The Dolgan language is a Turkic language with around 1,000 speakers, spoken in the

Taymyr Peninsula The Taymyr Peninsula (russian: Таймырский полуостров, Taymyrsky poluostrov) is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administrat ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

. The speakers are known as the Dolgans. The word "Dolgan" means 'tribe living on the middle reaches of the river'. This is most likely signifying the geographical location of the Dolgan tribe. The language is very local and restricted to a certain area and has declined in usage over the years. As of 2010 there are only about 1,050 speakers of the language. The language has expressed a few changes since the beginning of its formation, such as alphabet and phrasing terms. The issue as of recently has become the weak integration of this local language within families with mixed marriages. Instead of speaking either of the parents' local languages, the family incorporates Russian as the more dominant language to ease interfamilial and external communication. This results in children learning the language only slightly or as a second language. Over generations, the language continues to fade.

Classification

Dolgan, along with its close relative Sakha (Yakut), belongs to the North Siberian subbranch of the Turkic language family. Like most other Turkic languages, Dolgan has

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

, agglutinative morphology, subject-object-verb word order, and lacks

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

Sample comparison with Yakut (in Latin)

Geographical distribution

Official status

Dolgan is established as a dominant language in the

Dialects/Varieties

Three Dolgan subgroups: * Western –

Yenisei The Yenisey (russian: Енисе́й, ''Yeniséy''; mn, Горлог мөрөн, ''Gorlog mörön''; Buryat: Горлог мүрэн, ''Gorlog müren''; Tuvan: Улуг-Хем, ''Uluğ-Hem''; Khakas: Ким суғ, ''Kim suğ''; Ket: Ӄук, ...

Norilsk Norilsk ( rus, Нори́льск, p=nɐˈrʲilʲsk, ''Norílʹsk'') is a closed city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located south of the western Taymyr Peninsula, around 90 km east of the Yenisey River and 1,500 km north of Krasnoyarsk. Norilsk ...

* Central – Avam * Eastern – Khatanga All dialects are understood among each other, despite subtle differences. Yakut is also understood among all since it is so similar.

History

The Dolgan language started out having a

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

in the early 20th century. Over time, the

Cyrillic alphabet , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = Gr ...

was implemented instead since it is the same alphabet used by the related language, Yakut. Evenki's influence on Dolgan can explain, in part, why it is considered a separate language from Yakut. Dolgan has made appearances in newspapers, such as the ''Taymyr'', as well as schools starting around the time of the 60s. However, now there are only around 1,050 speakers of the Dolgan language. Certain words in the language were developed from geographical implications that have been present since the start of the Dolgan language. For instance, the directional terms ''ta¯s'' (1. south 2. east) and ''muora'' (1. north 2. west) are representative of the corresponding landscapes. ''Ta¯s'' is related to the word stone, and the southeast topography of the native region,

, is covered by the Putorana Mountains. Similarly, ''muora'' denotes "sea" where the western zone of Taimyr has access to the sea shore. However, this is not true for all directional terms, nor all words of the Dolgan language. Southwest, ''uhä'', and northeast, ''allara'', have no significance in geographical terms relative to Taymyr.

Grammar

Morphology

The composition of morphological categories in the noun is:

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual number ...

, possession, and in the verb is:

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...

, aspect,

mode Mode ( la, modus meaning "manner, tune, measure, due measure, rhythm, melody") may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' MO''D''E (magazine)'', a defunct U.S. women's fashion magazine * ''Mode'' magazine, a fictional fashion magazine which is ...

, time,

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

and

. In contrast in the

Yakut language Yakut , also known as Yakutian, Sakha, Saqa or Saxa ( sah, саха тыла), is a Turkic language spoken by around 450,000 native speakers, primarily the ethnic Yakuts and one of the official languages of Sakha (Yakutia), a federal republic ...

, the

partitive In linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that indicates partialness. Nominal partitives are syntactic constructions, such as "some of the children", and may be classified semantically as either set partitives or entity partitives ba ...

is used in the possessive

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...

to address the

accusative case The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘t ...

, and joint case serves to structure two similar parts of a sentence. In conjugation of a verb in the common form of -''ааччы'', the

paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. Etymology ''Paradigm'' comes f ...

s of Dolgan inclination were preserved with the word ''баар''.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Dolgan has the following phonetic characteristics: * Diphthongisation of the Turkish medium vowels , e, öin the root syllable * Labial and palatal vowel harmony in the native words * Transition of the initial Turkish c- into h- , loss of the uvular x, ҕ: Yakut ; ''саха'' ~ Dolgan ''hака'' (self)

Vocabulary

*Much of the old

Yakut Language Yakut , also known as Yakutian, Sakha, Saqa or Saxa ( sah, саха тыла), is a Turkic language spoken by around 450,000 native speakers, primarily the ethnic Yakuts and one of the official languages of Sakha (Yakutia), a federal republic ...

was lost. * Lack of modern political and scientific terminology. * Change in the meaning of words under the influence of the Turkish semantic system. * Extensive borrowing from the Russian language.

Writing system

Over time, the language itself has changed and adapted. Even during the time period when it had a Cyrillic alphabet, it changed over the years. The first version of alphabet of the language had the following appearance: А а, Б б, В в, Г г, Д д, Дь дь, Е е, Ё ё, Ж ж, З з, И и, Иэ иэ, Й й, К к, Л л, М м, Н н, Ӈ ӈ, Нь нь, О о, Ө ө, П п, Р р, С с, Т т, У у, Уо уо, Ү ү, Үө үө, Ф ф, Х х, Һ һ, Ц ц, Ч ч, Ш ш, Щ щ, Ъ ъ, Ы ы, Ыа ыа, Ь ь, Э э, Ю ю, Я я.''Аксенова О. Е.'
Бэсэлээ буквалар
— Красноярск: Красноярское кн. изд-во, 1990. — 16 с. The current Dolgan alphabet is still Cyrillic and looks as follows:

Examples (with phonetics)

Hello : Дорообо oroːbo Mountain : Кайа aja Mother : Иньэ nˈe I love you : Мин энигин таптыыбын in eniɡin taptɯɯbɯn Birthday : Төрөөбүт күн ørøøbyt kyn Day after tomorrow : Өйүүн �jyyn Dog : Ыт �t

References

Bibliography

* Ager, Simon. (2011). Dolgan. ''Omniglot.'' Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ dolgan.htm. * Dolgikh, B. O. (1963). Proiskhozhdenie Dolgan (Origin of the Dolgan). ''Trudy Instituta'', Etnografii AN SSSR 84:92-141. * Grachyova, Galina. (1990). Dolgan. In Collis, Dirmid R. F. (ed.), Arctic Languages: An Awakening, 112-114. * Grenoble, Lenore A. and Lindsay J. Whaley. (2006). ''Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * * Lewis, E. Glyn. (1971). Migration and Language in the USSR. ''The International Migration Review: The Impact of Migration on Language Maintenance and Language Shift, 5(2),'' 147-179''. '' * Li, Yong-Sŏng. (2011). A study of Dolgan. (Altaic language series, 05.) Seoul: ''Seoul National University Pres''s. * * * * Marten, H.F., Rießler, M., Saarikivi, J., Toivanen, R. (2015). ''Cultural and Linguistic Minorities in the Russian Federation and the European Union: Comparative Studies on Equality and Diversity.'' Switzerland: Springer. * Minahan, James B. (2014). Dolgan in ''Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia.'' (63-67). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC. * Vahtre, Lauri. (1991). The Dolgans. ''The Red Book.'' Retrieved from https://www.eki.ee/books/ redbook/dolgans.shtml.