|
|
|
|
Chuvash language
|
| |
|
| |
Chuvash (Chuvash: ???????, Cavašla, )) is a Turkic language spoken in central Russia, primarily in the Republic of Chuvashia and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages.
The writing system for the Chuvash language is based largely on the Cyrillic alphabet, employing all of the letters used in the Russian alphabet, and adding four letters of its own:
ash is the native language of the Chuvash people and an official language of Chuvashia.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Chuvash language' Start a new discussion about 'Chuvash language' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
Chuvash (Chuvash: ???????, Cavašla, )) is a Turkic language spoken in central Russia, primarily in the Republic of Chuvashia and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages.
The writing system for the Chuvash language is based largely on the Cyrillic alphabet, employing all of the letters used in the Russian alphabet, and adding four letters of its own:
Language use
Chuvash is the native language of the Chuvash people and an official language of Chuvashia. It is spoken by about two million people. 86% of ethnic Chuvash and 8% of the people of other ethnicities living in Chuvashia claimed knowledge of Chuvash language during the 2002 census. Despite that, and although Chuvash is taught at schools and sometimes used in the media, it is considered endangered, because Russian dominates in most spheres of life and few children learning the language are likely to become active users.
History
Chuvash is the most distinctive of the Turkic languages and cannot be understood by speakers of other Turkic tongues. Today, Chuvash is classified, alongside with Khazar, Turkic Avar, Bulgar, and, possibly, Hunnic, as a member of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family. It is the only language of this family which is not extinct. The conclusion that Chuvash belongs to the Oghuric branch of Turkic arises from the reasoning that the vocabulary shows the language to belong to the r- and l- type which is typical for all languages of this branch. The rest of the Turkic languages (Common Turkic) are of the z- and š- type."
Since the surviving literary records for the non-Chuvash members of Oghuric are scant, the exact position of Chuvash within the Oghuric family cannot be determined.
Formerly, scholars considered Chuvash not properly a Turkic language at all but, rather, a Turkicized Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language.
Writing systems
Current
-
-
In 1873-1938
The modern Chuvash alphabet was devised in 1873 by school inspector Ivan Yakovlevich Yakovlev .
| ? | ? | ? | ?/? | ? | | a | e | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ?´ | ? | ç | ? | | ? | ? | ? |
In 1938, the alphabet underwent significant modification which brought it to its current form.
Previous systems
The most ancient writing system, known as the Orkhon script, disappeared after the Volga Bulgars converted to Islam. Later, the Arabic alphabet was adopted. After the Mongol invasion, writing degraded. After Peter the Great's reforms Chuvash elites disappeared, blacksmiths and some other crafts were prohibited for non-Russian nations, the Chuvash were educated in Russian, writing in runes recurred with simple folks.
Phonology
Consonants
The consonants are the following (the corresponding Cyrillic letters are in brackets): /p/, /t/, /k/, /c/, /š/, /s/ (ç), /?/, /v/,/ m/, /n/, /l/, /r/, /y/. The stops, sibilants and affricates are voiceless and fortes, but instead become lenes (sounding similar to voiced) in intervocalic position and after liquids, nasals and semi-vowels. E.g. ?????? sounds like annebe, ??????? sounds like kuzhakpa. However, geminate consonants don't undergo this lenition. Furthermore, the voiced consonants occurring in Russian are used in modern Russian-language loans. Consonants also become palatalized before and after front vowels.
Vowels
According to Krueger (1961), the Chuvash vowel system is as follows (the precise IPA symbols are chosen based on his description, since he uses a different transcription).
| | Front | Back |
|---|
| | Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded |
|---|
| High | i | | | u |
|---|
| Low | e | | ? | o (a) |
|---|
|
András Róna-Tas (1997) () provides a somewhat different description, also with a partly idiosyncratic transcription. The following table is based on his version, with additional information from Petrov (2001). Again, the IPA symbols are not directly taken from the works, so they could be inaccurate.
| | Front | Back |
|---|
| | Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | | High | | | | |
|---|
| Close-mid | | | | |
|---|
| Open-mid | | | | |
|---|
| Low | | | | |
|---|
|
The vowels a and e are described as reduced, thereby differing in quantity from the rest. In unstressed positions, they often resemble a schwa or tend to be dropped altogether in fast speech. At times, especially when stressed, they may be somewhat rounded and sound similar to and .
Additionally, occurs in loanwords from Russian.
