Buryat

Where it’s spoken

Buryat is spoken by the Buryat people of southern Siberia — primarily in the Buryat Republic (capital Ulan-Ude) on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, plus the Aga Buryat Okrug and Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug. Smaller Buryat populations live in northern Mongolia and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. UNESCO classifies the language as severely endangered.

What it sounds like

Buryat has vowel harmony like all Mongolic languages. It has phonemic vowel length and a complex set of diphthongs. The consonant system distinguishes aspirated and unaspirated stops. Stress typically falls on the first syllable. Several major dialects exist with substantial mutual intelligibility, though some Western Buryat dialects show stronger contact influence from Russian.

How it’s written

Buryat uses Cyrillic since 1939, with 36 letters (three added: Ү, Ө, Һ for sounds not in Russian). Earlier the traditional Mongolian vertical script was used; a brief Latin period (1931–1939) was abandoned. Buryats in Mongolia and China sometimes use the traditional Mongolian script.

History

Buryat diverged from a shared Mongolic ancestor with Khalkha Mongolian by the 17th century. Russian incorporation began in the 1600s; Soviet policies brought literacy alongside Russian-dominant schooling that has steadily shifted the speaker base toward Russian.