In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features. Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning that the affected vowels do not need to be immediately adjacent, and there can be intervening segments between the affected vowels. Generally one vowel will trigger a shift in other vowels, either progressively or regressively, within the domain, such that the affected vowels match the relevant feature of the trigger vowel. Common phonological features that define the natural classes of vowels involved in vowel harmony include vowel backness, vowel height, nasalization, roundedness, and advanced and retracted tongue root.
Kazakh is a Turkic language of the Kipchak branch spoken in Central Asia by Kazakhs. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz and Karakalpak. It is the official language of Kazakhstan, and has official status in the Altai Republic of Russia. It is also a significant minority language in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China, and in the Bayan-Ölgii Province of western Mongolia. The language is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs throughout the former Soviet Union, Germany, and Turkey.
Tatar is a Turkic language spoken by the Volga Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan, as well as Siberia and Crimea.
Uyghur or Uighur is a Turkic language written in a Uyghur Perso-Arabic script with 8–13 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Apart from Xinjiang, significant communities of Uyghur speakers are also located in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; it is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, television, and radio. Other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang also use Uyghur as a common language.
The Mari language, formerly known as the Cheremiss language, spoken by approximately 400,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation, as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari, are found also in the Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions.
The Samoyedic or Samoyed languages are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 25,000 people altogether, accordingly called the Samoyedic peoples. They derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Samoyedic, and form a branch of the Uralic languages. Having separated perhaps in the last centuries BC, they are not a diverse group of languages, and are traditionally considered to be an outgroup, branching off first from the other Uralic languages.
The Tuvans or Tyvans are a Turkic ethnic group indigenous to Siberia that live in Tuva, Mongolia, and China. They speak the Tuvan language, a Siberian Turkic language. In Mongolia, they are regarded as one of the Uriankhai peoples.
Tuvan, sometimes spelt Tyvan, is a Turkic language spoken in the Republic of Tuva in South Central Siberia, Russia. The language has borrowed a certain number of roots from Mongolian, Tibetan and Russian. There are small groups of Tuvans that speak distinct dialects of Tuvan in China and Mongolia.
Kalmyk Oirat, commonly known as the Kalmyk language, is a variety of the Oirat language, natively spoken by the Kalmyk people of Kalmykia, a federal subject of Russia. In Russia, it is the standard form of the Oirat language, which belongs to the Mongolic language family. The Kalmyk people of the Northwest Caspian Sea of Russia claim descent from the Oirats from Eurasia, who have also historically settled in Mongolia and Northwest China. According to UNESCO, the language is "definitely endangered". According to the Russian census of 2021, there are 110,000 speakers out of an ethnic population consisting of 178,000 people.
The Tofalarpeople are a Turkic people who live in Tofalariya, in the southwestern part of Nizhneudinsky District, Irkutsk Oblast of Russia. The Tofalar population is highly mixed with Russians due to the presence of Russian settlers and high rates of intermarriage.
The Soyot are an ethnic group of Samoyedic and Turkic origin who live mainly in the Oka region in the Okinsky District in Buryatia, Russia. They share much of their history with the Tofalar, Tozhu Tuvans, Dukha, and Buryat; the Soyot have taken on a great deal of Buryat cultural influence and were grouped together with them under Soviet policy. Due to intermarriage between Soyots and Buryats, the Soyot population is heavily mixed with the Buryat. In 2000, they were reinstated as a distinct ethnic group.
Kamas is an extinct Samoyedic language, formerly spoken by the Kamasins. It is included by convention in the Southern group together with Mator and Selkup. The last native speaker of Kamas, Klavdiya Plotnikova, died in 1989. Kamas was spoken in Russia, north of the Sayan Mountains, by Kamasins. The last speakers lived mainly in the village of Abalakovo, where they moved from the mountains in the 18th-19th centuries. Prior to its extinction, the language was strongly influenced by Turkic and Yeniseian languages.
The Dukha, Dukhans or Duhalar are a small Turkic community of semi-nomadic reindeer herders living in a sum of Khövsgöl Province, Mongolia called Tsagaannuur. The Dukha are divided into two groups: those from northeast Tuva and those from southeast Tuva. They are the only reindeer herding culture in Mongolia, and are considered one of the earliest domesticators of any animal.
The Siberian Turkic or Northeastern Common Turkic languages, are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family. The following table is based upon the classification scheme presented by Lars Johanson (1998). All languages of the branch combined have approximately 670,000 native and second language speakers, with most widely spoken members being Yakut, Tuvan, Northern Altai and Khakas. Despite their usual English name, two major Turkic languages spoken in Siberia, Siberian Tatar and Southern Altai, are not classified as Siberian Turkic, but are rather part of the Kipchak subgroup. Many of these languages have a Yeniseian substratum.
Yakut, also known as Yakutian, Sakha, Saqa or Saxa, 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.
The Tozhu Tuvans, Tozhu Tuvinians, Todzhan Tuvans or Todzhinians are a Turkic subgroup of the Tuvans living in Todzhinsky District of Tuva Republic. The Tozhu Tuvans are reindeer herders.
Dukha or Dukhan is a nearly extinct Turkic language or dialect variety of Tuvan language spoken by the Dukhan herder people in the Tsagaan-Nuur county of Khövsgöl Province in northern Mongolia. Dukhan belongs to the Taiga subgroup of Sayan Turkic. This language is nearly extinct and is only spoken as a second language. The ISO 639-3 proposal (request) code was dkh, but this proposal was rejected.
Turkmen grammar is the grammar of the Turkmen language, whose dialectal variants are spoken in Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and others. Turkmen grammar, as described in this article, is the grammar of standard Turkmen as spoken and written by Turkmen people in Turkmenistan.
Soyot is an extinct and revitalizing Turkic language of the Siberian Sayan branch similar to the Dukhan language and closely related to the Tofa language. Two dialects/languages are spoken in Russia and Mongolia: Soyot in the Okinsky District of the Republic of Buryatia (Russia) and Tsaatan in the Darkhad valley of Mongolia.
Valentin Ivanovich Rassadin was a Soviet and Russian linguist. He is best known for his documentation and studies of the Tofa language and Soyot-Tsaatan language.
