WIKITONGUES: Varvara speaking Even

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This video was recorded by Kristen Tcherneshoff in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, Russia. In this video, Varvara shares stories of her childhood: growing up reindeer herding, the first time she saw a Russian man from the west, and being gifted a mirror.

Even is a Tungusic language spoken by around 5,700 native speakers of the Evens people in the Russian Far East. It is spoken primarily by reindeer herding communities from the area between the eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, the western River Lena, the northern Arctic coast, and the southern River Aldan. The Even language is taught in pre-school and elementary school alongside Russian in this region.

There have been three orthographic systems implemented to write Even: an early attempt at replicating the Cyrillic alphabet, a Latin alphabet, and the currently used modern Cyrillic script. Even has vowel harmony, where vowels of a word have to be the same class, and there is a uniquely extensive system of possessive forms (where something can be personal, returnable, or simply have the value of possessiveness). Even changes with suffix agglutination, meaning that the features of suffix conjugation, rather than the addition of more modifying words, change the traits of an utterance.

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