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| Southern Altai | |
|---|---|
| Oirot, Oyrot (before 1948) | |
| тÿштÿк алтай тил, tüştük altay til | |
Southern Altai written in Cyrillic and Latin scripts | |
| Native to | Russia |
| Region | Altai Republic |
Native speakers | 68,700 (2020)[1] |
| Cyrillic | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | alt |
| ISO 639-3 | alt |
| Glottolog | sout2694[5] |
Southern Altai (also known as Oirot, Oyrot, Altai and Altai proper) is a Turkic language spoken in the Altai Republic, a federal subject of Russia located in Southern Siberia on the border with Mongolia and China . The language has some mutual intelligibility with the Northern Altai language, leading to the two being traditionally considered as a single language. According to modern classifications—at least since the middle of the 20th century—they are considered to be two separate languages.[6]
File:WIKITONGUES- Dmitry speaking Altai.webm Written Altai is based on Southern Altai. According to some reports, however, it is rejected by Northern Altai children. Dialects include Altai Proper and Talangit.[7]
Southern Altai is a member of the Turkic language family. Within this family, there have been various attempts to classify Altai, and not all of them agree as to its position as it has a number of ambiguous characteristics.[8] Due to certain similarities with Kyrgyz, some scholars group Altai with the Kyrgyz–Kipchak subgroup of the Kypchak languages.[2][3][9]
Southern Altai is primarily spoken in the Altai Republic, where it has official status alongside Russian.
Baskakov identifies three dialects of Southern Altai, some of which have distinctive sub-varieties:[2]
Some sources consider Telengit and Teleut to be distinct languages.[10][11]
Southern Altai has 8 vowels, which may be long or short, and 20 consonants, plus marginal consonants that occur only in loan words.[12]
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i y | ɯ u |
| Low | e ø | a o |
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-alveloar | Velar | Uvular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p b | t d | tʃ ɟ | k ɡ | q |
| Affricate | (ts) | ||||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | (x) ɣ | |
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||
| Trill | r | ||||
| Approximant | l | j | |||
Phonemes in parentheses occur only in Russian loanwords.
Southern Altai employs a version of the Cyrillic alphabet with additional characters to represent sounds not found in Russian.[13]
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Д д | Ј ј | Е е |
| Ё ё | Ж ж | З з | И и | Й й | К к | Л л |
| М м | Н н | Ҥ ҥ | О о | Ӧ ӧ | П п | Р р |
| С с | Т т | У у | Ӱ ӱ | Ф ф | Х х | Ц ц |
| Ч ч | Ш ш | Щ щ | Ъ ъ | Ы ы | Ь ь | Э э |
| алтай тил edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |