Northern Khanty is a
Uralic language
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 ...
, frequently considered a dialect of a unified
Khanty language
Khanty (also spelled Khanti or Hanti), previously known as Ostyak (), is a branch of the Ugric languages composed of multiple dialect continuum, dialect continua. It is varyingly considered a language or a collection of distinct languages spoken i ...
, spoken by about 9,000 people. It is the most widely spoken out of all the Khanty languages, the majority composed of 5,000 speakers in the
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (; ) also known as Yamalia () is a federal subject of Russia and an autonomous okrug of Tyumen Oblast. Its administrative center is the town of Salekhard, and its largest city is Novy Urengoy. The 2021 Russian ...
, in Russia.
The reason for this discrepancy is that dialects of Northern Khanty have been better preserved in its northern reaches, and the Middle Ob and Kazym dialects are losing favor to Russian. All four dialects have been literary, beginning with the Middle Ob dialects, but shifting to Kazym, and back to Middle Ob, now the most used dialect in writing. The Shuryshkar dialects are also written, primarily due to an administrative division between the two, as the latter is spoken in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
Dialects
Dialects of Northern Khanty:
*
Obdorsk (
Priuralsky District)
*
Berjozov (Synja, Muzhi, Shuryshkar),
Kazym, Sherkal
Transitional
* Atlym, Nizyam
Phonology
Kazym
Consonants
The Kazym dialect distinguishes 18 consonants.
Vowels
The vowel inventory is much simpler. Eight vowels are distinguished in initial syllables: six full and four reduced . In unstressed syllables, four values are found: .
A similarly simple vowel inventory is found in the Nizyam, Sherkal, and Berjozov dialects, which have full and reduced . Aside from the full vs. reduced contrast rather than one of length, this is identical to that of the adjacent Sosva dialect of
Mansi
Mansi may refer to:
* Mansi people, an Indigenous people of Russia
** Mansi language
*Mansi (name), given name and surname
*Mansi Junction railway station
* Mansi Township, Myanmar
** Mansi, Myanmar, a town in the Kachin State of Myanmar (Burma)
* ...
.
Shuryshkar
Obdorsk
Vowels
The Obdorsk dialect has retained full close vowels and has a nine-vowel system: full vowels and reduced vowels .
Consonants
However, it has a simpler consonant inventory, having the lateral approximants /l lʲ/ in place of the fricatives /ɬ ɬʲ/ and having fronted to /s n/.
Alphabet
A new alphabet scheme for Northern Khanty was published in 2013. The various written standards, such as Kazym (Northern Khanty) and Surgut (
Eastern Khanty), have their own versions of this alphabet, with some different letters. The influential ' (Enlightenment/Education) publishing house, which publishes many of the textbooks and early literacy material for the smaller languages of Russia, designed curved-tail variants of the letters ''ԯ'' and ''ң'' with a tick, namely ''ԓ'' and ''ӈ'', and these have been redundantly encoded in Unicode as separate characters.
[L2/23-015](_blank)
''Comments on CYRILLIC CHE WITH HOOK’s use in Khanty and Tofa (Tofalar) (L2/22-280)''. These hooked forms have been chosen as the preferred
allograph
In graphemics and typography, the term allograph is used of a glyph that is a design variant of a letter or other grapheme, such as a letter, a number, an ideograph, a punctuation mark or other typographic symbol. In graphemics, an obvious exa ...
s of these letters for the Kazym alphabet.
[N. B. Koshkareva (2013]
Topical issues of perfection of the Khanty script and orthography
- Brief summary describing situation with Khanty orthography. However, the respected Khanty-language journal ' uses the diagonal-tail forms ''ӆ'' and ''ӊ'' for Kazym.
''и'' and ''ы'' are
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...
s, breaking the phonemic principle of the alphabet.
Sample texts
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal D ...
in Kazym Khanty:
:
:
:
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Article 1 of the
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
File:2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples voting map.svg , , ,
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP or DOTROIP) is a legally non-binding United Nations resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007 ...
in Kazym Khanty:
:
: ()
:
Article 1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in English:
: Indigenous peoples have the right to the full enjoyment, as a collective or as individuals, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognized in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law.
Notes
References
Sources
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{{Uralic languages
Khanty language
Indigenous languages of Siberia