Northern Yukaghir Language

I. Sociolinguistic Data

1. Language Name

The people’s endonym are vadul (wadul), which literally translates as “powerful” or “strong.” There are also such spelling variations as vadudaruu (wadudaruu), where aruu means “language” or “speech,” sometimes “word,” or “voice,” while –d– is a component connecting elements of compound words. The vadun aruu (wadun aruu) and vadul aruu (wadul aruu) variants are also sometimes used.

In Russian, the language names are тундренный юкагирский (Tundra Yukaghir), северный юкагирский, северноюкагирский (Northern Yukaghir), вадульский (Vadul). The language is frequently called simply “Yukaghir,” without providing any specifications. Vladimir Jochelson believed that the word “Yukaghir” was an exonym of Tungus origins (dyuke ghir “ice / cold people”). Sometimes, scholars used the terms “the Tundra dialect of Yukaghir” and the “Forest dialect of Yukaghir.” Researchers, however, note significant differences between the two, and speakers often can barely understand each other.

2. General Characteristics

2.1. Number of Native Speakers and of the Corresponding Ethnic Group

Per the 2010 census, ethnic groups comprise 1.603 persons, while the number of people in ethnic groups in traditional settlements is as follows: 392 in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and 35 in the Chukotka autonomous area.

Experts estimate that the number of the language speakers is approximately 50 persons. The 2010 census indicates that 370 persons are fluent in the language. The number of respondents who listed Yukaghir as their native tongue in the census and lived in traditional native settlements was 229 persons in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and 32 persons in the Chukotka autonomous area. Sociolinguistic research shows that census data do not align with reality. In 2010, the number of Northern (Tundra) Yukaghirs was about 700 persons, while the number of speakers of the Northern Yukaghir (Tundra Yukaghir) was only about 50 persons. Moreover, Vyacheslav I. Shadrin’s field data report that only 12 persons are fluent in Northern Yukaghir.

Age Breakdown of Speakers

For the most part, representatives of middle-age and senior groups (aged 50 and above) demonstrate advanced levels of the language, in part because these groups managed to partially preserve everyday communication in the native language. Nonetheless, there are a few speakers aged between 30 and 50 who have a good command of Northern Yukaghir, but do not use it in everyday communication

2.2. Sociolinguistic Characteristics

Yukaghir (“The Law on Languages in the Republic of Sakha [Yakutia]” does not distinguish between Northern and Southern Yukaghir) has the status of an official language in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), yet in reality, it has very limited use in official fields.

The area with ethnic Northern Yukaghir communities is historically multilingual. Already in the 20th century, many members of the community knew four to five languages (Northern Yukaghir, Even, Chukotkan, Yakut, and Russian are used in the northeast of the Nizhnekolymsk district). Yukaghir and Even were involved in contacts to the greatest degree, while Chukotkan, on the contrary, stands apart as regards contact-related phenomena. Until the mid-20th century, not all members of the community were fluent in Russian, and the majority spoke Yakut. Since the mid-20th century, on the contrary, indigenous languages of the region have exhibited negative dynamics, while command of Russian was on the rise. Nonetheless, this region still has multilingual speakers, who speak more than three languages.

People with advanced levels of Northern Yukaghir are mostly members of the older generation who use it to communicate with one another, and the language is no longer passed down to children. The middle generation has people with passive command of Northern Yukaghir who prefer to communicate in Yakut and/or Russian.

We should also note that there are active members of the intelligentsia and the teacher community willing to work on preserving their native tongue and culture, and that the younger generation is also interested in the language; they attend Northern Yukaghir classes in Sunday schools or study it using WhatsApp.

2.3. Vitality Status

Northern Yukaghir has the 2A vitality status: inter-generational transmission is interrupted throughout the area, and communication in the language is limited. According to the UNESCO classification status, the language is critically endangered. The EGIDS classification status is 8a (Moribund).

Thus, Northern Yukaghir is in grave danger of extinction. In 2005, a Northern Yukaghir speaker, Professor Gavril Kurilov, author of the Yukaghir-Russian dictionary and the Yukaghir grammar expressed his concerns: “Unless we hurry, the last speakers of Tundra Yukaghir who still know the language and the traditional art of storytelling and singing, will die, and the unique Yukaghir cultural legacy will die with them.”

The main cause of Northern Yukaghir disappearing is that parents do not speak to their children in their native tongue. That results in the language disappearing within one or two generations.

