Chukchi (/ˈtʃʊktʃiː/CHUUK-chee),[3] also known asChukot,[4] is aChukotko–Kamchatkan language spoken by theChukchi people in the easternmost extremity ofSiberia, mainly inChukotka Autonomous Okrug. The language is closely related toKoryak. Chukchi, Koryak,Kerek,Alutor, andItelmen form the Chukotko-Kamchatkanlanguage family. There are many cultural similarities between the Chukchis andKoryaks, including economies based onreindeer herding. Both peoples refer to themselves by the endonymLuorawetlat (ԓыгъоравэтԓьат[ɬəɣˀorawetɬˀat]; singularLuorawetlan ԓыгъоравэтԓьан[ɬəɣˀorawetɬˀan]), meaning "the real people". All of these peoples and other unrelated minorities in and around Kamchatka are known collectively asKamchadals.
Chukchi andChukchee areanglicized versions of the RussianexonymChukcha (pluralChukchi). This came into Russian fromČävča, the term used by the Chukchis'Tungusic-speaking neighbors, itself a rendering of the Chukchi word чавчыв[tʃawtʃəw], which in Chukchi means "[a man who is] rich in reindeer," referring to any successful reindeer herder, a wealthy man by local standards.
Although Chukchi language is taught in 28 elementary schools in Chukotka Autonomous Region to 1616 children (according to 2015-2016 data),[5] and there are several hours of daily TV and radio broadcasts in the Chukchi language, the everyday use and proficiency in the language is declining among native Chukchis. According tothe 2020 census, 8,526 of the 16,200 Chukchi people speak Chukchi; and most Chukchi now speakRussian (fewer than 100 report not speaking Russian at all). The language is on the list ofendangered languages in theUNESCORed Book.
The Chukchi people have a rich history and culture, which have traditionally centered around war.[6] The Chukchi prize warriors and the fighting spirit that they embody. This emphasis on conflict can be seen in the interactions between the Chukchi and the Russians, which date back to the middle of the seventeenth century and tell of glorious battles between the two groups.[6] The Chukchi have also been known to battle nearby tribes, particularly the Tánñit, which comprise fellow Siberian peoples known as the Koryaks. However, over the last century, the Chukchi people have engaged in far fewer conflicts and have focused more on trading. Today, the Chukchi economy relies heavily on trade, particularly with Russia.[7]
Besides trading with Russia, the Chukchi make their living off of herding reindeer and bartering with other tribes.[6] There is also a group of Chukchi that do not herd reindeer and instead live along the coast, trading more with tribes who live along the pacific coast. Some Chukchi people even choose to go back and forth between the two divisions, trading with both. These people tend to control more of the trade and have been called Kavrálît or “Rangers”.
Notably, Chukchi men and women use different pronunciation for the same words. While men say "r" or "rk", women say "ts" or "tsts" in the same word.[8]
Many Chukchis use the language as their primary means of communication both within the family and while engaged in their traditional pastoral economic activity (reindeer herding). The language is also used in media (includingradio andTV translations) and somebusiness activities. However, Russian is increasingly used as the primary means of business and administrative communication, in addition to behaving as alingua franca in territories inhabited by non-Chukchis such as Koryaks and Yakuts. Over the past few decades, fewer and fewer Chukchi children have been learning Chukchi as a native language. Almost all Chukchis speak Russian, although some have a lesser command than others. Chukchi language is used as a primary language of instruction inelementary school; the rest of secondary education is done in Russian with Chukchi taught as a subject.
A Chukchi writer,Yuri Rytkheu (1930–2008), has earned a measure of renown in both Russia and Western Europe, although much of his published work was written in Russian, rather than Chukchi. Chukchi poetAntonina Kymytval wrote in her native language.
[ɸ, x, ɻ̊, j̊] are heard as allophones of /β, ɣ, ɻ, j/ after voiceless stops.[9]
/ɻ/ is mostly heard as an alveolar trill [r], when in between vowels.[10]
/s/ is phonetically [s~t͡ʃ] in free variation and only occurs in the men's dialect.
/t͡ʃ/ becomes [s] before /q/ and only occurs in the women's dialect.
/s/, /t͡ʃ/ and /ɻ/ have different distributions between men's and women's dialects.[11]
There are no voicedstops in the language; these are only found inloanwords.[12]
The vowels are/i/,/u/,/e₁/,/e₂/,/o/,/a/, and/ə/./e₁/ and/e₂/ are pronounced identically but behave differently in the phonology. (Cf. the two kinds of/i/ inInuit Eskimo, whose known cause is the merger of two vowels/i/ and/ə/, which are still separate inYup'ik Eskimo.)
