Profile
Native Name
Shor
Total Speakers
10,000
Usage By Country
Kemerovo Oblast in south-central Siberia.
Background
The Shor language (Шор тили) 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.
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:
· Mrasu
· Kondoma
Both named after the districts where they are spoken. Differences between these dialects are small, but the mrasu dialect belongs to khakass dialects, and the Kondoma belongs to northern Altay dialects.
Received 11/23/2009
Posted 11/30/2009
Checked 11/29/2009