Nenets languages

Last updated
Nenets
ненэцяʼ вада
nenécja' vada
Native to Russia
Region Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Komi Republic, Murmansk Oblast [ citation needed ]
Ethnicity49,787 (2020 census) [1]
Native speakers
38,405 (2020 census) [2]
Uralic
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3 yrk
Glottolog nene1251
Nenets current.png
Distribution of Nenets languages in the 21st century. [3] [4]

Nenets (in former work also Yurak) is a pair of closely related languages spoken in northern Russia by the Nenets people. They are often treated as being two dialects of the same language, but they are very different and mutual intelligibility is low. The languages are Tundra Nenets, which has a higher number of speakers, spoken by some 30,000 to 40,000 people [5] [6] in an area stretching from the Kanin Peninsula to the Yenisei River, [7] and Forest Nenets, spoken by 1,000 to 1,500 people in the area around the Agan, Pur, Lyamin and Nadym rivers. [5] [6]

Contents

The Nenets languages are classified in the Uralic language family, making them distantly related to some national languages spoken in Europe – namely Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian – in addition to other minority languages spoken in Russia. Both of the Nenets languages have been greatly influenced by Russian. Tundra Nenets has, to a lesser degree, been influenced by Komi and Northern Khanty. Forest Nenets has also been influenced by Eastern Khanty. Tundra Nenets is well documented, considering its status as an indigenous and minority language. It has a literary tradition going back to the 1930s, while Forest Nenets was first written during the 1990s and has been little documented. [6]

Apart from the word 'Nenets', only one other Nenets word has entered the English language: 'parka', their traditional long, hooded jacket, made from skins and sometimes fur. [8] [9] [ unreliable source? ]

Common features of Nenets languages

Tundra Nenets has 16 moods, most of which reflect different degrees of certainty in what in English might be called indicative statements or different degrees of force in what in English might be called imperative commands. [10] An overarching feature of the Nenets languages is the introduction of systematic palatalization of almost all consonants. This originates from contrasts between different vowel qualities in the Proto-Samoyedic language. [11]

The velar consonants *k and *ŋ were additionally shifted to *sʲ and *nʲ when palatalized.

Similar changes have also occurred in the other Samoyedic languages spoken in the tundra zone: Enets, Nganasan and the extinct Yurats.

Differences between Tundra and Forest Nenets

Tundra Nenets generally has remained closer to Proto-Nenets than Forest Nenets, whose phonology has been influenced by eastern Khanty dialects. Changes towards the modern languages include: [12] [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

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The Uralic languages, sometimes called the Uralian languages, form a language family of 42 languages spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt and Komi spoken in the European parts of the Russian Federation. Still smaller minority languages are Sámi languages of the northern Fennoscandia; other members of the Finnic languages, ranging from Livonian in northern Latvia to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; and the Samoyedic languages, Mansi and Khanty spoken in Western Siberia.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingrian language</span> Finnic language spoken by the Izhorians of Ingria, Russia

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Livvi-Karelian language</span> Karelian dialect spoken in Russia and Finland

Livvi-Karelian is a supradialect of the Karelian language, which is a Finnic language of the Uralic family, spoken by Olonets Karelians, traditionally inhabiting the area between Ladoga and Onega lakes, northward of Svir River.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Komi language</span> Uralic language spoken in Russia

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Udmurt language</span> Uralic language

Udmurt is a Permic language spoken by the Udmurt people who are native to Udmurtia. As a Uralic language, it is distantly related to languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian. The Udmurt language is co-official with Russian within Udmurtia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enets language</span> Moribund Samoyedic language of Siberia

Enets is a Samoyedic language of Northern Siberia spoken on the Lower Yenisei within the boundaries of the Taimyr Municipality District, a subdivision of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian Federation. Enets belongs to the Northern branch of the Samoyedic languages, in turn a branch of the Uralic language family. In 2010 about 40 people claimed to be native Enets speakers, while in 2020, 69 people claimed to speak Enets natively, while 97 people claimed to know Enets in total.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mordvinic languages</span> Pair of Uralic languages of Russia

The Mordvinic languages, also known as the Mordvin, Mordovian or Mordvinian languages , are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Moksha language, both spoken in Mordovia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mansi languages</span> Uralic languages spoken in Russia

The Mansi languages are spoken by the Mansi people in Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Sverdlovsk Oblast. Traditionally considered a single language, they constitute a branch of the Uralic languages, often considered most closely related to neighbouring Khanty and then to Hungarian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Selkup language</span> Samoyedic language of Siberia

Selkup is the language of the Selkups, belonging to the Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. It is spoken by some 1,570 people in the region between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers. The language name Selkup comes from the Russian селькуп, based on the native name used in the Taz dialect, шӧльӄумыт әты šöľqumyt əty, lit. 'forest-man language'. Different dialects use different names.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nganasan language</span> Endangered Samoyedic language

The Nganasan language is a moribund Samoyedic language spoken by the Nganasan people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kamassian language</span> Extinct Samoyed language

