Nenets (in former work also Yurak) is a pair of closely related languages spoken in northern

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

by the

Nenets people The Nenets ( yrk, ненэй ненэче, ''nenəj nenəče'', russian: ненцы, ''nentsy''), also known as Samoyed, are a Samoyedic ethnic group native to northern Arctic Russia, Russian Far North. According to the latest census in 2010, t ...

. They are often treated as being two

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

s of the same language, but they are very different and

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

is low. The languages are Tundra Nenets, which has a higher number of speakers, spoken by some 30,000 to 40,000 people in an area stretching from the

Kanin Peninsula The Kanin Peninsula () is a large peninsula in Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is surrounded by the White Sea to the west and by the Barents Sea to the north and east. Shoyna is one of the few communities on the peninsula. Fauna For cetacea ...

to the

Yenisei River The Yenisey (russian: Енисе́й, ''Yeniséy''; mn, Горлог мөрөн, ''Gorlog mörön''; Buryat: Горлог мүрэн, ''Gorlog müren''; Tuvan: Улуг-Хем, ''Uluğ-Hem''; Khakas: Ким суғ, ''Kim suğ''; Ket: Ӄук, ...

, and Forest Nenets, spoken by 1,000 to 1,500 people in the area around the

Agan The Agan (russian: Аган) is a river in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug in Russia. It is long, and its basin covers . Course The Agan is a left tributary of the Tromyogan, of the Ob basin. To the south of its course lies the basin of the Vat ...

, Pur, Lyamin and Nadym rivers. The Nenets languages are classified in the

Uralic language family The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...

, making them distantly related to some national languages spoken in Europe – namely

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

, Estonian, and Hungarian – in addition to other minority languages spoken in Russia. Both of the Nenets languages have been greatly influenced by

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

. 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 Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...

and

minority language A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 196 sovereign states recognized internationally (as of 2019) a ...

. It has a literary tradition going back to the 1930s, while Forest Nenets was first written during the 1990s and has been little documented. Apart from the word 'Nenets', only one other Nenets word has entered the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

: '

parka A parka or anorak is a type of coat with a hood, often lined with fur or faux fur. This kind of garment is a staple of Inuit clothing, traditionally made from caribou or seal skin, for hunting and kayaking in the frigid Arctic. Some Inuit ...

', their traditional long, hooded jacket, made from skins and sometimes fur.

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 A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...

statements or different degrees of force in what in English might be called imperative commands. 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. * *Cä, *Ca → *Cʲa, *Ca * *Ce, *Cë → *Cʲe, *Ce * *Ci, *Cï → *Cʲi, *Ci * *Cö, *Co → *Cʲo, *Co * *Cü, *Cu → *Cʲu, *Cu The

velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive an ...

s *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 The Khanty ( Khanty: ханти, ''hanti''), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (russian: остяки) are a Ugric indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, togethe ...

dialects. Changes towards the modern languages include: * Tundra Nenets: ** Delabialization of /wʲ/ → /j/ ** Lenition of initial /k/ → /x/ ** Simplification of /ʔk/ → /k/ * Forest Nenets: ** Initial /s/ → /x/ ** Medial denasalization of /nʲ/ → /j/ ** The change of rhotics to lateral fricatives: /r/, /rʲ/ → /ɬ/, /ɬʲ/ ** Shortening of geminate nasals ** Breaking of geminate /lː/ → /nɬ/ ** Phonemicization of palatalized velars /kʲ/, /xʲ/, /ŋʲ/ due to vowel changes ** Raising of non-close vowels preceding a syllable with an original close vowel ** Loss of vowel distinctions in unstressed syllables ** Introduction of short/long contrasts for /a/ and /æ/

References

Note

External links

Tundra Nenets website

The Russian–Nenets Audio Phrasebook

Comparative Nenets–Nganasan dictionary (with Russian and English equivalents)
{{Authority control Northern Samoyedic languages Languages of Russia