The Chelkan Language

I. Sociolinguistic data

Language names. 

Spelling variants: the Chalkan language . The old name: the language of Lebed Tatars (the ethnic group got its name from living along the coasts of the river Lebed), Nikolay A. Baskakov used a compound name: the dialect of Lebed Chalkan Tatars ( kuu-kizhi ). The people’s endonyms are shalgannu/shalgandu , also kuu-kizhi (from the Chelkan kuu – swan, hence the ethnonym Lebed Tatars or Lebedins ( lebed means swan in Russian), a calque from the Turkic kuu , and the river name Lebed), the name the group uses for the language is shchalgan til / shalgan til , shalganug .

Previously, Chelkans were considered to be part of the Altai people, and their language was classified as a northern dialect of Altai. In 2000, Chelkans were recognized as a separate ethnic group and listed among the indigenous small-numbered peoples of the Russian Federation. The 2002 Census was the first Census to record Chelkans as a separate ethnic group. In addition to Turkic peoples, Chelkans, like many other Altaians today, trace their origins to Samoyed and Ket peoples. The Chelkan idiom is significantly different from the norms of the literary Altai, and it is therefore proper to consider it as a separate language and not a dialect . 

General characteristics

Total number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group

Number of native speakers: 310 persons. Source: people who listed their command of language in the 2010 Census. Number of native speakers in traditional settlement per the 2010 Census: 290 persons. Source: 2010 Census. Number of the people (2010 Census): 1,181 persons. 

Age of speakers .

The young generation has poorer command of the language.

The level of knowledge of Chelkan differs not only from generation to generation, but also in areas where Chelkan communities live. In the remote village of Kurmach-Baygol where the largest number of native speakers live, some children speak Chelkan since childhood, while in the village of Biyka, even the older generation today has poor command of the language. In recent decades, the young generation has been demonstrating greater interest in their mother tongue, yet language transmission does not occur in every family, and the number of fluent native speakers is falling rapidly as members of the old generation pass. As the 2014-2017 field studies’ results demonstrate, most Chelkans prefer Russian as a means of communication even if they self-identify as Chelkan. The lower age limit for native Chelkan speakers is about 25.

Sociolinguistic characteristics.

General characteristics.

The number of native Chelkan speakers has been falling steadily in the 21 st century. 

When surveyed in 2000, 81.6% of ethnic Chelkans in the Turochak district called Chelkan their native tongue, and 9.9% said their native tongue is Russian. A sociolinguistic study conducted in the same year showed that the overwhelming majority of Chelkans (73%) speak Chelkan, although 25.6% prefer Russian. Mostly Chelkans speak Chelkan and Russian since they live in a close contact with Russians. The 2014–2017 field studies show that most Chelkans use Russian when communicating among themselves.

Several events influenced Chelkan’s dynamics. In the late 1960s, the government of the USSR made a decision to switch all ethnic schools to the Russian schools’ curriculum. All classes were to be taught in Russia. Consequently, virtually all ethnic schools were closed down. In the Turochak District, only two ethnic schools remained out of 32: the eight-grade school in Kurmach-Baygol and the elementary school in the village of Suranash. At the same time, small hamlets were being transformed into large villages. Logging companies were being set up staffed by large numbers of rotation workers. Many ethnic hamlets disappeared. Additionally, Chelkan is being powerfully affected by the written Altai language taught in schools. Even though the literary Altai language is not used in oral communication, Chelkans write in Altai or use Chelkan words in accordance with the rules of the literary Altai language. Therefore, oral Chelkan is influenced by Russian, and written Chelkan is influenced by the literary Altai language. Amid such an imbalanced trilingualism, Chelkan is in danger of extinction.

Vitality status 

2B – Interrupting 

Today, all Chelkans are bilingual and have a good command of Russian that has become the native tongue for many of them. Consequently, the areas where Chelkan is used are shrinking, and it is kept up only in family communication and in small work teams engaged in traditional occupations. 

Use in various fields.

Information about a writing system (if applicable).

