The Oroch language

I. Sociolinguistic Data

1. Existing alternative names.

Language name variants (endonym, exonym).        

The official name of the language is Oroch. Previously, the linguonym the Oroqen (Orochen, Orochon) language was used. Until the 1920s, scholars believed that the Oroch language was the same as the Udege language (i.e., an Udege dialect). Since the 1920s, it is considered to be a separate language.

Until the 1920s, the Oroch and the Udege were officially called the Oroqen ( Orochon/Orochen ). Valentin A. Avrorin and Elena P. Lebedeva argue that at that time, the Oroch themselves used the endonym “ Nani ,” “people of the land.” Currently, this endonym has been forgotten, and the Oroch use the official ethnonym the Oroch; in Oroch, end-stressed orochi (Sg.), orochisa (Pl.) The origins of this ethnonym are still debated in scholarship.

The most widespread opinion claims this term comes from the word “oro/olo” meaning reindeer. However, reindeer are not endemic to the Oroch’s settlement areas, and the Oroch have never been reindeer herders. The explorer Jean François de Lapérouse was the first to use this term after visiting the De-Kastri Bay in 1787, he used it to refer to people living on the coast of the Tatar Strait. De Lapérouse may have used extended to the Oroch the ethnonym applied to people living further up north. Another opinion suggests that de Lapérouse may have encountered a group of the Ulchi whose dialect had the /l/ > /r/ rhotacism typical for some Tungus-Manchu languages. Finally, there is an opinion that this ethnonym is linked to the word “olo” meaning “here” and, consequently, “oroch” means “a local.”

Names of Oroch clans mostly frequently meant “resident” of a particular area. When passports were issued, clan names were assigned as last names (Akunka, Bisyanka, Kopenka, Namunka, etc.)

The Udege, the Oroch’s closest neighbors, called them namunka, or “a resident of the sea coast.” Another Udege name for the Oroch was pyaya (pia). The Nanai called them kekar, the same name as they used for the Udege as they apparently did not distinguish between the two ethnic groups.

Traditionally, the Oroch lived on the eastern slopes of the Sikhote-Alin mountain range and along the rivers flowing into the Tatar Strait from the De-Kastri Bay in the north to the river Botchi in the south. In the past, there were several territorial Oroch groups: the Khungari Oroch living along the river Khungari (today’s Gur); the Koppi Oroch living along the Koppi; the Amur Oroch living along the Amur around Lake Kizi (the Ulchi District); the Primorye Oroch living on the coast of the Tatar Strait; the Tumnin Oroch living in the lower reaches of the Tumnin. Today’s surviving territorial groups are the Tumnin and Primorye Oroch (the latter includes the Koppi Oroch who had been relocated to Sovetskaya Gavan).

Map 1. The Oroch Territorial Groups

2. General characteristics

2. 1. Number of Native Speakers and the Corresponding Ethnic Group

Census data, including estimates (see Table 1) reflect the dynamics of the corresponding ethnic group’s numbers. The first data on the Oroch were collected by the seafarer Nikolay K. Boshnyak. He estimated the number of the Oroch living on the coast of the Tatar Strait to be around 150 people.

The table shows that after a certain increase by the 1960s, the numbers started falling slowly.

Valentin A. Avrorin and Elena P. Lebedeva believe that the 1959 Census data are a result of an error that subsisted in the subsequent censuses held in 1970, 1979, and 1989: “Oroks living on Sakhalin Island were mistakenly recorded as the Oroch.” Other errors were made, too. Consequently, it makes sense to consider only the data pertaining to the Oroch living in the Khabarovsk and Primorye Territories especially since the Oroch living in the European part of Russia (one person living in the Republic of Karelia, the Lipetsk and Vladimir regions each, etc.) are represented by individuals essentially cut off from their ethnic group. Additionally, the 1989 Census recorded 32 Oroch outside the Russian Federation in Ukraine. Numbers of the Oroch in the Khabarovsk Region are stable: 499 persons in 1989; 426 persons in 2002; 441 persons in 2010. The Primorye territory had 21 Oroch in 2002, and 19 Oroch in 2010.

Falling Oroch numbers in the last decades are owing not so much to higher mortality as a consequence of falling quality of life as to assimilation.

2.2. Sociolinguistic Characteristics

The Oroch use Russian in all areas of life. The 2010 Census recorded only eight Oroch who said they were native speakers of Oroch. The 2020 Census recorded 29 Oroch speakers.

2.2.3. Use in Various Fields

Today, Oroch is not used even in family life and everyday communication. At the same time, Oroch remains to some extent an ethnic marker, which leads to attempts to revive it: Oroch language clubs are organized, an internet phrasebook was drafted, etc. (see below).

The Oroch Language in Education

Since the 1990s, the school in the village of Uska Orochskaya in the Khabarovsk territory offered Oroch classes as part of extracurricular activities: the Oroch language club operated there periodically. Students staged plays based on Oroch fairy tales. Currently, the club is not working. Oroch is not taught as a school subject. The Khabarovsk territory regularly offers further education courses for teachers of various native languages, Oroch is not part of the program.

Oroch is not used in the media (radio, TV, the press), but is to some extent used on websites of those municipal districts that are home to Oroch communities.

Culture, Folklore

Ethnic cultural centers work on preserving and reviving traditional culture. Such centers are established at community centers, museums, and schools. Oroch literature is constituted by folklore texts: fairy tales, legends, stories of the past (oral history), descriptions of the traditional worldview, including stories of shamanic practices, biographic and hunting tales, recipes, and songs. These texts were published mostly in Russia, but also abroad.

