Chuvash language
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| Chuvash Чӑвашла, Čăvašla |
||
|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | /ʨəʋaʂˈla/ | |
| Spoken in: | Russia | |
| Region: | Chuvashia | |
| Total speakers: | 1,330,000 (Russian Census (2002), self-reported speakers) | |
| Language family: | Altaic[1] (controversial) Turkic Oghuric Chuvash |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Chuvashia (federal subject of Russia) | |
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | cv | |
| ISO 639-2: | chv | |
| ISO 639-3: | chv | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Chuvash (Chuvash: Чӑвашла, Čăvašla, IPA: [ʨəʋaʂˈla]; also known as Chăvash, Chuwash, Chovash, Chavash, Çuvaş or Çuaş) is a Turkic language spoken to the west of the Ural Mountains in central Russia. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages.
Chuvash is the native language of the Chuvash people and an official language of Chuvashia. It is spoken by about two million people.[2] 86% of ethnic Chuvash and 8% of the people of other ethnicities living in Chuvashia claimed knowledge of Chuvash language during the 2002 census.[3] Despite that, and although Chuvash is taught at schools and sometimes used in the media, it is considered endangered[4][5], because Russian dominates in most spheres of life and few children learning the language are likely to become active users.
The writing system for the Chuvash language is based largely on the Cyrillic alphabet, employing all of the letters used in the Russian alphabet, and adding four letters of its own: Ӑ, Ӗ, Ҫ and Ӳ.
Contents |
[edit] History
Chuvash is the most distinctive of the Turkic languages and cannot be understood by speakers of other Turkic tongues. Its parent language — spoken by the Volga Bulghars in the Middle Ages — differs from all other modern Turkic languages so considerably that it is usually classified as a sister language of Proto-Turkic, rather than a daughter language, like the rest of the Turkic languages. Other related languages, such as Hunnic, are now extinct.
Formerly, scholars considered Chuvash not properly a Turkic language at all but, rather, a Turkicized Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language.[6]
[edit] Writing systems
[edit] Current
- А Ӑ Б В Г Д Е Ё Ӗ Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Ҫ Т У Ӳ Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
- а ӑ б в г д е ё ӗ ж з и й к л м н о п р с ҫ т у ӳ ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я
- а, ӑ, бӑ, вӑ, гӑ, дӑ, е, ё, ӗ, жӑ, зӑ, и, йӑ, кӑ, лӑ, мӑ, нӑ, о, пӑ, рӑ, сӑ, ҫӑ, тӑ, У, ӳ, фӑ, хӑ, цӑ, чӑ, шӑ, щӑ, хытӑлӑхпалли, ы, ҫемҫелӗхпалли, э, ю, я
[edit] In 1873-1938
The modern Chuvash alphabet was devised in 1873 by school inspector Ivan Yakovlevich Yakovlev [7].
| а | е | ы | и/і | у | ӳ | ă | ĕ | й | в | к | л | љ | м | н | њ | п | р | р́ | с | ç | т | т ̌ | ђ | х | ш |
In 1938, the alphabet underwent significant modification which brought it to its current form.
[edit] Previous systems
The most ancient writing system, known as the Orkhon script, disappeared after the Volga Bulgars converted to Islam. Later, the Arabic alphabet was adopted. After the Mongol invasion, writing simply disappeared.
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Consonants
The consonants are the following (the corresponding Cyrillic letters are in brackets): /p/ (п), /t/ (т), /k/ (к), /č/ (ч), /š/ (ш), /ś/ (ç), /χ/ (х), /v/ (в),/ m/ (м), /n/ (н), /l/ (л), /r/ (р), /y/ (й). The stops, sibilants and affricates are voiceless and fortes, but instead become lenes (sounding similar to voiced) in intervocalic position and after liquids, nasals and semi-vowels. E.g. Аннепе sounds like annebe, кушакпа sounds like kuzhakpa. However, geminate consonants don't undergo this lenition. Furthermore, the voiced consonants occurring in Russian are used in modern Russian-language loans. Consonants also become palatalized before and after front vowels.
[edit] Vowels
According to Krueger (1961), the Chuvash vowel system is as follows (the precise IPA symbols are chosen based on his description, since he uses a different transcription).
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |
| High | i (и) | y (ӳ) | ɯ (ы) | u (у) |
| Low | e (е) | ø̆ (ĕ) | а (а) | ŏ (ă) |
András Róna-Tas (1997) ([2]) provides a somewhat different description, also with a partly idiosyncratic transcription. The following table is based on his version, with additional information from Petrov (2001). Again, the IPA symbols are not directly taken from the works, so they could be inaccurate.
| Front | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |
| High | i (и) | y (ӳ) | ɯ (ы) | u (у) |
| Close-mid | ĕ (ĕ) | ɤ̆ (ă) | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ (е) | |||
| Low | a (а) | |||
The vowels ă and ĕ are described as reduced, thereby differing in quantity from the rest. In unstressed positions, they often resemble a schwa or tend to be dropped altogether in fast speech. At times, especially when stressed, they may be somewhat rounded and sound similar to /o/ and /ø/.
Additionally, ɔ (о) occurs in loanwords from Russian.
[edit] Dialects
There are two dialects of Chuvash: Viryal or Upper (which has both o and u) and Anatri or Lower (which has u for both o and u: up. totă "full", tută "taste" - lo. tută "full, taste" ). The literary language is based on both the Lower and Upper dialects. Both Tatar and the Finnic languages have influenced the Chuvash language, as have Russian, Mari, Mongolian, Arabic, and Persian, which have all added many words to the Chuvash lexicon.
