Khakas language#Dialects

Traditionally, the Khakas language is divided into several closely related dialects, which take their names from the different tribes: {{Interlanguage link multi|Sagay dialect|ru|3=Сагайский диалект|lt=Sagay}}, {{Interlanguage link multi|Kacha dialect|ru|3=Качинский диалект|lt=Kacha}}, Koybal, Beltir, and Kyzyl{{Clarification needed|date=March 2022|note=This links to the capital of Tyva. The Tyvan are typically not considered directed to be a tribe of Khakas, so far as I know. Is this referring to somebody different?}}. In fact, these names represent former administrative units rather than tribal or linguistic groups. The people speaking all these dialects simply referred to themselves as Тадар (Tadar, i.e. Tatar). The Khakas language also has a dialect named Kamas Turk (or Kamas Turkic), which according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger has been extinct since the 1950s.{{cite web|title=Atlas of the world's languages in danger|url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000187026|website=UNESCO|date=2010|access-date=2025-03-15|author1=Christopher Moseley|author2=Alexandre Nicolas|page=195-196}}

The people who speak the Fuyu Kyrgyz language originated in the Yenisei region of Siberia but were relocated into the Dzungar Khanate by the Dzungars, and then the Qing moved them from Dzungaria to northeastern China in 1761, and the name may be due to the survival of a common tribal name.[https://books.google.com/books?id=AzG5llo3YCMC&pg=PA110 Tchoroev (Chorotegin) 2003], p. 110.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LbmP_1KIQ_8C&pg=PA113|title=Tumen Jalafun Jecen Aku: Manchu Studies in Honour of Giovanni Stary|first=Giovanni|last=Stary|date=12 April 2018|publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag|isbn=9783447053785|access-date=12 April 2018|via=Google Books}} The Yenisei Kirghiz were made to pay tribute in a treaty concluded between the Dzungars and Russians in 1635.[https://books.google.com/books?id=8FVsWq31MtMC&pg=PA89 Millward 2007], p. 89. Sibe Bannermen were stationed in Dzungaria while Northeastern China (Manchuria) was where some of the remaining Öelet Oirats were deported to.{{cite book|author=Juha Janhunen|title=Manchuria: An Ethnic History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vfJiAAAAMAAJ&q=pacified|year=1996|publisher=Finno-Ugrian Society|isbn=978-951-9403-84-7|page=112}} The Nonni basin was where Oirat Öelet deportees were settled. The Yenisei Kirghiz were deported along with the Öelet.{{cite book|author=Juha Janhunen|title=Manchuria: An Ethnic History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vfJiAAAAMAAJ&q=Oelet|year=1996|publisher=Finno-Ugrian Society|isbn=978-951-9403-84-7|pages=111–112}} Chinese and Oirat replaced Oirat and Kirghiz during Manchukuo as the dual languages of the Nonni-based Yenisei Kirghiz.{{cite book|author=Juha Janhunen|title=Manchuria: An Ethnic History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vfJiAAAAMAAJ&q=Oirat|year=1996|publisher=Finno-Ugrian Society|isbn=978-951-9403-84-7|page=59}} The present-day Kyrgyz people originally lived in the same area that the speakers of Fuyu Kyrgyz at first dwelled within modern-day Russia. These Kyrgyz were known as the Yenisei Kyrgyz. It is now spoken in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province, in and around Fuyu County, Qiqihar (300 km northwest of Harbin) by a small number of passive speakers who are classified as Kyrgyz nationality.{{Harvnb|Hu|Imart|1987|p=1}}

The first major recordings of the Khakas language originate from the middle of the 19th century. The Finnish linguist Matthias Castrén, who travelled through northern and Central Asia between 1845 and 1849, wrote a treatise on the Koybal dialect, and recorded an epic. Wilhelm Radloff traveled the southern Siberian region extensively between 1859 and 1870. The result of his research was, among others, published in his four-volume dictionary, and in his ten-volume series of Turkic texts. The second volume contains his Khakas materials, which were provided with a German translation. The ninth volume, provided with a Russian translation, was prepared by Radloff's student Katanov, who was a Sagay himself, and contains further Khakas materials.

The Khakas literary language, which was developed only after the Russian Revolution of 1917, is based on the central dialects Sagay and Kacha; the Beltir dialect has largely been assimilated by Sagay, and the Koybal dialect by Kacha.

