Buryat language
Quick Summary
The Buryat language is a northernmost Mongol language spoken by the Buryat people, who primarily reside south and east of Lake Baikal in Siberia. The Buryat are closely related to other Mongol peoples in terms of language, history, and culture.12
The Buryat language is part of the eastern group of Mongolian languages, alongside the standard Mongolian language. While closely related, Buryat differs from Mongol primarily due to its vocabulary, which includes Russian loanwords, and some phonological and morphological features.3
The Buryat people traditionally practiced nomadic pastoralism and had a complex social structure. Their religious life was a blend of shamanism and Buddhism. Today, many Buryat live in the Buryatia autonomous republic within Russia.14
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- Altaic languagesThe Mongolian languages
Buryat and Kalmyk are also literary languages written in Cyrillic script. As the result of divergent spelling conventions and differences in vocabulary, written Khalkha and Buryat differ from one another much more than do the closely related spoken dialects on which they are based. That…
Read MoreBuryat and Kalmyk are also literary languages written in Cyrillic script. As the result of divergent spelling conventions and differences in vocabulary, written Khalkha and Buryat differ from one another much more than do the closely related spoken dialects on which they are based. That…
Read More - Mongolian languagesThe Eastern and Western groups
…split between Eastern Mongolian (Khalkha, Buryat, and the dialects of Inner Mongolia) and Western Mongolian (Oirat and Kalmyk) occurred at a later stage than that between the peripheral, archaizing languages and the central group. So many features—the loss of initial /h/, reduction of vowel sequences to long vowels, development of…
Read More…split between Eastern Mongolian (Khalkha, Buryat, and the dialects of Inner Mongolia) and Western Mongolian (Oirat and Kalmyk) occurred at a later stage than that between the peripheral, archaizing languages and the central group. So many features—the loss of initial /h/, reduction of vowel sequences to long vowels, development of…
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