Yakut ( / j ə ˈ k uː t / yə- KOOT ), also known as Yakutian , Sakha , Saqa or Saxa (Yakut: саха тыла ), is a Turkic language belonging to Siberian Turkic branch and spoken by around 450,000 native speakers, primarily the ethnic Yakuts and one of the official languages of Sakha (Yakutia) , a federal republic in the Russian Federation .
53-520: The Ulakhan-Vava (Russian: Улахан-Вава ; Yakut : Улахан-Вава ) is a river in Yakutia ( Sakha Republic ), Russia . It is a left hand tributary of the Vilyuy , and is 374 kilometres (232 mi) long, with a drainage basin of 12,500 square kilometres (4,800 sq mi). The river flows across Mirninsky District ; there are no permanent settlements in the area. The nearest inhabited place
106-672: A "tendency toward syncretism ", as evidenced by the locals sometimes first inviting a shaman, and then an Orthodox priest to carry out their rites in connection with some event in their life. According to the Information Center under the President of Sakha Republic (Информационный центр при Президенте РС(Я)), the religious demography of the republic was as follows: Orthodoxy: 44.9%, Shamanism: 26.2%, Non-religious: 23.0%, New religious movements: 2.4%, Islam: 1.2%, Buddhism: 1.0%, Protestantism: 0.9%, Catholicism: 0.4%. According to
159-477: A 2012 survey, 37.8% of the population of Sakha adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church , 13% to Tengrism or Sakha shamanism , 2% to Islam , 1% are unaffiliated Christians , 1% to forms of Protestantism , and 0.4% to Tibetan Buddhism . In addition, 26% of the population deems itself atheist , 17% is "spiritual but not religious", and 1.8% follows other religions or did not give an answer to
212-458: A Sakha lawyer and city councilor by the name of Vasily Nikiforov, which criticized the policies and effects of Russian colonialism, and demanded representation in the State Duma . The Yakut Union acted to make the city council of Yakutsk stand down and was joined by thousands of Sakha from the countryside, but the leaders were arrested and the movement fizzled out by April 1906. Their demand for
265-754: A Sakha representative in the Duma, however, was granted. Sakha was home to the last stage of the Russian Civil War, the Yakut Revolt . On April 27, 1922, former Yakutsk Oblast was proclaimed the Yakut ASSR , although in fact the eastern part of the territory, including the city of Yakutsk, was controlled by the White Russians . The early Soviet period saw a flourishing of Sakha literature as men such as Platon Oyunsky wrote down in writing
318-622: A king of the Megino-Khangalassky Sakha, began a Sakha conspiracy by allowing the first stockade construction. In August 1638, the Moscow Government formed a new administrative unit with the administrative center of Lensky Ostrog (Fort Lensky), the future city of Yakutsk , which had been founded by Pyotr Beketov in 1632. The arrival of Russian settlers at the remote Russkoye Ustye in the Indigirka delta
371-523: A large number of words of Mongolian origin related to ancient borrowings, as well as numerous recent borrowings from Russian . Like other Turkic languages and their ancestor Proto-Turkic , Yakut is an agglutinative language and features vowel harmony . Yakut is a member of the Northeastern Common Turkic family of languages, which also includes Shor , Tuvan and Dolgan . Like most Turkic languages , Yakut has vowel harmony ,
424-482: A shaman temple in downtown Yakutsk in 2002. Currently, while Orthodox Christianity maintains a following (however, with very few priests willing to be stationed outside of Yakutsk), there is interest and activity toward renewing the traditional religions. As of 2008, Orthodox leaders described the worldview of the republic's indigenous population (or, rather, those among the population who are not completely indifferent to religion) as dvoyeverie (dual belief system), or
477-718: Is Ekonda , located about 80 km (50 mi) to the NNW of the river source. The Ulakhan-Vava belongs to the upper section of the Vilyuy basin. Its sources are in an elevated part of the Vilyuy Plateau , near the Krasnoyarsk Krai border. It heads roughly southeastwards in its upper course and bends to the northeast in its middle reaches and heads roughly eastwards meandering in the floodplain . Finally, shortly before its mouth it bends sharply northeastwards and meets
530-516: Is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender . Word order is usually subject–object–verb . Yakut has been influenced by Tungusic and Mongolian languages . Historically, Yakut left the community of Common Turkic speakers relatively early. Due to this, it diverges in many ways from other Turkic languages and mutual intelligibility between Yakut and other Turkic languages is low and many cognate words are hard to notice when heard. Nevertheless, Yakut contains many features which are important for
