Albert speaking Sakha

Albert speaks Sakha, or the Yakut language, a Turkic language native to Sakha in the Russian Federation. Sakha borrows both Mongolian and Russian words. Related to Dolgan, another North Siberian language. This video of Albert speaking Sakha was recorded in Alberta, Canada. Yakut (Sakha) is spoken by approximately 450,000 people in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), part of the Russian Federation. It is classified as a Turkic language in the North Siberian sub-group. It contains loanwords from languages such as Russian, Mongolian and Evenki. A majority of the Yakut are bilingual in Yakut and Russian. Like most other Turkic languages, Sakha is agglutinating and applies vowel harmony to its phonology. Yakut is used as a lingua franca by many ethnic groups in the Sakha Republic, and is used more commonly than other Indigenous languages in the region. There are books published in this language, making use of Cyrillic orthography, but Yakut history is also preserved orally through a tradition known as "Olonkho". This oral tradition is preserved and sang by traditionally skilled performers who are now passing their history onto a younger generation. This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. To download a copy, please contact hello@wikitongues.org.