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-ei ...

by the Nenets people. 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 ...

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 ...

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 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, 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,

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also * ...

, 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 Eastern may refer to: Transportation *China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai *Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways *Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991 *Eastern Air Li ...

. Tundra Nenets is well documented, considering its status as an indigenous 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) ...

. 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 Proto-Samoyedic, or Proto-Samoyed, is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Samoyedic languages: Nenets ( Tundra and Forest), Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, as well as extinct Kamas and Mator. Samoyedic is one of the principal branches of ...

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 place of articulation, 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 Soft palate, velum). Since the velar region of the roof of ...

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 The Enets (russian: энцы, ; singular: , ; also known as Yenetses, Entsy, Entsi, Yenisei or Yenisey Samoyeds) are a Samoyedic ethnic group who live on the east bank, near the mouth, of the Yenisei River. Historically nomadic people, they now ...

, Nganasan and the extinct

Yurats Yurats (Yurak) was a Samoyedic language spoken in the Siberian tundra west of the Yenisei River. It became extinct in the early 19th century. Yurats was probably either a transitional variety connecting the Nenets and Enets language The Enets ...

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