Хятан хэлний үгийн сангаас тус хэлний язгуур хэлний харьяаллыг хайх нь

Exploring the Linguistic Family Affiliation of the Khitan Language through Khitan Vocabulary

Abstract

This paper takes the deciphered Khitan scripts and vocabulary as the starting point to explore the controversial issue of the linguistic family affiliation of the Khitan language, which has four main viewpoints: belonging to the Mongolian branch, being a mixed language of Mongolian and Tungusic, etc. Among the deciphered Khitan words, there are many Chinese loanwords, but they are of limited use for studying the linguistic family affiliation. The remaining static words and some verbs have many similarities or correspondences with Mongolian in terms of pronunciation, sound and meaning, especially the obvious similarities in the names of the twelve Chinese zodiac animals and numerals. On the whole, there is no dispute that the Khitan language belongs to the Altaic language family, and it may belong to the Mongolian branch.