Tofalar

I. Sociolinguistic data

1.2 General characteristics

Autoethnonym (self-name) is tofa , tova . This word was mentioned by Julius von Stubendorf in 1854. Until then, the Tofalar had been called Karagas , after the name of one of the clans, Kara Khaash , this word having nothing to do with Kara Kas “black goose”. The name Tofalar was officially approved in 1934, as was the equivalence of the words tofalar and tofa . The Tofalar live in the native villages of Alygdzher, Nerkha and Verkhnyaya Gutara in the Nizhneudinsky district of the Irkutsk region. Among the neighboring ethnic groups, the following names are found for the Tofalar: the Todzha Tuvans call them Khaashtar , the Nizhneudinsk Buryats - Uryaankad , the Oka Buryats - Uryaankhad , Uygar , Uygar Khelten , Zugde .

Number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group

In 2018, in places of ethnic residence, about 769 people (out of 1,201) called themselves Tofalar. In 2022, according to the local administration, there were 754 people in Tofalaria calling themselves Tofalar: in Alygdzher there were 295, in Nerkha 170, in Verkhnyaya Gutara 289. The total number of the Tofalar before 1959 is difficult to determine. According to Julius von Stubendorf, in 1851 there were 543 Tofalar. The census data (see Table 1) show a slight increase in the number of the Tofalar, while the number of native speakers has been steadily decreasing. In 1989, 309 people recognized Tofalar as their native language, in 2002, it was 378, and in 2010 - 32, although 93 citizens of the Russian Federation indicated their knowledge of the Tofalar language, of which 87 were Tofalar.

Table 1. Population dynamics of the Tofalar in the post-war period:

The explanation for the increase in the number of the Tofalar stems from the opportunity to use various state benefits provided to the small-numbered peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. The Tofalar themselves currently make up half of the population in the places of their traditional residence (Alygdzher, Nerkha, Verkhnyaya Gutara, Nizhneudinsky district).

Sociolinguistic characteristics: level of the threat of extinction, use in various fields

The Tofalar language is currently defined as “disappearing” (1B). The intergenerational transmission of the language has been disrupted throughout the entire area; communication between the most competent speakers and language infrastructure are absent. All of the Tofalar speak Russian fluently. According to the census of 1989, 95% of the Tofalar spoke Russian; in 2010, 95% of the Tofalar spoke Russian as their native language. In addition to the Tofalar and Russian languages, in 2010 several Tofalar indicated their knowledge of English, German, French, Ukrainian, as well as Alyutor, Armenian, Tuvan and Yakut (one person each for the last four).

Tofalar speakers do not use the language in everyday life, the main language of communication being Russian. Those few who do know the language recall it only when a researcher or another interested person comes along. Other than that, they only speak it at festivals and holidays. There are no significant dialectal differences in the Tofalar language. Previously, the Alygdzher and Gutara dialects used to be distinguished, which, however, did not interfere with mutual understanding.

Currently, there are about 30 native speakers of Tofalar, of which only 3, although not entirely fluently, can narrate a story and carry on a conversation, about 5 are passive speakers who can carry on a short conversation, and about 25 understand common words and everyday phrases to varying degrees, but cannot coherently narrate a story or support a conversation on any topic.

The youngest active speakers of Tofalar are over 50 years old, but their speech shows simplifications of grammatical structures. Among those born in 1982-94, there are those who understand a standard set of imperative phrases and interrogative statements. All the children born in 2017-18 understand basic phrases expressing an order or request: during school lessons and breaks, the teachers conduct exercises in a form of a game, asking in Tofalar to perform a certain action (stand up, sit, jump, run, knock, etc.).

Until the end of the 20th century the Tofalar language had been passed down orally. Tofalar is a newly-written language. The creation of Tofalar writing began in 1986. The writing system was developed by Valentin Rassadin based on his field notes (1964-1969). The Tofalar alphabet is based on the Cyrillic alphabet with nine additional graphemes ғ, h, i, қ, ң, ө, ү, ҷ, ə, which are also found in the alphabets of other Turkic languages. The length of a vowel is indicated by doubling the corresponding letters, pharyngalization is expressed by a hard sign after the vowel. This system was used to publish the following educational literature: “Tofa primer for primary school” (Rassadin, Shibkeev. Irkutsk, 1989); “Reading manual for Tofalar schools, 1st grade” (Rassadin, Shibkeev, Syltyschyk. Irkutsk, 1990); “Төrәәn soot: reading manual for Tofalar schools, 2nd grade”. (Rassadin. St. Petersburg, 2008); “Copybook: workbook for the primer for Tofalar schools, 1st grade” (Rassadin. St. Petersburg, 2008).

Tofalar language classes were introduced in 1990. Currently, the language is studied at the elementary level in grades 2 to 4 in the villages of Alygdzher, Nerkha and Verkhnyaya Gutara. The curriculum allocates for it one hour a week, 34 hours per academic year, 102 hours during the entire period of study. However, the position of the Tofalar language as a means of communication has not strengthened; young people choose not to use it in communication.

