Tuvan language

Tuvan
Тыва дыл Tıva tıl
Pronunciation	[tʰɤ̀ʋɐ tɤ̀ɫ]
Native to	Russia, Mongolia, China
Region	Tuva
Ethnicity	Tuvans
Native speakers	130,000 (2021)
Language family	Turkic Common Turkic Sayan Turkic Steppe Sayan Turkic Tuvan
Writing system	Cyrillic script
Official status
Official language in	Russia Tuva
Language codes
ISO 639-2	tyv
ISO 639-3	tyv
Glottolog	tuvi1240  Tuvinian todj1234  Todja
ELP	Tuva
	Tuha
Tuvan is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

People	Tuvan / Tyvans Тывалар Тувинцы
Language	Tuvan / Tyvan Тыва дыл
Country	Tuva / Tyva Тува Тыва

A Tuvan speaker

Inscription in Kyzyl using Turkic script

Tuvan, sometimes spelt Tyvan, is a Turkic language spoken in the Republic of Tuva in South Central Siberia, Russia. There are small groups of Tuvans that speak distinct dialects of Tuvan in China and Mongolia.

History

While this history focuses on mostly the people of Tuva, many linguists argue that language is inevitably intertwined with the socio-historical situation of a language itself. The earliest record of Tuvan is from the early 19th century by Wūlǐyǎsūtái zhìlüè (Chinese: 烏里雅蘇台志略), Julius Klaproth 1823, Matthias Castrén 1857, Nikolay Katanov, Vasily Radlov, etc.

The name Tuva goes back as early as the publication of The Secret History of the Mongols. The Tuva (as they refer to themselves) have historically been referred to as Soyons, Soyots or Uriankhais.

Classification

Tuvan (also spelled Tyvan) is linguistically classified as a Sayan Turkic language. Its closest relative is the moribund Tofa.

Although Tuvan has more speakers than endangered languages such as Seri in Mexico (est. 1000 speakers) or Nǁng in South Africa (fewer than 10 speakers), still Tuvan is endangered by global dialects around them like Russian or Mandarin.

Tuvan, as spoken in Tuva, is principally divided into four dialect groups; Western, Central, Northeastern, Southeastern.

• Central: forms the basis of the literary language and includes Ovyur and Bii-Khem subdialects. The geographical centrality of this dialect meant it was similar to the language spoken by most Tuvans, whether or not exactly the same.
• Western: can be found spoken near the upper course of the Khemchik. It is influenced by the Altai language.
• Northeastern, also known as the Todzhi dialect, is spoken near the upper course of the Great Yenisey. The speakers of this dialect utilize nasalization. It contains a large vocabulary related to hunting and reindeer breeding not found in the other dialects.
• Southeastern: shows the most influence from the Mongolic languages.

Other dialects include those spoken by the Dzungar, the Tsengel and the Dukha Tuvans, but currently these uncommon dialects are not comprehensively documented. Different dialects of the language exist across the geographic region in which Tuvan is spoken. K. David Harrison, who completed his dissertation on the Tuvan language in 2001, argues that the divergence of these dialects relates to the nomadic nature of the Tuvan nation.

One subset is the Jungar Tuvan language, originating in the Altai Mountains in the western region of Mongolia. There is no accurate number of Jungar-Tuvan speakers because most currently reside in China, and the Chinese include Tuvan speakers as Mongolians in their census.

Phonology

Consonants

Tuvan has 19 native consonant phonemes:

Consonant phonemes of Tuvan

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Plosive	lenis	p	t		ɡ
	fortis	pʰ	tʰ		k
Affricate			t͡s	t͡ʃ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ	x
	voiced		z	ʒ
Approximant		ʋ	l	j
Flap			ɾ

Vowels

Vowels in Tuvan exist in three varieties: long, short, and short with low pitch. Tuvan long vowels have a duration that is at least (and often more than) twice as long as that of short vowels. Contrastive low pitch may occur on short vowels, and when it does, it causes them to increase in duration by at least a half. When using low pitch, Tuvan speakers employ a pitch that is at the very low end of their modal voice pitch. For some speakers, it is even lower and using what is phonetically known as creaky voice. When a vowel in a monosyllabic word has low pitch, speakers apply low pitch only to the first half of that vowel (e.g. [àt] 'horse'). That is followed by a noticeable pitch rise, as the speaker returns to modal pitch in the second half of the vowel.

