This article or section should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. See why. (May 2019)

Chuvash
C?va?la Çova?la
?
Pronunciation	[ta?'la]
Native to	Russia
Region	Chuvashia and adjacent areas
Ethnicity	Chuvash
Native speakers	1,042,989 (2010 census)[1]
Language family	Turkic Oghur (Lir) Chuvash
Early form	Bulgar
Writing system	Cyrillic
Official status
Official language in	Russia  Chuvashia
Language codes
	cv
	chv
	chv
Glottolog	chuv1255
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Chuvash (;^[2] ?, translit. C?va?la, Çova?la, IPA: [ta?'la])^[3] is a Turkic language spoken in European Russia, primarily in the Chuvash Republic and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages, one of the two principal branches of the Turkic family. ^[4]

The writing system for the Chuvash language is based on the Cyrillic script, employing all of the letters used in the Russian alphabet and adding four letters of its own: ?, ?, ? and ?.

Usage

Stamp of the Soviet Union, Chuvash people, 1933

Chuvash is the native language of the Chuvash people and an official language of Chuvashia.^[5][6] It is spoken by 1,640,000 persons in Russia and another 34,000 in other countries.^[7] 86% of ethnic Chuvash and 8% of the people of other ethnicities living in Chuvashia claimed knowledge of Chuvash language during the 2002 census.^[8] Despite that and although Chuvash is taught at schools and sometimes used in the media, it is considered endangered,^[9][10] because Russian dominates in most spheres of life and few children learning the language are likely to become active users.

A fairly significant production and publication of literature in Chuvash still continues. According to UNESCO's Index Translationum, at least 202 books translated from Chuvash were published in other languages (mostly Russian) since ca. 1979.^[11] However, as with most other languages of the former USSR, most of the translation activity took place before the dissolution of the USSR: out of the 202 translations, 170 books were published in the USSR^[12] and just 17, in the post-1991 Russia (mostly, in the 1990s).^[13] A similar situation takes place with the translation of books from other languages (mostly Russian) into Chuvash (the total of 175 titles published since ca. 1979, but just 18 of them in post-1991 Russia).^[14]

History

Chuvash is the most distinctive of the Turkic languages and cannot be understood by speakers of other Turkic tongues. Chuvash is classified, alongside the extinct language Bulgar, as the only remaining member of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family. Since the surviving literary records for the non-Chuvash members of Oghuric are scant, the exact position of Chuvash within the Oghuric family cannot be determined.

The Oghuric branch is distinguished from the rest of the Turkic family (the Common Turkic languages) by two sound changes: r corresponding to Common Turkic z and l corresponding to Common Turkic ?.^[15]

Chuvash is so divergent from the main body of Turkic languages that scholars formerly considered Chuvash to be a Turkified Finno-Ugric (Uralic language).^[16] However, the first scientific fieldwork description of Chuvash, by August Ahlqvist in 1856, allowed researchers to establish its proper affiliation.^[17]

Writing systems

Current

1873-1938

The modern Chuvash alphabet was devised in 1873 by school inspector Ivan Yakovlevich Yakovlev.^[19]

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

Previous systems

The most ancient writing system, known as the Old Turkic alphabet, disappeared after the Volga Bulgars converted to Islam. Later, the Arabic script was adopted. After the Mongol invasion, writing degraded. After Peter the Great's reforms Chuvash elites disappeared, blacksmiths and some other crafts were prohibited for non-Russian nations, the Chuvash were educated in Russian, while writing in runes recurred with simple folk.^[20][21]

Phonology

Consonants

The consonants are the following (the corresponding Cyrillic letters are in brackets): The stops, sibilants and affricates are voiceless and fortes but become lenes (sounding similar to voiced) in intervocalic position and after liquids, nasals and semi-vowels. sounds like annebe, but ? sounds like kuzhakpa. However, geminate consonants do not undergo this lenition. Furthermore, the voiced consonants occurring in Russian are used in modern Russian-language loans. Consonants also become palatalized before and after front vowels.

• can have a voiced allophone of .

Vowels

A possible scheme for the diachronic development of Chuvash vowels^[] (note that not all the sounds with an asterisk are necessarily separate phonemes).

According to Krueger (1961), the Chuvash vowel system is as follows (the precise IPA symbols are chosen based on his description since he uses a different transcription).

