Chukchi, or Ḷygʺoravėtḷʹėn jiḷyjiḷ, to use its native name, is a member of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan language family spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the easternmost province of Russia.
Currently, use of the Chukchi language is endangered, with Russian being spoken in an ever wider range of situations, while Chukchi remains a language of the home and reindeer-related activities.
However, the traditional Chukchi way of life remained little changed until the middle of the twentieth century. Indeed, in the centuries prior to contact with Imperial Russia, population pressure led a number of Chukchis to live off the coasts, where the pre-existing Eskimo populations adopted more elements of Chukchi culture than the other way around.
(At its closest point, the US state of Alaska lies a mere 100km across the Bering Strait. Indeed, there are several language families which have members on both sides of this body of water, e.g. the Yupik and Eskimo-Aleut families.)
Section 1: The Women’s Dialect
One particularly interesting feature of Chukchi is the existence of separate dialects for men and women. Sex-based dialects are a rare phenomenon, mostly occurring in the native languages of America, though non-American examples include Irish Sign Language, Basque, Japanese and the Yanyuwa language of Australia.
The use of Male of Female Dialect is determined by the sex of the speaker, though there is no prohibition against using the other one. In some circumstances, it makes more sense to use the other Dialect, for example if a man is quoting a woman or vice versa.
(Do not confuse this feature with grammatical gender. This relates to the sex, or gender, of the speaker, as oppose to the gender of the noun.)
One hypothesis concerning how distinctive Male and Female Dialects entered the language is that female Chukchi speakers adopted the most noticeable and significant features of the varieties of Chukchi spoken by speakers of other first languages. The motive behind this is believed to be that, at least among some Chukchi women, this type of borrowed mispronounciation was a social marker of one’s femininity.
Gradually, this became a regular part of the language, and its non-native origin may go some way to explaining its somewhat limited extent in the language.
In Chukchi, the difference between the Male and Female Dialects is quite simple and straightforward, appearing only in a limited number of pronounciation differences. For example:
English: mosquito
Female Chukchi: mtsen
Male Chukchi: mren
English: sister
Female Chukchi: tsakəɣet
Male Chukchi: sakəɣet
However, one very important aspect where the difference between men’s and women’s speech occurs in the 3rd Person Plural Pronouns
English: they
Female Chukchi: ətsi / əts-
Male Chukchi: ətri / ərɣ-
In Chukchi, all pronouns have two forms. The first is the Free Absolutive Form, while the second is the Non-Absolutive Stem.
The Non-Absolutive is used to build Non-Absolutive Pronouns. For example, we have the Ergative pronouns:
English: they
Female Chukchi: ətsənan
Male Chukchi: ərɣənan
nan is the Ergative Marking, and ə is used to link it with the Stem when the Stem ends with certain consonants, though it is worth noting that the Ergative Markings are slightly irregular anyway.
There are some other common sound correspondences, but to be perfectly honest, there are far more interesting systems of Sex-based Dialects out there, ones which affect the actual grammar of the language.
Also, if you would like to know what the Ergative Case is, I would recommend you read this previous article, particularly the latter half: Dyirbal v. Mandarin
Dyirbal is an Australian language that I have discussed on a number of previous occasions, which brings us to our next topic, which leads us onto the next topic.
(Anadyr is the Administrative Centre of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, which has a population of approximately 15,000 people, out of around 50,000 for the region as a whole. Since 2010, the population of the Okrug is believed to have fallen, while Anadyr’s population is believed to have risen.)
Section 2: The Perlative Case
The Perlative Case is another feature that is rare across world languages, appearing mostly, but not exclusively, in the languages of Australia.
In Chukchi, it is used to mark something as the path followed, and is roughly equivalent to the English word along in most circumstances. For example:
təleneŋʔetwʔet waamjekwe təlerkən = The sailboat is going along the river
təleneŋʔetwʔet means sailboat, and is built from three parts. The first part, təle, is the verb stem meaning to go.
neŋ is an interesting affix which means something along the lines of to use as a tool. For example riŋeneŋ means aeroplane, with riŋe meaning to fly. Thus, the word has the literal meaning of a tool with which to fly.
ʔetwʔet means boat.
waamjekwe has two sections. The first is waam, which means river, while -jekwe is the Perlative Suffix.
təlerkən is composed of the aforementioned təle, and the Progressive Suffix –rkən. The Chukchi Progressive Marker is used to indicated that the event described is ongoing at the time of the speech utterance, and is, at least in this instance, the direct equivalent of the English Progressive Marker -ing.
From this sentence we can derive these two translations:
Chukchi: təleneŋʔetwʔet waamjekwe təlerkən
Direct: The sailboat along the river is sailing
Literal: The-boat-which-is-a-tool-for-going the river-along going
So in this section, we met the Suffix -jekwe, and in Chukchi there are a number of other suffixes that encode information which would be imparted through another word in English.
However, Suffixes are not the only form of addition to a word which exists in Chukchi.
(A rainbow reflected off the Anadyr river. This river, and its various tributaries, empty into the Gulf of Anadyr, which is frozen over for around 10 months a year.)
Section 3: The Associative Circumfix
Now what exactly is a Circumfix? I hear you ask.
As our working definition, we shall say that a Circumfix is what you get when a Prefix and a Suffix love each other very much, and in order to express that love, they team up in order to convey a new meaning, one that neither could impart by themselves.
Our example here is the Associative Circumfix ɣa-_____-ma, which indicates that the Circumfixed noun is a part of, or typically obsessed by, the head noun. For example:
English: Together with their herds they took them
Chukchi: ɣaŋalwəlʔəma nəpiriqinetʔm
ɣaŋalwəlʔəma is comprised of three components.
