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 Ös/Middle
Chulym Documentation Project
The Ös documentation project is a multi-media documentation
project dedicated to the moribund Ös language of central
Siberia. Ös (also known as Middle Chulym) is a divergent
Turkic speech variety now mostly used by elderly speakers
who live in small, isolated villages in Tomsk Oblast’ and
Krasnoyarsk Kray in central Siberia. Ös has become
endangered in part as a result of open hostility from the
state during the twentieth century.
The Ös people were
dropped from census statistics as a distinct ethnic group
after 1959, regaining separate ethnic identity only in 1999.
A priority for this project is the creation of a
web-accessible digital archive to make Ös data accessible to
scholars and, of greater importance, to the native community
itself in the future. Beyond documentation, we will take
steps to support the Ös community in their efforts to
preserve their language and culture. This includes for
example training of speakers in the use of modern media.
The
first ever book in Ös is currently under production under
the direction of Living Tongues, with the proto-type
field-tested during the summer, 2005. The Ös documentation
project is generously funded by a major documentation grant
MDP0096 (based at Swarthmore College) to Dr. Gregory D. S.
Anderson and Dr. K. David Harrison from the Hans Rausing
Endangered Language Program (http://www.hrelp.org), based at
SOAS, University of London.
Map of Chulym
New
Literacy Development
Living Tongues Institute takes its cue from the community
itself in setting priorities for further community-based
output and other measures to improve the language ecology.
In July 2003, we met with the Chulym tribal council to
discuss our proposed research. The council issued a written
invitation to us to work in the community and collect data
and to assist in the development of a standardized
orthography. A pilot version of a book based on stories we
collected in a modified native orthography has been
developed and this will be combined wth an ‘ABC’ book for Ös
in the near future. The native orthography is the
development of Living Tongues Institute consultant Vasilij
Gabov.
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Pilot version of book
Three generations
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Chulym Storybook
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Indigenous Ös orthographic tradition
Paper published in
2007 Linguistic Discovery 4/1/07
Sound Files from the Ös project
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Chulym
Video Clips From The Ös Project
Soon to be
added
Photos from the Ös project
Some works resulting from the Ös project
More on Ös [Middle Chulym] language
The indigenous people of the middle Chulym river basin (ö:s
kizhiler ‘Ös people’, pisting kizhiler,‘our people’) speak
one of the most critically endangered of native Siberian
languages. The Ös language is a divergent Turkic speech
variety now mostly used by elderly speakers who live in
small, isolated villages in Tomsk Oblast’ and Krasnoyarsk
Kray in central Siberia.
The present-day Ös people are descended from non-Turkic
peoples of Yeniseic and Uralic stock, who lived as fishers
and hunter-gatherers primarily along the Chulym river. Their
history—including multiple waves of colonization and
linguistic assimilation first into Turkic, and now into
Russian—is reflected in substrate structures of their
language that distinguish it significantly from other
Siberian Turkic tongues.
Middle Chulym or Ös has become endangered in part as a
result of open hostility from the state during the twentieth
century. Unlike most native Siberian languages, it was never
committed to writing. In the 1940s, with the establishment
of the ‘second mother tongue’ policy, children were rounded
up into boarding schools and forbidden to speak their mother
tongue. This led to rapid abandonment of the language. In
addition, Ös [Chulym Turkic] people were dropped from census
statistics as a distinct ethnic group after 1959, regaining
separate ethnic identity only in 1999. In the 1970’s, they
were forcibly consolidated into larger, Russian-speaking
settlements, thus losing their population base and
traditional language milieu.
According to an ethnographic survey conducted by V. P.
Krivonogov (1998), in 1997 there were 115 self-reported
‘fluent speakers’ of which only 11 claimed to use Chulym as
the primary language of spoken communication, while 24
reported that they spoke Chulym as often they spoke Russian.
However, our pilot field survey, conducted in July 2003,
suggests that the total number of actual speakers, including
semi-speakers, is less than 40.
In July, 2003, we undertook a pilot investigation to the
Middle Chulym region. We focused on villages where the
greatest concentrations of Ös live: these are Belij Yar,
Novoshumilovo, Ozyornoe, and Tegul’det, in eastern Tomsk
Oblast’ and Pasechnoe in western Krasnoyarsk Kray.
A second expedition took place in June-July 2005. Some of
the findings of the expeditions to date include that there
appears to be now under 25 speakers of the language, and
fewer than 10 who are capable as serving as consultants or
language teachers.
There also appear to be two varieties of the language. A
Middle Chulym variety and an Upper Chulym variety which, as
might be expected, shares features with Xyzyl or Kyzyl (Xakas),
the next variety further upriver into Krasnoyarsk Kray. We
also became aware of an indigenous Ös orthographic tradition
for this unwritten language (see below).
Indigenous Ös orthographic tradition
New Literacy's
The last work done in the Chulym region was in the early
1970’s by R.M. Biryukovich and earlier in the 1940’s and
1950’s by A. P. Dul’zon. Their results were published in
Russian mostly in various local journals. These studies have
a large amount of data from the Tatar-like or Tatar-ized
Lower Chulym language. In fact, the two so-called Chulym
varieties are so different that Ös speakers profess Lower
Chulym forms to be completely unrecognizable.
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Last work done in the Chulym region was in the early 1970’s |
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A priority for this project is the creation of a
web-accessible digital archive to make Ös data accessible to
scholars and, of equal importance, to the native community
itself in the future. Digitized audio/video recordings are
being housed at the Siberian Languages Laboratory in Tomsk
and at the ELAR archive in London.
Community ownership of Middle Chulym intellectual property
is a primary consideration in all our work. Digital
recordings housed at Tomsk and SOAS must remain under the
auspices of the Chulym community itself, which will grant
permission (both individually and collectively) for their
scholarly use and dissemination.
Because the Middle Chulym community itself is not yet
connected to the Internet, we consider it a priority to
produce and disseminate materials in alternative media
(e.g., print, audio tape, VHS video tape) so that community
members who wish to see and hear the language spoken may do
so readily.
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Anna Baydasheva, Ös consultant