583-415: Is 0.31 per km (2019), which is one of the lowest among Russian districts. Urban population: 65,45% (2018). Source: Russian Federal State Statistics Service According to the 2021 Census , the ethnic composition was: Historical population figures are shown below: The official languages are both Russian and Sakha , also known as Yakut, which is spoken by roughly half of the republic's population. In
SECTION 10
#1732782568467636-436: Is a common sound-change across the world's languages, being characteristic of such languages as Greek and Indo-Iranian in their development from Proto-Indo-European, as well as such Turkic languages as Bashkir, e.g. höt 'milk' < *süt . Debuccalization of /s/ to /h/ is also found as a diachronic change from Proto-Celtic to Brittonic , and has actually become a synchronic grammaticalised feature called lenition in
689-587: Is also believed to date from the 17th century. The Siberian Governorate was established as part of the Russian Empire in 1708. Russian settlers began to form a community in the 18th century, which adopted certain Sakha customs and was often called Yakutyane (Якутя́не) or Lena Early Settlers (ленские старожилы). However, the influx of later settlers had assimilated themselves into the Russian mainstream by
742-764: Is entirely predictable, and all words will follow the following pattern: Like the consonant assimilation rules above, suffixes display numerous allomorphs determined by the stem they attach to. There are two archiphoneme vowels I (an underlyingly high vowel) and A (an underlyingly low vowel). Examples of I can be seen in the first-person singular possessive agreement suffix -(I)m : as in (a): aat- ïm name- POSS . 1SG aat- ïm name-POSS.1SG 'my name' et- im meat- POSS . 1SG et- im meat-POSS.1SG 'my meat' uol- um son- POSS . 1SG uol- um son-POSS.1SG 'my son' üüt- üm milk- POSS . 1SG üüt- üm milk-POSS.1SG 'my milk' The underlyingly low vowel phoneme A
795-541: Is of paleontological significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch , preserved in ice or permafrost . In 2015, the frozen bodies of Dina and Uyan the cave lion cubs were found. Bodies of Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon , a woolly rhinoceros from the Kolyma River , and bison and horses from Yukagir have also been found. In June 2019,
848-600: Is represented through the third-person singular agreement suffix -(t)A in (b): aɣa- ta father- POSS . 3SG aɣa- ta father-POSS.3SG 'his/her father' Sakha Republic Sakha , officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) , is the largest republic of Russia , located in the Russian Far East , along the Arctic Ocean , with a population of one million. Sakha comprises half of
901-469: The Arctic Circle and all of it is covered by permafrost which greatly influences the region's ecology and limits forests in the southern region. Arctic and subarctic tundra define the middle region, where lichen and moss grow as great green carpets and are favorite pastures for reindeer . In the southern part of the tundra belt, scattered stands of dwarf Siberian pine and larch grow along
954-670: The Evenk term Yako (also yoqo , ñoqa , or ñoka ), which was the term the Evenks used to describe the Sakha. This was in turn picked up by the Russians. The Yukaghirs , another neighboring people in Siberia , use the exonym yoqol ~ yoqod- ~ yoqon- ( Tundra Yukaghir ) or yaqal ~ yaqad- ~ yaqan- ( Kolyma Yukaghir ). The self-designation Sakha is probably of the same origin (* jaqa > Sakha following regular sound changes in
1007-481: The Russian Orthodox Church and required to take Orthodox Christian names, but in practice generally continued to follow traditional religions. During the Soviet era, most or all of the shamans died without successors. In the 1990s, a neopagan shamanist movement called aiyy yeurekhé was founded by the controversial journalist Ivan Ukhkhan and a philologist calling himself Téris. This group and others cooperated to build
1060-502: The Soviet period. This was also the beginning of geological prospecting, mining , and local lead production. The first steam-powered ships and barges arrived. Sakha's remoteness, compared to the rest of Siberia, made it a place of exile of choice for both Tsarist and Communist governments of Russia. Among the famous Tsarist-era exiles were the democratic writer Nikolay Chernyshevsky ; Doukhobors , conscientious objectors whose story
1113-618: The 2021 census, 95% of Yakuts, 72% of Evenks and 60% of Evens declared Sakha as their native language. The Sakha language is a member of the Turkic language family, belonging to the Siberian branch. It is closely related to the Dolgan language of the former Taymyr Dolgano-Nenets Autonomous Okrug . The Sakha Republic is also home to many of the world's speakers of Tungusic languages , primarily of Evenki and Even . Additionally, Chukchi and
SECTION 20
