The Dolgan language (, or , ) is a severely endangered

Turkic language The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

with 930 speakers, spoken in the

Taymyr Peninsula The Taymyr Peninsula ( ) is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administratively it is part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Federal subject of Russia. Ge ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. The speakers are known as the Dolgans. The word "Dolgan", derived from Evenki, means 'tribe living on the middle reaches of the river'. This is most likely signifying the geographical location of the Dolgan tribe. Its closest relative is Sakha. The language is very local and restricted to a certain area and has declined in usage over the years. As of 2020 there are only about 5,350 speakers of the language. The language has experienced 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. In 1999, however, some children were apparently learning Dolgan, with Russian also being learned at an early age.

Classification

Dolgan, along with its close relative Sakha (Yakut), belongs to the North Siberian subbranch of the

family. Like most other Turkic languages, Dolgan has

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

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

grammatical gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...

. Dolgan is linguistically relatively close to its nearest relative Sakha (also known as Yakut), which has led researchers for a long time to account for it as a variety of the latter, cf. Dolgich's (1963: 129) statement in his well-known paper on the origin of the Dolgans: " ... долганский язык является диалектом якутского языка." ‘ ...the Dolgan language is a dialect of the Yakut language.’. Only in 1985 did Elizaveta Ubryatova account for Dolgan as a separate language, namely in her monograph on the language of the Norilsk Dolgans.

Sample comparison with Yakut (in Latin)

Geographical distribution

Status

Dolgan is established as a dominant language in the

Dialects/Varieties

There are three Dolgan subgroups: * Western –

Yenisey The Yenisey or Yenisei ( ; , ) is the list of rivers by length, fifth-longest river system in the world, and the largest to drain into the Arctic Ocean. Rising in Mungaragiyn-gol in Mongolia, it follows a northerly course through Lake Baikal a ...

Norilsk Norilsk ( rus, Нори́льск, p=nɐˈrʲilʲsk) is a closed city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located south of the western Taymyr Peninsula, around 90 km east of the Yenisei, Yenisey River and 1,500 km north of Krasnoyarsk. Norilsk is 300 ...

* 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, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

in the early 20th century. Over time, the

Cyrillic alphabet The Cyrillic 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 countries in Southeastern Europe, Easte ...

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 ''tās'' (1. south 2. east) and ''muora'' (1. north 2. west) are representative of the corresponding landscapes. ''Tās'' 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 Taymyr 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.

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)

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:

Grammar

Morphology

The composition of morphological categories in the noun is:

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

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

, 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 produ ...

, aspect, mode, time,

person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who 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 suc ...

and

. Dolgan language exhibits eight

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

s. In contrast in the

Sakha language Sakha may refer to: * Sakha Republic, a federal subject of Russia * Sakha language, or Yakut, a Turkic language * Sakha people, also Yakuts, a Turkic people * Sakha scripts, writing systems for the Sakha language * Sakha, Egypt, a town also known ...

(i.e. Yakut), the

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

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 an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and det ...

to address the

accusative case In grammar, the accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "he ...

, and joint case serves to structure two similar parts of a sentence. Another notable difference from Sakha is that Dolgan does not have comitative case. 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. The word ''paradigm'' is Ancient ...

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

Cases

The table below lists case forms for the noun ''таба'' 'deer' ('camel' in Common Turkic):

Vocabulary

*Much of the old

Yakut language The Yakut language ( ), also known as the Sakha language ( ) or Yakutian, is a Siberian Turkic language spoken by around 450,000 native speakers—primarily by ethnic Yakuts. It is one of the official languages of the Sakha Republic, a 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.

Examples

* Hello: Дорообо oroːbo(from

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

Здорово) * Mountain: Кайа aja* Mother: Иньэ nˈe* I love you: Мин энигин таптыыбын in eniɡin taptɯːbɯn(таптыыбын, shared by Sakha, is a loan from Mongolian) * Birthday: Төрөөбүт күн ørøːbyt kyn* Day after tomorrow: Өйүүн �jyːn* Dog: Ыт �t

References

Bibliography

* Ager, Simon. (2011). Dolgan. ''Omniglot.'' Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ dolgan.htm. * Chris Lasse Däbritz. (2022)
A Grammar of Dolgan: A Northern Siberian Turkic Language of the Taimyr Peninsula: 18
BRILL * 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.

External links

Dolgan DoReCo corpus
compiled by Chris Lasse Däbritz, Nina Kudryakova, Eugénie Stapert and Alexandre Arkhipov. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.

Paul A. Goble, ''Window on Eurasia'' (September 2, 2024) {{Authority control Agglutinative languages Taymyr Autonomous Okrug Krasnoyarsk Krai Indigenous languages of Siberia Siberian Turkic languages Subject–object–verb languages Dolgans