András Róna-Tas (1997)^[22] provides a somewhat different description, also with a partly idiosyncratic transcription. The following table is based on his version, with additional information from Petrov (2001). Again, the IPA symbols are not directly taken from the works so they could be inaccurate.

The vowels ? and ? are described as reduced, thereby differing in quantity from the rest. In unstressed positions, they often resemble a schwa or tend to be dropped altogether in fast speech. At times, especially when stressed, they may be somewhat rounded and sound similar to /o/ and /ø/.

Additionally, ? (?) occurs in loanwords from Russian where the syllable is stressed in Russian.

Word accent

The usual rule given in grammars of Chuvash is that the last full (non-reduced) vowel of the word is stressed; if there are no full vowels, the first vowel is stressed.^[23] Reduced vowels that precede or follow a stressed full vowel are extremely short and non-prominent. One scholar, Dobrovolsky, however, hypothesises that there is in fact no stress in disyllabic words in which both vowels are reduced.^[24]

Dialects

There are two dialects of Chuvash:

• Viryal or Upper (which has both o and u) and
• Anatri or Lower (which has u for both o and u: up. tot?, "full", tut? "taste" - lo. tut?, "full, taste").

The literary language is based on both the Lower and Upper dialects. Both Tatar and the neighbouring Uralic languages such as Mari have influenced the Chuvash language, as have Russian, Mongolian, Arabic and Persian, which have all added many words to the Chuvash lexicon.

Morphology

As characteristic of all Turkic languages, Chuvash is an agglutinative language and as such, has an abundance of suffixes but no native prefixes or prepositions, apart from the partly reduplicative intensive prefix, such as in - white, -? - snow-white, ? - black, -? - jet black, - flat, - - absolutely flat, - full, - - chock full (compare to Turkish beyaz - white, bem-beyaz snow-white, kara - black, kap-kara - jet black, düz - flat, dümdüz - absolutely flat, dolu - full, dopdolu - chock full). One word can have many suffixes, which can also be used to create new words like creating a verb from a noun or a noun from a verbal root. See Vocabulary below. It can also 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. There are six noun cases in the Chuvash declension system:

Grammatical case:

• Nominative -
• Possessive (of), after consonants: -/-, after vowels: -? according to the vowel harmony
• Dative-Accusative (for), after consonants: -?/-?, after vowels: -/- according to the vowel harmony
• Locative (in, on), formed by adding -/-, -/- according to the vowel harmony
• Ablative (from), formed by adding -/-, -/- according to the vowel harmony
• Instrumental (with), formed by adding -()/-() according to the vowel harmony
• Abessive (without), formed by adding -/- according to the vowel harmony
• Causative, formed by adding -/- according to the vowel harmony

Plural:

• Nominative: -
• Possessive: -
• Dative-Accusative: -?
• Locative: -
• Ablative: -
• Instrumental: -
• Abessive: -
• Causative: -

Also:

• Terminative-antessive (to), formed by adding -(?)
• relic of distributive, formed by adding -? "daily, every day", "per house", "every time one comes"
• Semblative (as), formed by adding to pronouns in genitive or objective case ( , "like me", , "like you", , "like him, that way", , "like us", , "like you all", , "like myself", , "like yourself", , "like this"); adding -, - to nouns (, "humanlike", ?, "like Lenin")
• Postfix? (ha)

Adjective:

• Comparative: -/-

Verb:

• Infinitive: -(||)/-(||), negative postfix
• Gerund (-ing): positive -, negative -/-
• Conditional mood if: -()?/-()?, negative -?()?/-?()?, even if: -()? /-()? , negative -?()? /-?()?

Taking (day) as an example:

Possession is expressed by means of constructions based on verbs meaning "to exist" and "not to exist" ("" and ""). For example, to say, "My cat had no shoes":

+ - (?) + - + -

(? ? )

which literally translates as "cat-mine-of foot-cover(of)-plural-his non-existent-was."

Verbs

Chuvash verbs exhibit person and 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.

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is the principle by which a native Chuvash word generally incorporates either exclusively back or hard vowels (?, ?, ?, ?) and exclusively front or soft vowels (?, ?, ?, ?). As such, a notation for a Chuvash suffix such as - means either - or -, whichever promotes vowel harmony; a notation such as -? means either -?, -?, again with vowel harmony constituting the deciding factor.

