Evenki script

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Evenki language did not have its own written language, but its linguistic material in the 18th-19th centuries was repeatedly recorded by various researchers who used various graphic systems in their materials. So, the first Evenki texts were published in 1705 in the second edition of N. Witsen ’s book “Noord en Oost Tartarye”, which contains a translation of the translation of the prayer “Our Father” in the Latin alphabet . Later Evenki words were recorded by Stralenberg , Pallas , Messerschmidt and other researchers. For recordings, they used both Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. In 1856, the first scientific grammar of the Evenki language was published, written by M. A. Castren ^[1] .

The first attempts to create Evenki script were undertaken by missionaries of the Russian Bible Society . In 1818, they translated into the Evenki language passages from the New Testament . In translations that were never published, the Cyrillic alphabet was used ^{[2] [3]} . In some publications, there is a statement that the Tungus Primer of 1858 and the dictionary and translation of the Gospel of Matthew ^[2] that were written in Evenki are spoken. However, in reality, these books are written in the Olsk dialect of the Even language ^{[1] [4]} .

The creation of Evenki writing began in the 1920s. In May 1928, researcher G. M. Vasilevich prepared for Evenki students studying in Leningrad a Memo to Tungus Vacationers. It was a small training manual, propagated on a steklograph ^[5] . It used the Evenki alphabet compiled by Vasilevich on a Latin graphic basis. A year later, she compiled “The first book for reading in the Tunguska language” (Әwәnkil dukuwuntin) ^[6] . This alphabet had the following composition: Aa Bb Hh Dd Ӡӡ Ee Әә Gg Hh Ii Kk Ll Mm Nn ​​Ŋŋ Oo Pp Rr Ss Tt Uu Ww Yy ; it also included diacritics : macron , to indicate the longitude of sound and a letter comma, to indicate palatalization ^[7] .

In 1930, it was decided to create writing for most of the peoples of the North of the USSR . The Latin alphabet was chosen as its graphic basis. In the same year, a draft Evenki alphabet was proposed by J. P. Alcor. This project differed from the Vasilevich alphabet only in the presence of letters for displaying Russian borrowings ( C c, F f, J j, W sh, Z z ), as well as using V v instead of W w ^[8] . After some refinement, the letter Hh was replaced by Ç ç , V v by W w , and the letter Y y was excluded ^[7] . In May 1931, the Evenki Latinized alphabet was officially approved, and in 1932 a regular book publication began on it ^[2] . The basis of the literary language was the most studied Nepan dialect (north of the Irkutsk region ) ^[9] .

The official Latinized Evenki alphabet, which was used for book publishing and school instruction, looked like this ^[10] :

In 1937, like other alphabets of the peoples of the USSR, the Evenki alphabet was transferred to the Cyrillic basis. Initially, it included 33 letters of the Russian alphabet and the digraph Ng ng ^[11] . In the 1950s, this digraph was replaced with the letter Ӈ ӈ . At the same time, the base of the literary language was translated into the Polygus dialect ^[9] .

The modern Evenki Cyrillic alphabet contains 34 letters and looks like this:

Currently, diacritics are also used in educational texts - macrons to indicate long vowels - however, their use is optional ^[12] .

Evenki of Yakutia speak eastern dialects, which are very different from the southern dialects, on which the literary language is based. In this regard, since the 1990s, the second standard of the Evenki literary language has been formed in Yakutia ^[9] . As regards the alphabet, it differs in the use of the letter Һ һ to denote the specific sound of oriental dialects, expressed in the literary language by the letter Xx , and also, sometimes, the letters Ҥҥ instead of Ӈ ӈ ^{[13] [14]} .

Evenki script is not standard in China . To write Evenki texts, various writing systems are used - the Latinized alphabet, Old Mongolian writing ^[15] , as well as Chinese hieroglyphic writing .

Latin script is used in several variations. For example, in the Evenki-Chinese dictionary “Ewengki nihang bilehu biteg”, published in 1998 ^[16] , the following version proposed by Do Dorji is used: A a, B b, C c, D d, E e, Ē ē, F f , G g, Ḡ ḡ, H h, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, Ng ng, Ɵ ō, O o, P p, Q q, R r, S s, T t, U u, V v, W w, X x, Y y, Z z . Another Evenki textbook uses the standard Latin alphabet with the addition of the letter Өө ^[17] . There are other options for writing the Evenki language in the Latin alphabet, mainly based on IPA .

Compiled by ^[18] , ^[17] :