Languages of the former Soviet Union: Russian names, self-designations

Russian names and self-designations

Russian names nearly all follow one model: an adjective in -ский plus язык, language, as in тофаларский язык for Tofa or негидальский язык for Negidal. Four rows turn it round and put язык first: язык коми, язык идиш, язык иврит, and the joint name for Tat and Judeo-Tat, which reads татский и горско-еврейский язык.

The self-designations work the same way in most languages, a name plus the local word for language or speech, and that word shows the family. Turkic languages use тили, тиле, дили or тыл: ногай тили, татар теле, гагауз дили, тыва дыл. The Avar-Andic group of Dagestan says мацӏ or мицци; Dargwa, Budukh and Kryts say мез; Komi has кыв, Erzya кель and Moksha кяль. Ukrainian and Belarusian use мова.

Some languages name themselves with a single word. Nenets is ненэця” вада, Nganasan simply ӈана”са, Orok уйльта, Ulch нани and Koryak нымылг’ын. Others keep two names side by side, separated in the table by a semicolon: Avar has авар мацӏ and магӏарул мацӏ, Dungan хуэйзў йүян and хуэйзў хуа, Shor шор тили and тадар тили.

Seven scripts for the languages of the USSR

Cyrillic carries most of the list, and many of its rows need letters that Russian lacks. The palochka ӏ marks ejective consonants in Avar, Lezgi, Ingush and their neighbours; Abkhaz writes ԥ in аԥсуа, Chukchi ԓ in ԓыгъоравэтԓьэн, and Khanty and Nganasan use ӈ for the ng sound. Bashkir башҡорт and Kazakh қазақ show the letters added for q, and Dungan, the one Chinese language in the list, writes ў and ү in its Cyrillic alphabet.

Six other scripts appear. Georgian, Mingrelian and Svan use the Georgian alphabet, Armenian its own, Arabic and Persian the Arabic script, Hebrew, Yiddish and Bukhori the Hebrew script, Greek its own, and Korean Hangul. The Baltic and Baltic-Finnic languages, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Livonian, Karelian, Ingrian, Veps and Votic, stand in Latin letters, and so do Polish, German and Turkish.