The Nenets language is far from the most widely spoken language in Russia, bearing the imprint of the traditional culture of the Nenets people. According to the results of the 2010 All-Russian Population Census, the number of Nenets in Russia is about 40,000 people, while the number of speakers of this language totals a little more than 20,000 people.
The main territory of the spread and existence of the language is the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. It is also spoken in the Komi Republic, Arkhangelsk region and some other regions of the country over the distance from the Kola Peninsula to the Yenisei. By tradition, it is customary to divide the Nenets language into two main dialects: forest and tundra, but gradually they are bred into Neshan and Nenets. For linguists, this is a separate topic of research.
Characteristic
The name of the Nenets language is “nenetsya 'vada”. It belongs to the northern group of the Samoyedic language branch belonging to the Ural family. It is characterized by an agglutinating type, the presence of a small case system, a singular, dual and plural system, a rather undeveloped system of verb tenses.
The Nenets came to the territory of their current habitat around the first millennium AD. Their nationality was formed from the merger of the peoples of southern Siberia with the indigenous population of the tundra zone. There is an assumption that the meeting of the two ancestral nationalities is reflected in the Nenets folklore in the image of the mythical people of Sihirt. It is still not clear whether this people existed or not, but the legends about it excite modern historians.
Writing
Throughout their history, the Nenets established cultural and social contacts with the Mansi, Khanty, Russians, Komi and Permians, which could not but affect the development of both their culture and language. There is a very small number of works published in the Yamal-Nenets language, even less about it. This movement began very recently. So, the first primer was published only in 1932, the first Russian-Nenets dictionary in 1937.
Is it worth it to go into details if even the first Nenets alphabet appeared only in 1931, and it was created artificially, based on the Latin alphabet. In 1937, an alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created.
Grammar
The language of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug has preserved the longitude and brevity of vowels. Consonants, as in Russian, are contrasted here on the basis of hardness and softness. In the phoneme system, there are two sounds with guttural bows.
In addition to the usual nominative, genitive and accusative cases, there is a dative directional, locally instrumental, depositional and longitudinal.
Nenets forest language
The Nenets forest language, which was mentioned above, is the main language of the small indigenous people of Nesha, living in the forests and taiga of the Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets okrugs. Such a language is also often called non-shan language. By the way, “ne'sha” on it means nothing more than the word “people”.
Even in Soviet linguistics, it was noted that Neshan Nenets is very different from the tundra. Moreover, its similarity with the languages of Khanty and Mansi is often indicated - the forest Nenets themselves also consider their language similar to Khanty. Writing was created only in 1994. With its help, mainly scientific and reference literature is created devoted to the study of the language and the fundamentals of its teaching.
Use
Basically, in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Russian language is used for communication. Nenets is almost equal with him - he can often be heard in places of dense residence of representatives of the indigenous population. Also, the basic laws and regulations of this constituent entity of the Russian Federation are translated into the local language.