The Oroch language is an extinct language spoken by the Oroch people in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. It is a member of the southern group of the

Tungusic languages The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu–Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the ...

and is closely related to the

Nanai language The Nanai language (also called Gold, Goldi, or Hezhen) is spoken by the Nanai people in Siberia, and to a much smaller extent in China's Heilongjiang province, where it is known as Hezhe. The language has about 1,400 speakers out of 17,000 ethn ...

and

Udege language The Udege language (also Udihe language, Udekhe language, Udeghe language) is the language of the Udege people. It is a member of the Tungusic family. It is a moribund language, and classified as critically endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the ...

. It was spoken in the

Khabarovsk Krai Khabarovsk Krai (, ) is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (a krai) of Russia. It is located in the Russian Far East and is administratively part of the Far Eastern Federal District. The administrative centre of the krai is the types of ...

( Komsomolsky,

Sovetskaya Gavan Sovetskaya Gavan () is a town in Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, and a port on the Strait of Tartary which connects the Sea of Okhotsk in the north with the Sea of Japan in the south. Population: It was previously known as Imperatorskaya Gavan (Им ...

, and Ulchsky districts). The language is split into three dialects: Tumninsky, Khadinsky, and Hungarisky. At the beginning of the 21st century, a written form of the language was created. The Russian government and the scientific field disagree on whether the language is living or extinct. The last active speaker died in 2008, but there are passive speakers who speak Oroch to varying degrees. Oroch belongs to the northern subgroup of the

, alongside Udege, its closest relative, and the Ewenic languages. It is believed that the Oroch language is the closest to Nanai, because a significant group of Nanai (Evenki) origin (Samagirs) joined the Orochs. Until the beginning of the 20th century, some researchers combined the Orochi with the Udege, considering them as close dialects. In the 1930s it was believed that the Udege language could be considered as a single standard language for both ethnic groups.

Extinction

According to the 2002 Census, there were 257 speakers of the Oroch language; however, this is known to be erroneous due to confusion with the similarly-named

Orok language Uilta (, also called Ulta, Ujlta, or Orok) is a Tungusic language spoken in the Poronaysky District, Poronaysky and Nogliksky District, Nogliksky administrative divisions of Sakhalin Oblast, Administrative Divisions of Sakhalin Oblast, in the ...

. According to the 2010 Census, there were eight speakers. However, according to researchers, by the late 1990s, even the oldest Orochi could only utter a few phrases. The Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Khabarovsk Krai stated that the last fluent speaker of the Oroch language died in 2008. In 2010, this association held a meeting of elderly Orochi, who together were able to remember only about 20 Oroch words, and could not count to ten.

Dialects

The Oroch dialects are (Perekhvalskaya 2022:234): *Koppi *Oroch Xadi *Tumnin

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Oroch has a system of vowel harmony based on the presence or absence of

retracted tongue root In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR or +ATR), or expanded pharynx, and retracted tongue root (RTR or −ATR) are contrasting states of the pharynx during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Afric ...

(RTR).

Orthography

References

Bibliography

* * * Альбина Гирфанова (1994). "Орочский язык". Контактологический энциклопедический словарь-справочник: Северный регион. Языки народов Севера, Сибири и Дальнего Востока в контактах с русским языком. М. (1). (in Russian)

External links

Unesco – Oroch language
(In Russian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Oroch Language Agglutinative languages Critically endangered languages Culture of Khabarovsk Krai Indigenous languages of Siberia Tungusic languages stub