Yakut spelling of the 1920s in the context of language development: discussions, solutions

Abstract

Abstract

The article examines issues of language development in the Yakut ASSR in the first decades of the Soviet era. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the history of the development of Yakut orthography in the 1920s. To achieve this goal, the following tasks are solved: 1) description of the history of the development of Yakut orthography in the 1920s; 2) interpretation of the first attempts at standardizing the Yakut language in the context of the development of its orthography; 3) identification of the essence of various orthographic principles; 4) analysis of the orthographic design of borrowings from the Russian language. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the creation of a historical retrospective of the most significant aspects of the formation of Yakut orthography in this period. The methodological basis of the work includes the method of linguistic description (with the techniques of observation, systematization and generalization) and the comparative-historical method used to reconstruct the history of the development of Yakut orthography. The data for the spelling analysis of Russian loanwords was collected using a continuous sampling method from Yakut-language newspapers. The research source base consisted of articles by language development figures of the 1920s, as well as archival documents. The study revealed that in the 1920s, following extensive discussions on alphabet and spelling issues and the introduction of morphological principles into writing, the main development paths of Yakut orthography were generally defined and its guiding principles were consolidated. Toward the end of the period under review, a tendency toward phoneticized spelling of loanwords increased.