Even language
Even, also known as Lamut, Ewen, Eben, Orich, Ilqan, is a Tungusic language spoken by the Evens in Siberia. It is spoken by widely scattered communities of reindeer herders from Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk in the east to the Lena river in the west and from the Arctic coast in the north to the Aldan river in the south. Even is an endangered language with only some 5,700 speakers. These speakers are specifically from the Magadan Oblast, the Chukot Autonomous Okrug and the Kamchatka Krai. The now-extinct Arman dialect was highly divergent and may have been a separate language.
In the regions where the Evens primarily reside, the Even language is generally taught in pre-school and elementary school alongside the national language, Russian. Where Even functioned primarily as an oral language for communication between reindeer herding brigades, textbooks began circulating throughout these educational institutions from around 1925 to 1995.
The syntax of the Even language follows the nominative case and subject–object–verb word order, with the attribute preceding the dependent member.
Dialects
The dialects are Arman, Indigirka, Kamchatka, Kolyma-Omolon, Okhotsk, Ola, Tompon, Upper Kolyma, Sakkyryr and Lamunkhin. Ola is the literary dialect. The Arman dialect has been extinct since the 1970s.Language contact
In some remote Arctic villages, such as Russkoye Ustye, whose population descended from Russian-Even intermarriage, the language spoken into the 20th century was a dialect of Russian with a strong Even influence.Phonology
, and are allophones of and, respectively.Morphology and syntax
Even parts of speech include postpositions, conjunction, particles, and adverbs, as well as nouns and verbs; nouns in Even can function as adjectives and adverbs. Even features a nominative-accusative alignment with subject-object-verb word order. There exists an obligatory copula, but it can be omitted if a noun in the predicate is inflected for the third person.Nouns in Even are marked for 13 cases, including the nominative, accusative, dative, lative, two forms of the locative, prolative, three forms of the ablative, instrumental, and comitative. They are also inflected for the singular or plural number and for possession, as well as for the subjective, which indicates that the subject noun has no object. Noun inflection is exclusively suffixing. Its pronouns are distinguished between personal, reflexive, and possessive forms, with a distinction between alienable and inalienable forms.
Verbs can be conjugated with prefixes for 15 aspects and feature 6 distinctions in voice, with specific negative and interrogative forms. There are 14 ways to form participles, 8 being transgressives.
Orthography
At present, Even writing functions in Cyrillic. There are three stages in the history of Even writing:- until the early 1930s, early attempts to create a written language based on the Cyrillic alphabet;
- 1931–1937 – writing on the Latin basis;
- since 1937 – modern writing based on the Cyrillic alphabet.
Long vowels are indicated by a macron above the corresponding letter.