Buryat language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Buryat | ||
|---|---|---|
| буряад хэлэн | ||
| Spoken in | Buryat Republic, northern Mongolia, northwestern the People's Republic of China, Ust-Orda Buryatia, Aga Buryatia | |
| Total speakers | 400,000 | |
| Language family | Altaic[1] (controversial) | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | bua | |
| ISO 639-3 | variously: bua – Buryat (generic) bxu – China Buriat bxm – Mongolia Buriat bxr – Russia Buriat |
|
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Buryat (or Buriat) is a Mongolic variety spoken by the Buryats that is usually classified as a language. The majority of Buryat speakers live in Russia along the northern border of Mongolia and speak Russia Buriat. There are also smaller, more distinct, communities in both Mongolia and the People's Republic of China that speak Mongolia Buriat and China Buriat, respectively. Russia Buriat, or Buryat kheleng, is an official language in the Buryat Republic of Russia. Of the three, only Russia Buriat has a written literature, written in a Cyrillic orthography. The most obvious differences between the three varieties are the donor languages of their borrowed vocabulary and the sociolinguistic contexts in which they are used.[2]
Contents |
[edit] Sounds
| This section requires expansion. |
[edit] Stress
Lexical stress (word accent) falls on the rightmost heavy nonfinal syllable. Otherwise, it falls on the word-final heavy syllable. If there are no heavy syllables, then the leftmost syllable is stressed. Heavy syllables without primary stress receive secondary stress (Walker 1997):
-
ˌHˈHL [ˌøːɡˈʃøːxe] "to act encouragingly" LˌHˈHL [naˌmaːˈtuːlxa] "to cause to be covered with leaves" ˌHLˌHˈHL [ˌbuːzaˌnuːˈdiːje] "steamed dumplings (accusative)" ˌHˈHLLL [ˌtaːˈruːlaɡdaxa] "to be adapted to" ˈHˌH [ˈboːˌsoː] "bet" LˈHˌH [daˈlaiˌgaːr] "by sea" LˈHLˌH [xuˈdaːlinɡˌdaː] "to the husband's parents" LˌHˈHˌH [daˌlaiˈgaːˌraː] "by one's own sea" ˌHLˈHˌH [ˌxyːxenˈɡeːˌreː] "by one's own girl" LˈH [xaˈdaːr] "through the mountain" ˈLL [ˈxada] "mountain"
Secondary stress may also occur on word-initial light syllables without primary stress, but further research is required.
Buryat has the same stress pattern as Khalkha Mongolian.
[edit] References
- ^ Ethnologue.com: Altaic
- ^ Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
- Poppe, Nicholas. (1960). Buriat grammar. Uralic and Altaic series (No. 2). Bloomington: Indiana University.
- Walker, Rachel. (1997). Mongolian stress, licensing, and factorial typology. (Online on the Rutgers Optimality Archive website: roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?id=184.)