The acoustic impression is similar to that of a rising tone like the rising pitch contour of the Mandarin second tone, but the Tuvan pitch begins much lower. However, Tuvan is considered a pitch accent language with contrastive low pitch instead of a tonal language. When the low pitch vowel occurs in a multisyllabic word, there is no rising pitch contour or lengthening effect: [àdɯ] 'his/her/its horse'. Such low pitch vowels were previously referred to in the literature as either kargyraa or pharyngealized vowels. Phonetic studies have demonstrated that the defining characteristic of such vowels is low pitch. See Harrison 2001 for a phonetic and acoustic study of Tuvan low pitch vowels.

In her PhD thesis, "Long Vowels in Mongolic Loanwords in Tuvan", Baiarma Khabtagaeva states that the history of long vowels is ambiguous. While the long vowels may originate from Mongolic languages, they could also be of Tuvan origin. In most Mongolic languages, the quality of the long vowel changes depending on the quality of the second vowel in the conjunction. The only exception to this rule is if the conjunction is labial. The ancient Tuvan languages, in contrast, depended upon the first vowel rather than the second to determine the long vowels.

Khabtagaeva divided the transformation of these loanwords into two periods: the early layer and the late layer. The words in the early layer are words in which the Mongolic preserved the conjunction, the VCV conjunction was preserved but the long vowel still developed when it entered the Tuvan language, or the stress is on the last syllable and a long vowel in the loanword replaced a short vowel in the original word. The late layer includes loanwords in which the long vowel does not change when the word entered Tuvan.

Vowel phonemes of Tuvan

		Short		Long		Low pitch
		High	Low	High	Low	High	Low
Front	Unrounded	i	e	iː	eː	ì	è
	Rounded	y	ø	yː	øː	ỳ	ø̀
Back	Unrounded	ɯ	a	ɯː	aː	ɯ̀	à
	Rounded	u	o	uː	oː	ù	ò

Vowels may also be nasalized in the environment of nasal consonants, but nasalization is non-contrastive. Most Tuvan vowels in word-initial syllables have a low pitch and do not contrast significantly with short and long vowels.

Vowel harmony

Tuvan has two systems of vowel harmony that strictly govern the distribution of vowels within words and suffixes. Backness harmony, or what is sometimes called 'palatal' harmony, requires all vowels within a word to be either back or front. Rounding harmony, or what is sometimes called 'labial' harmony, requires a vowel to be rounded if it is a high vowel and appears in a syllable immediately following a rounded vowel. Low rounded vowels [ø] [o] are restricted to the first syllable of a word, and a vowel in a non-initial syllable may be rounded only if it meets the conditions of rounding harmony (it must both be a high vowel [y] [u] and be preceded by a rounded vowel). See Harrison (2001) for a detailed description of Tuvan vowel harmony systems.

Grammar

Tuvan builds morphologically complex words by adding suffixes. For example, теве teve is 'camel', тевелер teveler is 'camels', тевелерим tevelerim is 'my camels', тевелеримден tevelerimden is 'from my camels'.

Nouns

Tuvan marks nouns with six cases: genitive, accusative, dative, ablative, locative, and allative. The suffixes below are in front vowels, however, except -Je the suffixes follow vowel harmony rules. Each case suffix has a rich variety of uses and meanings, of which only the most basic ones are shown here.

