Tungusic languages
Encyclopedia
The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu-Tungus, Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia
and Manchuria
by Tungusic peoples
. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain. Traditionally, linguists considered Tungusic to be part of the Altaic language family
along with the Turkic
and Mongolic
language families
; more recent proposals are that it belongs to Macro-Altaic, the latter including Japanese and Korean as well, or on the other hand, that Altaic is not a genetic group but a Sprachbund
.
Northern Tungusic
The following languages can be considered dialects or related languages of Evenki
Southern Tungusic
Jurchen-Manchu (Jurchen and Manchu are simply different stages of the same language; in fact, the ethnonym "Manchu" did not come about until 1636 when Emperor Hong Taiji decreed that the term would replace "Jurchen") is the only Tungusic language with a literary form (in Jurchen script
and later the Manchu alphabet
) which dates back to at least the mid- to late-12th century; as such it is a very important language for the reconstruction of Proto-Tungusic.
The earliest and one of the most important extant texts in Jurchen is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (Da Jin deshengtuo songbei), which was erected in 1185, during the Dading period (1161–1189). It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele.
Other ancient Tungusic languages include that of the Mohe.
systems and elaborate patterns of tense
and aspect
marking. They also exhibit a complex pattern of vowel harmony
, based on the parameters of vowel roundedness
and vowel tenseness
.
Another common feature is vocabulary, such as Manchu emu, zhuwe, ilan, meaning 1,2,3.
and Mongolic languages
in the Altaic language family
. Others have suggested that the Tungusic languages might be related (perhaps as a paraphyletic outgroup) to the Korean
, Japonic
, or Ainu
languages as well.
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
by Tungusic peoples
Tungusic peoples
Tungusic peoples are the peoples who speak Tungusic languages. The word originated in Tunguska, an ill-defined region of Siberia.-Peoples:Tungusic peoples are:*Evenks*Evens*Jurchens *Manchu*Negidals...
. Many Tungusic languages are endangered, and the long-term future of the family is uncertain. Traditionally, linguists considered Tungusic to be part of the Altaic language family
Altaic languages
Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
along with the Turkic
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
and Mongolic
Mongolic languages
The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner...
language families
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
; more recent proposals are that it belongs to Macro-Altaic, the latter including Japanese and Korean as well, or on the other hand, that Altaic is not a genetic group but a Sprachbund
Sprachbund
A Sprachbund – also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area or language crossroads – is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact. They may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related...
.
Classification
Linguists working on Tungusic have proposed a number of different classifications based on different criteria, including morphological, lexical, and phonological characteristics. One classification which seems favoured over other alternatives is that the Tungusic languages can be divided into a northern branch and a southern branch, with the southern branch further subdivided into southeastern and southwestern groups.Northern Tungusic
Northern Tungusic languages
The Northern Tungusic languages belong to the Tungusic family and are spoken in far eastern Russia and northeastern China.- References :*...
- Evenki (obsolete: Tungus), spoken by Ewenkis in central SiberiaSiberiaSiberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and northeastern ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and - EvenEven languageThe Even language is a Tungusic language spoken by the Evens in Siberia. It is spoken by widely scattered communities of reindeer herders from Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east to the River Lena in the west, and from the Arctic coast in the north to the River Aldan in the south...
(Lamut) of eastern SiberiaSiberiaSiberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
The following languages can be considered dialects or related languages of Evenki
- OroqenOroqen languageOroqen is a Northern Tungusic language spoken in the People's Republic of China. Dialects are Gankui and Heilongjiang. Gankui is the standard dialect...
- NegidalNegidal languageNegidal is a language of the Tungusic family spoken in the Russian Far East, mostly in Khabarovskij Kraj, along the lower reaches of the Amur River. Negidal belongs to the Northern branch of Tungusic, together with Evenki and Even...
- Solon
- Manegir
Southern Tungusic
Southern Tungusic languages
The Southern Tungusic languages belong to the Tungusic family and are spoken in the extreme southeast of Russia and northeastern China.- References :*...
- Southeastern TungusicSoutheastern Tungusic languagesThe Southeastern Tungusic languages are one of two branches within the Southern Tungusic languages. It consists of Nanai, Akani, Birar, Kile, Samagir, Orok, Ulch, Oroch, and Udege....
- NanaiNanai languageThe Nanai language is spoken by the Nanai people in Siberia, and to a much smaller extent in China's Heilongjiang province, where it is known as Hezhe...
(Gold, Goldi, Hezhen) - Akani
- Birar
- Kile
- Samagir
- OrokOrok languageOrok is the Russian name for the language known by its speakers as Ulta or Ujlta. Similarly, the people are called Oroks or Ulta. It is counted among the Tungusic languages...
- UlchUlch languageThe Ulch language, or Olcha, is a Tungusic language spoken by the Ulch people in Siberia.- Alphabet :In brackets are letters that are used in writing, though not officially included in the alphabet....
- OrochOroch languageThe Oroch language is spoken by the Oroch people in Siberia. It is a member of the southern group of the Tungusic languages and is closely related to the Nanai language and Udege language. It is spoken in the Khabarovsk Krai...
