- may be considered as one of the most endangered and at the same time least
studied members of the Turkic family of languages. In early Turkology, speakers of this
language were mostly referred to as Chulym Tatar (a highly misleading term since
the language is not part of, or particularly close to, the Tatar dialect continuum), or Küerik
(the self-designation of one of the Chulym -Turkic tribes which has by now completely
disappeared), and some data about their language found its way into major Turkological
works of the early 20th century.
The Chulym-Turkic language, so named after the river Chulym, a right
tributary of the Ob', flowing in a roughly counter-clockwise arc through the Tomskaja
Oblast' and the southern part of the Krasnojarskij Kraj, is, due to the highly
unsatisfactory state of its documentation, notoriously difficult to classify within the
Turkic family. While some of its distinctive traits seem to speak in favor of an inclusion
into the Southern Siberian subgroup (most clearly represented by Khakas), Kipchak features
seem also to be present, which could be indicative of a classificatory status closer to
Kirghiz and comparable eastern Kipchak languages.
A common self-designation of the Chulym -Turkic ethnos and language
seems not to be in general use, most refer to themselves and their language with terms
derived from the names of their settlements, while officially they are mostly referred to
as Khakas by the authorities, to which practice, however, most Chulym Turks object.
Detailed village-by-village statistics on language retention is
lacking, but Krivonogov's calculations for the whole nationality may be summarized as
follows: of all members of the Chulym Turkic ethnos, 25.4 % claim Chulym Turkic as their
native language, but only altogether 16.4 % consider themselves fully fluent in it. A
further 12.6 % admit varying degrees of difficulties in speaking the language, and 20.9 %
claim only passive knowledge of it. Slightly more than half of all Chulym Turks (50.1 %)
do not know the language at all.
A rough calculation on the basis of these data leads to an assumed
number of slightly more than 100 full speakers of Chulym Turkic (and somewhat around
another 100 with whom some linguistic work might also still be possible).