The first and last build the Associative Circumfix ɣa-___-ma, and here refers to a herd of animals and the people who care for it.
Other meanings of the Associative Circumfix include, but are not limited to, a house and its occupants, an animal hide and its hind legs, and a pot and its contents.
The second component is ŋalwəlʔ, which simply means herd.
The Epenthetic Schwa ə does not serve a specific grammatical purpose. It serves instead to avoid having three syllables directly in a row.
nəpiriqinetʔm, meanwhile, is built from five separate parts.
n- is the Habitual Aspect Prefix, which can be used in two main contexts. The first of these is in a narrative event, which can be a one-off. The second is possibly the exact opposite, referring to a non-novel event, one which takes place on a frequent, if not regular, basis.
What connects these two contexts, however, is that unlike other moods in Chukchi, neither refers to the possible of the event described, and thus is dependent on further information in order to be placed in time.
Following this is another Epenthetic Schwa –ə-, which appear not infrequently in the language as a whole.
Nestled in the middle of the word is piri, which is the verb stem meaning to take. This is the core of the word, to which all modifiers are added.
After this we have –qinet, which is the 3rd Person Plural Agent acting on Plural Object Suffix. This title is something of a word salad, aye, but I shall try to explain.
Essentially, it means that the doer of the verb is they and that the receiver of the verb is them, i.e. they are both in the 3rd Person Plural.
In some ways, you could translate -qinet as they do/did that to them.
Furthermore, -qinet can also mean they do/did that, without any reference to a them upon which to act, i.e. an action that concerns no-one except the people doing it.
However, the form –qinet is not the typical form of this Suffix, which would be -lin(e). This change occurs due to contact with the Habitual Aspect Prefix n-.
Last, but not least, we have the Emphatic Discourse Suffix –ʔm, of whose purpose I am not quite certain, but I believe has something to do with adding emphasis to the sentence.
Now that we have explored the Associative, let us now explore its direct opposite, i.e. the Privative.
(A Chukchi family outside their traditional dwelling. The word Chukchi itself comes from a Russian corruption of the Chukchi word chauchu, which means rich in reindeer, and was used by the reindeer-herding Chukchi to distinguish themselves from the coastal Chukchi, whom they called the Anqallyt, or sea people. The Chukchi’s own word for a member of their group is Luoravaetian, which means true person.)
Section 4: The Privative Circumfix
In this section, we will explore how the Chukchi discuss having a lack of something, which is denoted via the Privative Circumfix e-_____-ke.
The most direct translation for this in English would be the Suffix -less, though other common ones would be words such as without or lacking. Let’s now analyse this Circumfix in action:
Chukchi: erilqəke nənʔelqin ənqen cewaro?
English: Did the grey reindeer throw up?
erilqəke is built from the compontents: e-rilq-ə-ke
The 1st and 4th of these components are e- and -ke, or the Privative Circumfix, which in the literal translation we have translated as without.
The 3rd part is our now familiar friend the Epenthetic Schwa ə, while the base noun rilq means stomach contents.
nənʔelqin breaks down also into four components: n-ə-nʔel-qin
The first two, n and ə, are the Habitual Prefix, which here, I assume, indicates a Narrative Event and yet another Epenthetic Schwa respectively.
nʔel is the base verb for to become, and forms the core of this word.
-qin, meanwhile, is the Habitual from of the 3rd Person Singular Subject Suffix.
If it looks somewhat familiar, that it is because the Singular form of the earlier discussed -qinet.
Thus, one can translate -qin as s/he does/did that.
ənqen is a 3rd Person Singular Absolutive Demonstrative. This means that it serves the purpose of English words such as the/this/that. In contrast to most Chukchi demonstratives, it does not encode for distance, i.e. whether the thing is a short, medium or large distance away.
This also touches on the issue of Animacy in Chukchi, but this is an issue for another exploration.
cewaro means grey-skinned reindeer. As one can expect, the Chukchi have many specific terms relating to reindeer, as befits a people whose main ancestral occupations include reindeer-herding. Other words for reindeer are:
qora/qaa = reindeer;
apaʔaka = newborn reindeer whose leg muscles haven’t developed yet;
areqaŋo = reindeer with a white back; and
ilɣəlʔu = reindeer with a white face.
Of course, there are probably more words for types of reindeer, but these were all together in a handy list.
Now, you may have noticed that the Chukchi sentence did not contain a word meaning to throw up. This was more of a stylistic choice on my end, as the Chukchi grammar would allow the sentence to refer to defecation or dissection.
A more literal translation of the Chukchi sentence is:
erilqəke nənʔelqinet ənqen qaat? = Did the reindeer become without its stomach contents?
(A Chukchi man engaged in reindeer-herding. The other main vocation of the Chukchi is whale hunting.)
In conclusion, I hope that this was a fascinating glance into one of Russia’s many minority languages. Hopefully you didn’t get too chilly up here on the roof of Eurasia, and that certain refugees from the melting Arctic ice were not too overbearing.
I shall go out on a limb here, and say that the most interesting feature discussed was the Gender Dialects. While the difference between Male and Female Chukchi is very subtle, in other languages, a sentence as spoken by a man can be almost unrecognisable from that spoken by a woman. One such example is the Yanyuwa language spoken in Australia, which we will explore in more depth. Until then,
Same Wilf-Time!
Same Wilf-Channel!
Sources:
Google Images
Michael John Dunn, A Grammar of Chukchi (Australia: Australian National University 1999)
Michael Dunn, „Chukchi Women’s Language: A Historical-Comparative Perspective“ in Anthropological Linguistics, 42.3 (2000) pp.305-328
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chukchi_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chukotka_Autonomous_Okrug
Languages with Wilf 