The Yakut language, or Sakha, is a Turkic language with around 363,000 speakers that is spoken in the Sakha Republic in the Russian Federation. Its speakers are known as the Yakuts. The Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (Yakut: Саха Республиката; Russian: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Altaic is a language family which includes 60 languages spoken by about 250 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and Far East. ... The Turkic languages are a group of related languages that are spoken by a variety of peoples distributed across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with estimated 100-130 million native speakers. ... The Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (Yakut: Саха Республиката; Russian: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... The Turkic languages are a group of related languages that are spoken by a variety of peoples distributed across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with estimated 100-130 million native speakers. ... The Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (Yakut: Саха Республиката; Russian: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... Yakuts, self-designation: Sakha, are a Turkic people associated with Yakutia/Sakha Republic. ...

Classification

Yakut is a member of the Northern Turkic family of languages, which includes Shor, Tuvan, and Dolgan in addition to Yakut. The Northern Turkish family is a subgroup of the Turkic languages, which most linguists believe to be member of an Altaic language family. The Shor language is one of the Turkic languages. ... The Tuvan (Tuvan: Тыва дыл (Tyva dyl)), also known as Tuvinian, Tyvan, or Tuvin, is one of the Turkic languages. ... The Turkic languages are a group of related languages that are spoken by a variety of peoples distributed across a vast area from Eastern Europe to Siberia and Western China with estimated 100-130 million native speakers. ... Altaic is a language family which includes 60 languages spoken by about 250 million people, mostly in and around Central Asia and Far East. ...

Like Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish, Yakut has vowel harmony, is agglutinative and has no grammatical gender. Word order is usually Subject Object Verb. In linguistics, a language is said to possess vowel harmony (also metaphony) when it has a phonological rule that requires all vowels in a word to belong to a single class. ... An agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. ... In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns requiring different agreement forms on determiners, adjectives, verbs or other words. ... In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ...

Geographic distribution

Yakut is spoken almost exclusively in the Sakha Republic and by a small diaspora in other parts of the Russian Federation, Turkey, and other parts of the world. Yakut is widely spoken as a sprachbund by other ethnic minorities in the Sakha Republic. The Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (Yakut: Саха Республиката; Russian: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... A Sprachbund (German for language union) (also known as linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area) is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity. ... The Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (Yakut: Саха Республиката; Russian: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ...

Sounds

One characteristic feature of Yakut is vowel harmony. For example, if the first vowel of a Yakut word is a front vowel, the second and other vowels of the same word are usually the same vowel or another front vowel: In linguistics, a language is said to possess vowel harmony (also metaphony) when it has a phonological rule that requires all vowels in a word to belong to a single class. ...

 kelin "back": e is open unrounded front, i is close unrounded front. 

Consonants

In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Dentals are consonants articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the middle or back part of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... The vocal cords, also known as vocal folds, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the human larynx. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... (adj. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ...

Vowels

In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds) is a vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

Writing system

Yakut is written using the Cyrillic script: the modern Yakut alphabet, that was established in 1939 by Soviet Union, consists of the Russian one plus 5 additional letters: Ҕҕ, Ҥҥ, Өө, Һһ, Үү. The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... 1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

The International Phonetic Alphabet. ...

Literature

The first printing in Yakut was a part of a Nicolaas Witsen's book published in 1692 in Amsterdam. Nicolaas Witsen (1641-1717) was born to a family of successful Dutch businessmen and rapidly became a key figure in the political, economic and cultural relations between tsarist Russia and the Netherlands. ... Events February 13 - Massacre of Glencoe March 1 - The Salem witch trials begin in Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony with the charging of three women with witchcraft. ... Amsterdam Location Country The Netherlands Province North Holland Population 739,295 (1 January 2005) Coordinates 4°54E - 52°22N Website www. ...

External links

• Sakha Open World - Орто Дойду - A platform to promote the Yakut Language on the web; News, Lyrics, Music, Fonts, Forum (in Yakut, Unicode)
• Russian translations of Yakut texts - heroic poetry, fairy tales, legends, proverbs, etc.
• Baayaga village website - news and stories about and by the people of Baayaga (in Yakut)