Phonetics of Tuvan According to the Texts of Katanov

Mehmet Ölmez and Ayşe Şeyma Fındık

Phonetics of Tuvan According to the Texts of Katanov

(64th Meeting Budapest, 2022)

Wilhelm Radlov compiled and collected language samples in Altai and Western Siberia since 1860 and published them in 10 volumes under the name “Proben der Volkslitteratur”. Uryanhay (Tuva), Abakan and Karagas texts are included in the 9th volume. This volume was prepared by Nikolay Federovich Katanov with the materials he had collected during his trip to Tuva between March 13 and August 30, 1889 (see St. Petersburg, 1907). Katanov remained within the borders of “Barıın Kemçik” region in central and western Tuva. This region is where the central dialect of Tuvan is spoken. These compilations made by Katanov were made under difficult conditions. Katanov, who thought that the Tuvan dialects were insufficient in examining the dialects, stated that the reasons for this were the lack of transportation, the lack of vehicles and the suspicion of the Uryanhays, despite the abundance of texts. At the end of this trip, Katanov examined the phonetic and morphological features of Tuvan with his doctoral thesis titled “Examination of the Relationship of Uryanhay Language with Other Languages of Turkish Origin”. Since Katanov and Radlov were among the first researchers of Tuvan and the texts they compiled included dialect features; Tuvan text has different sound features from modern Tuvan. In this study, based on the texts compiled by Katanov, the sound characteristics of Tuvan are presented comparatively.