Chelkan is an unwritten language even though some publications in Chelkan already exist. Two alphabets were proposed for Chelkan in 2013 and 2014 (Kandarakova 2013; Pustogacheva, Tayborina 2014), although a common Chelkan alphabet has not still been approved: existing publications reflect the speech in accordance with the individual preferences of the authors, compilers, or editors. Additionally, there is no teaching in Chelkan. Consequently, native speakers themselves do not have written Chelkan skills, and adapt the Russian and Altai alphabets for writing down their native vocabulary. 

Geographical characteristics

Constituent entities of the Russian Federation with communities of native speakers .

The Altai Republic.

3.2. Total number of traditional native settlements : 11.

3.3. List of settlements (per the 2010 Census). 

Chelkans live in communities in the Turochak District of the Altai Republic in the villages of Kurmach-Baygol, Suranash, Biyka, Chuyka, Tondoshka, Artybash, Iogach, Kebezen, Verkh-Biysk, Maysk, Tuloy, Turochak. Some Chelkans live in the city of Gorno-Altaisk. Some families live beyond the Altai Republic in the cities of Biysk, Barnaul, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Tashtagol, Ekaterinburg, Abakan, Ulan-Ude, Kyzyl, Nadym, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and also in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.

Chelkan numbers by settlement; data from Shalganut Kalyk – Chelkans RCG (2019) and the 2010 Census

Historical dynamics

The numbers of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group per various Censuses (staring with 1897) and other sources.

II. Linguistic data

Position in the genealogical classification of world languages.

Altaic macrofamily > Turkic > Central-Eastern group > (mountain) Altaic group > Northern Altaic subgroup.

Languages of the Northern Altaic subgroup are significantly different from the languages of the Southern Altaic subgroup and have many traits in common with the neighboring Shor and Khakas languages.

Dialects.

The Chelkan language has no dialects or subdialects.

Brief history of studying the language.

Traditionally, Chelkans as such are believed to have been first mentioned in 1625, when a unit of Kuznetsk soldiers subjugated and imposed yasak (natural tax) on a group of Chelkans. Later, in 1629, Chelkans along with other taiga groups from the foot of the Northern Altai Mountains were made part of the Kuznetsk uezd (district) of the Tomsk province of the Tsardom of Russia. 

Academician Vasily V. Radlov was the first to record the language of Chelkans (Lebedins). The first volume of Samples of Folk Literature of Turkic Tribes (1866) contains several Chelkan folk texts; some information on the Chelkan language is presented in his general study Phonetics of Northern Turkic Languages (1882). Chelkan linguistic data were included in Vasily I. Verbitsky’s Non-Slavs of the Altai Mountains (1893) and in his Dictionary of the Altai and Aladagh Languages . In the 20 th century, Nikolay A. Baskakov made a major contribution to the study of Altaic languages; his series Northern Dialects of the Altai (Oyrot) Language has a volume on the Chelkan language as well ( The Dialect of Lebed Chelkan Tatars [Kuu-Kizhi] , 1985). Baskakov used both materials from his own field studies and previously published texts and materials on Northern Altaic languages. 

In the 1970s–1980s, the Novosibirsk Experimental Phonetics Laboratory led by Vladimir M. Nadelyaev ran a large-scale study of Siberian languages’ phonetics; at that time, Nadezhda A. Kirsanova (Mandrova) and Victor  N. Kokorin began studying the Chelkan phonetics and defended their PhD theses. Later, Iraida Ya. Selyutina worked in this area. In 1990-2023, articles by Irina A. Nevskaya,  Ayana A. Ozonova, Oksana N. Pustogacheva, Alyona R. Tazranova, Elena V. Tyuntesheva, Natalya N. Fedina, Olga Yu. Shagdurova, and other scholars focused on issues in Chelkan morphology and lexicology. The ethnologists Ekaterina P. Kandarakova, Erzhan A. Belgibaev, and  Arzhana P. Chemchieva are engaged in studying Chelkans’ ethnic and cultural uniqueness. The toponyms of the regions populated by Chelkans and Altaians have been generally described in Olga T. Molchanova’s fundamental study Structural Types of Turkic Toponyms in the Altai Mountains (Saratov, 1982) and in the Toponymic Dictionary of the Altai Mountains (Gorno-Altaysk, 1979). Nikolay M. Yadrintsev, Leonid P. Potapov, Dmitry A. Funk, and other scholars described Chelkans’ history and economic activities. Sazon S. Surazakov studied Chelkan folklore. 

