Yakut

Last Updated: 2019-08-22

SLIGHTLY COMPROMISED: conflation between /j/ and /j̃/

Background

Language Family: Turkic / Common Turkic / Siberian / Northern / Yukutian

• Also referred to as Sakha, Saxa, Saqa, or Yakutian, it is spoken in Russia.

Phonology

Consonants

• There seems to be some debate as to whether the palatal affricates /cç/ and /ɟʝ/ are in fact stops /c/ and /ɟ/ respectively, due to a lack of frication. I opted for that classification of affricates as done by Tolkov (2011) (p. 1).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d		k ɡ
Affricates			cç ɟʝ
Fricatives		s		x ɣ	h
Nasals	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants		l	j j̃
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. The palatal approximant on the right is nasalized.

Vowels

• Vowel harmony exists in Yakut (Tolkov 2011, 6–7).
• Vowel length is contrastive. Long vowels are indicated by repeated graphemes (Tarasova 2013, 2).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i y		ɯ u
Mid	e ø		o
Low		a
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are unrounded and those on the right are rounded.

Diphthongs
/ie/, /yø/, /ɯa/, /uo/

Alphabet

• The distinction between /j/ and /j̃/ is not marked in the orthography (Tolkov 2011, 2), compromising the language.
  • /j/ is transcribed by default in the rules, meaning /j̃/ is not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.
• Graphemes present in loanwords will be included in the transcription only if the corresponding phoneme is also a native phoneme in Yakut.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
а	/a/
б	/b/
в	/v/	only used in loanwords
г	/ɡ/
ҕ	/ɣ/
д	/d/
е	/e/	only used in loanwords
ё	/jo/	only used in loanwords
ж	/ʒ/	only used in loanwords
з	/z/	only used in loanwords
и	/i/
й	/j/; /j̃/	/j/: default in the rules
к	/k/
л	/l/
м	/m/
н	/n/
ҥ	/ŋ/
о	/o/
ө	/ø/
п	/p/
р	/ɾ/
с	/s/
һ	/h/
т	/t/
у	/u/
ү	/y/
ф	/f/	only used in loanwords
х	/x/
ц	/ts/	only used in loanwords
ч	/cç/
ш	/ʃ/	only used in loanwords
щ	/ɕː/	only used in loanwords
ъ		only used in loanwords
ы	/ɯ/
ь		may indicate palatalization of preceding consonant; only used in loanwords or in the digraphs ⟨дь⟩ and ⟨нь⟩
э	/e/
ю	/ju/	only used in loanwords
я	/ja/	only used in loanwords
Digraph
нь	/ɲ/	geminate ⟨нь⟩ is written as ⟨ннь⟩, rather than ⟨ньнь⟩
дь	/ɟʝ/

Lenition Rules

• /s/ debuccalizes to /h/ (Tolkov 2011, 1).
• /p/ voices intervocalically (Gurevich 2004, 269–72).
• /k/ is said to spirantize to /χ/ (Gurevich 2004); however, Kingston (2008) argues that it’s merely due to place assimilation (p. 9).

Misc. Rules

• Gemination of consonant occurs (Tolkov 2011, 7).

References

Gurevich, Naomi. 2004. Lenition and Contrast: The Functional Consequences of Certain Phonetically Conditioned Sound Changes. New York: Routledge.

Kingston, John. 2008. “Lenition.” In Selected Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology.

Tarasova, Zoya E. 2013. “Translation of the Sakha (Yakut) Culture-Specific Vocabulary into English.” Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 6 (5): 748–53.

Tolkov, Igor. 2011. “Phonetics of Sakha.”