#17327825684671166-484: The 20th century. In an administrative reform of 1782, Irkutsk Governorate was created. In 1805, Yakutsk Oblast was split from Irkutsk Governorate. Yakutsk Oblast in the early 19th century marked the easternmost territory of the Russian Empire, including such Far Eastern (Pacific) territories as were acquired, known as Okhotsk Okrug within Yakutsk Oblast. With the formation of Primorskaya Oblast in 1856,
1219-637: The Northern Hemisphere, are covered by ice for 9–10 months of the year. New Siberian Islands are a part of the republic's territory. After Nunavut was separated from Canada's Northwest Territories in 1999, Sakha became the largest subnational entity ( statoid ) in the world, with an area of 3,083,523 square kilometers (1,190,555 sq mi), slightly smaller than the territory of India (3.3 million km ), but still slightly larger than Argentina . Sakha can be divided into three great vegetation belts. About 40% of Sakha lies above
1272-525: The Russian territories of the Pacific were detached from Sakha. The Russians established agriculture in the Lena River basin. The members of religious groups who were exiled to Sakha in the second half of the 19th century began to grow wheat , oats , and potatoes . The fur trade established a cash economy. Industry and transport began to develop at the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of
1325-534: The Sakha by the 17th century. The Tsardom of Russia began its conquest of the region in the 17th century, moving east after the defeat of the Khanate of Sibir . Tygyn , a king of the Khangalassky Sakha, granted territory for Russian settlement in return for a military pact that included war against indigenous rebels of all North Eastern Asia ( Magadan , Chukotka , Kamchatka and Sakhalin ). Kull,
1378-608: The Yakut language during the 2002 census . Yakut has the following consonants phonemes , where the IPA value is provided in slashes '//' and the native script value is provided in bold followed by the romanization in parentheses. Yakut is in many ways phonologically unique among the Turkic languages . Yakut and the closely related Dolgan language are the only Turkic languages without hushing sibilants . Additionally, no known Turkic languages other than Yakut and Khorasani Turkic have
1431-544: The area as early as the 9th century or as late as the 16th century, though most likely there were several migrations. They migrated up north from around Lake Baikal to the middle Lena due to pressure by the Buryats, a Mongolic group. The Sakha displaced earlier, much smaller populations who lived on hunting and reindeer herding, introducing the pastoralist economy of Central Asia. The indigenous populations of Paleosiberian and Tungusic stock were mostly assimilated to
1484-680: The area as the Yakutsk Oblast into the Tsardom of Russia in the early-mid 17th century, obliging the indigenous peoples of the area to pay fur tribute . While the initial period following the Russian conquest saw the Sakha population drop by 70%, the Imperial period also saw the expansion of the native Yakuts from the middle Lena along the Vilyuy River to the north and the east displacing other indigenous groups. Yakutia saw some of
1537-825: The area of its governing Far Eastern Federal District , and is the world's largest country subdivision , covering over 3,083,523 square kilometers (1,190,555 sq mi). Yakutsk , which is the world's coldest major city, is its capital and largest city. The republic has a reputation for an extreme and severe climate, with the second lowest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere being recorded in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon (second only to Summit Camp , Greenland ), and regular winter averages commonly dipping below −35 °C (−31 °F) in Yakutsk. The hypercontinental tendencies also result in warm summers for much of
1590-667: The below section ). There is an additional regular morphophonological pattern for [ t ] -final stems: they assimilate in place of articulation with an immediately following labial or velar. For example at 'horse' > akkït 'your [pl.] horse', > appït 'our horse'. Yakut initial s- corresponds to initial h- in Dolgan and played an important operative rule in the development of proto-Yakut, ultimately resulting in initial Ø- < *h- < *s- (example: Dolgan h uoq and Yakut s uox, both meaning "not"). The historical change of *s > h , known as debuccalization ,
1643-789: The course of development of the Yakut language) as the Evenk and Yukaghir exonyms for the Yakuts. It is pronounced as Haka by the Dolgans , whose language is a close relative of the Yakut language . Sakha stretches to the Henrietta Island in the far north and is washed by the Laptev and Eastern Siberian Seas of the Arctic Ocean. These waters, the coldest and iciest of all seas in
Ulakhan-Vava - Misplaced Pages Continue
