Udege

I. Sociolinguistic data

1. Names of the language

Existing alternative names (autoethnonyms, exoethnonyms)

The autoethnonym is ude, udie. Until the 1920s the Udege had not had a single self-name; it was replaced by the names of the tribes. During this period, the Udege (together with the Oroch) were called Orochons. The ethnonym Orochons or Rachons is still used in the Krasnoarmeysk district as a pejorative term. The ethnonym udekhe (originally the self-name of one of the Udege groups) was introduced by Sergei Brailovsky, who also introduced the term tazy as synonymous with udekhe. The ethnonym tazy (Chinese: 鞑子 t'a cze, 'resident of Primorye'), originally applied to all Udege, but currently denotes the ethnic group of the southern Nanai and the Udege who switched to the Chinese (and later to Russian) language.

In academic literature the people was also called ude (Evgeny Schneider) or udykhe (Igor Kormushin). In the census of 2010, the Udege called themselves Ude, Udege, Udekhe, the Udekhe people. Exoethnonym is kekar/kyakala/kyakara (the Oroch), kyakara (Manchus).

2. General characteristics

2.1. Number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group

Population census data reflects a steady decline of the language: according to the census of 1989, 462 people spoke Udege; in 2002 it was 227; in 2010 - 103 people; in 2020 - 193.

Number of native speakers:

The figures provided by the censuses appear inflated. In 2002, 59 people spoke the Udege language in the Primorsky Territory, and 96 in the Khabarovsk Territory. 72 people (31%) of those “who speak the Udege” lived outside the traditional Udege territory: 6 people in Moscow, 12 in St. Petersburg, 17 in the Volga Federal District, etc. These people, as a rule, do not speak the language, but call it “native” without fully understanding the meaning of the term.

In the census of 2010, 103 people indicated knowledge of the Udege language (55 in the Primorsky Territory, 16 in the Khabarovsk Territory and 32 people outside the ethnic territory). 174 people throughout the Russian Federation indicated Udege as their native language. In the census of 2020, 679 people regarded Udege as the native language, but only 193 people actually speak it. These figures clearly show that respondents do not fully understand the meaning of the term “mother tongue”.

2.2. The language is on the verge of extinction as its several dozen/hundred native speakers are of a very advanced age.

All of the Udege people speak Russian. The 4 people in the census of 2002 who do not know Russian apparently belonged to the oldest generation segment.

2.2.1. Use in various fields

The most important function of the Udege language is its ethnic marker role. Proficiency in the language, even on a minimal level, has become prestigious. This makes it possible to hope for the preservation of the language, albeit in a reduced form, but its full revival as a means of communication is considered impossible.

2.4. Information about a writing system (if applicable)

The Udege writing system was created in the early 1930s. Evgeny Shneider based it on a unified Latin alphabet developed for the languages of the peoples of the USSR that did not have a written tradition. The Shneider's alphabet was used in the publication of the Udege primer "Minti oņofi", several textbooks and reading books for elementary school, as well as in "Concise Udege-Russian Dictionary". In 1936-37 the writing systems of all the peoples of the USSR began to be converted into Cyrillic, and a Cyrillic version of the Shneider’s alphabet was introduced. This writing system was used in the publication of the textbook “Arithmetic”. In 1937 Evgeny Shneider was arrested and his alphabet fell into disuse; the Udege language became unwritten. In the 1930s the Khor dialect became the basis of the written language.

The new alphabet for Khor was developed by Mikhail Simonov and Valentina Kyalundzyuga in the 1980s and approved by the Khabarovsk Regional Executive Committee in 1989. The Simonov-Kyalundzyuga alphabet was used in the publication of a collection of Udege folklore (1998), an Udege primer (1999), the three-volume “Dictionary of the Udege Language” (Simonov, Kyalundzyuga 1998), in the CD “Udie Keyeni” (2008) and the Udege language textbook for second grade (Kyalundzyuga,  Kimonko, Perekhvalskaya, Skorospelkin, 2018).

At the same time, a group of linguists headed by Elena Perekhvalskaya developed an alphabet for the Bikin dialect. This alphabet was used in the preparation of Udege textbooks for primary schools and kindergartens.

