Buryat, Oirat, Dagur, Santa (Mongolic Languages)

1 Sydney Language Festival Feb. 11, 2023 Buryat, Oirat, Dagur, Santa (Mongolic Languages) Alan Reed Libert, University of Newcastle Alan.Libert@newcastle.edu.au (1) Transurasian (~aka Altaic) Languages (Robbeets and Savelyev 2020:2) 2 (2) (https://scalar.usc.edu/works/buryat-language-in-irkutsk/------information-about-the-buryat-language) 3 (3) One Classification of the Mongolic Languages (Nugteren 2020:104) 4 (4) “similar words found in Daur and other Mongolic languages” (Wu 1996:3) (cf. Turkish kara ‘black’) Buryat (or Buriat) (5) Buryatia (https://celt.indiana.edu/portal/Buryat/index.html) 5 (6) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buryat_language#:~:text=It%20contained%20the%20following%20letters,the%20Latinized%20alphabet%20was%20approved.) (7) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buryat_language#:~:text=It%20contained%20the%20following%20letters,the%20Latinized%20alphabet%20was%20approved.) 6 (8) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buryat_language#:~:text=It%20contained%20the%20following%20letters,the%20Latinized%20alphabet%20was%20approved.) (9) Some Properties of Buryat (and related languages) (https://celcar.indiana.edu/apps/pamphlets/buryat.pdf) “Similar to other Altaic languages, Buryat is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language. And like many other Central Asian languages, Buryat features vowel harmony, wherein the vowel quality of a vowel in a word directly affects the vowel quality of the other vowels within the word. Another feature of Buryat is the use of postpositions, so instead of saying “on the table” like in English, a Buryat speaker would say “stol dėėrė” (table on).” 7 (10) Buryat Declension, also illustrating vowel harmony (Castrén 1957:12) Oirat (or Oirad) (11) Quote from Birtalan (2020:210) “The ethnonym Oirat (Oyirad, Written Mongol vUjirat, Spoken Oirat Öörd) covers several groups of Western Mongols, originally probably belonging to the tribal confederation of the Hoi-yin Irgen ‘Forest People’, who until the thirteenth century lived south and southwest of Lake Baikal. After Chinggis Khan’s eldest son Jochi attacked the ‘Forest People’ (in 1206–7), the ancient Oirat moved to the steppes of the Altai region and adopted a fully nomadic way of life. In the fifteenth century their descendants emerged as a growing political power known as the Oirat Confederation. Under the rule of Toghon (c.1416–40) and his son Esen (1440–55) the Oirat expanded their territory from the Altai to the Ili (Yili) valley, claiming themselves to be the legitimate heirs of Chinggis Khan’s empire. The Oirat reached their height of power under the rule of Ghaldan Boshokhtu (1670–97) and his successors Tsewangrabdan (1697–1727) and Ghaldantseren (1727–45), when the so-called Junghar (Jaguv Qhar ‘Left Hand’) Khanate was established in the Ili region, subsequently known as Jungaria (Dzungaria). Like the Eastern and Southern Mongols, the Oirat were ultimately subjugated by the Manchu, whose empire expanded to Jungaria in the middle of the eighteenth century. As a consequence of their complex political history, the Oirat are today dispersed over various regions, including not only Jungaria and Western Mongolia, but also Manchuria and the Kukunor 8 region in Amdo (Qinghai). The Kalmuck in the Volga region also represent an Oirat diaspora group, though they have long functioned as a separate entity both politically and linguistically.” (12) Kalmuck/Oirat Clear Script (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Script#/media/File:Smp_kalmyk.gif) 9 Dagur (or Daur) (13) Quotes from Yamada (2020:321): Santa (Dongxiang) (14) “The Dongxiang are a Mongol nationality living mainly in the Dongxiang Autonomous County , an area of about 1462 square km in size located within the Linxia Huizu Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province in the West of China. According to the census of 1982, they have a population of 279,300 of which the majority (145,000) lives in the Autonomous County. The remainder lives in Xinjiang (40,000), Lanzhou (the capital of Gansu), Qinghai, Ningxia etc. The Dongxiang call themselves Sarta while the name Dongxiang until 1950 had a purely geographical connotation. The region of Linxia which used to be known as Hezhou was divided into four areas: East and West, North and South Villages. The Dongxiang derived their name from the East Village (=dong xiang). Historically they were not considered a proper nationality but were thought to be part of the locally dominating Muslim population (Huihuizu ). Only after 1949 they were granted nationality status. In 1950, the Dongxiang Autonomous Region ( ) was founded which was renamed Autonomous County in 1955.” (Corff 1996) 10 References Birtalan, Á. (2020) “Oirat”. In M. Robbeets and A. Savelyev (eds.) The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages, Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp. 210-228. Castrén, M. A. (1857) Versuch einer burjätischen Sprachlehre nebst kurzem Wörterverzeichniss. Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, St. Petersburg. Corff, O. (1996) The Dongxiang Mongols and Their Language. <http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~corff/im/Sprache/Dongxiang.html>. Nugteren, H. (2020) “The Classification of the Mongolic Languages”. In M. Robbeets and A. Savelyev (eds.) The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages, Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp. 92-104. Robbeets, M. and A. Savelyev (2020) “Introduction”. In M. Robbeets and A. Savelyev (eds.) The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages, Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp. 1-4. Wu, C. (1996) Daur. Lincom Europa, Munich. Yamada, Y. (2020) “Dagur”. In M. Robbeets and A. Savelyev (eds.) The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages, Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp. 321-333.