Root	Allomorphs
When after:	voiceless	nasals	voiced/vowel	After -л
Nominative	-∅
Genitive (-NIŋ)	-тиң (-tiŋ)	-ниң (-niŋ))		-диң (-diŋ)
Accusative (-NI)	-ти (-ti)	-ни (-ni)		-ди (-di)
Dative (-KA)	-ке (-ke)	-ге (-ge)
Locative (-DA)	-те (-te)	-де (-de)
Ablative (-DAn)	-тен (-ten)	-ден (-den)
Allative I (-Je)	-че (-če)	-же (-že)
Allative II (-DIvA)	-тиве (-tive)	-диве (-dive)
Plural
Nominative (-LAr)	-тер (-ter)	-нер (-ner)	-лер (-ler)	-дер (-der)
Oblique cases: by adding voiced variant into the plural suffix (-лерниң, -лерге, ...)

Example of declensions

Case	Form	Meaning
Nominative	теве (teve)	"camel"
Genitive	тевениң (teveniŋ)	"of the camel"
Accusative	тевени (teveni)	"the camel" (definite direct object of verb)
Dative	тевеге (tevege)	"for the camel" or "at the camel" (in the past tense)
Locative	теведе (tevede)	"at the camel" or "in the camel"
Ablative	теведен (teveden)	"from the camel" or "than a/the camel"
Allative I	тевеже (teveže)	"to(wards) the camel"
Allative II	теведиве (tevedive)

Verbs

Verbs in Tuvan take a number of endings to mark tense, mood, and aspect. Auxiliary verbs are also used to modify the verb. For a detailed scholarly study of auxiliary verbs in Tuvan and related languages, see Anderson 2004.

Syntax

Tuvan employs SOV word order. For example, теве сиген чипкен (camel hay eat-PAST) "The camel ate the hay."

Vocabulary

Name of family members in Tuvan.

Tuvan vocabulary is mostly Turkic in origin but marked by a large number of Mongolian loanwords. The language has also borrowed several Mongolian suffixes. In addition, there exist Ketic and Samoyedic substrata. A Tuvan talking dictionary is produced by the Living Tongues Institute.

In contrast with most Turkic languages, which have many Arabic and Persian loanwords that even cover some basic concepts, these loanwords are very few, if any, in Tuvan, as Tuvans never adopted Islam like most Turkic peoples.

Writing system

Cyrillic script

The current Tuvan alphabet is a modified version of the Russian alphabet, with three additional letters: Ңң (Latin "ng" or International Phonetic Alphabet [ŋ]), Өө (Latin "ö", [ø]), Үү (Latin "ü", IPA [y]). The sequence of the alphabet follows Russian, but with Ң located after Russian Н, Ө after О, and Ү after У.

А а	Б б	В в	Г г	Д д	Е е	Ё ё	Ж ж
З з	И и	Й й	К к	Л л	М м	Н н	Ң ң
О о	Ө ө	П п	Р р	С с	Т т	У у	Ү ү
Ф ф	Х х	Ц ц	Ч ч	Ш ш	Щ щ	Ъ ъ	Ы ы
Ь ь	Э э	Ю ю	Я я

The letters Е and Э are used in a special way. Э is used for the short /e/ sound at the beginning of words while Е is used for the same sound in the middle and at the end of words. Е is used at the beginning of words, mostly of Russian origin, to reflect the standard Russian pronunciation of that letter, /je/. Additionally, ЭЭ is used in the middle and at the end of words for the long /e/ sound.

The letter ъ is used to indicate pitch accent, as in эът èt 'meat'.

Historic scripts

Traditional Mongolian script

In the past, approximately from 17th and 18th centuries till the 30s of the 20th century Tuvans used the traditional Mongolian script as their written language. By the late 1920s less than 1.5% of the total Tuvan population was literate in the traditional Mongolian script. Mongolian literacy was mainly possessed by the feudal nobility and officials. The absolute majority of Tuvans (with the exception of residents of some areas of the south-eastern part of Tuva, where Tuvan-Mongolian bilingualism has been preserved to this day) did not know the Mongolian language, and had long spoken only their native language.

