Ethnicity Buryats, Barga Mongols | ||
Native to Native speakers (265,000 in Russia and Mongolia (2010 census); 65,000 in China cited 1982 census) Language family MongolicCentral MongolicBuryat | ||
Buryat (Buriat) /ˈbʊriæt/ (Buryat Cyrillic: буряад хэлэн, buryād xelen) is a variety of Mongolic spoken by the Buryats that is classified either as a language or as a major dialect group of Mongolian. The majority of Buryat speakers live in Russia along the northern border of Mongolia where it is an official language in the Buryat Republic, Ust-Orda Buryatia and Aga Buryatia. In the Russian census of 2002, 353,113 people out of an ethnic population of 445,175 reported speaking Buryat (72.3%). Some other 15,694 can also speak Buryat, mostly ethnic Russians. There are at least 100,000 ethnic Buryats in Mongolia and the People's Republic of China as well. Buryats in Russia have a separate literary standard, written in a Cyrillic alphabet. It is based on the Russian alphabet with three additional letters: Ү/ү, Ө/ө and Һ/һ.
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Dialects
The delimitation of Buryat mostly concerns its relationship to its immediate neighbors, Mongolian proper and Khamnigan. While Khamnigan is sometimes regarded as a dialect of Buryat, this is not supported by isoglosses. The same holds for Tsongol and Sartul dialects, which rather group with Khalkha Mongolian to which they historically belong. Buryat dialects are:
Based on loan vocabulary, a division might be drawn between Russia Buriat, Mongolia Buriat and China Buriat. However, as the influence of Russian is much stronger in the dialects traditionally spoken west of Lake Baikal, a division might rather be drawn between the Khori and Bargut group on the one hand and the other three groups on the other hand.
Phonology
Buryat has the vowel phonemes /i, ə, e, a, u, ʊ, o, ɔ/ (plus a few diphthongs), short /e/ being realized as [ɯ], and the consonant phonemes /b, g, d, th, m, n, x, l, r/ (each with a corresponding palatalized phoneme) and /s, ʃ, h, j/. These vowels are restricted in their occurrence according to vowel harmony. The basic syllable structure is (C)V(C) in careful articulation, but word-final CC clusters may occur in more rapid speech if short vowels of non-initial syllables get dropped.
Stress
Lexical stress (word accent) falls on the last heavy nonfinal syllable when one exists. Otherwise, it falls on the word-final heavy syllable when one exists. If there are no heavy syllables, then the initial syllable is stressed. Heavy syllables without primary stress receive secondary stress:
Secondary stress may also occur on word-initial light syllables without primary stress, but further research is required. The stress pattern is the same as in Khalkha Mongolian.
Grammar
Buryat is an SOV language that makes exclusive use of postpositions. Buryat is equipped with eight grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, instrumental, ablative, comitative, dative-locative and a particular oblique form of the stem.