2.4. Use in Different Fields

Legislation and Administrative Procedures

Per the Law of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) “On the status of the languages of Indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia),” the Yukaghir language is an official language in settlements with ethnic Yukaghir communities in Nelemnoye (the village of Nelemnoye) and Olerinsky (the village of Andryushkino) suktuls (municipal units). In reality, however, the Yukaghir languages in those settlements are not used by local authorities, and in paperwork. Not a single regulation has been translated into the Yukaghir languages. Requirements for municipal employees do not include a command of the Yukaghir language. The Yukaghir languages are poorly represented in the linguistic landscape of settlements with Yukaghir ethnic communities.

The Northern Yukaghir in Education

A Northern Yukaghir learning kit was developed for students between the 1 and 4 years of school.

The Northern Yukaghir language is a study subject in the village of Andryushkino in the Nizhnekolymsk district (up to three hours a week). Northern Yukaghir is no longer a mandatory subject in the village of Kolymskoye and is taught an hour a week as an elective. It is also taught as an elective in the elementary and middle schools in the village of Chersky of the Nizhnekolymsk district and the Kazachye complete school in the village of Kazachye of the Ust-Yansk district (one hour a week).

Even though the principal trend is for a declining share of the native language in school education, new educational programs are being launched. For instance, Northern Yukaghir was put on the curriculum in the experimental school in the village of Neryungri and it is being studied as a separate subject.

No school uses Northern Yukaghir as a language of instruction.

Language Courses

Until 2020, Northern Yukaghir courses (led by Ladina G. Kurilova) were regularly offered in Yakutsk. There were two levels: beginner and intermediate. At the moment, classes have been partially moved online. There are also Northern Yukaghir courses primarily for children in the village of Chersky.

Writing System

Today’s Yukaghir alphabet (mostly for Northern Yukaghir) was developed in the 1980s by Gavril N. Kurilov using the Cyrillic alphabet. Orthographic rules were approved by the Council of Ministers of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on April 28, 1983. In 1987, they were published (Yukaghir Orthography Rules).

This orthographic system is currently used both in fiction and in school books.

The alphabet designed in the 1930s (originally Latin-based, then Cyrillic-based) never got traction.

Traditionally, Yukaghirs used ideographic writing on birch bark, the so-called toses. Samuil M. Shargorodsky was the first to discover and describe the toses in the 1890s.

Northern Yukaghir has several phonemes that do not exist in Russian, and they are denoted by letters that do not exist in the alphabet used for the Russian language.

3. Geographic Characteristics

3.1. Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation with Ethnic Communities

The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) (Nizhnekolymsk district, villages of Andryushkino, Kolymskoye, Chersky urban-type settlement). Sources do not list Yukaghir communities in the Chukotka autonomous area, but the 2010 Census recorded 198 Yukaghirs living there (primarily in the Bilibino and Anadyr districts). The documents of the 2010 Census name the Chukotka autonomous area as the area of Yukaghirs’ primary settlement territory.

Total number of Traditional Native Settlements

Tundra Yukaghirs’ ethnic settlements are located in three Yakutia districts: the Nizhnekolymsk (the villages of Chersky, Andryushkino, Pokhodsk, Kolymskoye), Allaikhovsky (villages of Chokurdakh and Olenegorsk), and Ust-Yansk (villages of Deputatsky, Omoloy, Kazachey, Tumat, Ust-Yansk, Yukaghir) districts.

Speakers of Northern Yukaghir live mostly in the far northeast of Yakutia, in the camping areas and the villages of Andryushkino and Kolymskoye of the Nizhnekolymsk district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Individual speakers live in the city of Yakutsk.

List of Settlements

The following settlements were also listed as Yukaghirs’ settlements indicating the number of ethnic group members and language speakers. Comparison of this information with data in the section on the numbers of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group shows that the figures in the 2010 Census are greatly inflated.

Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

Yukaghir as mother tongue was listed by respondents in the city of Yakutsk, Yakutsk municipality (language: 43 persons, ethnic group: 180 persons); city of Neryungri, the Neryungri district (language: 10 persons, ethnic group: 13 persons); village of Tosu, the Viluy district (language: 5 persons, ethnic group: 5 persons); Svetly urban-type settlement, the Mirny district (language: 3 persons, ethnic group: 3 persons). Since these places are outside Yukaghirs’ traditional settlement areas, we cannot determine the exact numbers of Northern and Southern Yukaghirs among the respondents. However, proceeding from the fact that the city of Neryungri has a school that teaches Northern Yukaghir, we can suppose that the corresponding group dominates there.

