Jungar Tuvan Texts

In this book, Talant Mawkanuli presents 37 individual texts in Jungar Tuvan, as well as their English translations. These texts were recorded by the author in the Jungar-Altai region of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China from the years 1987 to 1995. Jungar Tuvan is spoken by only 4,000 people worldwide, and it is a dialect of the Turkic language Tuvan, itself only spoken by 200,000-300,000. As such, works such as this are vital for the recording and preservation of Jungar Tuvan. The texts within the book are arranged into five general types: tales of history and culture, tales of human life and personal experiences, folk tales, songs and blessings, and conversations. The texts are presented with line-by-line Jungar Tuvan in Latin transcription with English translation. For specialists in the field of Turkic linguistics or those simply interested in the lives of minorities in Inner Asia, this book is an excellent source for both cultural and linguistic information.

Talant Mawkanuli is the director of the Turkic and Central Eurasian Studies Program and an associate teaching professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington. His research interests include sociolinguistics, ethnic identity and endangered languages in Central and Inner Asia.