A notable feature of Chukchi is itsvowel harmony system largely based onvowel height./i,u,e₁/ alternate with/e₂,o,a/, respectively. The second group is known as "dominant vowels" and the first group as "recessive vowels"; that is because whenever a "dominant" vowel is present anywhere in a word, all "recessive" vowels in the word change into their "dominant" counterpart. Theschwa vowel/ə/ does not alternate but may trigger harmony as if it belonged to the dominant group.
Initial and final consonant clusters are not tolerated, and schwa epenthesis is pervasive.
Stress tends to: 1. be penultimate; 2. stay within the stem; 3. avoidschwas.
The cover of a Grade 5 Chukchi language textbook from 1996, illustrating the then newCyrillic El with hook letter. The title isԮыгъоравэтԯьэн йиԯыйиԯ 'Chukchi language'.
Chukchi is one of few languages to have autonomously produced its own written script, and the northernmost language in the world to have done so. The script was invented by a man namedTenevil, but never saw widespread use.[13]
Until 1931, the Chukchi language had no official orthography, in spite of attempts in the 1800s to write religious texts in it.
At the beginning of the 1900s,Vladimir Bogoraz discovered specimens of pictographic/logographic writing by the Chukchi herdsmanTenevil (seeru:File:Luoravetl.jpg). Tenevil's writing system was entirely his own invention.[13] It was nearly lost during the initial period of Soviet contact and subsequent Russian Arctic expeditions. The first official Chukchi alphabet wasdevised by Bogoraz in 1931 and was based on theLatin script:
А а
Ā ā
B b
C c
D d
Е е
Ē ē
Ə ə
Ə̄ ə̄
F f
G g
H h
I i
Ī ī
J j
K k
L l
M m
N n
Ŋ ŋ
O o
Ō ō
P p
Q q
R r
S s
T t
U u
Ū ū
V v
W w
Z z
Ь ь
In 1937, this alphabet, along with all of the other alphabets of the non-Slavic peoples of the USSR, wasreplaced by aCyrillic alphabet. At first it was theRussian alphabet with the addition of the digraphsКʼ кʼ andНʼ нʼ. In the 1950s the additional letters were replaced byӃ ӄ andӇ ӈ. These newer letters were mainly used in educational texts, while the press continued to use the older versions. At the end of the 1980s, the letterԮ ԯ (Ԓ ԓ) was introduced as a replacement forЛ л. This was intended to reduce confusion with the pronunciation of the Russian letter of the same form. The Chukchi alphabet now stands as follows:
The Letters Бб, Дд, Жж, Зз, Сс, Фф, Хх, Цц, Шш, And Щщ, Are Only Used For Discutaration Not Chukchi Letting Dialects Of Country Foreign Names And Blaouuer Loanwords The 10 Letters Banned
Г And Ы Are Pronounced [g] And [ɨ] And Respective In Russian Loanwords And Foreign Names
Chukchi is a largelypolysynthetic,agglutinative,direct-inverse language and hasergative–absolutive alignment. It also has very pervasiveincorporation. In particular, the incorporation is productive and often interacts with other linguistic processes.[15] Chukchi allows free incorporation of adjuncts, such as when a noun incorporates its modifier.[15] However, besides the unusual use of adjuncts, Chukchi behaves in a typologically normal manner. The language of Chukchi also uses a specific verb system. The basic locative construction of a sentence in Chukchi contains a single locative verb, unlike many other languages.[16]
In thenominals, there are two numbers and about 13 morphological cases: absolutive, ergative/instrumental, equative (copula), locative, allative, ablative, orientative, inessive, perlative, sublative, comitative, associative, and privative.[17] Nouns are split into three declensions influenced byanimacy: the first declension, which contains non-humans, has plural marking only in the absolutive case; the second one, which contains personal names and certain words for mainly older relatives, has obligatory plural marking in all forms; the third one, which contains other humans than those in the second declension, has optional plural marking. These nominal cases are used to identify the number of nouns, as well as their purpose and function in a sentence.[15]
Verbs distinguish three persons, two numbers, three moods (declarative, imperative and conditional), two voices (active andantipassive) and six tenses: present I (progressive), present II (stative), past I (aorist), past II (perfect), future I (perfective future), future II (imperfective future). Past II is formed with a construction meaning possession (literally "to be with"), similar to the use of "have" in the perfect in English and other Western European languages.