In 1924, a Cyrillic alphabet was devised, which was replaced by a Latin alphabet in 1929, and by a new Cyrillic alphabet in 1939.{{Cite book|last=Akiner|first=Shirin|title=Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union (with an Appendix on the non-Muslim Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union)|publisher=Routledge|year=1986|isbn=0-7103-0188-X|pages=410}}

In 2012, an Enduring Voices expedition documented the Xyzyl language from the Republic of Khakassia. Officially considered a dialect of Khakas, its speakers regard Xyzyl as a separate language of its own.{{Cite news

| last = Andrew Howley

| title = NG Explorers Help Record Xyzyl Language

| work = National Geographic Explorers Journal

| access-date = 2012-10-21

| date = 2012-05-21

| url = http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/21/ng-explorers-help-record-xyzyl-language/

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130701133403/http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/05/21/ng-explorers-help-record-xyzyl-language/

| url-status = dead

| archive-date = July 1, 2013

}}

The Khakas language is part of the South Siberian subgroup of Turkic languages, along with Shor, Chulym, Tuvan, Tofa, and Northern Altai. The language of the Turkic-speaking Yugurs of Gansu and the Fuyu Kyrgyz language of a small group of people in Manchuria also share some similarities with languages of this subgroup. The Khakas language has also been part of a wider language area covering the Southern Samoyedic languages Kamassian and Mator. A distinctive feature that these languages share with Khakas and Shor is a process of nasal assimilation, whereby a word-initial palatal stop (in all of these languages from an earlier palatal approximant *j) develops into an alveolar nasal {{IPA|/n/}} or a palatal nasal {{IPA|/ɲ/}}, when followed by another word-internal nasal consonant.{{cite journal|first=Eugene|last=Helimski|title=Areal groupings (Sprachbünde) within and across the borders of the Uralic language family: A survey|year=2003|journal=Nyelvtudományi Közlemenyek|issn=0029-6791|url=http://www.nytud.hu/nyk/100/helimski.pdf|volume=100|page=158}}

{{main|Khakas alphabets}}

Latin alphabet (1929–1939):

Cyrillic alphabet (1939–present):

{{Expand section|date=November 2024}}

Standard Khakas has 10 grammatical cases.

Khakas has a core Turkic vocabulary. Although there were no historic contacts with Arabic (or Islam), the vocabulary features few Arabic words, for example, {{lang|kjh|хабар}} "news, tiding",{{cite web |last= |first= |date= |title=Хакасско-русский и русско-хакасский|url=http://sostik.info/word/?word=Хабар|trans-title= Khakas-Russian and Russo-Khakas Dictionary|website= |language= ru|location= |publisher= |access-date=}} {{lang|kjh|халых}} "people, a mass (of people), society".{{cite web|url=http://sostik.info/word/?word=Халых|title=Хакасско-русский и русско-хакасский}}

{{Reflist}}

{{Notelist}}

• {{Citation | last1 = Hu | first1 = Zhen-hua | last2 = Imart | first2 = Guy |name-list-style=amp | title = Fu-Yü Gïrgïs: A tentative description of the easternmost Turkic language | year = 1987 | publisher = Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies | location = Bloomington, Indiana}}

• {{cite book | author=Anderson, G. D. S. | title=Xakas. Languages of the world: Materials: 251 | publisher=München | year=1998}}
• {{cite book | author=Castrén, M. A. | title=Versuch einer koibalischen und karagassischen Sprachlehre nebst Wörterverzeichnissen aus den tatarischen mundarten des minussinschen Kreises | publisher=St. Petersburg | year=1857}}
• {{cite book | author=Donidze, M. A. | title=Языки мира: Тюркские языки. | publisher=Moscow | year=1997}}
• {{cite book | author=Katanov, N. F. | title=Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme. IX. Theil: Mundarten der Urianchaier (Sojonen), Abakan-Tataren und Karagassen | publisher=St. Petersburg | year=1907}}
• {{cite book|editor1=Lars Johanson|editor2=Éva Ágnes Csató Johanson|title=The Turkic Languages|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z7i5CAAAQBAJ&q=khakas+tatar&pg=PA100|date=1998|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-82527-9}}
• {{cite book | author=Radloff, W. | title=Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens. II. Theil: die Abakan-Dialecte (der Sagaische, Koibalische, Katschinzische), der Kysyl-Dialect und der Tscholym-Dialect (Küerik) | publisher=St. Petersburg | year=1867}}
• {{cite book | author=Radloff, W. | title=Versuch eines Wörterbuches der Türk-Dialecte I-IV | publisher=St. Petersburg | year=1893–1911}}

{{Incubator|code=kjh}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20051218162207/http://www.ozturkler.com/data_english/0007/0007_18.htm Hakas People and Hakasia]
• [http://www.tarbagan.net/fotj/KhakasLang.htm Khakasian Alphabet]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120307161023/http://sostik.info/word.php Khakas-Russian Online Dictionary]
• [http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/2434 Endangered languages project - Khakas]
• [http://www.language-archives.org/language/kjh OLAC resources in and about the Khakas language]
• [https://linghub.ru/oral_khakas_corpus/ Spoken corpus of the dialects of Khakas] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803082122/https://linghub.ru/oral_khakas_corpus/ |date=2020-08-03 }}
• [https://khakas.altaica.ru/ Online Khakas corpus (in Russian)]

{{Turkic languages}}

{{Languages of Russia}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Khakas Language}}

Category:Agglutinative languages

Category:Siberian Turkic languages

Language

Category:Indigenous languages of Siberia