Koriak

(Nymylan), the language of the Koriaks, the main population of the Koriak National Okrug. A language of the Chukchi-Kamchatka group, Koriak is spoken by about 6,100 persons (1970 census). It is subdivided into several dialects: Chavchuven, Paren, Itkan, Kamen, Apukin, Palan, and Karagin. Koriak has vowel synharmony and consonant assimilation and is an agglutinative and incorporative language. It has a multicase system of noun declension, and in its verb inflection there is a contrasting subject and subject-object conjugation. Koriak has a nominative and an ergative construction. The Koriak writing system, based on the Chavchuven dialect, was created in 1931 using the Roman alphabet; a Russian-based alphabet was introduced in 1936.