Both subject and direct object are cross-referenced in the verbal chain, andperson agreement is very different in intransitive and transitive verbs. Person agreement is expressed with a complex system involving both prefixes and suffixes; despite the agglutinative nature of the language, each individual combination of person, number, tense etc. is expressed in a way that is far from always straightforward. Besides thefinite forms, there are also infinitive,supine (purposive), numerousgerund forms, and a present and past participle, and these are all used with auxiliary verbs to produce further analytic constructions.
The word order is rather free, thoughSOV is basic. The possessor normally precedes the possessed, andpostpositions rather than prepositions are used.
Chukchi as a language often proves difficult to categorize. This is primarily due to the fact that it does not always follow a typical linguistic and syntactical pattern. These exceptions allow Chukchi to fit into more than one linguistic type.[15]
Chukchi has periodic tense: it can incorporate the nounnәki- to build a nocturnal verb form.[18]
A large number of words in the Chukchi language arereduplicated in their singular forms, i.e. ChukchiЭ’ръэр ("iceberg") andУтуут ("tree").[19] There is also significant influence from theRussian language, especially in formal vocabulary and modern concepts, i.e. ChukchiЧайпат, from RussianЧай (tea). The extent to which Chukchi and theEskimo languages borrowed vocabulary between one another, or a relationship between the two, has not been studied in detail.
Thenumeral system was originally purelyvigesimal and went up to 400, but a decimal system was introduced for numerals above 100 via Russian influence. Many of the names of the basic numbers can be traced etymologically to words referring to the human body ("finger", "hand" etc.) or to arithmetic operations (6 = "1 + 5" etc.).
The external influences of Chukchi have not been well-studied. In particular, the degree of contacts between the Chukchi andEskimo languages remains an open question.Research into this area is problematic in part because of the lack of written evidence. (Cf. de Reuse in the Bibliography.) Contact influence of Russian, which is increasing, consists of word borrowing and pressure on surfacesyntax; the latter is primarily seen in written communication (translated texts) and is not apparent in day-to-day speech.
Alevtina N. Zhukova, Tokusu Kurebito,"A Basic Topical Dictionary of the Koryak-Chukchi Languages (Asian and African Lexicon Series, 46)",ILCAA, Tokyo Univ. of Foreign Studies (2004),ISBN978-4872978964
Bogoras, W (1901). "The Chukchi of Northeastern Asia".American Anthropologist.3 (1):80–108.doi:10.1525/aa.1901.3.1.02a00060.
Bogoras, W., 1922. "Chukchee". InHandbook of American Indian Languages II, ed. F. Boas, Washington, D.C.
De Reuse, Willem Joseph, 1994.Siberian Yupik Eskimo: The Language and Its Contacts with Chukchi, Univ. of Utah Press,ISBN0-87480-397-7
Dunn, Michael John (1999).A Grammar of Chukchi (PhD Thesis). Australian National University.
Dunn, Michael, 2000. "Chukchi Women's Language: A Historical-Comparative Perspective",Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Fall, 2000), pp. 305–328
Kolga, M. (2001). The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire. Tallinn: NGO Red Book.
Krause, Scott R. (1980).Topics in Chukchee Phonology and Morphology. Ann Arbor: UMI.
Nedjalkov, V. P., 1976. "Diathesen und Satzstruktur im Tschuktschischen" [in German]. In: Ronald Lötzsch (ed.),Satzstruktur und Genus verbi (Studia Grammatica 13). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, pp. 181–211.
Skorik, P[etr] Ja., 1961.Grammatika čukotskogo jazyka 1: Fonetika i morfologija imennych častej reči (Grammar of the Chukchi Language: Phonetics and morphology of the nominal parts of speech) [in Russian]. Leningrad: Nauka.
Skorik, P[etr] Ja., 1977.Grammatika čukotskogo jazyka 2: Glagol, narečie, služebnye slova (Grammar of the Chuckchi Language: Verb, adverb, function words) [in Russian]. Leningrad: Nauka:
Volodin, A. P.; Skorik, P. Ja. (1997). "Čukotskyj jazyk" [The Chukchi language].Jazyki mira: Paleoaziatskije jazyki [Languages of the World: Paleoasiatic Languages)] (in Russian). Moskva: Indrik. pp. 23–39.
Skorik, P. J. (1961).Grammatika čukotskogo jazyka [Grammar of the Chukchi Language] (in Russian). Vol. 1. Leningrad: Nauka.
Skorik, P. J. (1977).Grammatika čukotskogo jazyka [Grammar of the Chukchi Language] (in Russian). Vol. 2. Leningrad: Nauka.
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