What is Chuvash Language?

Chuvash (Чăвашла, Čăvašla)
Spoken in:	Russia
Region:	Chuvashia
Total speakers:	1,330,000 (Russian Census (2002), self-reported speakers)
Ranking:
Genetic classification:
Official status
Official language of:	Chuvashia (federal subject of Russia)
Regulated by:
Language codes
ISO 639-1	cv
ISO 639-2	chv
SIL
See also: Language – List of languages

Chuvash (Chuvash: Чăвашла, Čăvašla, IPA: [ʨəʋaʂˈla]; also known as Chăvash, Chuwash, Chovash, Chavash, Çuvaş or Çuaş) is a Turkic language spoken to the west of the Ural Mountains in central Russia. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages.

Chuvash is the native language of the Chuvash people and an official language of Chuvashia. It is spoken by about two million people.^[1] 86% of ethnic Chuvash and 8% of the people of other ethnicities living in Chuvashia claimed knowledge of Chuvash language during the 2002 census.^[2]

The writing system for the Chuvash language is based largely on the Cyrillic alphabet, employing all of the letters used in the Russian alphabet, and adding four letters of its own: Ӑ, Ӗ, Ҫ and Ӳ.

History

Chuvash is the most distinctive of the Turkic languages and thus cannot be understood by speakers of other Turkic tongues. Its parent language — spoken by the Volga Bulghars in the Middle Ages — differs from all other modern Turkic languages so considerably that it is usually classified as a sister language of Proto-Turkic, rather than a daughter language, like the rest of the Turkic languages. Other related languages, such as Hunnic, are now extinct.

Formerly, scholars considered Chuvash not properly a Turkic language at all but, rather, a Turkicized Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language.^[3]

Writing systems

Current

А Ӑ Б В Г Д Е Ё Ӗ Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Ҫ Т У Ӳ Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я

а ӑ б в г д е ё ӗ ж з и й к л м н о п р с ҫ т у ӳ ф х ц ч ш щ ъ ы ь э ю я

а, ӑ, бӑ, вӑ, гӑ, дӑ, е, ё, ӗ, жӑ, зӑ, ийӑ, кӑ, лӑ, мӑ, нӑ, о, пӑ, рӑ, сӑ, ҫӑ, тӑ, У, ӳ, фӑ, хӑ, цӑ, чӑ, шӑ, щӑ, хытӑлӑхпалли, ы, ҫемҫелӗхпалли, э, ю, я

In 1873-1938

The modern Chuvash alphabet was devised in 1873 by school inspector Ivan Yakovlevich Yakovlev ^[4].

а

е

ы

и/і

у

ӳ

ă

ĕ

й

в

к

л

љ

м

н

њ

п

р

р́

с

ç

т

т ̌

ђ

х

?

In 1938, the alphabet underwent significant modification which brought it to its current form.

Previous systems

The most ancient writing system, known as the Orkhon script, disappeared after the Volga Bulgars converted to Islam. Later, the Arabic alphabet was adopted. After the Mongol invasion, writing simply disappeared.

Phonology

Chuvash	IPA
a	a
a	ɘ
y	ɯ
u	u
o	ɔ
e	ɛ
e	ɘ
i	ɨ
ü	y

Dialects

There are two dialects of Chuvash: Viryal or Upper (which pronounces an o, as in хола = town) and Anatri or Lower (which pronounces the same sound as u, as in хула = town). The literary language is based on the Lower dialect. Both Tatar and the Finnic languages have influenced the Chuvash language, as have Russian, Mari, Mongolian, Arabic, and Persian, which have all added many words to the Chuvash lexicon.

Grammar

Chuvash is an agglutinative language and as such has an abundance of suffixes, but no native prefixes (apart from the reduplicating intensifier prefix as in шура="white", шап-шура="very white"). One word can have many suffixes and these can also be used to create new words (like creating a verb from a noun, or a noun from a verbal root, see Vocabulary section further below) or to indicate the grammatical function of the word.

Nouns and adjectives

Chuvash nouns can take endings indicating the person of a possessor. They can take case-endings, as in Latin. There are six noun cases in the Chuvash declension system:

• Nominative
• Genitive, formed by adding -ăн, -ĕн or simply -н according to the vowel harmony
• Objective, formed by adding -(н)a or -(н)е, according to the vowel harmony
• Locative, formed by adding -тe, -ре, -тa, -ра according to the vowel harmony
• Ablative, formed by adding -тен or -тан, -рен, ран according to the vowel harmony
• Instrumental, formed by adding -пe or -пa, according to the vowel harmony

Taking кун (day) as an example:

Chuvash	English	Noun case
кун	day, or the day	Nominative
кунăн	of the day	Genitive
куна	to the day	Objective
кунта	in the day	Locative
кунтан	of the day, or from the day	Ablative
кунпа	with the day	Instrumental

