Shor language

language
name=Shor
nativename=Шор тили "šor tili", Тадар тили "tadar tili"
familycolor=Altaic
states=Russia
region=Kemerovo
speakers=9,800
fam1=Altaic [" [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90009] Ethnologue"] (controversial)
fam2=Turkic
fam3=Northern
iso2=tut|iso3=cjs

The Shor language (Shor: "Шор тили", Russian: "Шорский язык") is one of the Turkic languages. It is spoken by around 10,000 people in the Kemerovo Oblast in south-central Siberia. Not all ethnic Shors speak Shor, and the language witnessed a decline from the late thirties to the early nineties. However, the dissolution of the Soviet Union saw signs of Shor lingual revival. The language is now being taught at the Novokuznetsk branch of the Kemerovo State University.

Shor language was not mentioned in ISO 639, an international standard that lists short codes for language names, until it was included as "cjs" in the recent edition ISO 639-3.

Like its neighbor languages, the language borrows a great number of roots from the Mongolian language as well as words from the Russian language. The two main dialects are Mrasu and Kondoma, named after the districts where they are spoken. Differences between these dialects are small.

It is written with a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet, which was introduced by Christian missionaries in the middle of the 19th century.

To highlight the endangered status of the language, Gennady Kostochakov recently published a book of poems in Shor entitled, "I am the Last Shor Poet." [cite news
author = Staff writer
title = The dying fish swims in water
work = The Economist
pages = 73-74
date = December 24 2005 - January 6 2006]

Morphology and syntax

Pronouns

Shor has seven personal pronouns:

Notes

References

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=cjs Ethnologue report for Shor language]
* [http://lingsib.iea.ras.ru/en/languages/shor.shtml Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia: The Shor language]
* [http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/shors.shtml The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire: The Shors]
* [http://www.tarbagan.net/fotj/ShorLang.htm The Shor alphabet]