Northern Altai or Northern Altay is a collective name for several tribal moribund Turkic dialects spoken in the Altai Republic of Russia. Though traditionally considered one language, Southern Altai and the Northern varieties are not fully mutually intelligible. Written Altai is based on Southern Altai, and is rejected by Northern Altai children. Northern Altai is written in Cyrillic. In 2006, in the Altay kray, an alphabet was created for the Kumandin variety.

Phonology

Northern Altai has 8 vowels, which may be long or short, and 20 consonants, plus marginal consonants that occur only in loan words.

Vowels

Consonants

Demographics

According to data from the 2002 Russian Census, 65,534 people in Russia stated that they have command of the Altay language. Only around 10% of them speak Northern Altay varieties, while the remaining speak Southern Altay varieties. Furthermore, according to some data, only 2% of Altays fluently speak the Altay language.

Varieties

Northern Altay consists of the following varieties: The Tubalar language (also known as Tuba language), is also often ascribed to belong to the Northern Altai group, but its relation to other languages is dubious and it may belong to Kipchak languages. 408 Tubalars claim to know their national language, and 436 people in all reported knowing Tuba. Closely related to the northern varieties of Altay are the of the Shor language and the of the Chulym language.

Linguistic features

The following features refer to the outcome of commonly used Turkic isoglosses in Northern Altay.