Tuvan

Last Updated: 2020-07-02

Background

Language Family: Turkic / Common Turkic / Siberian Turkic / South Siberian / Sayan Turkic / Tuvan

• Tuvan, also know as Tuvinian, Tyvan, or Tuvin, is spoken in the Tuva Republic in Russia.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stops	p b	t d		k ɡ
Affricates			cç
Fricatives		s z	ç ʝ	x
Nasals	m	n		ŋ
Trills		r
Approximants	ʋ	l	j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• Vowel length is contrastive in Tuvan (Harrison 2000, 11). Long vowels are indicated by duplicate graphemes.
• Low tone (vs. no tone) is contrastive syllable-initially (O’Brien 2010, 1–2); however, it’s rather marginal, such that very few words display this distinction (although the prevalence depends on the dialect). It is not marked in Crúbadán, so I have chosen to proceed with the language, not accounting for it in the rules.
• Vowel harmony is present in Tuvan (Harrison 2000, 111).

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

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
а	/ɑ/
б	/b/
в	/ʋ/
г	/ɡ/
д	/d/
e	/e/; /je/	/e/: word-medially and word-finally; /je/: word-initially in Russian loanwords
ё	/jo/
ж	/ʝ/
з	/z/
и	/i/
й	/j/
к	/k/
л	/l/
м	/m/
н	/n/
ң	/ŋ/
о	/o/
ө	/ø/
п	/p/
р	/r/
с	/s/
т	/t/
у	/u/
ү	/y/
ф	/f/	appears in Russian loanwords
х	/x/
ц	/ts/	appears in Russian loanwords
ч	/cç/
ш	/ç/
щ	/çcç/	appears in Russian loanwords
ъ		indicates pitch accent
ы	/ɯ/
ь		represents where there was a reduced vowel
э	/e/	word-initially
ю	/ju/	appears in Russian loanwords
я	/jɑ/	appears in Russian loanwords

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Tuvan follow the order of (C)V(V)(C)(C) (Harrison 2000, 18).

Lenition Rules

• /ɡ/ may spirantize to [ɣ] (Harrison 2000, 13).
• Intervocalically, /p/ is realized as [ʋ] (ibid).
• Velar consonants are often elided intervocalically (Harrison 2000, 87).
• Voiceless stops become voiced intervocalically (Harrison 2000, 83).
  • In this position /b/ and /ɡ/ become [ʋ] and [ɣ], respectively.

Misc. Rules

• Voiceless stops (and voiced velar stops) can geminate (Harrison 2000, 82).
• Velars /k/ and /ɡ/ are predictably realized as [q] and [ɢ], respectively, before back vowels (Harrison 2000, 13).

References

Harrison, K. David. 2000. “Topics in the Phonology and Morphology of Tuvan.” Dissertation, Yale University. https://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/dharris2/Harrison-Dissertation.pdf.

O’Brien, Jeremy. 2010. “Tone in Tuvan.”