Altai, Southern
Facts
- Language: Altai, Southern
- Alternate names: Altai, Oirot, Oyrot, Altay, Altay tili
- Language code: alt
- Language family: Turkic, Common Turkic, Kipchak, East Kipchak
- Dialects: Telengit, Teleut.
- Number of speakers: 57400
- Vulnerability: Threatened [Read more...]
- Script: Cyrillic script. Mongolian script.
More information:
Introduction
Southern Altai is a Turkic language spoken in the Altai Republic, a federal subject of Russia located in Southern Siberia on the border with Mongolia and China. The language has some mutual intelligibility with the Northern Altai language. And the two were traditionally considered to be a single language, but according to modern classifications—at least since the middle of the 20th century—they are considered to be two separate languages. The written Altai is based on Southern Altai. According to some reports, however, it is rejected by Northern Altai children. Dialects include Altai Proper and Talangit.