Background

Language Family: Mongolian / Eastern / Oirat-Khalkha / Khalkha-Buriat / Buriat

Russia Buryat is the most widely spoken dialect of Buryat (also spelled Buriat). It is spoken along Russia’s border with Mongolia in the Buryat Republic, Ust-Orda Buryatia, and Aga Buryatia. Speakers of other Buryat dialects live in Mongolia and China.

Phonology

Consonants

/p/, /f/, /v/, /fʲ/, /vʲ/, /ts/, /tʃ/, and /k/ only appear in loanwords (Staroverov 2020, 45).
- Graber (2012) argues, however, that /k/ appears in so many loanwords that it has become part of Buryat’s phonemic inventory (p. xviii). I have therefore opted to include it in the inventory and rules.
- I have opted also to include /p/, just as Radnaeva (2003) and Sanzheev (1962) do (p. 2738; p. 12).
- Although I closely follow the analysis done by Staroverov (2020), I have chosen to diverge from it and exclude palatalized /s/ and /z/, just as Radnaeva (2003), Radnaeva (2006), and Sanzheev (1962) do.
The palatalized consonants are recognized as phonemes, but based upon how infrequently they appear in Crúbadán, they seem rather marginal.

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p pʲ b bʲ	t tʲ d dʲ			k ɡ ɡʲ
Fricatives		s z	ʃ ʒ		x xʲ	ɦ
Nasals	m mʲ	n nʲ
Trills		r rʲ
Approximants		l lʲ		j
Note: For phonemes without diacritics that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. Phonemes with the diacritic (ʲ) are palatalized.

Vowels

Vowel length is phonemic in Buryat (Khabtagateva 2013, 161).
There is much disagreement around how to represent the mid-front vowel. I have chosen to follow Staroverov (2020) and use /ɘ/ (p. 45).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ʉ	u
Mid	ɘ	ɵ	o
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ai/, /oi/, /ui/, /ʉi/, /ei/

Alphabet

Note: /ɡʲ/ is not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
а	/a/
б	/b/
в	/v/	occurs in loanwords
г	/ɡ/
д	/d/
е	/jɘ/
ё	/jo/
ж	/ʒ/
з	/z/
и	/i/
й	/j/	often appears as the second element of a diphthong (Graber 2012, xviii)
к	/k/	occurs in loanwords
л	/l/
м	/m/
н	/n/
о	/o/
ө	/ɵ/	⟨ѳ⟩ is an alternative form
п	/p/
р	/r/
с	/s/
т	/t/
у	/u/
ү	/ʉ/
ф	/f/	occurs in loanwords
х	/x/
ц	/ts/	occurs in loanwords
ч	/tʃ/	occurs in loanwords
ш	/ʃ/
щ	/ʃtʃ/	occurs in loanwords
ъ		indicates lack of palatalization of proceeding consonant
ы	/i/
ь	/ʲ/	marks palatalization of preceding consonant
э	/ɘ/
ю	/ju/
я	/ja/
һ	/ɦ/

Syllable Structure

The structure of syllables in Russia Buryat consist of CV(C)(C) word-medially and (C)V(C)(C) word-initially (Staroverov 2020, 46).

Lenition Rules

/ɡ/ spirantizes to [ɣ] intervocalically in words with front vowels and to [ʁ] intervocalically in words with back vowels (Staroverov 2020, 46).

Misc. Rules

Vowel harmony is present in Buryat (Khabtagateva 2013, 161).
When a vowel-initial suffix is added to a short vowel stem, one of the vowels is deleted (Staroverov 2020, 47).
When a vowel-initial suffix is added to a long vowel stem, a dorsal consonant is epenthesized (ibid.).

References

Graber, Kathryn Elizabeth. 2012. “Knowledge and Authority in Shift: A Linguistic Ethnography of Multilingual News Media in the Buryat Territories of Russia.” Dissertation, University of Michigan. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/91451/kegraber_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Khabtagateva, Bayarma. 2013. “The Buryat People and Their Language.” Journal of Endangered Languages, 155–76.

Radnaeva, Ljubov. 2003. “The Two Types of Transcription (the Buryat Language Database).” In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

———. 2006. “Phonetic Research of the Sound Form of Modern Buryat Language.” In Proceedings of Teh Xith International Conference “Speech and Computer”.

Sanzheev, G.D. 1962. Grammar of Buryat: Phonetics and Morphology. https://altaica.ru/LIBRARY/mong/BuriatGrammar.pdf.

Staroverov, Peter. 2020. “Buriat Dorsal Epenthesis Is Not Reproduced with Novel Morphemes.” Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus 60: 43–69. doi:10.5842/60-0-756.

Russia Buryat

Abi Creighton