Dolgan language

Dolgan, along with its close relative Sakha (Yakut), belongs to the North Siberian subbranch of the Turkic language family. Like most other Turkic languages, Dolgan has vowel harmony, agglutinative morphology, subject-object-verb word order, and lacks grammatical gender. Dolgan is linguistically relatively close to its nearest relative Sakha (also known as Yakut), which has led researchers for a long time to account for it as a variety of the latter, cf. Dolgich's (1963: 129) statement in his well-known paper on the origin of the Dolgans: " ... долганский язык является диалектом якутского языка." ‘[ ...] the Dolgan language is a dialect of the Yakut language.’. Only in 1985 did Elizaveta I. Ubrjatova account for Dolgan as a separate language, namely in her monograph on the language of the Norilsk Dolgans.

The Dolgan language started out having a Latin alphabet in the early 20th century. Over time, the Cyrillic alphabet was implemented instead since it is the same alphabet used by the related language, Yakut. Evenki's influence on Dolgan can explain, in part, why it is considered a separate language from Yakut.[6] Dolgan has made appearances in newspapers, such as the Taymyr, as well as schools starting around the time of the 60s.[2] However, now there are only around 1,050 speakers of the Dolgan language.

Certain words in the language were developed from geographical implications that have been present since the start of the Dolgan language. For instance, the directional terms tās (1. south 2. east) and muora (1. north 2. west) are representative of the corresponding landscapes.[7] Tās is related to the word stone, and the southeast topography of the native region, Taymyr Peninsula, is covered by the Putorana Mountains. Similarly, muora denotes "sea" where the western zone of Taimyr has access to the sea shore.

However, this is not true for all directional terms, nor all words of the Dolgan language. Southwest, uhä, and northeast, allara, have no significance in geographical terms relative to Taymyr.

• Much of the old Yakut Language was lost.
• Lack of modern political and scientific terminology.
• Change in the meaning of words under the influence of the Turkish semantic system.
• Extensive borrowing from the Russian language.

Over time, the language itself has changed and adapted. Even during the time period when it had a Cyrillic alphabet, it changed over the years. The first version of alphabet of the language had the following appearance: А а, Б б, В в, Г г, Д д, Дь дь, Е е, Ё ё, Ж ж, З з, И и, Иэ иэ, Й й, К к, Л л, М м, Н н, Ӈ ӈ, Нь нь, О о, Ө ө, П п, Р р, С с, Т т, У у, Уо уо, Ү ү, Үө үө, Ф ф, Х х, Һ һ, Ц ц, Ч ч, Ш ш, Щ щ, Ъ ъ, Ы ы, Ыа ыа, Ь ь, Э э, Ю ю, Я я.[9]

The current Dolgan alphabet is still Cyrillic and looks as follows:

• Hello: Дорообо [doroːbo] (from Russian Добро)
• Mountain: Кайа [kaja]
• Mother: Иньэ [inˈe]
• I love you: Мин энигин таптыыбын [min eniɡin taptɯɯbɯn] (таптыыбын, shared by Sakha, is a loan from Mongolian)
• Birthday: Төрөөбүт күн [tørøøbyt kyn]
• Day after tomorrow: Өйүүн [øjyyn]
• Dog: Ыт [ɯt]

Dolgan language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Dolgans

• Ager, Simon. (2011). Dolgan. Omniglot. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ dolgan.htm.
• Dolgikh, B. O. (1963). Proiskhozhdenie Dolgan (Origin of the Dolgan). Trudy Instituta, Etnografii AN SSSR 84:92-141.
• Grachyova, Galina. (1990). Dolgan. In Collis, Dirmid R. F. (ed.), Arctic Languages: An Awakening, 112-114.
• Grenoble, Lenore A. and Lindsay J. Whaley. (2006). Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Johanson, Lars (2021). Turkic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 20, 24.
• Lewis, E. Glyn. (1971). Migration and Language in the USSR. The International Migration Review: The Impact of Migration on Language Maintenance and Language Shift, 5(2), 147-179.
• Li, Yong-Sŏng. (2011). A study of Dolgan. (Altaic language series, 05.) Seoul: Seoul National University Press.
• Pakendorf, Brigitte; Stapert, Eugénie (2020). "Sakha and Dolgan, the North Siberian Turkic Languages". In Robbeets, Martine; Savalyev, Alexander (eds.). The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages. Oxford University Press. pp. 430–45. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198804628.003.0027. ISBN 978-0-19-880462-8.
• Stachowski, Marek (1993). Dolganischer Wortschatz. Krakow: Uniwersytet Jagielloński. (in German)
• Stachowski, Marek (2010). "Considerations on the system and the origins of the terms for cardinal points in the Dolgan language" (PDF). Incontri Linguistici. 33: 233–242. JSTOR 3002797.
• Marten, H.F., Rießler, M., Saarikivi, J., Toivanen, R. (2015). Cultural and Linguistic Minorities in the Russian Federation and the European Union: Comparative Studies on Equality and Diversity. Switzerland: Springer.
• Minahan, James B. (2014). Dolgan in Ethnic Groups of North, East, and Central Asia: An Encyclopedia. (63-67). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC.
• Vahtre, Lauri. (1991). The Dolgans. The Red Book. Retrieved from https://www.eki.ee/books/ redbook/dolgans.shtml.

• Stachowski, M.: Dolganischer Wortschatz, Kraków 1993 (+ Dolganischer Wortschatz. Supplementband, Kraków 1998).
• Stachowski, M.: Dolganische Wortbildung, Kraków 1997.

• Dolgan DoReCo corpus compiled by Chris Lasse Däbritz, Nina Kudryakova, Eugénie Stapert and Alexandre Arkhipov. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.