Article

Name: A Spelling Project for an Endangered Unwritten Language as a Sociolinguistic Problem (On the Example of the Alutor Language)

Authors: Tatyana A. Golovaneva

Institute of Philology of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

Abstract:

The purpose of this article is to show the complexities of the formation of writing in a minority language under conditions of linguistic shift. The problem is examined using the example of the Alutor language of the Chukchi and Koryak language belonging to one family. The establishment of the Alutor national writing is a spontaneous process, initiated by members of the ethnic community who are interested in preserving their native language traditions. With an almost 100% scholarship among adult population that knows how to read and write in Russian, the graphic-orthographic system of the Alyutor language is being formed under the strong influence of the pre-dominant Russian writing. However, the capacity of the Russian alphabet is not enough to reflect in the written language phonetic peculiarities of Alutor speech, and the influence of the syllabic principle, spontaneously carried over from the Russian writing system, creates grounds for variability and insoluble contradictions. The process of approving orthographic norms is complicated by the sociolinguistic situation: the linguist-designed script does not meet the expectations of speakers of a minority language.

Keywords: language policy, language shift, Chukotko-Kamchatsky languages, Alutor language, minority languages, spelling rules, writing systems

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