1696-418: The following table for the suffixes -GIt (second-person plural possessive suffix, oɣoɣut 'your [pl.] child'), -BIt (first-person plural possessive suffix, oɣobut , 'our child'), -TA ( partitive case suffix, tiiste 'some teeth'), -LArA (third-person plural possessive suffix, oɣoloro 'their child'). Note that the alternation in the vowels is governed by vowel harmony (see the main article and
1749-722: The last battles of the Russian Civil War , and the Bolshevik authorities re-organized Yakutsk Oblast into the autonomous Yakut ASSR in 1922. The Soviet era saw the migration of many Slavs , specifically Russians and Ukrainians , into the area. On 27 September 1990, the area became the Yakutskaya-Sakha Soviet Socialist Republic, and on 27 December 1991, it became the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The exonym Yakut comes from
1802-524: The lects of the Yukaghir language family are spoken in the northeast. Before the arrival of the Russian Empire, the majority of the local population was Tengrist , similar to the other Turkic people of Central Asia, or in Paleoasian indigenous shamanism with both 'light' (community leading) and 'dark' (healing through spirit journey) shamans. Under the Russians, the local population was converted to
1855-517: The native script bold and romanization in italics: Like other Turkic languages , a characteristic feature of Yakut is progressive vowel harmony . Most root words obey vowel harmony, for example in кэлин ( kelin ) 'back', all the vowels are front and unrounded. Yakut's vowel harmony in suffixes is the most complex system in the Turkic family. Vowel harmony is an assimilation process where vowels in one syllable take on certain features of vowels in
1908-401: The palatal nasal / ɲ / . Consonants at morpheme boundaries undergo extensive assimilation , both progressive and regressive. All suffixes possess numerous allomorphs . For suffixes which begin with a consonant, the surface form of the consonant is conditioned on the stem-final segment. There are four such archiphonemic consonants: G , B , T , and L . Examples of each are provided in
1961-404: The population dropping from 240,500 in 1926 down to 236,700 at the 1959 census. Sakha's demographics shifted wildly during the Soviet period as ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, among other groups, settled the area en masse, primarily in Yakutsk and the industrial south. Previously, even Yakutsk had been primarily Sakha and Sakha-speaking. With the end of korenizatsiya , usage of the Sakha language
2014-418: The preceding syllable. In Yakut, subsequent vowels all take on frontness and all non-low vowels take on lip rounding of preceding syllables' vowels. There are two main rules of vowel harmony: The quality of the diphthongs /ie, ïa, uo, üö/ for the purposes of vowel harmony is determined by the first segment in the diphthong. Taken together, these rules mean that the pattern of subsequent syllables in Yakut
2067-612: The reconstruction of Proto-Turkic , such as the preservation of long vowels. Despite all the aberrant features of Sakha (i.e. Yakut), it is still considered to belong to Common Turkic (in contrast to Chuvash ). Yakut is spoken mainly in the Sakha Republic . It is also used by ethnic Yakuts in Khabarovsk Region and a small diaspora in other parts of the Russian Federation , Turkey , and other parts of
2120-528: The region during the late Pleistocene – early Holocene period. Sakha is the only federal subject of Russia which uses more than one time zone. Sakha spans three time zones. Like the rest of Russia, it does not use daylight saving time . The largest river is the navigable Lena River (4,400 km). As it moves northward, it includes hundreds of small tributaries located in the Verkhoyansk Range . There are over 800,000 lakes in
2173-622: The related Goidelic languages ( Irish , Scottish , and Manx ). Debuccalization is also an active phonological process in modern Yakut. Intervocalically the phoneme / s / becomes [ h ] . For example the /s/ in кыыс ( kïïs ) 'girl' becomes [h] between vowels: kïï s girl > > kïï h -ïm girl- POSS . 1SG kïï s > kïï h -ïm girl > girl-POSS.1SG 'girl; daughter' > 'my daughter' Yakut has twenty phonemic vowels: eight short vowels, eight long vowels, and four diphthongs. The following table give broad transcriptions for each vowel phoneme, as well as
Ulakhan-Vava - Misplaced Pages Continue
2226-572: The republic. Sakha was first home to hunting-gathering and reindeer herding Tungusic and Paleosiberian peoples such as the Evenks and Yukaghir . Migrating from the area around Lake Baikal , the Turkic Sakha people first settled along the middle Lena river sometime between the 9th and 16th centuries, likely in several waves, bringing the pastoral economic system of Central Asia with them. The Russians colonised and incorporated