Chuvash has two classes of vowels: front and back (see the table above). 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. , "in Cheboksary" but , "at home".

Two vowels cannot occur in succession.

Exceptions

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

Word order

Word order in Chuvash is generally subject-object-verb.

Chuvash numbers

• 1 - p?rre, p?r
• 2 - ? ikk?, ik?, ik
• 3 - vi, ? vi, vi?
• 4 - ? t?vatt?, t?vat?, t?vat
• 5 - pill?k, pil?k
• 6 - ultt?, IPA: ['ult:?], ? ult?, IPA: ['ult], ult, IPA: [ult]/IPA: [ult?]
• 7 - ?icc?, IPA: ['?it?:?], ? ?ic?, IPA: ['?it], ?ic, IPA: ['?it]
• 8 - sakk?r, IPA: ['sak:?r], sak?r, IPA: ['sakr]
• 9 - t?hh?r, t?h?r
• 10 - vunn?, vun
• 11 - vun p?r
• 12 - ? vun ikk?, vun ik?, vun ik
• 13 - vun vi, ? vun vi, vun vi?
• 14 - ? vun t?vatt?, vun t?vat?, vun t?vat
• 15 - vun pill?k, vun pil?k
• 16 - vun ultt?, ? vun ult?, vun ult
• 17 - vun ?icc?, ? vun ?ic?
• 18 - vun sakk?r, vun sak?r
• 19 - vun t?hh?r, vun t?h?r
• 20 - ?ir?m
• 30 - v?t?r
• 40 - h?r?h
• 50 - ? all?, al?, al
• 60 - utm?l
• 70 - ?itm?l
• 80 - ? sak?rvunn?, sak?rvun
• 90 - ? t?h?rvunn?, t?h?rvun
• 100 - r
• 1000 - pin
• 834236 - sak?r r v?t?r t?vat? pin te ik r v?t?r ultt?, IPA: [?sak?rrtrtatp?in?t?e?ikrtr?ult:], ? sak?r r v?t?r t?vat? pin te ik r v?t?r ult?

See also

• Chuvash literature
• Bulgar language
• Cyrillic script
• Oghur languages
• Turkic Avar language
• Turkic languages
• Ivan Yakovlev

References

Specific

General

• ?au?evi?, Ekrem (2002). "Tschuwaschisch. in: M. Okuka (ed.)" (PDF). Lexikon der Sprachen des Europäischen Ostens. Klagenfurt: Wieser. Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens 10: 811-815. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 March 2006. Retrieved 2010.
• Dobrovolsky, Michael (1999). "The phonetics of Chuvash stress: implications for phonology". Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 539-542. Berkeley: University of California.
• Johanson, Lars & Éva Agnes Csató, ed. (1998). The Turkic languages. London: Routledge.
• Lars Johansen (1998). "The history of Turkic". Johanson & Csató. Encyclopædia Britannica Online CD 98. pp. 81-125. Retrieved 2007.
• Lars Johanson (1998). "Turkic languages".
• Lars Johanson (2000). "Linguistic convergence in the Volga area". Gilbers, Dicky & Nerbonne, John & Jos Schaeken (ed.). Languages in contact Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi. pp. 165-178 (Studies in Slavic and General linguistics 28.).
• Johanson, Lars (2007). Chuvash. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier.
• Krueger, John (1961). Chuvash Manual. Indiana University Publications.
• Paasonen, Heikki (1949). Gebräuche und Volksdichtung der Tschuwassen. edited by E. Karabka and M. Räsänen (Mémoires de la Société Finno-ougrinenne XCIV), Helsinki.
• , ?. ? (2001). " ". ? . - . pp. ?. 475-476.
• ?-?-?, (2015). ? ? . ?.

External links

• ? "- ? "
• Chuvash-Russian On-Line Dictionary
• Chuvash English On-Line Dictionary
• Chuvash People's Website (in English), also available in Chuvash, Esperanto and Russian
• Nutshell Chuvash, by András Róna-Tas
• Chuvash people and language by Éva Kincses Nagy, Istanbul Erasmus IP 1- 13. 2. 2007
• Chuvash manual online
• ? ? ?...
• ? ?
• , ?
• ? ç
• ?
• ?. ? ? ?, ? , ? ? ?
• Why don't Chuvash people speak Chuvash?
• "As it is in the Chuvash Republic the Chuvash are not needed?!"