Chulym (, Ös tili, chulym tili, tatar tili; Russian: Чулымский язык), also known as Chulym Tatar, Chulim, Chulym-Turkic (not to be confused with the Turkic Siberian Tatar language) and Ös, is a critically endangered language of the Chulyms, spoken by no more than 30 people, many of whom are elderly. The names which the people use to refer to themselves are пистиҥ кишилер, pistɪŋ kiʃɪler (our people) and ось кишилер, øs kiʃɪler (Ös people). The native designation for the language are ось тил(и), øs til(ɪ) ~ ø:s til(ɪ), and less frequently тадар тил(и), tadar til(ɪ).
The language is spoken in Russia, at various locations along the Chulym River usually by Indigenous people native to the Chulym river basin. Ös speakers reside primarily in Belij Yar, Novoshumilovo, Ozyornoe, and Teguldet, in eastern Tomsk Oblast and Pasechnoe in western Krasnoyarsk Kray.
The language is closely related to the Shor and Khakas languages. Though all these are considered by some as one language, the Ös speakers themselves do not believe this to be the case. Lower Chulym had more Tatar influence and Middle Chulym having more Khakas influence. There is also a significant Yeniseic influence on the language, with those who speak Middle Chulym themselves likely being descendants of Yeniseic, Ob Ugric, and Samoyedic speaking peoples who assimilated and began speaking a Turkic language.
Dialects
Chulym comprises two distinct dialects with multiple sub-dialects, corresponding to locations along the Chulym River. The native ethnonym is given in italics.
- Lower Chulym (extinct)
- Küärik, küärik jon (Koryukovskaya volost)
- Ketsik (Kurchikova volost)
- Yezhi, je:ži jon (Baygul'skaya volost)
- Yatsi, jatsi jon (Yachinskaya volost)
- Chibi, tš'ibi d'on (Kyzyldeyeva volost)
- Middle Chulym also known as Ös Chulym
- Tutal, tutaɫ tš'onu (Tutal'skaya volost, Teguldetsky District, Tomsk Oblast)
- Melet, pilet tš'onu (Meletskaya volost, Tyukhtetsky District, Krasnoyarsk Krai)
The "Upper Chulym dialect" identified by Harrison & Anderson Glottolog classifies the Tutal dialect, spoken in the village of Teguldet, as belonging to Shor, and the Melet dialect, spoken in , being close to the of Khakas.
History
Chulym was once a widely spoken language but its history consists of "multiple waves of colonization and linguistic assimilation first into Turkic, and now into Russian". The Chulyms are thought to have shifted from a Yeniseian language to Turkic. Their original language has left influence in modern Chulym, such as place names, especially hydronyms. This shift becomes even more evident when one studies the structure of the language, which is distinguishable from other Siberian Turkic languages. Now, Middle Chulym has become endangered due to the Russian hostility that occurred during the mid-twentieth century. It was during the 1940s, when Joseph Stalin was in power, that there was an establishment of a program called "the second mother tongue policy". This included the act of rounding up children and sending them to boarding schools, where they learned the nation's language and were forced not to speak their own native tongue. The program quickly caused the community to abandon the Chulym language. Soon enough, the language became associated with negative connotations and thus it gained an inferior and low social status. In the film The Linguists, a Chulym native speaker named Vasya Gabov described Chulym as being "viewed as a 'gutter language'," and the language was no longer passed on to the children. Furthermore, in the 1970s, the Chulym community was forced into Russian-speaking settlements, where they had to adapt and speak the Russian language in order to move up in the social ladder and have greater chances of economic prosperity. For instance, Gabov's village, Novotarlagany, was abolished, along with many other Chulym settlements. Soon enough, Chulym speakers were abandoning their native tongue; this caused the community to lose a great number of speakers and their language traditions. Not only were the Chulym people forced to abandon their language, but also the government dropped them from the census statistics as a distinct ethnic group after 1959. Under the eyes of the government, the Chulym population was seen as non-existent, and not enough to earn itself a place as a different national unit; it was not until 1999 that the community regained their status as a separate ethnic entity. Thus, with Russia's urbanization and domination of their national language, the Chulym language's chances of survival are slim.
Status
Chulym is a moribund language and will most likely be extinct by the 2030s. It is listed in the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages. During the filming of the 2008 American documentary film The Linguists, linguists Greg Anderson and K. David Harrison interviewed and recorded 20 speakers and estimated there may be 35 fluent speakers out of a community of overall 426 members. Lemskaya mentions that Gabov seems to be the youngest speaker of the Tutal dialect, whereas she has found speakers in their late 40s of the Melet dialect (which Anderson & Harrison call 'Upper Chulym').
