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

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

by the Nenets people. They are often treated as being two

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

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

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelli ...

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. Geography It is surrounded by the White Sea to the west and by the Barents Sea to the north and east. Shoyna (also spelled Shoina) is one of the few communities o ...

to the

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, 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 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 ...

, 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. 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) and ...

. 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 that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

: '

parka A parka, like the related anorak, is a type of coat (clothing), coat with a hood (headgear), hood, that may be lining (sewing), lined with fur or fake fur. Parkas and anoraks are staples of Inuit clothing, traditionally made from Reindeer, cari ...

', 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 sentence Dec ...

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 Velar consonants 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 (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relativel ...

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 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