Ket language
Categories: Language stubs | Language isolates | Languages of Russia | Yeniseian languages
The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family, spoken along the middle Yenisei Basin. Another Yeniseian language, Yugh, only recently went extinct.
The Ket language is also threatened with extinction. The number of ethnic Kets that are native speakers of the language has dropped from 1225 in 1926 to 537 in 1989.
Documentation
Attempts have been made by Soviet scholars to establish a relationship with either Burushaski or the Sino-Tibetan languages, and it frequently forms part of the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. See Yeniseian languages for details.
The earliest observations about the language were published by P. S. Pallas in 1788 in a travel diary (Путешествия по разным провинциям Русского Государства).
In 1858, M. A. Castrén published the first grammar and dictionary (Versuch einer jenissei-ostjakischen and kottischen Sprachlehre), which also included material on the Kot language. During the 19th century, the Kets were mistaken for a tribe of the Finno-Ugric Khats.
A. Karger in 1934 published the first grammar (Кетский язык), as well as a Ket primer (Букварь на кетском языке).
, and a new treatment appeared in 1968, written by A. Kreinovich. E. Alekseyenko has written a historical-ethnological treatment of the Kets (Кеты, 1967). In spite of the attention paid to the Ket language and their origin there are no dictionaries, academic monographs on the language or samples of texts available. E. Kreinovich in 1986 suggested a Ket orthography based on the Cyrillic alphabet, without fully representing Ket phonology with the 32 letters used. The written language is based on the Suloma and Kellog dialects.
Literature
- N. K. Karger, Кетский язык. — Языки и письменность народов Севера. Ч. III, Moscow, Leningrad (1934)
- E. A. Kreinovich, Кетский язык. — Языки народов СССР. Т. V, Leningrad (1968)
- Edward J. Vajda. Ket Prosodic Phonology. (2000)
- E. Vaida, M. Zinn. Morfologicheskii slovar ketskogo glagola : na osnove iuzhno-ketskogo dialekta. = Morphological dictionary of the Ket verb : Southern dialect / E. Vajda, M. Zinn. (2004)
External links