Khitan language

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Khitan
Kitan
Native to	Northeastern China, southeastern Mongolia, eastern Siberia
Region	Northern
Extinct	literary form in 1244 with the death of Yelü Chucai, last person known who could speak and write Khitan
Language family	Serbi–Mongolic? Para-Mongolic?[1] Xianbei? Khitanic? Khitan
Writing system	Khitan large script and Khitan small script
Official status
Official language in	Liao dynasty, Qara Khitai
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zkt
Linguist List	zkt
Glottolog	kita1247

Khitan or Kitan ( in large script or in small, Khitai;^[2] Chinese: 契丹語, Qìdānyǔ), also known as Liao, is an extinct language once spoken in Northeast Asia by the Khitan people (4th to 13th century CE). It was the official language of the Liao Empire (907–1125) and the Qara Khitai (1124–1218). Owing to a narrow corpus of known words and a partially undeciphered script, the language has yet to be completely reconstructed.^[3]

Khitan appears to have been related to the Mongolic languages;^[4] Juha Janhunen states: "Today, however, the conception is gaining support that Khitan was a language in some respects radically different from the historically known Mongolic languages. If this view proves to be correct, Khitan is, indeed, best classified as a Para-Mongolic language."^[1]

Alexander Vovin (2017) argues that Khitan has several Koreanic loanwords.^[5] Since both the Korean Goryeo dynasty and the Khitan Liao dynasty claimed to be successors of Goguryeo, it is possible that the Koreanic words in Khitan were borrowed from the language of Goguryeo.^[5]

Khitan was written using two mutually exclusive writing systems known as the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script.^[1] The small script, which was a syllabary, was used until the Jurchen-speaking Jin dynasty (1115–1234) replaced it with the Jurchen script in 1191.^[6] The large script was logographic like Chinese.

Prior to the 19th century, only one Khitan text, the Langjun inscription, was known to scholarship in China; however, the inscription was thought by Ming and Qing scholars to be written in the Jurchen script.^[3]

The History of Liao contains a volume of Khitan words transcribed in Chinese characters titled "Glossary of National Language" (國語解). It is found in Chapter 116.^{[7][8][9][10]}

The Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty erroneously identified the Khitan people and their language with the Solons, leading him to use the Solon language to "correct" Chinese character transcriptions of Khitan names in the History of Liao in his Imperial Liao-Jin-Yuan Three Histories National Language Explanation (欽定遼金元三史國語解) project.

The Liao dynasty referred to the Khitan language with the term Guoyu (國語, "National language"), which was also used by other non-Han Chinese dynasties in China to refer to their languages like Manchu of the Qing, Classical Mongolian during the Yuan dynasty, Jurchen during the Jin, and Xianbei during the Northern Wei. Even today, Mandarin is referred to in Taiwan as Guoyu.

There are several closed systems of Khitan lexical items for which systematic information is available.^[3] The following is a list of words in these closed systems that are similar to Mongolic. Mongolian and Daur equivalents are given after the English translation:

The Liaoshi records in Chapter 53:

國語謂是日為「討賽咿兒」。「討」五；「賽咿兒」，月也。

In the national (Khitan) language this day (5th day of the 5th lunar month) is called 'Tao Saiyier'. 'Tao' means five; 'Saiyier' means moon/month.

'Tao Saiyier' corresponds to Mongolian 'tavan sar' (fifth moon/month).

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Texts in Khitan language

Look up Category:Khitan language in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wiktionary has a word list at Appendix:Khitan word list

• New Developments of the Studies on Khitai Language and Khitai Scripts Archived 2016-04-03 at the Wayback Machine