Draft scripts

In 1926, the government of the Tuvan People's Republic asked Soviet scientists to develop a native Tuvan script. The first draft of a Tuvan alphabet based on Cyrillic was compiled by Roman Buzykaev (1875-1939) and B. Bryukhanov (Sotpa) in 1927. This alphabet contained the letters Аа, Бб, Вв, Гг, Дд, Ёё, Жж, Ӝӝ, Зз, Ии, Йй, Кк, Лл, Мм, Нн, Ҥҥ, Оо, Ӧӧ, Пп, Рр, Сс, Тт, Уу, Ӱӱ, Хх, Чч, Шш, Ыы. The first Tuvan primer was published using this alphabet, but this project was not developed further.

One of the many draft scripts based on Latin, Cyrillic, and Mongolian scripts was Mongolian script developed by Nikolaus Poppe to suit the Tuvan language.

Tuvan Latin

Example of Latin-based alphabet on the Tuvan People's Republic coat of arms. It says "PYGY TELEGEJNIꞐ PROLETARLARЬ POLGAŞ TARLATKAN ARATTARЬ KATTЬƵЬꞐAR".

The Latin-based alphabet for Tuvan was devised in 1930 by a Tuvan Buddhist monk, Mongush Lopsang-Chinmit (a.k.a. Lubsan Zhigmed). This project was proposed based on the German alphabet, albeit with a modified letter order. In this proposed system, all vowels were placed first (10 letters), followed by consonants (18 letters). This order is characteristic of the classical Mongolian script. Moreover, the pronunciation of several letters underwent significant alteration.

A few books and newspapers, including primers intended to teach adults to read, were printed using this writing system. Lopsang-Chinmit was later executed in Stalinist purges on 31 December 1941.

In the USSR, Aleksandr Palmbach, Yevgeny Polivanov, and Nicholas Poppe were engaged in the development of the Tuvan Latinized alphabet. These researchers utilized the so-called New Turkic Alphabet as a foundation for their work. New Turkic Alphabet was designed with the intention of facilitating unification of writing systems among all Turkic peoples. In early 1930, the Tuvan alphabet was finalized and officially introduced on June 28, 1930, by a decree of the TPR government. The approved Tuvan alphabet was as follows:

A a	B ʙ	C c	D d	E e	F f	G g	Ƣ ƣ
H h	I i	J j	Ɉ ɉ	K k	L l	M m	N n
Ꞑ ꞑ	O o	Ө ө	P p	R r	S s	Ş ş	T t
U u	V v	X x	Y y	Z z	Ƶ ƶ	Ь ь

The letter Ɉ ɉ was excluded from the alphabet in 1931.

Examples

Latin	Pirgi tьʙa tьldьꞑ yƶykteri	PYGY TELEGEJNIꞐ PROLETARLARЬ POLGAŞ TARLATKAN ARATTARЬ KATTЬƵЬꞐAR!
Cyrillic	Бирги тыва дылдың үжүктери	Бүгү телегейниң пролетарлары болгаш дарлаткан араттары каттыжыңар!
Common Turkic alphabet	Pirgi tıva tıldıñ üjükteri	Pügü telegeyniñ proletarları polgaş tarlatkan arattarı kattıjıñar!
English	First Tuvan language alphabet	All the world's workers and oppressed peoples, unite!

By September 1943, this Latin-based alphabet was replaced by a Cyrillic-based one, which is still in use to the present day. In the post-Soviet era, Tuvan and other scholars have taken a renewed interest in the history of Tuvan letters.

Transliteration

For bibliographic purposes, transliteration of Tuvan generally follows the guidelines described in the ALA-LC Romanization tables for non-Slavic languages in Cyrillic script. Linguistic descriptions often employ the IPA or Turcological standards for transliteration.

Status

Tuvans in China, who live mostly in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, are included under the Mongol nationality. Some Tuvans reportedly live at Kanas Lake in the northwestern part of Xinjiang, where they are not officially recognized, and are counted as a part of the local Oirat Mongol community that is counted under the general PRC official ethnic label of "Mongol". Oirat and Tuvan children attend schools in which they use Chakhar Mongolian and Mandarin Standard Chinese, native languages of neither group.

