Heritage Kinship Terminology and Language Shift Among the Buryats of Khövsgöl, Mongolia

While previous studies of Mongolian regional dialects have consistently classified the Khövsgöl Buryat language under the category of “Buryat dialects”, no empirical linguistic example has been documented in academic literature. Driven by a research interest in whether the Khövsgöl Buryat heritage language still preserves its Buryat heritage features or has transformed into a variety of the nationally standardized Khalkha dialect as a result of historical and sociopolitical influence, the authors conducted fieldwork in Tsagaan-Üür soum of Khövsgöl province in August 2021 and January–February 2022. Although Tsagaan-Üür has a majority Buryat population, locating and interviewing speakers who actively used the Khövsgöl Buryat heritage language was challenging. Daily life is conducted mostly in Khalkha dialect, and elder speakers who retained knowledge of the Khövsgöl Buryat heritage language were initially reluctant to speak it openly due to the legacy of political repression. This study applied methods for assessing the linguistic and cultural vitality of the Khövsgöl Buryats, documenting endangered languages, and designing language revitalization strategies. Audio and video recordings of linguistic and cultural material were collected, archived, and analyzed to determine the current state of the Khövsgöl Buryat heritage language. In the research participants’ recollections and the terms they used to address each other, many kinship terms appear. These terms are distinguished by a phonological system and semantic shift that indicate male and female referents, and they preserve many linguistic heritages that have disappeared from other regional dialects.