The Allaikhovsky and Ust-Yansk districts, on the contrary, are within Yukaghirs’ traditional settlement area, but not a single resident there listed Yukaghir as their native tongue on the 2010 Census. At the time of the Census, Northern Yukaghirs lived in the following settlements: the village of Chokurdakh (70 persons out of the population of 2.363 persons) and the village of Olenegorsk (8 persons out of the population of 254 persons) in the Allaikhovsky district; the village of Deputatsky (22 persons out of the population of 2.934 persons), the village of Kazachye (30 persons out of the population of 1.365 persons), village of Tumat (15 persons out of the population of 534 persons), Ust-Yansk (4 persons out of the population of 317 persons), Yukaghir (9 persons out of the population of 127 persons), village of Khayyr (10 persons out of the population of 432 persons), Ust-Kuyga urban-type settlement (4 persons out of the 978 population ) of the Ust-Yansk district.

Chukotka Autonomous Area

Several other settlements in the Anadyr district (the villages of Snezhnoye and Kanchalan and Ugolnye Kopi urban-type settlement), Chukotka district (the village of Lorino), Chaunsky district (the village of Yanranay) are home to a small number of ethnic Yukaghirs who did not list themselves as Yukaghir speakers.

4. Historical Dynamics

II. Linguistic Data

Position in the Genealogy of World Languages

Northern Yukaghir together with Southern Yukaghir are part of the Yukaghir family (sometimes called the Yukaghir Chuvan family).

This family is nominally considered to be genetically isolated and included in the geographically and ethnographically identified group of Paleo-Siberian languages that also includes Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Eskimo-Aleutian, Yenisei, and Nivkh languages (for more details on this family see [World Languages. Paleo-Siberian Languages, 1997]). Purely linguistic criteria allow for positing this family’s remote relationship with Uralic languages [Nikolaeva 1988; Nikolaeva, Helimski 1997: 155; Nikolaeva 2020: 1].

Dialects

Previously, Northern Yukaghir and Southern Yukaghir were not distinguished and were believed, on the contrary, to be dialects of a single Yukaghir language (some linguistic descriptions still retain this terminology), however, significant differences in vocabulary and grammar allow for considering these two idioms as separate languages.

In the lexicostatistic method, 91% of identical lexis is the cutoff line. The percentage of identical lexis between Northern Yukaghir and Southern Yukaghir is significantly smaller: 47% in the smallest estimates [Nemirovsky 2017] and 74% in the highest estimates [Koryakov 2020]. Consequently, the Research Center for Preserving, Reviving, and Documenting the Languages of Russia defines these two idioms as different languages [Syuryun et al. 2021: 47-48].

A few centuries ago, the dialects of the Yukaghir languages were more diverse, but by the mid-19th century, most of them had been gone. Currently, there are no dialects identified in Northern Yukaghir.

Koryakov Yu.B. “The Principles of Compiling the List of Languages of Russia” // 3rd session of the Discussion and Analytics Club of Linguistic Policy Issues. November 24, 2020. (in Russian)

Kurilov G.N. Modern Yukaghir: Student’s Book. Yakutsk: Ofset Press, 2006.

Kurilov G.N. Yukaghir-Russian Dictionary. Novosibirsk: Nauka Press, 2001.

Nemirovsky A.A. “Mikhail A. Zhivlov’s New Linguistics Results and Confirmation of the of Ymyyakhtakh Relations of (Proto) Yukaghirs” // Paleo-Siberian Peoples’ Folklore: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference (Yakutsk, November 21–25, 2016). Yakutsk: Mediaholding Press, 2017. (in Russian)

Nikolaeva I.A. The Problem of Uralic-Yukaghir Genetic Connections. PhD Thesis: 10.02.07. Moscow: Institute of Linguistics, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1988. (in Russian)

Nikolaeva I.A., Khelimsky E.A. “The Yukaghir Language” // Voldin A.P. (ed.) et al.World Languages. Paleo-Siberian Languages. Moscow: Indrik Press, 1997. P. 155-168. (in Russian)

Ode C., Shmaltz M., Hengevell K. “Voices of the Tundra and Taiga: the Language of Tundra Yukaghirs” // Brochure. A seriously endangered Paleo-Siberian language of Arctic Russia: Collection of linguistic and folklore materials on the language and culture of the Siberian people to be documented for education and preservation for future generations on CD/DVD. 2010. E-publication: http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/cecilia.ode/ (in Russian)

Syuryun A.A., Davidyuk T.I., Evstigneeva A.P. Corrected List of the Languages of Russia. Final Documents Prepared in the Research Project “The Development of a Plan and Methodology for Preserving and Reviving the Languages of Russia.” Moscow: Institute of Linguistics RAS, Research Center for Preserving, Reviving, and Documenting the Languages of Russia, 2021. E-publication: https://iling-ran.ru/languages_of_russia/2021_stage1/doc1.pdf (in Russian)

Volodin A.P. (ed.) et al. World Languages. Paleo-Siberian Languages. Moscow: Indrik Press, 1997. (in Russian)