Yakut Alphabet

Yakut calls itself саха тыла, the Sakha language, and has been written in Cyrillic since 1939. In Yakut alphabetical order the letters are: А Б В Г Ҕ Д Дь Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н Ҥ Нь О Ө П Р С Һ Т У Ү Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я. In this order Ҕ comes after Г, Ҥ after Н, Ө after О, Һ after С and Ү after У. Дь and Нь count as letters of their own but are written with two characters, Д or Н plus the soft sign Ь, so there is nothing extra to install for them.

Native Yakut words use only part of the set. Twelve letters, В Е Ё Ж З Ф Ц Ш Щ Ъ Ю Я, appear mainly in words taken from Russian, and older loans were respelled the Yakut way instead: Russian школа became оскуола (school), and республика became өрөспүүбүлүкэ. Э, by contrast, is everywhere: эн (you), кэпсээ (tell me).

Yakut has eight short vowels, а ы о у and э и ө ү, and like other Turkic languages it has vowel harmony: suffixes change their vowel to match the word. Long vowels are written double (саас, age; үүт, milk), and four diphthongs are written as pairs: ыа, иэ, уо, үө, as in Ыһыах, дьиэ (house), уол (boy) and үөрэх (learning). Punctuation follows Russian practice: guillemets « » for quotations, „ “ for quotes inside quotes, a long dash — for dialogue and № before numbers.

Ҕ, Ҥ, Ө, Һ, Ү, Дь and Нь: the special Yakut letters

Ҕ ҕ, ghe with a middle hook, is a voiced fricative made at the back of the mouth, softer than г: аҕа (father), доҕор (friend). Yakut is one of very few languages that use this letter. Ҥ ҥ, the en-ghe ligature, is the ng sound of English sing: саҥа (new), олоҥхо, the Yakut heroic epic.

Ө ө and Ү ү are rounded front vowels, close to German ö and ü: өрүс (river), күн (sun, day). Һ һ is a plain h, usually between vowels, as in Ыһыах, the midsummer festival, and оһуокай, the round dance danced at it.

Дь is a soft d that sounds close to English j, and Нь is the ny sound of Spanish ñ. They are frequent: дьон (people), дьыл (year), and the capital Yakutsk is Дьокуускай; Нь starts town names such as Ньурба (Nyurba). Because each is one letter in Yakut, dictionaries list Дь words after all the other Д words.

How to type Yakut letters on a keyboard

Windows has a built-in Sakha keyboard layout: add the Sakha language or keyboard under Settings › Time & language › Language & region. It is a Russian layout that adds Ҕ Ҥ Ө Һ Ү. On a phone, look for Sakha in your keyboard app's languages; long-press on a Russian keyboard does not reach these letters, so copying them from this page is the quickest way.

In Microsoft Word, type a letter's code and press Alt+X: 0494 Ҕ, 0495 ҕ, 04A4 Ҥ, 04A5 ҥ, 04E8 Ө, 04E9 ө, 04BA Һ, 04BB һ, 04AE Ү, 04AF ү. On a Mac, the Character Viewer (Control+Command+Space) finds them by name: “ghe with middle hook”, “ligature en ghe”, “barred o”, “shha”, “straight u”. In HTML, write ҕ for ҕ, ҥ for ҥ, ө for ө, һ for һ and ү for ү.

Watch the look-alikes, because fonts and keyboards often offer the wrong ones. Yakut Ҥ is a ligature of Н and Г, not Kazakh and Tatar Ң with a descender; Yakut Ҕ has a hook in the middle, not the stroke of Kazakh Ғ; Һ is Cyrillic, not Latin h; Ө is not Greek Θ and Ү is not Latin Y. They look alike on screen but sort, search and spell-check as different letters, so a substitute can break searching and spell-checking in Yakut text.

Where the Yakut language is spoken

Yakut is spoken in Russia, in the Sakha Republic, also called Yakutia (Саха Сирэ), the largest region of any country in the world, stretching along the Lena river (Өлүөнэ) to the Arctic coast. It is an official language there alongside Russian. Unicode's CLDR estimates about 450,000 speakers, and nearly all of them also speak Russian; prices are written in rubles, with the sign ₽.

Yakut is the most north-easterly Turkic language. Its closest relative is Dolgan, spoken on the Taymyr Peninsula; it is distantly related to Turkish, Kazakh, Tatar and Chuvash, but split from them so long ago that speakers cannot follow each other. For a long time Yakut also served as the common language of the region, and many Evenks, Evens and Yukaghirs in Yakutia speak it. For neighbouring alphabets see the Russian, Buryat, Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh and Turkish collections; for 🇷🇺 and the country's emoji see Russia.

Yakut symbols and emoji

Yakutia has no flag emoji of its own, so posts use 🇷🇺 or the emoji of its life. The year's big celebration is Ыһыах (Ysyakh) at the summer solstice, when people greet the sun ☀️, dance the оһуокай and drink кымыс, fermented mare's milk 🥛; the hardy Yakut horse 🐎, which lives outdoors all winter, belongs to the festival and to the culture as a whole.

Winter brings ❄️ and 🥶: Oymyakon and Verkhoyansk in Yakutia are counted among the coldest inhabited places on Earth. The permafrost keeps giving up mammoths 🦣, the region's mines produce most of Russia's diamonds 💎, frozen fish 🐟 is shaved thin and eaten as stroganina, and reindeer 🦌 are herded across the north.