The Tofalar language is not used in the media, however, there are quite a few Internet sites about the Tofalar and their language. The Tofalar literature is represented mainly by the folklore texts collected by Nikolai Katanov, Nadezhda Dyrenkova, Valentin Rassadin and Anatoly Stoyanov. The first samples of Tofalar folklore were recorded in 1890 by Nikolai Katanov and published by Vasily Radlov in 1907.

The collection consists of 67 songs (536 verses), 38 fairy tales, 26 stories and 9 legends about the tribe. In 1975–1976, Anatoly Stoyanov recorded Tofalar folk songs, which were transcribed by Valentin Rassadin and published in 1980. The best examples of Tofalar oral folk art were published by Valentin Rassadin in his collection “Legends, fairy tales and songs of the gray-haired Sayan. Tofalar folklore" (1996). Many texts can be found in school reading manuals. There is a collection of poems dedicated to Tofalaria, but all the poems are written in Russian. There are no fiction writers using the Tofalar language.

Geographical characteristics

The Tofalar live in the native villages of Alygdzher, Nerkha and Verkhnyaya Gutara in the Nizhneudinsky district of the Irkutsk region. They also reside in the cities of Irkutsk and Nizhneudinsk, the villages of the Nizhneudinsky district of the Irkutsk region; several have lived for a long time in St. Petersburg. Most Tofalar live in rural areas (approx. 87% in 2010).

Total number of native settlements

3 villages.

List of main native settlements :

Irkutsk region, Nizhneudinsky district : Alygdzher, Nerkha, Verkhnyaya Gutara

Irkutsk region, Nizhneudinsky district : Nizhneudinsk

Irkutsk region : Irkutsk

Table 2. The Tofalar: main native settlements 

Historical dynamics

Table 3. Number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic grou

II. Linguistic data

According to the classification of Nikolai Baskakov, the Tofalar language belongs to the Uyghur-Tukuy subgroup of the Uyghur-Oghuz group of the Eastern Hunnic branch of Turkic languages. Valentin Rassadin placed Tofalar with Tuvan, Soyot, Kök-Monchak (China), Tsaatan Uyghur, Uyghur-Uryankhay and Tsengel Tuvan (Mongolia) into a separate Sayan subgroup of Turkic languages. The Sayan subgroup is divided into the steppe and taiga languages. Tofalar, together with Todzha Tuvan, Soyot, Tsaatan Uyghur and Uyghur-Uryankhay, belongs to the taiga languages.

Dialectal situation

Valentin Rassadin distinguished the Alygdzher and Gutara dialects. The Nerkha dialect occupied an intermediate place. The differences between the dialects were minor. Phonetic differences in the speech of the Alygdzher and Gutara Tofs were observed in the alternation of k (Gutara) and kh (Alygdzher) in word-initial position. In the Gutara speech, the replacement of the posterior lingual fricative g with the middle lingual y (yod) was sometimes observed in word-final position. There were also differences in the lexical composition, listed in the Tofalar-Russian dictionary of 2016. As a result of the mixing of the populations of Alygdzher, Nerkha and Verkhnyaya Gutara, the differences between the dialects have gradually disappeared.

Brief history of academic research of the language

The first academic description of the Tofalar language was made by Matthias Сastren, who visited the Tofalar in 1849.  An article in German about the language of the Koibal and Karagas was published by Anton Schiefner in 1857. Nikolai Katanov recorded samples of Tofalar speech and some folklore texts in 1890, which were published by Vasily Radlov in 1907. Nikolai Katanov used Tofalar materials in his “Study of the Uryankhay Language” (1903) comparing it with the Tuvan language. The subsequent study of the language was published by Nadezhda Dyrenkova, based not on field data, but on the materials received from the Tofalar students of the Institute of the Peoples of the North in 1930–1931. The article, extensively describing the phonetic system and touching upon morphology and word formation, was published in 1963 and included the texts themselves. The work of Karl Menges, who described the Tofalar language, relying on materials from Castren and Katanov, was published in 1959. The most comprehensive description of the language belongs to Valentin Rassadin, who (since 1964) devoted more than half of his life to this topic. He did a tremendous amount of work on the Tofalar language, providing a fundamental scholarly coverage of the language’s features, and also preparing the basis for future educational materials: dictionaries, primers and texts in the language. His works on phonetics, vocabulary and morphology remain the only complete descriptions of the Tofalar language. Since 1965, Vladimir Nadelyaev conducted several experimental studies of Tofalar phonetics. In 2000-2001, the documentation of the Tofalar language was carried out by a group of American linguists, including David Harrison, who studied Tuvan, and Gregory Anderson, who worked with Khakass. Since 2007, Arzhaana Syuryun has been studying the Tofalar language: her academic interests include the grammar of Tofalar, description of its current state and issues of language revival.