Kamassian is an extinct Samoyedic language. It is included by convention in the Southern group together with Mator and Selkup. The last native speaker of Kamassian, Klavdiya Plotnikova, died in 1989. Kamassian was spoken in Russia, north of the Sayan Mountains, by Kamasins. The last speakers lived mainly in the village of Abalakovo. Prior to its extinction, the language was strongly influenced by Turkic languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mator language</span> Extinct Samoyedic language

Mator or Motor is an extinct Uralic language belonging to the group of Samoyedic languages, extinct since the 1840s. It was spoken in the northern region of the Sayan Mountains in Siberia, close to the Mongolian north border. The speakers of Mator, Matorians or Mators, lived in a wide area from the eastern parts of the Minusinsk District (okrug) along the Yenisei River to the region of Lake Baikal. Three dialects of Mator were recorded: Mator proper as well as Taygi and Karagas. Mator was influenced by Mongolic, Tungusic and Turkic languages before it went extinct, and may have even been possibly influenced by the Iranic languages.

Proto-Samoyedic, or Proto-Samoyed, is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Samoyedic languages: Nenets, Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, as well as extinct Kamas and Mator. Samoyedic is one of the principal branches of the Uralic language family, and its ancestor is Proto-Uralic. It has been suggested that Proto-Samoyedic greatly influenced the development of Tocharian, an Indo-European language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">En with hook</span> Cyrillic letter used for /ŋ/ in many languages

En with hook is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Its form is derived from the Cyrillic letter En (Н н) by adding a hook to the right leg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forest Nenets language</span> Samoyedic language

Forest Nenets is a Samoyedic language spoken in northern Russia, around the Agan, Pur, Lyamin and Nadym rivers, by the Nenets people. It is closely related to the Tundra Nenets language, and the two are still sometimes seen as simply being dialects of a single Nenets language, despite there being low mutual intelligibility between the two. The next closest relatives are Nganasan and Enets, after them Selkup, and even more distantly the other Uralic languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tundra Nenets language</span> Samoyedic language

Tundra Nenets is a Uralic language spoken in European Russia and North-Western Siberia. It is the largest and best-preserved language in the Samoyedic group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastern Mansi language</span> Extinct Uralic language spoken in Russia

Eastern Mansi is an extinct Uralic language spoken in Russia in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug around the river Konda. It became extinct in 2018, when its last speaker Maksim Šivtorov died. It has Khanty and Siberian Tatar influence. There is vowel harmony, and for it has, frequently diphthongized.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Mansi language</span>

Southern (Tavda) Mansi was a Uralic language spoken in Russia in the Sverdlovsk. It was recorded from an area isolated from the other Mansi varieties along the river Tavda. Around 1900 a couple hundred speakers existed; in the 1960s it was spoken only by a few elderly speakers, and it has since then become extinct. It had strong Tatar lexical influence and displayed several archaisms such as vowel harmony, retention of, , and.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Mansi language</span> Extinct Uralic language

Western Mansi was described as "probably extinct" in 1988. Although the last speaker is not known, none were left by the end of the 20th century. It had strong Russian and Komi influences; dialect differences were also considerable. Long vowels were diphthongized.

References

Note

  1. ↑ "Росстат — Всероссийская перепись населения 2020". rosstat.gov.ru. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
  2. ↑ "Итоги Всероссийской переписи населения 2020 года. Таблица 6. Население по родному языку" [Results of the All-Russian population census 2020. Table 6. population according to native language.]. rosstat.gov.ru. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
  3. ↑ Rantanen, Timo; Tolvanen, Harri; Roose, Meeli; Ylikoski, Jussi; Vesakoski, Outi (2022-06-08). "Best practices for spatial language data harmonization, sharing and map creation—A case study of Uralic". PLOS ONE. 17 (6): e0269648. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1769648R. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269648 . PMC   9176854 . PMID   35675367.
  4. ↑ Rantanen, Timo, Vesakoski, Outi, Ylikoski, Jussi, & Tolvanen, Harri. (2021). Geographical database of the Uralic languages (v1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4784188
  5. 1 2 "Nenets". ethnologue.com. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 Salminen, Tapani, Ackerman, Farrell (2006). "Nenets". In Brown, Keith (ed.). Encyclopedia of Languages & Linguistics. Vol. 8 (2 ed.). Oxford, England: Elsevier. pp. 577–579.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ↑ Staroverov, Peter (2006). Vowel deletion and stress in Tundra Nenets. Moscow, Russia. p. 1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ↑ "parka", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
  9. ↑ Games, Alex (2007). Balderdash & Piffle: One Sandwich Short of a Dog's Dinner . London: BBC. ISBN   978-1-84607-235-2.
  10. ↑ "Tundra Nenets grammatical sketch". www.helsinki.fi. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  11. 1 2 Sammallahti, Pekka (1988), "Historical phonology of the Uralic languages, with special reference to Samoyed, Ugric, and Permic", The Uralic Languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences, Leiden: Brill, pp. 478–554
  12. ↑ Salminen, Tapani (2007), "Notes on Forest Nenets phonology" (PDF), Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne (253), Helsinki, Finland: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura
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