EVENK LANGUAGE

also called Evenki, also spelled Evenky, formerly Tungus one of the largest members of the Manchu-Tungus language family (a subfamily of the Altaic languages). The language, which has more than 20 dialects, is spoken in China, Mongolia, and Russia. A literary form of the language, using the Latin alphabet, was created in the late 1920s, but that system was replaced by Cyrillic in the 1930s. Evenk has most features typical of Tungus languages. Clauses have the basic constituent order subjectobjectverb. The language also is characterized by a complex system of case suffixes (including accusative, indefinite accusative, dative, locative, ablative, and elative). Nouns are unmarked for number when preceded by a numeral. A phonemic contrast exists between short and long vowels, and words have simple syllable structure.