Kilda Kelen

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"Neo-Khitanese" is a preliminary label to describe a member of the League of Lost Languages that is spoken today on the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Siberia. Foreign scholars consider it to be an Altaic language -- the family consisting of the Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic language groups, and according to some, Korean or Japanese. However, the Neo-Khitanese themselves currently reject the 'Altaic Hypothesis'.

It is more easily agreed upon that Neo-Khitanese is a Tungusic language. Within that family, it has most in common with the northern branch of that family -- specifically to Evenki (or "Tungus") and to Even (or "Lamut").

Phonologically, it has a regular system of front/back vowel harmony, in which lexical stems determine the vowel quality of any affixes. "Front" vowels are e i ö ü while "back" vowels are a ï o u; it additionally distinguishes vowel length. Syllable structure is generally simple and of (C)V(C) form, with almost no clusters of more than two consonants, and very rare word-initial or word-final consonant clusters even in loanwords.

Grammatically, it is highly agglutinative, suffixing, has basic SOV word order, accusative syntax, and a wealth of non-finite verb forms. In all these respects it is quite a typical North Tungusic language, though it has a slightly reduced inflectional morphology compared to Even or Evenki. Nevertheless most morphological and syntactic constructions can be directly matched to corresponding forms in either or both of those languages.

Its lexicon, however, shows signs of being more archaic; most noticeably in preserving initial *p- as p- or f- (which has gone > h- > 0- in the other North Tungusic languages). Furthermore it has many lexemes found only in the Southern (or "Amuric") branch of Tungusic. Additionally, a large quantity of what have variously been interpreted as cognates or as early loanwords from Preclassical or Middle Mongolian and from Old Turkic suggests is generally accepted nowadays as support of the traditional Neo-Khitanese belief that they are descendants of the Khitans who ruled northern China under the Liao dynasty (907-1125 CE). Neo-Khitanese has furthermore absorbed very large numbers of lexical items from languages indigenous to Kamchatka (Kurile Ainu, Southern and Eastern "dialects" of Itelmen) and from languages neighboring Kamchatka (the Koryak and Alutor languages, and later from Aleut and even Pacific Yupik -- confusingly now called Aluutiq). There are also a small number of foreign loans from the heyday of Neo-Khitanese seafaring and trading in the Pacific Rim. In the 19th and 20th century, Neo-Khitanese proved much more conservative towards foreign influence than in the past, and has (relatively) few "global" or "international" vocabulary items borrowed from English or Russian. Perhaps as much as 1/4 or even 1/3 of the total lexicon is of non-Altaic or non-Tungusic origin.

The Neo-Khitanese in Kamchatka used forms of the Khitan logosyllabic writing system until the early 1800s, when Latin orthographies were adopted. The language has also been written in Japanese katakana (during 1941-1945), the Russian Cyrillic alphabet (primarily by Orthodox missionaries, priests, and converts beginning in the early 1700s), and in a "runic" syllabary devised in the late 1800s on the basis of the old Khitan script.