The Samoyedic () or Samoyed languages () are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

, by approximately 25,000 people altogether, accordingly called the Samoyedic peoples. They derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Samoyedic, and form a branch of the

Uralic languages The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers ab ...

. Having separated perhaps in the last centuries BC, they are not a diverse group of languages, and are traditionally considered to be an outgroup, branching off first from the other Uralic languages.

Etymology

The term ''Samoyedic'' is derived from the Russian term ''samoyed'' () originally applied only to the Nenets people and later extended to other related peoples. One of the theories supposes that the term is interpreted by some ethnologists as originating somewhat derogatorily from Russian ''samo-yed'', literally meaning "self-eater" (the word has been interpreted by foreign travelers as an allegation of cannibalism). Another suggestion for the term's origin is a corruption of the expression ''saam-edne'', meaning "Land of the Saams". The word ''Samodeic'' has been proposed as an alternative by some ethnologists. In modern Russian the words самодийцы/самодийские (''samodiytsy/samodiyskie''), i.e., "samodians"/"samodian" are used for this ethnic grouping and the corresponding area of research is called "samodistika", i.e., "samodistics". The word " самоед/samoyed" also refers in Russian to an excessively introspective or self-disparaging person i.e., the one engaged in самоедство/"self-devouring".

Classification

Traditionally, Samoyedic languages and peoples have been divided into two major areal groups: Northern Samoyedic (Nenets, Yurats, Enets, Nganasans), and Southern Samoyedic (Selkups) with a further now-extinct subgroup of Sayan-Samoyedics (Kamasins, Mators) named after the

Sayan Mountains The Sayan Mountains (, ; ) are a mountain range in southern Siberia spanning southeastern Russia (Buryatia, Irkutsk Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Tuva and Khakassia) and northern Mongolia. Before the rapid expansion of the Tsardom of Russia, the mou ...

. They are however purely geographical, and do not reflect linguistic relations. Linguistic genealogical classifications point to an early divergence of Nganasan and (perhaps to a lesser degree) Mator, with Enets–Nenets–Yurats and Kamas–Selkup forming internal branches. * Samoyedic ** Nganasan (''Tavgi'' or ''Tawgi-Samoyed'') *** Avam *** Vadey/Vadeyev ** Core-Samoyedic *** Enets-Nenets **** Enets (''Yenisei-Samoyed'') ***** Tundra Enets ***** Forest Enets **** Yurats **** Nenets (''Yurak-Samoyed'') ***** Tundra Nenets ***** Forest Nenets *** Kamas-Selkup **** Selkup ''(Ostyak-Samoyed'') ***** Northern Selkup (Taz) ***** Central Selkup (Tym) ***** Southern Selkup (Ket) **** Kamassian (''Sayan-Samoyed'') ***** Kamas ***** Koibal ** Mator (''Sayan-Samoyed'') *** Mator *** Taigi *** Karagas *** Soyot (Modern Soyots were subject to

Turkification Turkification, Turkization, or Turkicization () describes a shift whereby populations or places receive or adopt Turkic attributes such as culture, language, history, or ethnicity. However, often this term is more narrowly applied to mean specif ...

and do not speak the historical language)

Grammar

Samoyedic languages are primarily agglutinative. They have postpositions and suffixes and do not use articles or prefixes. Samoyedic languages also have grammatical evidentiality. Word order in Samoyedic languages is typically subject-object-verb (SOV). Below are two sentences in Nenets that demonstrate SOV word order and case in Samoyedic languages:

Nouns

Nouns in Samoyedic languages do not have gender, but they are declined for number (singular, dual, and plural) as well as case. All Samoyedic languages have at least seven noun cases which may include nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, locative, instrumental, lative, and/or prolative depending on the language.

Verbs

Many Samoyedic languages have the following three conjugation types: subjective, objective (in which the number of the object is expressed in addition to that of the subject), and reflexive. Verbs in Samoyedic languages have several moods, ranging from at least eight in Selkup to at least sixteen in Nenets. Other forms of verbs that can be found in Samoyedic languages are gerunds, participles, and infinitives. Of the Samoyedic languages, only Selkup has verbal aspect.

Phonology

Sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels a ...

obstruent An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well ...

consonant clusters with two consonants, of which the latter consonant is more sonorous than the former, are the most frequently occurring consonant clusters in several Samoyedic languages. Conversely, consonant clusters ending in glides are not found in any Samoyedic languages. Unlike some other Uralic languages, Samoyedic languages do not have vowel harmony. Vowel

epenthesis In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...

is frequently used in Samoyedic languages to break up consonant clusters, particularly in the case of loanwords borrowed from Russian. Vowel epenthesis from Russian to Nenets * крупа (krupa) > xurupa "cereals" * класс (klass) > xalas "class" Vowel epenthesis from Russian to Nganasan * бригада (brigada) > birigadә "brigade" * метр (metr) > metәrә "meter" Vowel epenthesis from Russian to Selkup * стекло (stʲeklo) > tʲekɨla "glass" * стол (stol) > istol "table"

Contact with Russian language

Samoyedic languages have experienced significant language contact with Russian to such an extent that members of the Nenets, Selkup, Nganasan, and Enets ethnic groups now often have Russian as a first language, with speakers of Samoyedic languages primarily belonging to elder age groups. Russian loanwords in Samoyedic languages include: колхоз ("collective farm"), машина ("car"), молоко ("milk"), Москва ("Moscow").

Geographical distribution

At present, Samoyed territory extends from the

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to the Laptev Sea, along the

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shores of

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, including southern Novaya Zemlya, the

Yamal Peninsula The Yamal Peninsula () is located in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of northwest Siberia, Russia. It extends roughly 700 km (435 mi) and is bordered principally by the Kara Sea and its Baydaratskaya Bay on the west, and by the G ...

, the mouths of the Ob and the Yenisei, and into the Taimyr peninsula in northernmost

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. They are contiguous with the trans-Ural Ugric speakers and the cis-Ural Komi to the south, but they are cut off from the Baltic Finns by the

Russians Russians ( ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. Their mother tongue is Russian language, Russian, the most spoken Slavic languages, Slavic language. The majority of Russians adhere to Eastern Orthodox Church ...

in the west. To the east traditionally dwell the northern Turkic Sakha. A substantial Samoyed city grew up at Mangazeya in the 16th century as a trade city, but was destroyed at the beginning of the 17th century. The Southern Samoyedic languages, of which only the Selkup language has survived to the present day, historically ranged across a wide territory in central Siberia, extending from the basin of the Ob River in the west to the Sayan- Baikal uplands in the east. Records up to the 18th century sporadically report several further entities such as "Abakan", "Kagmasin", "Soyot", though there is no clear evidence for any of these constituting separate languages, and all available data appears to be explainable as these having been simply early forms of Kamassian or Mator. ,

References

External links

* {{Authority control Languages of Russia