Dialects
There are two dialects of Chuvash: Viryal or Upper (which has both o and u) and Anatri or Lower (which has u for both o and u: up. tota "full", tuta "taste" - lo. tuta "full, taste" ). The literary language is based on both the Lower and Upper dialects. Both Tatar and the Finnic languages have influenced the Chuvash language, as have Russian, Mari, Mongolian, Arabic, and Persian, which have all added many words to the Chuvash lexicon.
Grammar
Chuvash is an agglutinative language and as such has an abundance of suffixes, but no native prefixes (apart from the reduplicating intensifier prefix as in ????="white", ???-????="very white"). One word can have many suffixes and these can also be used to create new words (like creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root, see Vocabulary section further below) or to indicate the grammatical function of the word.
Nouns and adjectives
Chuvash nouns can take endings indicating the person of a possessor. They can take case-endings. There are six noun cases in the Chuvash declension system:
- Nominative
- Genitive, formed by adding -a?, -e? or simply -? according to the vowel harmony
- Objective, formed by adding -(?)a or -(?)?, according to the vowel harmony
- Locative, formed by adding -?e, -??, -?a, -?? according to the vowel harmony
- Ablative, formed by adding -??? or -???, -???, ??? according to the vowel harmony
- Instrumental, formed by adding -?e or -?a, according to the vowel harmony
Also:
- Causal-final, formed by adding -?a?, -?e? according to the vowel harmony
- Privative, formed by adding -?a?, -?e? according to the vowel harmony
- Terminative-Antessive, formed by adding -(?)???
- relic of Distributive, formed by adding -?????: ???????? "daily, every day", ???????? "per house", ??????????? "every time one comes"
- Semblative, formed by adding -????, -???? to pronouns in genitive or objective case (???a???? "like me", ???????? "like you", ??????? "like him, that way", ???(?)????? "like us", ???(?)????? "like you all", ???a???? "like myself", ???????? "like yourself", ???????? "like this"); adding -??, -?? to nouns (?????? "humanlike", ??????? "like Lenin")
Taking ??? (day) as an example:
| Chuvash | English | Noun case |
|---|
| ??? | day, or the day | Nominative | | ???a? | of the day | Genitive | | ???? | to the day | Objective | | ????? | in the day | Locative | | ?????? | of the day, or from the day | Ablative | | ????? | with the day | Instrumental |
Possession is expressed by means of constructions based on verbs meaning "to exist" and "to not exist". Thus, while "???" and "ç??" represent "exists" and "not exists," "?????e" and "ç????e" are the preterite of these. These lead to the most bizarre-looking (to a Western reader) sentential structures: e.g., in order to say, "My cat had no shoes," we form:
- ????? + -a? + -a? ??? ??a(?) + -??? ç?? + -??e
which literally translates as, "cat-mine-of foot-cover(of)-plural-his non-existent-was." Note that many of the agglutinative languages of Eurasia use a form of the copula (the 'to be' verb) in order to mark possession, instead of a distinct verb meaning 'to have.' An example is Hungarian.
Verbs
Chuvash verbs exhibit person. They can be made negative or impotential; they can also be made potential. Finally, Chuvash verbs exhibit various distinctions of tense, mood, and aspect: a verb can be progressive, necessitative, aorist, future, inferential, present, past, conditional, imperative, or optative.
| Chuvash | English |
|---|
| ???- | (to) come | | ?????- | not (to) come | | ???????- | not (to) be able to come | | ???????? | She (or he) was apparently unable to come. | | ????????e | She had not been able to come. | | ????????e? | You (plural) had not been able to come. | | ????????e?-?? | Have you (plural) not been able to come? |
Vowel harmony
"Vowel harmony" is the principle by which a native Chuvash word generally incorporates either exclusively back vowels (?, a, ?, ?) or exclusively front vowels (?, e, ?, ). As such, a notation for a Chuvash suffix such as -??? means either -??? or -???, whichever promotes vowel harmony; a notation such as -??e? means either -??a?, -??e? again with vowel harmony constituting the deciding factor.
Chuvash has two classes of vowels -- front and back (see the table above). Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels. Therefore, most grammatical suffixes come in front and back forms, e.g. ????????'?? "in Cheboksary" but ????? "at home".
Exceptions
Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms like ?e???|????? "furniture" are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes (such as -e); there are also a few native Chuvash words that do not follow the rule (such as ???? "mother"). In such words suffixes harmonize with the final vowel; thus ????'?? "With the mother".
Word order
Word order in Chuvash is generally Subject Object Verb.
See also
External links
|
| |
|
|