- UdegeUdege languageThe Udege language is the language of the Udege people. It is a member of the Tungusic family.-Vocabulary:...
- Nanai
- Southwestern TungusicSouthwestern Tungusic languagesThe Southwestern Tungusic languages, also called the Jurchen-Manchu group, are one of two branches within the Southern Tungusic languages. It consists of Manchu, Xibe, and the extinct Jurchen....
(or the Jurchen-Manchu group)- ManchuManchu languageManchu is a Tungusic endangered language spoken in Northeast China; it used to be the language of the Manchu, though now most Manchus speak Mandarin Chinese and there are fewer than 70 native speakers of Manchu out of a total of nearly 10 million ethnic Manchus...
of ManchuriaManchuriaManchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
, the language of the ManchuManchuThe Manchu people or Man are an ethnic minority of China who originated in Manchuria . During their rise in the 17th century, with the help of the Ming dynasty rebels , they came to power in China and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, which...
s, who founded the Qing DynastyQing DynastyThe Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
of China. - SibeXibe languageThe Xibe language is the most widely spoken of the Tungusic languages spoken by members of the Xibe ethnic group in Xinjiang, in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.-Phonology:...
: spoken in XinjiangXinjiangXinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
autonomous region by descendants of a Manchurian tribe dispatched by the Qing Dynasty to Xinjiang as a military garrison. - JurchenJurchen languageJurchen language is an extinct language. It was spoken by Jurchen people of eastern Manchuria, the creators of the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It is classified as a Southwestern Tungusic language.-Writing:...
: an extinct language of the Jin Dynasty of China.
- Manchu
Jurchen-Manchu (Jurchen and Manchu are simply different stages of the same language; in fact, the ethnonym "Manchu" did not come about until 1636 when Emperor Hong Taiji decreed that the term would replace "Jurchen") is the only Tungusic language with a literary form (in Jurchen script
Jurchen script
Jurchen script was the writing system used to write Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in the northeastern China of the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese...
and later the Manchu alphabet
Manchu alphabet
The Manchu alphabet was used for recording the now near-extinct Manchu language; a similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language descended from Manchu...
) which dates back to at least the mid- to late-12th century; as such it is a very important language for the reconstruction of Proto-Tungusic.
The earliest and one of the most important extant texts in Jurchen is the inscription on the back of "the Jin Victory Memorial Stele" (Da Jin deshengtuo songbei), which was erected in 1185, during the Dading period (1161–1189). It is apparently an abbreviated translation of the Chinese text on the front of the stele.
Other ancient Tungusic languages include that of the Mohe.
Common characteristics
The Tungusic languages are of an agglutinative morphological type, and some of them have complex caseDeclension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
systems and elaborate patterns of tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
and aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
marking. They also exhibit a complex pattern of vowel harmony
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
, based on the parameters of vowel roundedness
Roundedness
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
and vowel tenseness
Tenseness
In phonology, tenseness is a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. It has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants. Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, that is, in...
.
Another common feature is vocabulary, such as Manchu emu, zhuwe, ilan, meaning 1,2,3.
Relationships with other languages
Tungusic has traditionally been linked with TurkicTurkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
and Mongolic languages
Mongolic languages
The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The best-known member of this language family, Mongolian, is the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia and the Mongolian residents of Inner...
in the Altaic language family
Altaic languages
Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
. Others have suggested that the Tungusic languages might be related (perhaps as a paraphyletic outgroup) to the Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Japonic
Japonic languages
Japonic languages is a term which identifies and characterises the Japanese which is spoken on the main islands of Japan and the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands. This widely accepted linguistics term was coined by Leon Serafim....
, or Ainu
Ainu language
Ainu is one of the Ainu languages, spoken by members of the Ainu ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō....
languages as well.
General references
- Kane, Daniel. The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters. Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series, Volume 153. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1989. ISBN 0933070233.
- Lewis, M. Paul (ed.). "Altaic" in Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International, 2009. ISBN 978-1-55671-216-6.
- Miller, Roy Andrew. Japanese and the Other Altaic Languages. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971.
- Poppe, Nicholas. Vergleichende Grammatik der Altaischen Sprachen [A Comparative Grammar of the Altaic Languages]. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1960.
- Tsintsius, Vera I. Sravnitel'naya Fonetika Tunguso-Man'chzhurskikh Yazïkov [Comparative Phonetics of the Manchu-Tungus Languages]. Leningrad, 1949.
- Stefan Georg. "Unreclassifying Tungusic", in: Carsten Naeher (ed.): Proceedings of the First International Conference on Manchu-Tungus Studies (Bonn, August 28 – September 1, 2000), Volume 2: Trends in Tungusic and Siberian Linguistics, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 45-57
External links
- The LINGUIST List MultiTree Project: Tungusic Family Tree
- Monumenta Altaica—Altaic Linguistics. Grammars, Texts, Dictionaries, Bibliographies of Mongolian and other Altaic languages
- Tungusic Research Group at Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
Tungusic languages - Vergleich der Reziproken des Ewenischen mit verwandten Sprachen