Nenets (autonym: ненёця" вада) is a language spoken by the Nenets people in northern Russia. It belongs to the Samoyedic languages which form the Uralic language family with the Finno-Ugric languages. There are two major dialects - Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets - with low mutual intelligibility between the two. Most Nenetses speak Tundra Nenets.

Geographical Distribution

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Nenets is spoken by 27 273 people of which 26 730 people are native speakers. It is spoken in the wide area in North Russia including Nenetsia, Yamalia, Taymyria, Komi and the eastern parts of the Murmansk Oblast in the Kola peninsula.

Phonology

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Nenets has a CV(C) syllable structure. In other words, a syllable may contain an initial consonant, a medial vowel, and an optional terminal consonant. Examples include ya ("earth"), wada ("word"), and ngarka ("big"). The schwa or reduced vowel may sometimes appear in lieu of a terminal consonant. Although the language does not technically permit syllables to begin with vowels, in practice this sometimes occurs in western dialects, e.g. western arka ("big") versus standard east-central ngarka.

The syllabic structure is fairly consistent in all dialects, however. There are no long vowels or diphthongs, nor initial nor final consonant clusters, nor medial clusters containing more than two consonants.

Vowels:

Schwa	°
Reduced	ø
Plain	a	e	i	o	u
Stretched	í	ú	æ

Some western dialects lack æ, replacing it with e.

Consonants:

Unvoiced plosives	k	k̕	p	ṕ	t	t̕
Voiced plosives	g	g̕	b	b́	d	d̕
Fricatives	s	ś	ʒ	ʒ́	ʦ	ʦ́
Nasals	m	ḿ	n	ń	ŋ
Liquids	l	ĺ	r	ŕ
Semi-vowels	h	h́	w	j	'

The accent mark denotes palatalization, or a movement towards palatal articulation or secondary palatal articulation. (That is, the accent mark does not indicate ejectives.)

Orthography

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Nenets is written with an adapted form of the Cyrillic alphabet, incorporating the supplemental letters Ӈ, ', and ".

А а	Б б	В в	Г г	Д д	Е е	Ё ё	Ж ж
З з	И и	Й й	К к	Л л	М м	Н н	Ӈ ӈ
О о	П п	Р р	С с	Т т	У у	Ф ф	Х х
Ц ц	Ч ч	Ш ш	Щ щ	Ъ ъ	Ы ы	Ь ь	Э э
Ю ю	Я я	'	"

External links

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• Tundra Nenets homepage
• Forest Nenets-English glossary
• Ethnologue report

Northern Samoyedic languages | Languages of Russia | Minority languages

Nenetseg | Nenzische Sprache | Nenets des forêts | 네네츠어 | Nenets | Неннаг æвзаг | Limba nenets | Ненецкий язык | Nenetsagiella | Nenetsin kieli