The contemporary Udege fiction writer is Alexander Kanchuga, who has published several autobiographical and historical books (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007). He uses his own writing system based on the Cyrillic alphabet, where all the sounds of the Udege language are represented by the letters of the Russian alphabet with the addition of a single letter Ң, for the backlingual sonant [ŋ].

Despite all the differences in the above-mentioned writing systems, the texts turn out to be quite easy to read. However, this indicates that in fact no unified spelling norm has been established.

When publishing folklore texts, various researchers have used other systems to record Udege words (Nikolaeva, Perekhvalskaya, Tolskaya, Kormushin,  Kazama).

3. Geographical characteristics

3.1. Constituent entities of the Russian Federation with ethnic communities

Most of the Udege live in the Khabarovsk (Lazo district, Nanai district) and Primorsky (Terneysky, Pozharsky, Krasnoarmeysky districts) Territories, as well as in the Jewish Autonomous Region of the Russian Federation.

The Kur-Urmi Udege live in the village of Kukan, where they make up a small percentage of the population; the Kur-Urmi dialect is practically extinct. The Hungarian Udege were resettled to the village of Snezhny (formerly Kun); this dialect is completely extinct. In 1972, the Anyuy Udege were resettled to the village of Uni (formerly Rassvet), located next to the village of Arsenyevo. Currently, a significant number of the Udege people from other territorial groups also reside here, mainly those who came from Gvasyugi (the Khor Udege). The Iman Udege, forced to leave the “unpromising” village of Sanchikheza (Ostrovnoy), settled in various villages of the Krasnoarmeysky district, and a lot moved to Krasny Yar. Now the largest number of the Iman Udege live on the territory of the Dalnekutsky rural settlement and in the village of Roshchino, where they make up a small part of the population.

The Samarga Udege live in the village of Agzu, where they make up about 80% of the population. The Khor Udege live in Gvasyugi (65% of the population). The Bikin Udege live in Krasny Yar and Olon (55% of the population), as well as in other settlements of the Pozharsky district (Luchegorsk, Svetlogorye, Verkhny Pereval).

A significant part of the Udege live in rural areas. According to the data of 2002, three quarters of the Udege were rural residents (approx. 75%). The data of 2010 give a somewhat more differentiated picture for the Udege people of the Primorsky and Khabarovsk Territories. In Primorye, one fifth (about 20% of the Udege) live in cities, and 25% reside in the Khabarovsk Territory. The somewhat greater urbanization of the Udege in the Khabarovsk Territory correlates with the less preserved state of the native language, which seems natural.

3.2. The total number of settlements in which native speakers traditionally live.

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I. Linguistic data.

1. Position in the genealogy of world languages

Altaic family > Manchu-Tungus branch > northern subgroup.

The Udege language belongs to the Manchu-Tungus language family. It was traditionally classified as a member of the southern subgroup of the Tungusic languages (together with the Oroch, Nanai, Ulch and Orok). However, it has been pointed out that certain features make Udege (and Oroch) closer to the languages of the northern subgroup, primarily to Negidal. According to Igor Kormushin, the Udege language should be considered part of the northern subgroup of the Tungusic languages, but bearing in mind that it experienced significant influence from the languages of the southern subgroup, especially Nanai and Ulch.  This influence is associated with the inclusion of individual tribes of a different linguistic affiliation into the Udege ethnic group (Kormushin 1998).

2. Dialectal situation

The dialects of Udege are divided, first of all, geographically with each territorial group distinguished by its own dialect. The scholars name eight: (1) Kur-Urmi, (2) Samarga, (3) Anyuy, (4) Hungarian, (5) Khor, (6) Bikin, (7) Iman, (8) Primorsky. It has been pointed out several times that dialectal differences in the Udege language are very significant; Vladimir Arsenyev wrote that Udege people from different territorial groups barely understood each other. The modern research shows that, despite all differences, the dialects of Udege are quite close and mutually intelligible. Once, a group of ethnographers arrived in the village of Arsenyevo on the Anyuy and played the recordings made by the Iman Udege. The distance between these dialects is over a thousand kilometers, yet old woman Vayanka perfectly understood the recorded fairy tale (storyteller Nadezhda Sigde), although, quite naturally, she noted the “accent”, which she characterized as “Chinese”. The dialectal differences are primarily phonetic (vowel composition), vocabulary-related, and, to a lesser extent, morphological.