From the 5th to the 7th of December, the 11th annual Seoul International Conference of Altaistics was held, with the main theme of “Syncronic and diachronic studies on Altaic languages.” The Altai community of Korea took the lead in organizing the event.
The overarching goal of the yearly conference is to stimulate research of Altai languages and literatures around the world. Scientists in the field of Altai studies took part in the discussions, which touched on subjects such as language, literature, history, and culture. Participants in the conference discussed the actual questions relating to research in the field of languages and national cultures of such minorities living on the territory of Russia, China, Japan whose language are all part of the Altai family. Researchers from Saint Petersburg, Ulan-Ude, Khabarovsk, Blagoveshchensk, and Yakutsk represented the Russian delegation at the conference of some 39 people. BGU Professor E.F. Afanasieva, a docent and chair of the Department of Indigenous Languages of Siberian Peoples, BGU, gave a talk entitled “Experimental research of the Evenk language in Buryatia.”