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Language Lineage

Lena Turkic

Sakha and Dolgan, the northernmost Turkic languages, which lost initial *s: *sub 'water' is Sakha uu, beside Turkish su.

c. 13th century CE – presentThe Lena basin of northeastern Siberia and the Taymyr Peninsula
On this page
  1. Origins
  2. Sakha and Dolgan Today
  3. Where it's spoken
  4. Turning points

01

Origins

Sakha (Yakut) is spoken in the Sakha Republic, the largest subdivision of Russia, where winter temperatures fall below −60 °C. The ancestors of its speakers came north from the Lake Baikal region, probably between the 13th and 15th centuries, bringing horses and cattle into the Arctic. They kept the animals through the winter in heated barns.

Isolated from the rest of Turkic for centuries, Sakha changed a good deal. It lost initial *s, so *sub 'water' is uu and *säkiz 'eight' is aγïs. Contact with Mongolic speakers before the migration, and with Evenki and Even herders afterwards, left a large layer of borrowed words, and Sakha's closest Turkic relatives are hard to identify.

02

Sakha and Dolgan Today

With some 450,000 speakers, Sakha is among the most vigorous indigenous languages of Russia and serves as a lingua franca for smaller groups in the republic. Its first modern alphabet, a Latin-based script devised by Semyon Novgorodov in the 1910s and 1920s, was replaced by Cyrillic in 1939.

Dolgan, on the Taymyr Peninsula, grew out of Sakha in the 18th and 19th centuries, as Evenki reindeer herders, Sakha and Russian settlers formed a new community that spoke a Sakha-based language.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Russiac. 400,000

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. ContactBefore c. 13th century CE

    Mongolic loanwords

    While still in the south, the ancestors of the Sakha borrow a large share of vocabulary from Mongolic neighbours. It is one of the heaviest Mongolic layers in any Turkic language.

    Sources (1)
    • Pakendorf, Brigitte. 2007. Contact in the Prehistory of the Sakha (Yakuts): Linguistic and Genetic Perspectives. Utrecht: LOT.
  2. Sound lawUndated; before the modern recordsContested

    Loss of initial *s

    *s- → ∅ (*sub → uu 'water', *säkiz → aγïs 'eight')

    Initial *s disappears: *sub 'water' → uu, *säkiz 'eight' → aγïs. It is one of the changes that make Sakha look so unlike the other Turkic languages. When it happened relative to the move north is unclear.

    Compare with other loss across families →

    Sources (1)
    • Johanson, Lars & Éva Á. Csató, eds. 2022. The Turkic Languages, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
  3. Splitc. 13th – 15th century CEContested

    North to the Lena

    Horse- and cattle-herding Turkic speakers move from the Baikal region down the Lena into the far north. They separate from the rest of Turkic and absorb Evenki and Even speakers along the way. The date and route are debated.

    Sources (1)
    • Pakendorf, Brigitte. 2007. Contact in the Prehistory of the Sakha (Yakuts): Linguistic and Genetic Perspectives. Utrecht: LOT.
  4. Split18th – 19th century CE

    Dolgan on the Taymyr

    A mixed community of Evenki, Sakha and Russian origin on the Taymyr Peninsula develops Dolgan, a Sakha-based language that is today counted as separate.

    Sources (1)
    • Johanson, Lars & Éva Á. Csató, eds. 2022. The Turkic Languages, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
  5. Writing1917 – 1939

    Novgorodov's alphabet

    Semyon Novgorodov creates a Latin-based, largely phonetic alphabet for Sakha, used in schools and print in the 1920s and 1930s before Cyrillic replaces it in 1939.

    Figures · Semyon Novgorodov (1892–1924)

    Sources (1)
    • Johanson, Lars & Éva Á. Csató, eds. 2022. The Turkic Languages, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.