The Southern Yukaghir Language

I. Sociolinguistic data 

Language names 

The ethnic endonym: Odul 

The language endonym: Odun Azhuu , in which Azhuu means (1) ‘voice’ (2) word (3) language [Nikolaeva, Shalugin 2002: 12]. One can also see the term of Odul Azhuu. 

The language names in Russian : Forest Yukaghir, Kolyma, Kolyma Yukahgir, Southern Yukaghir, Odul. There is also a very infrequent Taiga Yukaghir

Along with the Northern Yukaghir, it can just be called Yukaghir. 

Sometimes these two languages are called “dialects of Yukaghir language”, cp. “Forest dialect of Yukaghir”, but research shows essential differences between the two, so mutual intelligibility of two idioms might be possible, but it is extremely difficult. (see the detailed description of the dialect situation). 

General characteristics 

2.1. The number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group

The number of Southern Yukaghir speakers: 6 people. The number of those who recorded being able to speak the language in the 2010 Census: 370 people. The number of respondents who recorded Yukaghir as their native language in the 2010 Census and living in the traditional settlements: 18 people in Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and 13 people in Magadan Oblast. The size of the ethnic group (according to the 2010 Census): 1603. The size of the ethnic group in traditional settlements: 308 people in Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and 66 people in Magadan Oblast. 

2.2. Age of speakers.  

The language is spoken by an extremely small number of old people. The language is no longer used in everyday communication. 

2.3. Sociolinguistic characteristics. 

2.3.1. General characteristics 

The Yukaghir language (the legal act on the languages of Sakha Republic (Yakutia) does not differentiate between Northern and Southern Yukaghir) is recognised as an official language in Sakha Republic (Yakutia), but in actuality, it has very little use in official spheres. There are only a handful of active speakers of Southern Yukaghir language (only 6 people), the language has largely been abandoned in everyday communication and has not been transmitted to children for a long time. But one has to appreciate the efforts of academic intelligentsia to preserve their native language and culture as well as the interest in the language displayed by younger generations learning the language via the WhatsApp Messenger. 

2.3.2. Vitality status 

The situation of Southern Yukaghir is worse than that of Northern Yukaghir. Southern Yukaghir belongs to Category 1B. Intergenerational transmission is broken throughout the area of distribution, there is no regular communication in the language. 

UNESCO Classification Status: critically endangered. 

EGIDS Classification Status: 8b (Nearly Extinct).

2.2.3. Use in various fields. 

Literature (using the Southern Yukaghir webpage on the Minor Languages of Russia website). 

Literary works in Southern Yukaghir emerged relatively recently. The literary works include Cholgoraadiepe with translations of Russian folk tales, short stories and poems by Russian writers into Forest Yukaghir (2000); Children’s Stories by V.G.Shalugin, speaker of Southern Yukaghir and a representative of the culture of Forest Yukaghirs (2004); a collection of tales Koorii-Koori I Pelem-Pelem by N.N.Kurilov (2009), in which the translation into the language of Forest Yukaghir is carried out by A.E.Shchedrina, an Odul by ethnicity; L.N.Demina’s poems, short stories and tales, which were included in a number of textbooks (2005; 2011-2013) 

Legislative and administrative area

According to the Law of Sakha Republic (Yakutia) “On the status of the languages of indigenous minor peoples of the North of Sakha Republic (Yakutia)” Yukaghir is an official language in the areas of compact Yukaghir settlement in the in Nelemnski (settlement of Nelemnoye) and Olerinski (settlement of Andryushkino) Suktuls (Districts). 

However, in reality neither Yukaghir language is used in the workings of the local authorities and document circulation even in these settlements. No regulatory act has ever been translated into Yukaghir languages. Knowing and speaking the Yukaghir languages is not among the requirements for local authority employees. In the linguistic landscape of the areas of compact settlement these two languages have very weak roles. The last speech in Southern Yukaghir was given at a kolkhoz meeting in Nelemnoye, in 1958. The minutes only record the following remark: “Yukaghir is spoken, not intelligible”. 

2.4. Information about a writing system 

The Cyrillic writing system for Yukaghir languages was developed in the 1980s by a researcher and Northern Yukaghir speaker G.N.Kurilov. The rules of spelling were ratified by the Council of Ministers of the Yakut ASSR on April 28, 1983. In 1987 they were published ( Rules of Yukaghir Spelling ). But even now the issue of developing spelling standards for Southern Yukaghir remains unresolved. The writing system created in the 1930s (first on the basis of Latin symbols, then on the basis of the Russian spelling system) did not take off. 

Historically, Yukaghirs used an ideographic writing system on birch bark – the so called tos . The first tos were found and described by S.M.Shargorodsky in the 1890s. 

3. Geographic characteristics. 

3.1. Subjects of the Russian Federation with compact population of native speakers

Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Magadan Oblast 

3.2. Total number of traditional native settlements where the language is spoken. 

In case of Southern Yukaghir it is more correct to speak of the areas where the ethnic group traditionally live. Sakha Republic (Yakutia): Verkhnekolymski District, settlements of Nelemnoye and Zyryanka, in some resources the settlement of Verkhnekolymsk is also among these areas; Magadan Oblast: Srednekanski District, settlements of Seimchan and Balychygan. 