There is no fiction in Oroch.

Oroch was the language of the traditional religion. The Oroch were officially converted to Christianity in the second half of the 19th century, but their Christianization was highly superficial, and the Oroch remained animists using shamanic and other traditional religious practices.

Writing System

Until the late 1990s, the Oroch had no writing. A recording system developed by Valentin P. Avrorin and Elena P. Lebedeva was used to publish folklore texts and set down Oroch words in scholarship. This Cyrillic-based system had additional letters and diacritics. A practical writing system was developed in the 1990s-2000s, apparently by Galina S. Abramova who authored the first Oroch textbooks.

Geographical Characteristics

Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation with Ethnic Communities

Most of the Oroch live in the Khabarovsk Territory (Vanino and Sovetskaya Gavan Districts), and a few of the Oroch live in the Primorye Territory (Pozharsky District).

The Amur group emerged in the late 19th century when a small community of the Oroch migrated from the coast of the Tatar Strait to the Lake Kizi area (the Ulchi District). Valentin A. Avrorin and Elena P. Lebedeva reported that there were about 60 Amur Oroch in 1959. Over time, they settled in several villages of the Ulchi District and switched to the Ulchi language even though many remembered their Oroch origins. Therefore, most censuses did not capture the Oroch and inaccurately recorded them as the Ulchi.

The Khungari is a small sub-group of the Oroch who used to live along the river Khungari (today’s river Gur). During the campaign for eradicating the nomadic way of life, the Khungari Oroch were settled in the village of Tolomo and then moved to the village of Novoye Ommi; a few Oroch stayed on the Khungari (in Tolomo). In 1959, the group numbered about 80 persons. Currently, most Oroch from the group live in the cities of Amursk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

The Tumnin group consists of the Oroch who roamed in the lower reaches of the river Tumnin were settled in several villages of the Vanino District: Dzhugzha, Uska Orochskaya, Khuttu, and Oyomku (about 300 persons in total).

The Primorye group usually refers to the Oroch living along small rivers flowing into the Tatar Strait were settled in the village of Datta (Vanino District) in the village of Sovetskaya Gavan and in the neighboring villages (Zavety Ilicha, Maysky, Lososina, and Gatka).

The Koppi Oroch, the Oroch living along the river Koppi and southward to the river Botchi were settled in the village of Innokentievsky (Sovetskaya Gavan District); in the early 2000s, they were moved to the village of Sovetskaya Gavan.

In total, there are 7 native Oroch settlements:

Khabarovsk Territory, Vanino District: Datta

Khabarovsk Territory, Vanino District: Uska Orochskaya

Khabarovsk Territory, Vanino District: Vanino

Khabarovsk Territory, Sovetskaya Gavan District: Sovetskaya Gavan

Primorye Territory, Pozharsky District: Krasny Yar

In all settlements, the Oroch are a minority.

Historical Dynamics

Table 3. Numbers of the Oroch Broken Down by Constituent Entity

Table 4. Proficiency in Oroch and the Share of Speakers

II. Linguistic Data.

Position in the Genealogy of World Languages

Altaiс languages > Tungus-Manchu languages > northern group.

Oroch is part of the Tungus-Manchu family. Traditionally, it was placed in the southern subgroup of Tungus languages (together with Udege, Nanai, Ulchi, and Orok). Scholars, however, repeatedly pointed out certain traits that linked Oroch (and Udege) with the languages of the northern subgroup, primarily with Negidal. Some scholars believe that Oroch and Udege should be classified as part of the northern subgroup of Tungus languages; these languages, however, were heavily influenced by languages of the southern subgroup, particularly Nanai and Ulchi.

Dialects

Oroch language dialects are distinguished primarily on geographic grounds: each territorial group was ascribed its own dialect. Historically, scholars identified Khungari, Amur, Tumnin, Primorye, and Koppi dialects. Dialectal differences manifest primarily in phonetics and vocabulary, and, to a lesser degree, in morphology.

Brief History of Academic Research of the Language

Until the 1920s, the Oroch were not recognized as a separate ethnic group, and Oroch was not recognized as a separate language. The Oroch and Udege languages were equally called Oroqen or Oroch. Consequently, linguistic analysis is sometimes required to determine which language is referred to in a particular linguistic study published before the 1930s. For instance, “the Oroch language” dictionary compiled by Pyotr Schmidt (1928) contains Ugede words, and the same is obtained for the dictionary compiled by Vladimir K. Arseniev.

Some Oroch words were recorded in the late 19th century by the Far East explorers Leopold Shrenk, and Lev Ya. Shternberg, Vasily P. Margaritov. In 1896, Sergey Leontovich’s Concise Russian-Oroqen Dictionary with a Grammar Note was published.

Scholarly research of Oroch was inaugurated with the publication of Tsintsius’s article “An Overview of the Oroch Language Morphology” (Academic Proceedings of Leningrad State University, 1949) written pursuant to work with native Oroch speakers studying in the Institute of Peoples of the North in Leningrad. Subsequently, Valentin A. Avrorin and Elena P. Lebedeva worked with Oroch. Valentin A. Avrorin first traveled to the land of the Oroch back in 1929 as a member of an ethnographic expedition. 1959 saw a linguistic expedition to the Oroch and many texts were recorded that were subsequently transcribed and translated. Texts collected during that expedition form the basis of our knowledge of the Oroch language, they were used in later editions of these texts, in grammar textbooks and overviews.

Parfenova O.S. “The Oroch Language” // Written Languages of the World: Languages of the Russian Federation. Sociolinguistic Encyclopedia. Bk. 2. Moscow: Academia.