Tofa language

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Tofa, also known as Tofalar or Karagas, is one of the Turkic languages spoken in Russia's Irkutsk Oblast by the Tofalars. It is a moribund language; in 2010 only 93 people were reported to speak it.[1]

Tofa is most-closely related to the Tuvan language[3] and forms a dialect continuum with it. Tuha, and Tsengel Tuvan may be dialects of either Tuvan or Tofa. Tofa shares a number of innovations with these languages, including the change *d > z (as in *adaq > azak "foot") and the development of low tones on historically short vowels (as in *et > èt "meat, flesh").

Writing system

Tofa, although not often written, employs a Cyrillic alphabet:

А а Б б В в Г г Ғ ғ Д д Е е
Ә ә Ё ё Ж ж З з И и I i Й й
К к Қ қ Л л М м Н н Ң ң О о
Ө ө П п Р р С с Т т У у Ү ү
Ф ф Х х Һ һ Ц ц Ч ч Ҷ ҷ Ш ш
Щ щ ъ Ы ы ь Э э Ю ю Я я

Tofa has letters that are not present in the Russian alphabet: Ғғ [ɣ], Әә [æ], Ii [iː], Ққ [q], Ңң [ŋ], Өө [œ], Үү [y], Һһ [h], and Ҷҷ [d͡ʒ]. Additionally, the letter ъ is sometimes used after a vowel to mark low tone, as in эът "meat".

Morphology and syntax

Pronouns

Tofa has six personal pronouns:

Personal pronouns
Singular Plural
Tofa (transliteration) English Tofa (transliteration) English
мен (men) I биъс (bìs) we
сен (sen) you (singular) сілер (siler) you (plural, formal)
оң (oŋ) he/she/it оларың (olarıŋ) they

Tofa also has the pronouns бо "this", тээ "that", кум "who", and чү "what".

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. Lars Johanson (1998) "The History of Turkic". In Lars Johanson & Éva Ágnes Csató (eds) The Turkic Languages. London, New York: Routledge, 81-125. Classification of Turkic languages at Turkiclanguages.com

External links


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