Sources

• Harrison, K. David (2001). Topics in the Phonology and Morphology of Tuvan (PDF) (Doctoral thesis). Yale University. OCLC 51541112.
• Mänchen-Helfen, Otto (1992) [1931]. Journey to Tuva. Translated by Alan Leighton. Los Angeles: Ethnographic Press University of Southern California. ISBN 978-1-878986-04-7.
• Mongush, M. V. (1996). "Tuvans of Mongolia and China". International Journal of Central Asian Studies. 1: 225–243.
• Todoriki, Masahiko (等々力 政彦) (2011). 最古の可能性のあるトゥバ語語彙について [On the earliest possible Tuvan vocabulary]. Bulletin of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia (Thesis). Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo. pp. 238–220. hdl:2261/43632. ISSN 0563-8089.

Further reading

• Anderson, Gregory D. S. (2004). Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Altai-Sayan Turkic. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. ISBN 3-447-04636-8.
• Anderson, Gregory D. S.; Harrison, K. David (1999). Tyvan. Languages of the World/Materials 257. Lincom Europa. ISBN 978-3-89586-529-9.
• Harrison, K. David (2005). "A Tuvan Hero Tale, with Commentary, Morphemic Analysis, and Translation". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 125: 1–30.
• Krueger, John R. (1977). Krueger, John R. (ed.). Tuvan Manual. Uralic and Altaic Series Volume 126. Editor Emeritus: Thomas A. Sebeok. Indiana University Publications. ISBN 978-0-87750-214-2.
• Mawkanuli, Talant. 1999. "The phonology and morphology of Jungar Tuva", Indiana University PhD dissertation.
• Nakashima, Yoshiteru (中嶋 善輝 Nakashima Yoshiteru). 2008 "Tyva Yapon Biche Slovar', トゥヴァ語・日本語 小辞典" Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/project/gengokensyu/08tuvan6.pdf (Archive)
• Ölmez, Mehmet; Tuwinischer Wortschatz mit alttürkischen und mongolischen Parallelen, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-447-05499-7
• Rind-Pawloski, Monika. 2014. Text types and evidentiality in Dzungar Tuvan. Turkic Languages 18.1: 159–188.
• (in Mongolian) Sečenbaγatur, Qasgerel, Tuyaγ-a [Туяa], Bu. Jirannige, Wu Yingzhe, Činggeltei. 2005. Mongγul kelen-ü nutuγ-un ayalγun-u sinǰilel-ün uduridqal [A guide to the regional dialects of Mongolian]. Kökeqota: ÖMAKQ. ISBN 7-204-07621-4.
• Takashima, Naoki (高島 尚生 Takashima Naoki). 2008 "Kiso Tuba-go bunpō 基礎トゥヴァ語文法", Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/project/gengokensyu/08tuvan1.pdf (Archive)
• Takashima, Naoki. 2008 "Tuba-go kaiwa-shū トゥヴァ語会話集", Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/project/gengokensyu/08tuvan3.pdf (Archive)
• Taube, Erika. (1978). Tuwinische Volksmärchen. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. LCCN: 83-853915
• Taube, Erika. (1994). Skazki i predaniia altaiskikh tuvintsev. Moskva : Vostochnaia literatura. ISBN 5-02-017236-7
• Oelschlägel, Anett C. (2013). Der Taigageist. Berichte und Geschichten von Menschen und Geistern aus Tuwa. Zeitgenössische Sagen und andere Folkloretexte / Дух-хозяин тайги –Современные предания и другие фольклорные материалы из Тувы / Тайга ээзи – Болган таварылгалар болгаш Тывадан чыгдынган аас чогаалының өске-даа материалдары. [The Taiga Spirit. Reports and Stories about People and Spirits from Tuva. Contemporary Legends and other Folklore-Texts.] Marburg: tectum-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8288-3134-6

External links

• Tuvan language and folklore materials