The Chukchi Language
Listen to a recording of the Chukchi activist Vladimir Etylin telling a funny anecdote

Chukchis are among the most articulate and literate people I have ever had a kitchen-table discussion with. The many conversations I have had with Chukchis, from city apartments to village houses to tundra tents, have been always been lively, challenging, and peppered with laughter. My conversations with them have always been in Russian, because I don't speak Chukchi, and most Chukchi are quite fluent in Russian. For some, Russian is their first language, but the majority of Chukchis still consider Chukchi their native language, and it can be heard spoken in tundra and city alike.

The Chukchi language is spoken all over Chukotka and in bordering areas of the Sakha Republic, Magadan Oblast', and the Koryak Autonomous Region. It belongs to the Chukotka-Kamchatkan family of languages, which also includes the Kerek, Koryak, Aliutor and Itel'men languages. The Chukotka-Kamchatkan language family is included in a group of languages called Paleosiberian, which includes several language isolates of North Asia that are not particularly related to one another, but do not easily fit into any of the world's other major language groups. 

The first grammar of Chukchi was written by Vladimir Bogoraz (1922), a Russian revolutionary exiled to Chukotka who also wrote an ethnography of the Chukchi that stands today as a classic work (see the entry for Waldemar Bogoras on the Published Sources page). Comprehensive grammars of Chukchi written since then include Skorik's two-volume work (1961 and 1977) and a dissertation by an Australian graduate student named Michael Dunn (1999). The Chukchi linguist Petr Inenlikei (1982) wrote the standard Chukchi-Russian dictionary. In the Soviet period, a writing system was developed for the Chukchi language, at first using the latin alphabet, but this was later changed to the cyrillic alphabet (the same that is used for Russian).

According to Nikolai Vakhtin (2001), as of the 1989 Soviet census, 70.4 % of Chukchis claimed Chukchi as their mother tongue, while 28.3% claimed Russian as their mother tongue. That puts the Chukchi language in a good position, relatively speaking. For example, only 51.6% of Eskimos claimed Eskimo as their mother tongue, while 45.9% of them claimed Russian as their mother tongue.  However, Dunn (1999) notes (as Vakhtin also reports) that the mechnisms for transmission of language in Chukchi families have been weakened. Although almost all Chukchis over the age of 30 can speak their native language, the youngest generation (especially those growing up in cities) has at best only a passive knowledge of the language.  Chukchi intellectuals understandably worry about the language being lost. In the Soviet period, the language was promoted in many ways with state support, but since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that state support has all but disappeared.

The Soviet state gave unparalleled support for developing publications in the Chukchi language, and thus in any library in Chukotka you can find books and newspapers written in the literary dialect of the Chukchi language - including translations of classics of Russian literature by authors such as Pushkin and Chekov (at the top of this page you see the cover of a collection of Pushkin stories in Chukchi, checked out from the public library in the village of Snezhnoe - Лымн'ылтэ is Chukchi for "Stories"). For many years there was a Chukchi-language newspaper in Chukotka called Sovetken Chukotka that was a translation of the Russian-language newspaper Sovetskaia Chukotka. In the 1990s, the Chukchi-language editorial staff broke off to create an independent Chukchi-language newspaper called Murgin Nutenut ("our native language"). At left is the front page of that newspaper during its heyday in 1994. Unfortunately, the independent newspaper did not survive -- it was taken over by the Russian-language newspaper Krainii Sever, and now appears as a bi-monthly supplement of a few pages inside the Russian newspaper. If you want to learn more about this situation, the full story is told in my book. Yes, that was indeed a shameless plug for my book, I do not deny it.  ;-)

Aside from these printed forms of the language, Chukchi was also broadcast in television and radio programs. About an hour every evening is still set aside on the main public radio and television stations for broadcasts in Chukchi and Eskimo. These cover as wide a range of topics as any broadcast of Morning Edition on National Public Radio - local politics, economic issues, social issues, and culture, including frequent interviews with prominent Chukchis from around the region. While I am told the radio station finally has obtained computers, well into the 1990s a transcript of every radio broadcast had to be typed out on typewriters. These transcripts were not as much for use by the journalists as for the purpose of state censorship - each transcript, along with a Russian translation, had to be turned over to the radio station director in advance of the broadcast to be checked for suitablity of content. I do not know if this practice has continued since Abramovich became governor of Chukotka, but it was certainly in force as late as 1999. At right is an example of a Chukchi-language radio transcript - click on the image to view a larger version of it.

Chukchis have also made efforts to preserve and promote their oral language. Early in the 1990s, partially in response to the encouragement of French folklorist Charles Weinstein, the Chukchi language society Chychetkin Vetgav was created. "Chychetkin Vetgav" translates something like "Conversation in our own language" (Chychetkin = our, native, Vetgav = word, speech, conversation). The group meets periodically to drink tea and converse in Chukchi language. Above you see a picture of a larger and more formal tea party gathering of Chychetkin Vetgav in 1996. It was at this occasion that Vladimir Etylin told the anecdote linked at the top of this page.

At right you see Margarita Belichenko, a journalist at the Anadyr' radio station, as on-the-spot reporter at a Day of Indigenous Peoples celebration in the mid 1990s. Click on her photo to hear an excerpt from one of her broadcasts in the Chukchi language. See if you can catch it when she says her name near the end! You can also hear her twice say the name of the Chukchi language society Chychetkin Vetgav. It will sound to you like "Tsetsetkin Vetgav" - this word has an idiosyncratic pronunciation, replcing the sound "ch" with the sound "ts."

REFERENCES

Bogoras, Waldemar [Bogoraz]
    1922    "Chukchee." In: Handbook of American Indian Languages. F. Boas, ed. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 40, Part 2. Washington: GPO. pp 631-903.

Dunn, Michael
    1999    A grammar of Chukchi. Ph.D. Dissertation, Australian National University.

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    2000    Chukchi Women's Language: A Historical-Comparative Perspective. Anthropological Linguistics 42(3):305-328.

Inenlikei, P. I.
    1982    Chukotsko-russkii i russko-chukotskii slovar': posobie dlia uchashchikhsia nachal'noi shkoly (Chukchi-Russian and Russian-Chukchi dictionary: textbook for pupils in elementary school). Leningrad: Prosveshchenie.

Skorik, P. Ia.
    1961, 1977    Grammatika chukotskogo iazyka (volumes 1 and 2). Moscow: Izdatel'stvo akademii nauk SSSR.

Vakhtin, N.B.
    2001    Iazyki narodov Severa v XX veke: Ocherki iazykovogo sdviga. Cankt-Peterburg: Dmitrii Bulanin.