The Udege language (also Udihe language, Udekhe language, Udeghe language) is the language of the Udege people. It is a member of the Tungusic family.

Ethnonyms  
Until the beginning of the 20th century, neither the Orochs, nor the Udeges, nor the Tazes, who were considered one ethnic group, had a common self-name, each group had its own territorial name. Ethnic identity was present rather "implicitly", i.e. when local autochthonous inhabitants were opposed to alien peoples (Chinese, Manchus, Koreans, etc.).

For the first time, a common ethnonym for the Udeges, Orochs and Taz was given by Jean-François de Laperouse by the common ethnonym Orochons () for the indigenous population living along the coast of the Tatar Strait and the Sea of Japan, namely in the Gulf of De-Kastri in 1787 in time of his round-the-world trip. This name was in use in literature until the beginning of the 20th century, when the Udege language received its modern name.

For the first time, the term удиhе (udihe) as a self-designation for the people was introduced by the Russian ethnographer Brailovsky S. N. at the turn of the 20th century. This self-designation was worn by one of the groups of northern Udege. At the same time, he did not separate the Udege and Orochs. Brailovsky also began to use the term taz as a synonym for the term udihe. In the late 1920s, a campaign was launched in the country to change ethnonyms. The Orochons were divided into three groups and became Orochs, Udeges or Tazes. For the first time, such a division can be found in the works of Arseniev V. K.

Dialects 

Traditionaly, the udihe were semi-nomads, moving within a limited territory, each along a particular river and its tributaries, thereby forming territotial groups which usually consisted of several families. The territorial groups are mostly named after the corresponding rivers: (1) Kur-Urmi, (2) Samarga, (3) Anyuy, (4) Khungari, (5) Khor, (6) Bikin, (7) Iman, and (8) Sea shore (Namunka). From a linguistic point of view, the dialects of the Udege language, as well as the Oroch language, form a common continuum. Actually, the Udege continuum is divided along the “north-south” line, relating to all levels: phonetics and phonology, morphology and vocabulary, syntax. There are no sufficient materials on the Kur-Urmi dialect.

The Udihe dialects can be classified as follows:

 Kur-Urmi

Northern group:
 khor (udg. хуӈка)
 anyuy (udg. униӈка)
 samarga (udg. самаргиӈка)
 khungari (udg. хуӈгаке) †
Southern group: 
 bikin (udg. бикиӈка)
 iman (udg. имаӈка)
 primorskiy (sea shore) (udg. намуӈка) †

The southern dialects were known as Kekar or Kyakala. The "Kyakala" of Russia is not to be confused with the Jurchenic "Kyakala" spoken in China, also called Chinese Kyakala in order distinguish it from "Russian Kyakala" (i.e., Kekar, or southern Udegheic).

In the 30s of the 20th century, the Khor dialect on a Latin basis, created by Yevgeny Robertovich Schneider, was taken as the basis for the literary Udege language, which existed until 1937, when it was not repressed, and all literature created in Latin was not banned. Instead, the Cyrillic alphabet was formally introduced as part of a general campaign, but de facto the Udege language became unwritten until the 1980s.

In the late 80s, two literary languages began to form in the Udege language:

- one for the northern group based on the Khor dialect (Simonov-Kulyandziga alphabet; "Khabarovsk");

- the second for the southern group based on the Bikin dialect (the alphabet of Perekhvalskaya; "Leningrad" / "Petersburg").

Orthography 

Previously an oral language, in 1931 an alphabet was created for writing Udege as a part of latinisation in the Soviet Union.
In 1938 the policy of latinisation was reversed and the written Udige language was banned by Soviet authorities.  Books in Udihe were collected and burned. , an Udige language author and translator was declared an enemy of the people and executed.

Udege is currently written in two versions of the Cyrillic alphabet, known as the "Petersburg" and the "Khabarovsk" versions. The Khabarovsk version is used more often.

A few older letters that were used in this language: Ж ж, З з, Љ љ, Ц ц, Ш ш, Щ щ, Ъ ъ, Ы ы, ‘Ы ‘ы, Ы̄ ы̄, Ы̂ ы̂, Ю ю, ‘Ю ‘ю, Ю̄ ю̄, Ю̂ ю̂, Я я, ‘Я ‘я, Я̄ я̄, Я̂ я̂

Phonology 
The dialects of the Udege language differ in their sound composition, primarily in the system of vocalism. Northern dialects are characterized by the presence of five categories of vowel phonemes: short, long, diphthongs (which are similar in nature to long ones), glottalized and aspirated. In the southern dialects, aspirated vowels are absent, diphthongs tend to monophthongization. Vowel harmony is characteristic of all dialects. As for consonantism, there are 20 consonant phonemes in the northern dialects of the Udege language, and 19 in the southern dialects (there is no velar fricative /ɣ/).

The nature of glottalized and aspirated vowels in Udege can be explained by the loss of some consonants in the position between two vowels. Experimental studies have shown that in the northern dialects glottalized vowels are interrupted by a bow, therefore they are called "discontinuous". With a more fluent pronunciation, the bow is replaced by a "creaky" phonation.

In the related Udege language, aspirated and discontinuous vowels correspond to three-phonemic combinations of vowels with consonants. In general, aspirated long vowels are formed from the combination V-s-V, and glottalized long vowels from the combination V-q-V.

 /d͡z/ in the Southern dialect can have an allophone of [z].
 /p/ in medial positions can be heard as [f].

Vocabulary 
Udege contains a variety of loanwords from the closely related Nanai language, which have supplanted some older Udege vocabulary, such as:

 [banixe] (thank you), from Nanai [banixa], instead of Udege [usasa]
  (work), from Nanai , instead of Udege 
  (book) from Nanai , itself a loanword from  (Pinyin: ), which actually means "file, records, archives"
In general, a large degree of mutual assimilation of the two languages has been observed in the Bikin region. Udege has also exerted phonological influence on the Bikin dialect of Nanai, including monophthongisation of diphthongs, denasalisation of nasal vowels, deletion of reduced final vowels, epenthetic vowels preventing consonant final words, and the deletion of intervocalic [w].

Examples 
The beginning of the fairy tale "Selemege":

Notes

Bibliography

External links
 Chukchi fairy tales in Udihe (Udehe) and English
 Максим Руссо. Карта языков России: удэгейский (Полит.ру, 10 марта 2019)
 The Sound of the Udege language (Numbers & Sample Text)

Agglutinative languages
Critically endangered languages
Khabarovsk Krai
Languages of Russia
Tungusic languages