In 2000-2004, the Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the RAS in Novosibirsk ran field studies at Chelkan communities. Texts in Chelkan collected during these studies were published in issues 7, 10, 13 of Languages of the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia , while issues 15 and 17 subtitled The Chalkan Collection contain articles describing the main traits of Chelkan (2004, 2005).

The following theses were dedicated to Chelkan: Victor N. Kokorin’s  Vocalism in the Chelkan Language (Alma-Ata, 1982), Nadezhda A. Mandrova’s Consonantism in the Chelkan Language (Alma-Ata, 1982), Tatiana A. Nikolaeva’s Personal Predicative Structure of the Altaic Sentence (Alma-Ata, 1990), Natalya N. Fedina’s Phonetic Features of Today’s Chelkan Compared to the Khakas, Shor, and Altaic Languages (Novosibirsk, 2010).

In the summer of 1992, the village of Kurmach-Baygol hosted the first congress of the Chelkan people. Since then, language activists have been playing an important role; they include many current and former teachers of the village school in Kurmach-Baygol. Ekaterina P. Kandarakova (PhD) and Merited Teacher of the Russian Federation Anna M. Kandarakova played a tremendous part in collecting and publishing Chelkan folklore materials. They are both native Chelkan speakers and representatives of Chelkan culture. Ekaterina P. Kandarakova published many folklore materials and a book on Altaians’ customs and traditions. Anna M. Kandarakova had throughout her life been collecting materials on Chelkan. Most linguistic and folklore studies draw from her materials and involve her as a consultant. She compiled readers and children’s book in Chelkan.  

Oksana N. Pustogacheva was one of the leading experts on Chelkan in the late 20 th -early 21 st century. She combined research with linguistic activism, developed an alphabet for Chelkan, recorded audiobooks of Chelkan fairy tales and Bible excerpts in Chelkan, wrote several Chelkan textbooks. Her PhD thesis focused on the methodology of teaching children who are not native speakers of their people’s tongue.  

Currently, Natalya N. Fedina ( Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the RAS in Novosibirsk) is the leading researcher into Chelkan. She runs field studies and has authored several works on Chelkan phonetics and grammar. 

The starkest typological and regional linguistic features.

1. One of Chelkan’s distinctive features is a clearly manifested contraction of grammatical forms and consequent semantically distinguishing role of stress. See examples below

First-person plural present is the same as the – dy first-person plural past for stems ending in devoiced consonants:

Pys pes-ter-ys andyn kа́sh-t-ys .

We all-pl.-poss.1 st person pl. from there run – present, 1 st person pl.

‘We are all running from there.’

Pys korykak kа́sh-t-ys .

we to fear, gerund run – past, 1 st person pl.

‘We, afeared, ran.’

Therefore, contraction in analytical verbal forms in the Chelkan language results in major changes to the morphemes’ forms, and in some cases, only stem morphemes and person markers remain. These changes are most typical for indicative verb forms in Chelkan, which produces a reduced number of tense forms and mixed paradigms. This trend also produces multiple homographs that can be distinguished by stress, which indicates that stress in Chelkan plays a semantically distinguishing role.

1. Generally, declension and conjugation forms are also becoming simplified. This trend also includes morphological developments such as preserving a vowel in the Accusative in the possessive declension (- ny formant), including the plural formant – lar in the possessive paradigm, and phonetic developments that resulted in Chelkan affixes having a small number of variants compared to other Turkic languages due to the loss of vowel harmony and other phonetic simplifications.