2279-700: The republic. Major lakes and reservoirs include: Sakha's greatest mountain range, the Verkhoyansk Range , runs parallel and east of the Lena River, forming a great arc that begins in the Sea of Okhotsk and ends in the Laptev Sea. The Chersky Range runs east of the Verkhoyansk Range and has the highest peak in Sakha, Peak Pobeda (3,003 m). The second highest peak is Peak Mus-Khaya reaching 2,959 m. The Stanovoy Range borders Sakha in
2332-616: The right bank of the Vilyuy 2,043 km (1,269 mi) from its mouth in the Lena. The confluence is almost opposite the mouth of the Sen in the facing bank. The main tributaries of the Ulakhan-Vava are the 101 kilometres (63 mi) long Khaim (Хайм), the 105 kilometres (65 mi) long Sengachanda, the 72 kilometres (45 mi) long Mayykta-Seene (Майыкта-Сээнэ) and the 194 kilometres (121 mi) long Kyuryungnekan (Кюрюнгнэкээн) from
2385-455: The right; and the 83 kilometres (52 mi) long Umotka and the 46 kilometres (29 mi) long Vava from the left. The river is fed by snow and rain. It freezes in October and stays under ice until early June. Yakut language The Yakut language differs from all other Turkic languages in the presence of a layer of vocabulary of unclear origin (possibly Paleo-Siberian ). There is also
2438-439: The rivers. Below the tundra is the vast taiga forest region. Larch trees dominate in the north and stands of fir and pine begin to appear in the south. Taiga forests cover about 47% of Sakha and almost 90% of the cover is larch. The Sakha Republic is the site of Pleistocene Park , a project directed at recreating Pleistocene tundra grasslands by stimulating the growth of grass with the introduction of animals which thrived in
2491-630: The severed yet preserved head of a large wolf from the Pleistocene , dated to over 40,000 years ago, was found close to the Tirekhtyakh River. Ymyakhtakh culture ( c. 2200 –1300 BC) was a Late Neolithic culture of Siberia, with a very large archaeological horizon. Its origins were in Sakha, in the Lena river basin. From there it spread both to the east and to the west. The Turkic Sakha people or Yakuts may have settled
2544-419: The south. The Republic's extensive coastline contains a number of peninsulas; from west to east the most prominent are: From west to east the main islands of Sakha are: Sakha is well endowed with raw materials. The soil contains large reserves of oil , gas, coal , diamonds , gold , silver , tin , tungsten and many others. Sakha produces 99% of all Russian diamonds and over 25% of the diamonds mined in
2597-460: The traditionally oral and improvised olonkho , in addition to composing their own works. Many early Sakha leaders, including Oyunsky, died in the Great Purge . Sakha experienced significant collectivization between 1929 and 1934 , with the number of households experiencing collectivization rising from 3.6% in 1929 to 41.7% in 1932. Policies by which the Sakha were harshly affected resulted in
2650-670: The world. Sakha is known for its climate extremes, with the Verkhoyansk Range being the coldest area in the Northern Hemisphere. Some of the lowest natural temperatures ever recorded have been here. The Northern Hemisphere 's Pole of Cold is at Verkhoyansk , where the temperatures reached as low as −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F) in 1892 and 1885, and at Oymyakon , where the temperatures reached as low as −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F) in February 1934. Average annual precipitation : 200 mm (central parts) to 700 mm (mountains of Eastern Sakha). Siberia , and particularly Sakha,
2703-496: The world. Dolgan , a close relative of Yakut, which formerly was considered by some a dialect of Yakut, is spoken by Dolgans in Krasnoyarsk Region . Yakut is widely used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic – more Dolgans , Evenks , Evens and Yukagirs speak Yakut than their own languages. About 8% of the people of other ethnicities than Yakut living in Sakha claimed knowledge of
SECTION 50
#17327825684672756-865: Was restricted in urban areas such as Yakutsk, which became primarily Russian-speaking. In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union , Sakha was recognized in Moscow as the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. Sakha is historically part of Russian Siberia, but since the formation of the Far Eastern Federal District in 2000, it is administratively part of the Russian Far East . Population: 995,686 ( 2021 Census ) ; 958,528 ( 2010 Census ) ; 949,280 ( 2002 Census ) ; 1,081,408 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . Population density
2809-488: Was told to Leo Tolstoy by Vasily Pozdnyakov ; the Socialist Revolutionary Party member and writer Vladimir Zenzinov , who left an account of his Arctic experiences; and Polish socialist activist Wacław Sieroszewski , who pioneered in ethnographic research on the Sakha people. A Sakha national movement first emerged during the 1905 Revolution . A Yakut Union was formed under the leadership of
#466533