Medny Aleut

Brief Information

Native speakers of the Medny Aleut language live in the Nikolskoye village on the Bering island, which is part of the Commander Archipelago. According to the 2010 census, the total number of Aleuts in the Russian Federation is 482 people (155 of them in urban areas and 327 in rural areas), but there are only two speakers of Medny Aleut (both are fluent speakers). 

Medny Aleuts call their language  унан’ам умсуу. The Medny Aleut language got its name from the Medny island, which is part of the Commander Islands.

The Aleuts do not lead a traditional way of life, they are orthodox. The main language contacts occur with Russian.

Genealogy

The Medny Aleut language belongs to a small class of so-called mixed languages. Probably by the end of the XIX century it was formed as a result of the interaction of Aleut (now extinct dialect of the island Attu, the westernmost in the Aleut Islands range) and Russian. The origin of the Medny Aleut language makes its genealogical classification difficult. Some researchers tend to attribute it to the Aleut branch of the Eskimo-Aleut family, which also includes the Aleut language. This view is based mainly on the fact that most of the vocabulary in the Medny language is Aleut in its origin.

Distribution

 
Native speakers of the Medny Aleut language live on the Commander Islands (Nikolskoye village on the Bering Island). Previously, they lived in the Preobrazhenskoye village on the Medny island, but it was closed in the late 1960s.

Language contacts and multilingualism

The Medny Aleut language is most actively in contact with the Russian language. There is a general trend of switching to Russian.

Language functioning

The Medny Aleut language is legally considered as the language of northern indigenous minorities, since in the socio-political discourse Medny is not separated from Aleut.

The Medny Aleut language has no officially accepted writing system. The original system of writing for the Medny Aleut language (based on the modern Russian alphabet) was invented by one of its native speakers, a resident of the village Nikolskoye, G. M. Yakovlev, but it was not widely used.

There is no established literary norm.

Dynamics of language usage

Despite the recent interest in the language, the extinction of the language in the near future is unquestionable. Both native speakers are in the age of 70-90, the intergenerational transmission is not preserved.

Language structure

Phonetics

The Medny Aleut language has 10 vowels and 28 consonants.

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Morphology

Morphological type of language: agglutinative.

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Syntax

Medny Aleut has free word order. Nominative actant coding strategy.

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Vocabulary

The main source of borrowings is the Russian language.

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Language experts

Evgeny Vasilyevich Golovko
(Saint Petersburg, Russia)

Expert in Aleut, sociolinguistics and language contacts. Author of numerous works on Aleut and Medny Aleut.     
 

Field research:

1982 (June-July), 1985 (July–September), 1988 (May-July) - Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Nikolskoye village (Bering Island — Commander Islands): study of the sociolinguistic situation and grammatical structure of the Aleut language, as well as the language of Medny Aleuts. 

 

Grants:

1994: grant from the INTAS Foundation for work on Medny Aleut materials.

2003: grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to work on a book about the Medny Aleut language. 

An ongoing project supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (project manager/project director) E. V. Golovko). The results will be published in 2020.

Nikolai Borisovich Vakhtin
(Saint Petersburg, Russia)

Expert in Eskimo-Aleut languages. Author of works on Eskimo syntax, morphology and vocabulary. 

The research is based on field data collected during field trips to the regions of the Far North (Chukotka, Kamchatka, the Commander Islands, the Magadan Oblast, Yakutia).

Research centres

Department of the languages of the peoples of Russia ILS RAS

Currently, the department has experts in the languages of the following groups and families: Mongolian, Baltic-Finnish, Samoyedic, Tungus-Manchu, Turkic, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Eskimo-Aleut (see the personal page of E. V. Golovko).

 

Current RFBR project:

"Typology of mechanisms of interaction of the Russian language with the languages of the small peoples of Russia" (2018-2020, 17-29-09097), project manager E. V. Golovko.

Core references

Grammatical descriptions: grammars, sketches

Golovko E. V. Mednovskikh aleutov yazyk / / Yazyki mira: Paleoasiatiskiye yazyki. [Language of Medny Aleuts // Languages of the world: Paleo-Siberian languages.] Moscow: Indrik, 1997.

Dictionaries

Golovko E. V. Aleutsko-russkiy i Russko-aleutskiy slovar [Aleut-Russian and Russian-Aleut dictionary]. St. Petersburg: Prosveshchenie, 1994.

 

Selected papers on grammatical issues

Vakhtin N. B. Nekotorye osobennosti russko-aleutskogo dvuyazychiya na Komandorskikh ostrovakh // Voprosy yazykoznaniya [Some features of Russian-Aleutian bilingualism on the Commander Islands // Questions of Linguistics], 1985. No. 5. P. 35-45.

