Khakas language

language
name=Khakas
familycolor=Altaic
states=Russia
region=Khakassia
speakers=~60,000
fam1=Altaic [" [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90009] Ethnologue"] (controversial)
fam2=Turkic
fam3=Northern
iso2=tut
iso3=kjh

Khakas is a Turkic language spoken by the Khakas people, who mainly live in the southern Siberian Khakas Republic, or Khakassia, in Russia. The Khakas number 78,500, of whom 60,168 speak the Khakas language; most people are bilingual in Russian. Its ISO 639-3 code is kjh.

Traditionally, the Khakas language is divided into several closely related dialects, which take their names from the different tribes: Sagay, Kacha, Koybal, Beltir, and Kyzyl. 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 Tadar (i.e. Tatar). Shor, which was later on recognised as a Khakas dialect, is spoken by people who originally came from Shoria, currently the Kemerovo region.

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 1845–1849, 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 substituted by a Latin alphabet in 1929, and replaced by a Cyrillic alphabet again in 1939.

The Khakas language is part of the northeastern conglomerate of Turkic languages, which includes Shor, Chulym, Tuva, Tofa, Sakha (Yakut), and Dolgan.

Orthography

Latin alphabet:

Cyrillic alphabet:

References

*

*

*

*

*

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=kjh Ethnologue entry for Khakas]
* [http://www.ozturkler.com/data_english/0007/0007_18.htm/ Hakas People and Hakasia]
* [http://www.tarbagan.net/fotj/KhakasLang.htm Khakasian Alphabet]