Northern Altai or Northern Altay is the several tribal
Turkic dialects spoken in the
Altai Republic
The Altai Republic (; russian: Респу́блика Алта́й, Respublika Altay, ; Altai: , ''Altay Respublika''), also known as Gorno-Altai Republic, and colloquially, and primarily referred to in Russian to distinguish from the neighbour ...
of
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 ...
.
Though traditionally considered one language,
Southern Altai and the Northern varieties are not fully mutually intelligible.
Written Altai is based on Southern Altai, and is rejected by Northern Altai children.
Northern Altai is written in
Cyrillic
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
. In 2006, in the
Altay kray, an alphabet was created for the Kumandin variety.
Demographics
According to data from the
2002 Russian Census, 65,534 people in Russia stated that they have command of the Altay language. Only around 10% of them speak Northern Altay varieties, while the remaining speak Southern Altay varieties. Furthermore, according to some data, only 2% of Altays fluently speak the Altay language.
[Энциклопедия «Кругосвет»](_blank)
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Varieties
Northern Altay consists of the following varieties:
* (also Qubandy/Quwandy). 1,862 Kumandins claim to know their national language, but 1,044 people were registered as knowing Kumandy. Kumandy has the following three sub-varieties:
**Turačak
**Solton
**Starobardinian
* (also Kuu/Quu, Chalkandu/Shalkanduu, Lebedin). 466 Chelkans
The Chelkans (native name—''Chalkandu, Shalkandu'') are a small group of Turkic indigenous people of Siberia. They speak the Northern Altai Chelkan language. Those residing in Altai Republic are sometimes grouped together with the Altai ethnic ...
claim to speak their national language, and 539 people in all claim to know Chelkan.
The (also known as Tuba language), is also often ascribed to belong to the Northern Altai group, but its relation to other languages is dubious and it may belong to Kipchak languages.Tubalars
The Tubalars are an ethnic subgroup of the Altaians native to the Altai Republic in Russia.
According to the 2010 census, there were 1,965 Tubalars in Russia. In 2002 they were listed by the authorities within the indigenous small-numbered people ...
claim to know their national language, and 436 people in all reported knowing Tuba.
Closely related to the northern varieties of Altay are the of the Shor language
The Shor language ( endonym: шор тили, тадар тили) is a Turkic language spoken by about 2,800 people in a region called Mountain Shoriya, in the Kemerovo Province in Southwest Siberia, although the entire Shor population in thi ...
and the of the Chulym language
Chulym (in Chulym: Ось тили, ''Ös tili''; Russian: Чулымский язык), also known as Chulim, Chulym-Turkic (not to be confused with the Turkic Siberian Tatar language), is the language of the Chulyms. The names which the people ...
.
Linguistic features
The following features refer to the outcome of commonly used Turkic isoglosses in Northern Altay.
References
External links
Ethnologue entry for Northern Altai
* Page about the Kumandy variety with maps and grammatical information.
* Page about the Chelkan variety with maps and grammatical information.
* Page about the Tubalar variety with maps and grammatical information.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Altai, Northern, Language
Agglutinative languages
Turkic languages
Languages of Russia