Nenets (in former work also Yurak ) is a pair of closely related languages spoken in northern Russia by the Nenets people . They are often treated as being two dialects of the same language, but they are very different and mutual intelligibility 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 to the Yenisei River , and Forest Nenets , spoken by 1,000 to 1,500 people in the area around the Agan , Pur , Lyamin and Nadym rivers .
6-407: Sihirtia ( Nenets : сихиртя ) or Sirtia ( Nenets : сиртя ) were a mythical people who lived in the tundra before the arrival of Nenets . According to legends, Sihirtia were small-sized, wearing beautiful clothes with metal pendants. They had "white" (light blue) eyes and spoke with a slight stutter. Tall sandy hills served them as homes. They came out to the surface of the tundra at night or in
12-592: The 1990s and has been little documented. Apart from the word 'Nenets', only one other Nenets word has entered the English language : ' parka ', their traditional long, hooded jacket, made from skins and sometimes fur. Tundra Nenets has 16 moods , most of which reflect different degrees of certainty in what in English might be called indicative statements or different degrees of force in what in English might be called imperative commands. An overarching feature of
18-467: 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 . It has a literary tradition going back to the 1930s, while Forest Nenets was first written during
24-477: 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. The velar consonants *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
30-568: The mist; they lived under the ground, where they traveled on dogs and pastured mammoths ("earth deer"). Sihirtia were skilled smiths and good warriors. Meeting a Sihirtia brought either misfortune or good luck. There were cases of marriage between Nenets and Sihirtia. The folklore image of Sihirtia might have mythologically imprinted features of a real people (probably of Samoyedic or Paleo-Siberian origin) who lived in Europe and West Siberian tundra in antiquity. According to archeological data,
36-529: The predecessors of the Nenets were not shepherds – reindeer herders , but engaged in fishing and hunting wild reindeer and sea mammals. Nenets language The Nenets languages are classified in the Uralic language family , making them distantly related to some national languages spoken in Europe – namely Finnish , Estonian , and Hungarian – in addition to other minority languages spoken in Russia. Both of
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