Words Representing the Concept of ‘Soul’ in Southern Siberian Turkic Languages

In the following article, we offer a comparative analysis of ‘soul’ nomination in Turkic languages of Siberia regarding their usage in folklore texts, translated Christian texts, and modern literary fiction. We also analyze the potential of translation of the Russian concept of ‘soul’ in various contexts in this languages; this is where the novelty of our research lies, as well as its relevance in the context of the new wave of literary translations. Unlike the Russian concept of ‘soul’, which encompasses a large number of meanings and ideas, in the world view of Siberian Turkic peoples, there are many substances related to various aspects of the human nature. Some of these are related to the physical world (they are reflected in the names of ‘souls’ rooted in traditional beliefs), and some are related to people’s mental and psychological activities. The latter are also frequently represented by somatic terms such as ‘stomach’, ‘heart’, ‘liver’. Our analysis shows that among all the terms denoting ‘souls’ in traditional beliefs, the following three are commonly used in the selected texts: qut, sune ~ sunezin, tin, and (less frequently) d’ula ~ cula. Traditional terms for ‘souls’ are mostly found in folklore (tin, qut ~ xut, sus, d’ula ~ cula) in specific contexts tied to traditional beliefs. Some terms are used as components of idioms, most of which have similar structures and semantics, and have correlations in other Turkic languages. Terms for ‘souls’ related to shamanism were also found in early and modern translations of Christian texts into Altai and Khakas (tin, qut ~ xut, d’ula, sune). In the modern Tuvan language, the Mongolian loanword setkil serves as the primary term for ‘soul’, including Christian texts and descriptions of one’s psychological life. Traditional nominations of souls, apart from the aforementioned setkil (Tuvan), are not used to describe emotions due to their specific traits. In modern literary fiction, one’s inner spiritual world is described by the means of other terms which may be defined as ‘soul, one’s spiritual world’. For these lexemes, the meaning of ‘soul’ is not the primary one. Their main meanings are related to human mind/intellect, desires, and physical body. The Khakas loanword чан is an exception, with ‘soul’ as its primary meaning, which is close to the similar loanword in non-Siberian Turkic languages, where it is widely used in the same meaning and also as a form of address. Other Siberian Turkic nominations which correlate with the Russian word dusha ‘soul’ as ‘the center of one’s inner world’ may be divided into the following three groups: 1) Lexemes which mainly denote ‘intelligence’, ‘thought’: Tuvan sagis ‘memory, mental preservation of events’; Tuvan setkil ‘thought’; 2) Lexemes denoting ‘desire’, ‘mood’: Altai kuun ~ Khakas koyni ‘desire’ ~ Tuvan xoynu ‘mood’; 3) Lexemes generally denoting ‘visceras’ (something inside one’s body): Altai ic ~ Khakas isti ~ Tuvan izin ‘stomach, innards’; Altai ozok ‘stomach, innards’. In the Siberian Turkic language world image, buur ~ baar ~paar ‘liver’ и d’urek ~ curek ‘heart’ are important locations of one’s emotional processes. The liver is frequently viewed as the center of positive feelings, and in these languages, it is often related to kinship and children. In some contexts, it may be translated as ‘soul’ into Russian. Our study demonstrates a strong connection between one’s emotional state and mental processes, particularly in Tuvan, which is less evident in non-Siberian Turkic languages. Perhaps it stems from the Mongolian influence, where the inseparable connection between a person’s intellectual and psychological activities is a typical trait.

Keywords

Authors

References