Possession is expressed by means of constructions based on verbs meaning "to exist" and "to not exist". Thus, while "пур" and "çук" represent "exists" and "not exists," "пурччĕ" and "çукччĕ" are the preterite of these. These lead to the most bizarre-looking (to a Western reader) sentential structures: e.g., in order to say, "My cat had no shoes," we form:

кушак + -ăм + -ăн ура атă(и) + -сем çук + -ччĕ

(кушакăмăн ура аттисем çукччĕ)

which literally translates as, "cat-mine-of foot-cover(of)-plural-his non-existent-was." Note that many of the agglutinative languages of Eurasia use a form of the copula (the 'to be' verb) in order to mark possession, instead of a distinct verb meaning 'to have.' An example is Hungarian.

Verbs

Chuvash verbs exhibit person. They can be made negative or impotential; they can also be made potential. Finally, Chuvash verbs exhibit various distinctions of tense, mood, and aspect: a verb can be progressive, necessitative, aorist, future, inferential, present, past, conditional, imperative, or optative.

Chuvash	English
кил-	(to) come
килме-	not (to) come
килейме-	not (to) be able to come
килеймен	She (or he) was apparently unable to come.
килеймерĕ	She had not been able to come.
килеймерĕр	You (plural) had not been able to come.
килеймерĕр-и?	Have you (plural) not been able to come?

Vowel harmony

For more details on this topic, see Vowel harmony.

"Vowel harmony" is the principle by which a native Chuvash word generally incorporates either exclusively back vowels (а, ă, у, ы) or exclusively front vowels (е, ĕ, и, ӳ). As such, a notation for a Chuvash suffix such as -тен means either -тан or -тен, whichever promotes vowel harmony; a notation such as -тпĕр means either -тпăр, -тпĕр again with vowel harmony constituting the deciding factor.

	Front		Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
High	и	ӳ	ы	?
Low	е	ĕ	а	a

Chuvash has two classes of vowels -- front and back. Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels. Therefore, most grammatical suffixes come in front and back forms, e.g. Шупашкар'та "in Cheboksary" but килте "at home".

Exceptions

Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms like сĕтел|пукан "furniture" are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes (such as -ĕ); there are also a few native Chuvash words that do not follow the rule (such as анне "mother"). In such words suffixes harmonize with the final vowel; thus Анне'пе "With the mother".

Voiced consonants

Unvoiced consonants in Chuvash become voiced in an intervocal position. E.g. Аннепе sounds like annebe, кушакпа sounds like kuzhakpa.

Word order

Word order in Chuvash is generally Subject Object Verb, as in Japanese, Turkish and much of classical Latin, but not modern English.

Notes

References

• John Krueger (1961). Chuvash Manual. Indiana University Publications. 
• Heikki Paasonen (1949). Gebräuche und Volksdichtung der Tschuwassen. edited by E. Karabka and M. Räsänen (Mémoires de la Société Finno-ougrinenne XCIV), Helsinki. 

See also

• Cyrillic alphabet
• Hunnic language
• Turkic language

External links

• Swadesh list of Chuvash words
• Interactive Chuvash-Turkish Web Dictionary
• Chuvash-Russian Web-Dictionary
• Chuvash People's Site, in Chuvash, English, Esperanto and Russian

•  • [ e] Altaic languages
Turkic languages • Mongolic languages • Tungusic languages • Japonic languages* • Korean language*
Notes: *Japonic and Korean are not generally recognized as belonging to the Altaic language family. A hypothetical language family that would include both the Japonic languages and Korean is sometimes referred to as the Buyeo language family.

•  • [ e] Turkic languages
Oghur	Bulgar† | Chuvash | Hunnic† | Khazar† | Turkic Avar†
Uyghur	Old Turkic† | Aini| Chagatay† | Ili Turki | Lop | Uyghur | Uzbek
Kypchak	Baraba | Bashkir | Crimean Tatar | Cuman† | Karachay-Balkar | Karaim | Karakalpak | Kazakh | Kipchak† | Krymchak | Kumyk | Nogai | Old Tatar† | Tatar | Urum | Altay | Kyrgyz
Oghuz	Afshar | Azerbaijani | Crimean Tatar | Gagauz | Khorasani Turkish | Ottoman Turkish† | Pecheneg† | Qashqai | Salar | Turkish | Turkmen | Urum
Arghu	Khalaj
Northeastern	Chulym | Dolgan | Fuy Grgs | Khakas | Northern Altay | Shor | Tofa | Tuvan | Western Yugur | Sakha/Yakut
Notes: Listed in more than one group, Mixed language, Disputed, †Extinct