The Eastern and Southern Kamchadal languages

I. Sociolinguistic data

Language names.

This article will consider two extinct languages from the Kamchadal (Itelmen) group of Chukotko-Kamchatkan family of languages; they are frequently called Eastern Itelmen and Southern Itelmen as opposed to the extant Western Itelmen language (also called Itelmen proper). In the English-language scholarship, these languages are generally called Kamchadal (Itelmen). In this case, these three languages are called Western Kamchadal, Eastern Kamchadal, and Southern Kamchadal, and only the extant Western Kamchadal is called Itelmen.

The endonym “ itenmen ,” “the one who exists,” was recorded in the late 19 ^th century for all Kamchadal groups with small phonetic variations. For Western Itelmen, the 1926-1927 Polar Census used this name for residents of eleven settlements of the northwestern coast who had preserved their native tongue. In eight of them (Sopochnoe, Moroshechnoe, Belogolovoe, Khayryuzovo, Kovran, Utkholoka, Napan, and Sedanka), native speakers of Itelmen constituted the majority, and only in three (Tigil, Voyampolk, and Palana) they were a minority.

Of all the three languages in the Itelmen group, only Western Itelmen was studied in depth; for all other languages that this article focuses upon there is only fragmented information, primarily lists of words compiled by researchers in the late 18 ^th -19 ^th centuries, and some ethnographic and sociolinguistic descriptions from different periods. The preface to the vocabulary compendium [Mudrak 2008] reports that Eastern Kamchadal and Southern Kamchadal are linguistically closer to each other than to the Western Kamchadal, which makes it all the more logical to consider them in a special article.

General characteristics

Total number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group

Both languages considered herein are extinct. The last speakers of Western Kamchadal died in the early 20 ^th century (presumably in the 1920s), the last speakers of Southern Kamchadal died in the late 19 ^th century.

Western Kamchadal (Itelmen) is still extant, however, as of today, there only few living speakers of the language.

Eastern Kamchadal and Southern Kamchadal are believed to have disappeared owing, first, to large epidemics that afflicted Kamchatka starting in the 18 ^th century, and, second, to growing influence of the Russian language to which many Itelmens switched. Unlike neighboring peoples, Itelmens have always been a settled people and if their area of residence had factors that negatively affected their language, the linguistic community could not avoid them since it was not mobile; nomadic communities are known to preserve their languages longer.

Sociolinguistic characteristics.

Vitality for both languages – 1А (extinct).

Information about the writing system (if applicable) .

Geographical characteristics

Total number of native settlements

As of today, there are no settlements with speakers of Eastern Kamchadal or Southern Kamchadal. However, we shall give information on the geographic distribution of these languages in the late 19 ^th -early 20 ^th centuries. Generally, the Eastern Kamchadal community lived on the Pacific coast of the Kamchatka territory, while Southern Itelmens lived on the shores of the Kamchatka river from its source to its estuary, and on the Pacific coast from the river Uka in the north to the estuary of the river Nalachyova in the south. The northern boundary of the area populated by speakers of Eastern Kamchadal along the river Uka was an area of Kamchadal-Koryak contacts. In the 19 ^th century, Russian became the main language of interethnic communication pushing out both Koryak and Kamchadal.

Southern Itelmens lived around Bolsheretsk (Kamchatka’s first administrative center) and today’s area around Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Speakers of Southern Kamchadal lived south of the rivers Vorovskaya and Zhupanova to Cape Lopatka and even presumably to Shumshu Island, the first in the Kuril Islands archipelago. There are hypotheses of a contact zone between Itelmens and the Ainu around the Kuril Islands, and bilingualism was possible, too, but scholars have no confirmation of this theory. Since speakers of Southern Kamchadal lived around large administrative centers, the influence of Russian on this Itelmen group was particularly early and strong, and by the late 19 ^th century, this language was already extinct.

4. Historical dynamics

Census data and other data generally do not distinguish between different Kamchadal languages, so below, we give only general statistics. In the 1830s–1840s, Kamchatka had about 100 Kamchadal settlements. There were about 2,500 yasak (natural tax) paying Kamchadals, or men aged 15-50. The 1897 Census indicated that 3,978 persons claimed to know Kamchadal. The 1926 –1927 Census counted 868 Itelmens in 62 settlements in Kamchatka, 3,704 natives recorded as Kamchadals, and about 3,500 Russians.

II. Linguistic data.

Position in the genealogy of world languages.

The Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages > Kamchadal (Itelmen) group.

As a rule, the Kamchadal languages are treated as a separate group within the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages. Some scholars, however, deny this relation and believe the similarities between Kamchadal languages and Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages to stem from massive linguistic contacts and a large number of borrowings from Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages into Kamchadal languages. Nonetheless, the claim of these two groups being genetically related is currently dominant, particularly based on the analysis of basic vocabulary in Kamchadal languages that have a large number of cognates with Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages. This question is discussed in detail by Worth [Worth 1962], Vodolin [Volodin 1969], Comrie [Comrie 1983], and Fortescue [Fortescue 2003]. Current etymological dictionary of Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages [Mudrak 2000, Fortescue 2005] include Kamchadal lexis.

Dialects.

While the extant (Western) Kamchadal language has at least two dialects (Southern and Northern, or Sedanka dialect), Eastern Kamchadal and Southern Kamchadal were spoken by small groups living close together, and there were no dialects recorded, at least scant linguistic information on these two languages is insufficient to infer the existence of dialects in these two tongues. Only Sergey Krasheninnikov’s materials make a fleeting mention of the Northern variant of Eastern Kamchadal, but the data on it essentially duplicate the data on the main variant of Eastern Kamchadal. There are also mentions of some dialects of Southern Kamchadal with minimal lexical materials.

References

Comrie B. “The Genetic Affiliation of Kamchadal: Some Morphological Evidence” // Paper in Linguistics , Vol. 16, issues 3-4, 1983, pp. 109-120.

Fortescue M. “Comparative Chukotko-Kamchatkan dictionary” // W. Bisang, H. H. Hock, W. Winter (eds.) Trends in Linguistic documentation , vol. 23. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005.

Mudrak O.A. Compendium of Kamchadal Vocabulary from 18 ^th -Century Texts . Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura RAS Press, 2008. (in Russian)

Mudrak O.A. Etymological Dictionary of Chukotko-Kamchatkan Languages . Moscow: Yazyki Russkoy Kultury Press, 2000. (in Russian)

Volodin A.P. The “Itelmen Language’s Relation to Other Chukotko-Kamchatkan Languages” // A.P. Dulzon, ed. The Origins of the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia and Their Languages: Inter-University Conference Proceedings, May 11-13, 1969. Tomsk: Tomsk University Press, 1969. P. 225-227. (in Russian)

Worth D. S. "La place du kamtchadal parmi les langues soi-disant paléosiberiénnes" // Orbis, Vol. XI, No. 2, 1962, 579-599.