INTERRELATION OF FEATURES OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DIALECT (OLD BELIEVERS «KAMENSHIKI» OF THE KAZAKH ALTAI AND «SINTSZYANTSY» OF SOUTH AMERICA)

Many villages along the Bukhtarma River in the Kazakh part of Altai are places of “exodus” of Old-Believers towards the Chinese province of Western Xinjiang in the 1930s and later to South America. “Sintszyantsy” has become a new nickname for their groups, appeared to replace the old nickname “kamenshchiki”. Bukhtarminsky dialect is considered to be a mother tongue or a primary dialect in relation to a resettled, secondary dialect of the South American “sintszyantsy”.

The article is based on the expedition material recorded by O. G. Rovnova on the Bukhtarma, in Zyryanovsky district of the East Kazakhstan region (2011) and in the settlements of “sintszyantsy” in Argentina (2006, 2011, 2012), Brazil (2008, 2010). It provides a comparative description of the language situation and confessional culture in the Old Believers’ settlements of Kazakhstan and South America as well as the correlation of dialect features of the same Russian dialect, divided geographically. Due to the use of instrumental methods, the nature of vocalism after hard and soft consonants has been clarified. It has been made the general conclusion that according to the complex of dialect features the dialect is similar to dialects of the northeast of Nizhny Novgorod, the south-west of Kirov and the east of Kostroma region. The dialects of this territory are the North Russian base of the Middle Russian dialect of “sintszyantsy” and “kamenshchiki”.