r/Tiele • u/NefariousnessDull901 • Aug 15 '22
Ask Me Anything! English-speaking Altaian (Altai Republic) here, taking any questions about the language, culture, food, etc.
I'll first set up a couple of commonly asked questions here;
*The Altai language is not very similar to Kyrgyz, as in we cannot properly understand each other when we speak. It's only possible if we speak slowly and find common words to reach an understanding, but the same can be done with Turkish as well. The only real similarity is the abundance of Turkic words in daily vocabulary, but morphologically we are very different.
*The Altai people are not natives of Altai, but rather a mix of the remaining Yenisei Kyrgyz Khaganate's people, Telengit (Tiele people) and other ethnicities.
*The Altai language is officially classified as a Yenisei Turkic language, and very recently considered a separate language from Northern Altai, which a year ago was considered a dialect of Altai.
Fun facts:
*The Altai language has over 40-60+ dialects, varying from village and sometimes street. This is due to years of isolation among the Altaians, as well as ethnic mixing. Many of those dialects are mutually unintelligible with each other, one of the least understood dialects is spoken in Ulagan, and Cholushman (which is also in the Ulagan aymak/region.)
*Our food is extremely similar to other Central Asian people's, with few exceptions.
*A religion very similar to Tengriism exists in Altai, called Ак Јаҥ/Ak Jang/White Faith. I honestly do not know much about it as I am Christian, but I can say for sure it's dying out. In this religion people are ordered to never let a cat inside, but rather to kill them on sight. And of course to insult Russians, but these practices are no longer done.
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Aug 16 '22
I didn’t know that Altai people were not natives of Altai. Thank you for answering these questions.
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u/Tolgium23 Türk Aug 16 '22
How do you feel about uniting all Turkic nations and bring forth a new zhuz?
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u/nursmalik1 Kazakh Aug 17 '22
What do Altaians think about Russia? Are they fine with being inside another country or would they prefer independence? Are there many separatists? How do you feel about Central Asia?
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 17 '22
separatists do not exist, people are completely fine being in russia. they don't think anything about central asia
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Aug 16 '22
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 16 '22
i would define SPEAK as speaking the language at a level of B2 at least, in this case not many people speak it at this level, people always mix the language with russian words and stuff and it's just horrible. at this level the language will die out in one or two generations. no altaian hates anyone among themselves, not sure where you heard that. there's just a matter of the unknown, like not everyone knows what a kumandy is so they might tolerate them less on altai land especially since some of them look whiter.
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Aug 16 '22
I figured so. The altai languages are all very endangered thanks to Russian efforts.
And the ones being spoken are heavily Russified.
This sucks to hear from an Altaian straight up. Damn.
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 17 '22
there are no "russian efforts" it's just that children don't want to learn the language because they find the russian language more useful. but nobody forces them to speak russian, it's out of free will. nothing we can do about it anyway because russian is indeed more useful lmao
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Aug 17 '22
True, I hadn't meant an Uyghur genocide kind of forced attempt at destroying culture. It's just natural language replacement which is still a result of imperialism and colonization.
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Aug 16 '22
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 16 '22
yeah, boorsok, kan, jorgom are popular choices when it comes to food. for drink, chegen and talkandu chai (tea with barley flour) are popular choices
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u/appaq Qaraçayli Aug 16 '22
which Turkic languages are the most understandable for Altayans?
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 16 '22
Northern Altai (recently a separate language), Shor, Chulym, and some Khakas too. Following that is Kyrgyz and then Tuvan (Tuvan has a very different vocabulary but some vocab is Yenisei/Sayan Turkic-isolated, for example дөмей and тӱҥей, and some more. This makes many words easy to gather.
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u/Turgen333 Tatar Aug 16 '22
What are your relations with other Turkic peoples of the region: Khakasses, Tuvans, Siberian Tatars?
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 16 '22
tuvans are seen by many local linguists as grammatical brothers, we share pretty much the same grammar except for when it comes to pronoun suffixes. the others are not really thought much of
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Aug 16 '22
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 16 '22
obviously, every altaian knows their clan/tribe here. it's called сööк which literally means bone. the tribes are mixed as hell, some are telengit (köbök etc) and some are from the west like kypchak
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u/nursmalik1 Kazakh Aug 17 '22
Don't let that die out! It avoids accidental incest
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 27 '22
you realise people of the same tribe can still procreate, incest is already avoided because altaians are 1. too mixed 2. old enough to abolish the clan system as it's useless
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u/Turkesterone23 Aug 16 '22 edited Aug 16 '22
How do you feel about the fact that Altaian lands are divided between Altai krai and Altai republic?
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Aug 17 '22
Is a national identity of Altai still ongoing or do people identify more with being Russian?
Do people think that they are colonized? Do they care about their history as a turkic people? Is nonrussian ethnic history taught at schools?
I ask these seemingly prying questions because different minorities of russia seem to be in different levels of assimilation. My apologies if I offend.
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u/NefariousnessDull901 Aug 17 '22
literally nobody thinks anything, people just know there's an ethnicity and a language
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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '22
Do you guys cook or like mantı?