[edit] Grammar
Chuvash is an agglutinative language and as such has an abundance of suffixes, but no native prefixes (apart from the reduplicating intensifier prefix as in шура="white", шап-шура="very white"). One word can have many suffixes and these can also be used to create new words (like creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root, see Vocabulary section further below) or to indicate the grammatical function of the word.
[edit] Nouns and adjectives
Chuvash nouns can take endings indicating the person of a possessor. They can take case-endings. There are six noun cases in the Chuvash declension system:
- Nominative
- Genitive, formed by adding -ăн, -ĕн or simply -н according to the vowel harmony
- Objective, formed by adding -(н)a or -(н)е, according to the vowel harmony
- Locative, formed by adding -тe, -ре, -тa, -ра according to the vowel harmony
- Ablative, formed by adding -тен or -тан, -рен, ран according to the vowel harmony
- Instrumental, formed by adding -пe or -пa, according to the vowel harmony
Taking кун (day) as an example:
| Chuvash | English | Noun case |
|---|---|---|
| кун | day, or the day | Nominative |
| кунăн | of the day | Genitive |
| куна | to the day | Objective |
| кунта | in the day | Locative |
| кунтан | of the day, or from the day | Ablative |
| кунпа | with the day | Instrumental |
Possession is expressed by means of constructions based on verbs meaning "to exist" and "to not exist". Thus, while "пур" and "çук" represent "exists" and "not exists," "пурччĕ" and "çукччĕ" are the preterite of these. These lead to the most bizarre-looking (to a Western reader) sentential structures: e.g., in order to say, "My cat had no shoes," we form:
- кушак + -ăм + -ăн ура атă(и) + -сем çук + -ччĕ
- (кушакăмăн ура аттисем çукччĕ)
which literally translates as, "cat-mine-of foot-cover(of)-plural-his non-existent-was." Note that many of the agglutinative languages of Eurasia use a form of the copula (the 'to be' verb) in order to mark possession, instead of a distinct verb meaning 'to have.' An example is Hungarian.
[edit] Verbs
Chuvash verbs exhibit person. They can be made negative or impotential; they can also be made potential. Finally, Chuvash verbs exhibit various distinctions of tense, mood, and aspect: a verb can be progressive, necessitative, aorist, future, inferential, present, past, conditional, imperative, or optative.
| Chuvash | English |
|---|---|
| кил- | (to) come |
| килме- | not (to) come |
| килейме- | not (to) be able to come |
| килеймен | She (or he) was apparently unable to come. |
| килеймерĕ | She had not been able to come. |
| килеймерĕр | You (plural) had not been able to come. |
| килеймерĕр-и? | Have you (plural) not been able to come? |
[edit] Vowel harmony
-
For more details on this topic, see Vowel harmony.
"Vowel harmony" is the principle by which a native Chuvash word generally incorporates either exclusively back vowels (а, ă, у, ы) or exclusively front vowels (е, ĕ, и, ӳ). As such, a notation for a Chuvash suffix such as -тен means either -тан or -тен, whichever promotes vowel harmony; a notation such as -тпĕр means either -тпăр, -тпĕр again with vowel harmony constituting the deciding factor.
Chuvash has two classes of vowels -- front and back (see the table above). Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels. Therefore, most grammatical suffixes come in front and back forms, e.g. Шупашкар'та "in Cheboksary" but килте "at home".
[edit] Exceptions
Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms like сĕтел|пукан "furniture" are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes (such as -ĕ); there are also a few native Chuvash words that do not follow the rule (such as анне "mother"). In such words suffixes harmonize with the final vowel; thus Анне'пе "With the mother".
[edit] Word order
Word order in Chuvash is generally Subject Object Verb.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "[1] Ethnologue"
- ^ Ethnologue report for Chuvash
- ^ Russian Census 2002. 6. Владение языками (кроме русского) населением отдельных национальностей по республикам, автономной области и автономным округам Российской Федерации(Knowledge of languages other than Russian by the population of republics, autonomous oblast and autonomous districts)(Russian)
- ^ Zheltov, Pavel. An Attribute-Sample Database System for Describing Chuvash Affixes
- ^ UNESCO RED BOOK ON ENDANGERED LANGUAGES: EUROPE by Tapani Salminen. Last updated 22 September 1999
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (1997)
- ^ TELEGRAM TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE SIMBIRSK SOVIET
[edit] References
- John Krueger (1961). Chuvash Manual. Indiana University Publications.
- Heikki Paasonen (1949). Gebräuche und Volksdichtung der Tschuwassen. edited by E. Karabka and M. Räsänen (Mémoires de la Société Finno-ougrinenne XCIV), Helsinki.
- Петров, Н. П. (2001). Чувашская письменность новая / Н. П. Петров // Краткая чувашская энциклопедия. – Чебоксары, 2001. – С. 475-476.[3]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Swadesh list of Chuvash words
- Interactive Chuvash-Turkish Web Dictionary
- Chuvash-Russian Web-Dictionary
- Chuvash People's Site, in Chuvash, English, Esperanto and Russian
- Nutshell Chuvash, by András Róna-Tas
- Chuvash people and language by Éva Kincses Nagy, Istanbul Erasmus IP 1- 13. 2. 2007
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