Golovko E. Mednij Aleut or Copper Island Aleut: An Aleut-Russian Mixed Language // Mixed Languages: 15 Case Studies in Language Intertwining / Ed. by P. Bakker and M. Mous. Amsterdam: IFOTT, 1994. P. 113–121.

Golovko E. A Case of Nongenetic Development in the Arctic Area // Language Contact in the Arctic: Northern Pidgins and Contact Languages / Ed. by E. H. Jahr and I. Broch. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996. P. 63–78.

Работы по социолингвистике

Golovko E. V. Aleutskiy yazyk // Yazyk i obshestvo. Entsiklopediya [Aleut language // Language and society. Encyclopedia] / Ed. by V. Yu. Mikhalchenko. Moscow: Publishing Center "Azbukovnik", 2016. P. 54-58.

Golovko E. V. Aleutskiy yazyk // Yazyki narodov mira: Krasnaya kniga. Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar'-spravochnik [Ispravlennoe i dopolnennoe izdanie] [Aleut language // Languages of the peoples of Russia: The Red Book. Encyclopedic dictionary-reference [Revised and expanded edition] / Ed. by V. P. Neroznak, Moscow: Academia, 2002. P. 23-28.

Golovko E. V., Vakhtin N. B. Ob odnom neordinarnom sledstvii yazykovykh kontaktov: yazyk aleutov o. Medny // Vozniknovenie i funktsionirovanie kontaktnykh yazykov: Materialy rabochego soveshchaniya. [On an extraordinary consequence of language contact: the language of the Aleuts of Medny Island // The emergence and functioning of contact languages: Materials of the workshop] / Ed. by V. I. Belikov i I. F. Vardul'. M.: IV AN SSSR, 1987. P. 27–30.

Golovko E. V., Vakhtin N. B. K istorii formirovaniya yazyka o. Medny // Vozniknovenie i funktsionirovanie kontaktnykh yazykov: Materialy rabochego soveshchaniya [On the history of formation of the language of Medny Island // The emergence and functioning of contact languages: Materials of the workshop]. Ed. by V. I. Belikov i I. F. Vardul'. M.: IOS AS USSR, 1987. P. 30–33.

Golovko E. V. Aleutsko-russkie yazykovye svyazi // Kontaktologicheskiy entsiklopedicheskiy slovar'-spravochnik. Vyp. 1: Severnyy region. Yazyki narodov severa, Sibiri i Dal'nego Vostoka v kontaktakh s russkim yazykom [Aleut-Russian language relations // Contactological encyclopedic dictionary-reference. Ed. 1: Northern Region. Languages of the peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East in contact with the Russian language]. / Ed. vy V. M. Pan'kin. M.: Az, 1994. P. 51–57.

Golovko E., Vakhtin N. Aleut in Contact: The CIA Enigma // Acta Linguistica Hafniensia: International Journal of Linguistics. Vol. 22. Copenhagen, 1990. P. 97–126.

Работы по этнологии

Golovko E. V., Vakhtin N. B., Asinovskiy A. S. Etnolingvisticheskoe opisanie komandorskikh aleutov // Voprosy yazykoznaniya [Ethnolinguistic description of the Commander Aleuts // Questions of Linguistics]. № 6. 1983. P. 108–116.

Golovko E. V., Vakhtin N. B., Asinovskiy A. S. Etnolingvisticheskaya situatsiya na o. Beringa // Ratsional'noe prirodopol'zovanie na Komandorskikh ostrovakh [Ethnolinguistic situation on the island of Bering // Rational nature management on the Commander Islands] / Ed. by V. E. Sokolov. M.: MGU, 1987. P. 166–173.

Resources

Corpora and text collections

На данный момент общедоступного электронного корпуса медновского алеутского языка не существует.

Имеется некоторое количество текстов на медновском алеутском языке в личной коллекции Е. В. Головко.

Other electronic resources

There are no other electronic resources.

Data for this page kindly provided by

Evgeny Golovko (Institute of Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), Saint Petersburg).

Sources

Golovko E. V. Aleutskiy yazyk // Yazyk i obshchestvo. Entsiklopediya [Aleut language // Language and society. Encyclopedia]. / Ed. by V. Yu. Mikhal'chenko. M.: Izdatel'skiy tsentr «Azbukovnik». 2016. P. 54-58.

Golovko E. V. Mednovskikh aleutov yazyk // Yazyki mira: Paleoasiatiskiye yazyki. [The language of Medny Aleuts // Languages of the world: Paleo-Siberian languages]. Moscow: Indrik, 1997.

Golovko E. V., Vakhtin N. B., Asinovsky A. S. Yazyk komandorskikh aleutov: Dialekt ostrova Beringa [The language of the Commander Aleuts: The dialect of the Bering Island]. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2009.

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