Эвенкийский язык: история, современное состояние и перспективы.

Tungusic language of eastern Russia and China

Evenki (/eɪ/'/v//ɛ//n//k//i/ ayVENkee), formerly known as Tungus, is the largest member of the northern group of Tungusic languages, a group which also includes Even, Negidal, and the more closely related Oroqen language. The name is sometimes wrongly given as "Evenks". It is spoken by Evenks or Ewenkī(s) in Russia and China. In certain areas the influences of the Yakut and the Buryat languages are particularly strong. The influence of Russian in general is overwhelming (in 1979, 75.2% of the Evenkis spoke Russian, rising to 92.7% in 2002). Evenki children were forced to learn Russian at Soviet residential schools, and returned with a "poor ability to speak their mother tongue ". The Evenki language varies considerably among its dialects, which are divided into three large groups: the northern, the southern and the eastern dialects. These are further divided into minor dialects. A written language was created for Evenkis in the Soviet Union in 1931, first using a Latin alphabet, and from 1937 a Cyrillic one. In China, Evenki is written experimentally in the Mongolian script. The language is generally considered endangered.

Evenki is a subject–object–verb and head final language. The subject is marked according to the nominative case, and the object is in the accusative. In Evenki, the indirect object precedes the direct object.

The Manchu script was used to write Evenki (Solon) words in the "Imperial History of the National Languages of Liao, Jin, and Yuan". The Evenki did not have their own writing system until the introduction of the Latin script in 1931 and the subsequent change to Cyrillic in 1936–7. The literary language was first based on the Nepa dialect of the Southern subgroup, but in the 1950s was redesigned with the Stony Tunguska dialect as its basis. Although textbooks through the 8th grade have been published, "Literary Evenki has not yet achieved the status of a norm which cut across dialects and is understood by speakers of some dialects with great difficulty". Since the 1930s, "folklore, novels, poetry, numerous translations from Russian and other languages", textbooks, and dictionaries have all been written in Evenki. In Tura (former administrative center of the Evenk Autonomous Okrug), the local newspaper includes a weekly supplement written in Evenki. Furthermore, Mongolian functioned as a lingua franca among members of all minority groups there, as they tended to do their education in Mongolian medium schools. The only Evenki speakers whom Janhunen knew not to speak Mongolian as a second language were the Reindeer Evenki (sometimes called "Yakut") in the northern part of Hulunbuir, who used Russian as their "language of intercultural communication". Janhunen predicted that all of these languages, including Mongolian, were likely to lose ground to Chinese in coming years. However Chaoke noted more than a decade later that the usage rate of Evenki remained quite high, and that it was still common to find Evenki speakers who were proficient in three, four, or even five languages. There is a small population of Mongolized Hamnigan speakers of the Hamnigan dialect of Buryat in Mongolia as well, numbering around 1,000. There is little information regarding revival efforts or Evenki's status now. In 1998, the language was taught in preschools and primary schools and offered as an option in 8th grade. The courses were regarded as an 'ethnocultural component' to bring Evenki language and culture into the curriculum. Instruction as a second language is also available in the Institute of the Peoples of the North at Herzen University (the former St. Petersburg State Pedagogical University).