Phonology
Consonants
The following table lists the consonants of Chulym, dialectal variations are marked: MC = Middle Chulym dialect, LC = Lower Chulym dialect, K = Küärik subdialect of LC. No data was available for the other dialects. The table was derived from Dul'zon, Pomorska, and Li.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
! colspan="2" |
!Labial
!Alveolar
!Palatal
!Velar
!Uvular
!Glottal
|-
! colspan="2" |Nasal
|
|
| (MC, K)
|
|
|
|- align="center"
! rowspan="2" |Stop
!<small>voiceless</small>
|
|
| (LC)
|
| (MC)
|
|-
!<small>voiced</small>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|- align="center"
! rowspan="2" |Fricative
!<small>voiceless</small>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|-
!<small>voiced</small>
|
|
|
|
|()
|
|- align="center"
! rowspan="2" |Affricate
!<small>voiceless</small>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|-
!<small>voiced</small>
|
| (LC)
| (MC)
|
|
|
|- align="center"
! colspan="2" |Approximant
|
|
|
|
|
|
|- align="center"
! colspan="2" |Rhotic
|
|
|
|
|
|
|}
may also have an allophone of when in back-vowel positions.
is only found medially and finally, it is the result of secondary spirantization.
can be heard as a trill or a flap .
can be heard as uvular in free variation.
can be heard as a fricative in final positions.
|-
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | А а
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Б б
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | В в
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Г г
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ғ ғ
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Д д
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Дж дж
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Е е
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Ё ё
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Ж ж
|-
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | З з
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | И и
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Й й
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | К к
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Л л
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |М м
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Н н
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Ҥ ҥ
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |О о
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |П п
|-
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Р р
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | С с
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Т т
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | У у
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ф ф
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ц ц
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ч ч
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ш ш
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Щ щ
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" |Ъ ъ
|-
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ы ы
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ь ь
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Э э
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Ю ю
| style="width:3em; text-align:center; padding: 3px;" | Я я
|
|
|
|
|
|-
|
|
|
|}
Morphology
Pronouns
{|class="wikitable"
|+Personal pronouns
!colspan="2"|Singular
!colspan="2"|Plural
|-
! Chulym (translit.) || English || Chulym (translit.) || English
|-
| Мян (mæn) || I || Пис (pis) || We
|-
| Сян (sæn) || You (informal sg.) || Силяр (silær) || You (pl. or formal sg.)
|-
| Ол (ol) || He/She/It || Олар (olar) || They
|}
{| class = "wikitable"
|+ Declension of pronouns
{| class = "wikitable"
!colspan="2" | Aux. Verb
!rowspan="2" | Gloss
!colspan="2" | Aktionsart
!rowspan="2" | Aspect
|-
! MC || LC
! Perfective || Imperfective
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | al- || to take || ES || MP (Melet) || Reflexive benefactive (SBEN); Sudden entry into a state (PNCT)
|-
| tʃat- || jat- || to lie down || S, P (LC) || S, P (MC) || Durative (DUR)
|-
| tʃør- || jør- || to walk || ES (LC), P (Tutal) || P, MP (Melet) || Iterative durative (DUR.ITER)
|-
| ɯs- || ɯj- || to send || ES, EP (MC) || S (Melet) || Inchoative (INCH)
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | kal- || to remain || ES, EP (LC, Tutal) || – || Resultative (RES)
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | kɛl- || to arrive || ES (Melet) || – || Purposive (PURP)
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | kør- || to see || EP (Tutal) || P (Tutal) || Conative (CON)
|-
| olur- || ot- || to sit || S (LC) || S (LC), P (Melet) || Progressive (PROG)
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | par- || to leave || ES || S, P (LC) || Durative (DUR)
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | pɛr- || to give || ES, EP (LC) || P (LC) || Inchoative (INCH)
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | sal- || to place || ES || P (LC, Tutal) || Telic (TEL)
|-
|colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | tur- || to stand || S (LC), P (Melet) || S (LC), P (Melet) || Delimitative (DLMT)
|}
<!-- Some of these are more common than others, maybe it is a good idea to show this in some way, the information is in Lemskaya (2012) -->
Syntax
Chulym uses SOV word order and post-positions, just like many of the neighboring Turkic and Tatar languages. There is an ongoing effort by the Living Tongues Institute to write a book in Chulym and make it available through mass media.
!Common Turkic alphabet
!English