3.3. List of settlements

Республика Саха Якутия Sakha Republic (Yakutia) 

Yukaghir was also recorded as their native language by respondents in the city of Yakutsk (native language: 43 people, ethnic group: 180 people); city of Neryungri, Neryungriski District (native language: 10 people, ethnic group: 13 people), settlement of Tosu, Vilyuiski District (native language: 5 people, ethnic group: 5 people), urban-type settlement Svetlyi, Mirninski District (native language: 3 people, ethnic group: 3 people). Since these places are outside the traditional areas of Yukaghir habitation, we cannot provide the exact numbers of Northern and Southern Yukaghirs among these respondents. 

Magadan Oblast 

In [Nikolaeva 2005: 499] the settlement of Balygychan, Srednekanski District, Magadan Oblast, is mentioned as a part of the area of compact habitation for Southern Yukaghirs. But at the time of the 2010 Census only 11 people lived there, while in 2020 only one person lived in the settlement. 

4. Historical dynamics

II. Linguistic data 

Position in the genealogical classification of world languages. 

Northern Yukaghir along with Southern Yukaghir belongs to Yukaghir language family (one can also meet the term “Yukaghir-Chuvan language family”). On the provisional basis this family is considered genetically isolated, thought it is included in a group united by geographic and ethnographic principles, the group of Paleo-Siberian languages, which also includes Chukotka-Kamchatka, Eskimo-Aleut, Yeniseian languages and Nivkh language. (more on the languages of this family [World languages. Paleo-Siberian languages, 1997]) In accordance with properly linguistic criteria, one can hypothesise a distant relation of this family with Uralic languages (see [Nikolaeva 1988; Nikolaeva, Khelimski 1997: 155; Nikolaeva 2020: 1]

Dialect situation 

Previously, Southern Yukaghir and Northern Yukaghir were not separated and were considered dialects of a single Yukaghir language (one can see this terminology in some linguistic descriptions even now), but considerable differences in grammar and lexis allow treating these idioms as two different languages. A few centuries ago the dialect situation in Yukaghir languages was more varied, but by the mid-19 th century, most of these dialects had died out. At the present, Southern Yukaghir is not recognised to have different dialects. 

Short history of studying the language. 

The history of studying the Yukaghir languages started in the 19 th century, when the Orientalist A.A.Schiefner first described some morphological features of Yukaghir language on the basis of the materials he had laid his hands on – word lists, phrases and sporadic texts written down by various people from Yukaghirs. 

The ethnographic information about the Southern Yukaghirs were collected by I.Billings, participant of the 1785-1795 North Eastern geographic expedition, who visited the area of their compact habitation along the rivers Yacachnaya and Nelemnaya. 

An invaluable contribution to studying Yukaghir languages was made by V.I. Jochelson, who visited north-eastern Yakutia with several expeditions at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries (1895-1897 and 1901-1902) and provided an extensive description of the language, everyday life and traditions of Yukaghirs. In his fundamental work, The Yukaghir and the Yukaghirized Tungus (published in English in 1926 and published in Russian in 2005) he also included Yukaghir-Russian and Russian-Yukaghir glossary. 1936 saw the publication of his Essay on the Grammar of Yukaghir Language which includes the first description of phonetics and grammar of Southern Yukaghir language (or in the then terminology, the Kolyma dialect) 

In the second half of the 20 th century the task of describing the Kolyma dialect was continued by Soviet ethnographer and linguist E.A. Kreinovich. In 1959 he went on a Yukaghir expedition under the leadership of Z.V. Gogolev, to study the morphological structure and dialect characteristics of the languages of the Tundra and Kolyma Yukaghirs. The result of the expedition was the 1979 publication of the essay The Yukaghir Language based on the materials of the Kolyma dialect. In 1982 Kreinovich published a monography Studies and materials on the Yukaghir Language, summarising the data about both dialects and containing, among other things, a detailed description of the thematic-rhematic articulation. 

The interest in studying Yukaghir languages has not waned today. In 2003, A Grammar of Kolyma Yukaghir by E.Maslova was published: the book was based on the results of many years of her field work, but it took into account the previous descriptions of the language and used the material of oral texts extensively. An important contribution into studying Southern Yukaghir is made by researchers from other countries too, for instance, I.Nikolaeva (School of Oriental and African Studies, London University), who has been doing comparative and historical studies of Yukaghir languages. Her dissertation was about the genetic connections of Uralic and Yukaghir languages. In 2006 she published A Historical Dictionary of Yukaghir , which offered for the first time a reconstruction of lexis of a Proto-Yukaghir language, the ancestor of the present-day Yukaghir languages. In 2020, she carried out a similar analysis for morphological indicators in her Yukaghir Morphology in a Historical and Comparative Perspective . 

Specialists in Yukaghir languages now work at the Department of Northern Philology of the Institute for Humanies Research and Problems of North Indigenous Peoples of the Siberian Branch of the RAS. The Department holds annual expeditions to the places of compact habitation of Evenki, Evens, Yukaghirs to collect linguistic, folklore and ethnographic materials and to analyse the ethnocultural situation. The problems of the Southern Yukaghir language are studied by P.E. Prokopyeva and A.E. Prokopyeva. One great result of their work was the 2021 publication of the Yukaghir-Russian Dictionary (language of Forest Yukaghirs). The dictionary extensively used the field materials by researchers who collected information from Yukaghir speakers in 1989-2019.