Ket language. Meaning of the Ket language in the Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary

History and writing. Name chum salmon comes from the word ket "man". It has been established in the Russian language since the 1920s. Prior to this, the Kets were known under the name "Ostyaks", "Yenisei Ostyaks", "Yenisei". The ancestors of modern Kets were apparently formed in the Bronze Age in the south of the Ob and Yenisei interfluves as a result of the mixing of the Caucasoids of Southern Siberia with the ancient Mongoloids. Later (in the 1st millennium AD) they came into contact with the Turkic, Samoyedic and Ugrian speaking population.
The first information about the Ket language was published by P.S. Pallas in 1788 in travel notes (“Journeys through different provinces of the Russian State”). In 1858 M.A. Castren published a grammar and dictionary ("Versuch einer jenissei-ostjakischen und kottischen Sprachlehre"), which also contained materials on the now extinct Kott language. From the mid 1960s. several expeditions of Moscow linguists and ethnographers were organized, the materials of which were published in the "Ket collections".
In the early 1930s N.K. Karger developed the Ket alphabet based on the Latin alphabet and compiled a primer for the Middle Ket dialect, but the writing did not take root and the study of the Ket language as a native language soon ceased.
In 1988, a new Ket alphabet was approved based on the Cyrillic alphabet with the addition of a number of special characters. G.K. Werner and G.H. Nikolaev wrote the primer "Ostyyanka" for the South Ket dialect. According to it, language teaching was started in the elementary grades of schools in the villages of Baklanikha, Surgutikha, Goroshikha, Kellogg, Vereshchagino, Sulomai and Bor. At Kellogg, the Ket language is also taught as an elective in high school. Teachers undergo specialization in the regional center for advanced training of teachers.
The Ket language is actively studied by the American linguist Edward Wajda.

KET LANGUAGE (obsolete - the Yenisei-Ostyak language), the language of the Kets. Distributed in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (in the Turukhansk region, as well as in the southeast of the Evenki region) - along the Yenisei and its tributaries. It is on the verge of extinction: according to the 2002 census, out of 1.5 thousand Kets, 485 people speak the Ket language, according to experts, the number of competent native speakers is less than 100.

The Ket language is the last representative of the Yenisei languages. Together with the Yug language, it constitutes their northern branch. Previously, the linguonym "Ket language" united two dialects - Imbat and Sym; in modern linguistics these idioms are assigned the status of separate languages ​​- Ket and Yug proper. As part of the Ket languages, 3 main dialects are distinguished: southern, middle and northern. Dialects are subdivided into dialects, named after the name of the settlement: for example, in locality Sulomai - Sulomai. The largest number of speakers of the Ket language speaks the southern dialect, the smallest - the northern one.

The phonological system is characterized by the presence of a system of four words and form-distinctive tones. Depending on the approach to the phonological status of vocal allophones, the inventory of vowels includes from 7 to 11 phonemes. Synharmonism is absent. Unlike Kott, the Ket language (as well as the Yug language) retained a four-step system of mid-back unrounded vowels. Character traits vocalism of the southern dialect - the elimination of the final unstressed vowel and the iotation of the front vowels i, e. There are differences in the nature of the fourth tone compared to other dialects. The consonant composition of the Ket language varies from 12 to 18 phonemes, depending on the phonological interpretation. In consonantism, the southern and northern dialects differ from the middle dialect by the presence of rotacism d > r and spirantization b > v. In the middle dialect there is a transition s>š, and in the northern dialect there is a frequent transition s> č in consonant combinations ns and ls. The morphology of the name has a suffix-agglutinative character. There is a system of nominal classes: male, female and real. The traditionally distinguished case system (up to 13 cases) is mostly spatial in nature, there are no syntactic cases. A system of postpositions has been developed. The verb system is polysynthetic. The verb expresses the categories of tense and mood, as well as the concordant categories of person, class, and number. The presence of other categories [mode of action (see Aspectology), pledge, aspect, version, etc.] remains a subject of discussion. The verbal word form is built on the basis of morphemic orders (from 9 to 17, depending on the approach), mostly prefixed. Noun incorporation is limited to a few productive stems. The incorporation of other parts of speech (verbal name, adjective, adverb, etc.) is developed. The question of the structure of the Ket language has long been a subject of discussion. Some scientists attribute it to the active type, others to the nominative one (see Nominative system) with features of an active system and an ergative system. In modern linguistics, the point of view prevails that at the synchronous stage the Ket language cannot be attributed to any of the above types due to the lack of a general grammatical rule when choosing personal indicators in the verb.

Vocabulary is predominantly of Yenisei origin. Early borrowings mainly from Turkic languages and Samoyedic languages, later - from the Russian language.

The first script for the Ket language was developed in 1934 based on the Latin alphabet. Russian researcher Yenisei languages ​​by N.K. Karger. Cyrillic-based writing, created by the Russian Yeniseist G.K. Werner, was officially adopted in 1985.

Lit .: Dulzon A.P. Ket tales. Tomsk, 1966; he is. Ket language. Tomsk, 1968; Kreinovich Yu. A. The verb of the Celtic language. L., 1968; Ket collection. Mythology, ethnography, texts. M., 1969; Ket collection. Linguistics. M., 1995; Werner H. Die ketische Sprache. Wiesbaden, 1997; Vajda E. Ket. Munich, 2004; Georg S. A descriptive grammar of Ket (Yenisei-Ostyak). Introduction, phonology and morphology. Folkstone, 2007.

Dictionaries: Werner G.K. Ket-Russian/Russian-Ket Dictionary. SPb., 1993; Maksunova Z. V. Brief Ket-Russian Dictionary. Middle Ket dialect / Edited by G. K. Werner. Krasnoyarsk, 2001.

The appearance of kets is very different from the appearance of others Siberian peoples. The neighbors of the Kets - Yakuts, Evenks, Selkups, Khanty - are typical representatives of the Mongoloid race. Paleo-Asians, Eskimos and Chukchi form a special arctic branch of the Mongoloid race.

And the Kets combine in their appearance the features of Caucasians (quite often blue eyes, sometimes blond hair) and Indians of America (aquiline nose, "Indian cheekbones", a special eye shape). The language of the Kets and other Yenisei languages ​​close to it have nothing in common with the languages ​​of neighboring peoples, and so far it has not been possible to notice reliable signs of its relationship with any other languages ​​of the world. The Ket language is very peculiar. For example, it has an unusually complex system of conjugation of verbs. And many dozens of them conjugate in their own way, not like the rest. In 1971, Professor of Tomsk University A.

P. Dulzon received the State Prize for a monograph on Ket grammar. Much of this grammar is devoted to the verb.

“Summer movement along the river in boats is denoted by the Kets with a completely different verb than winter movement on ice,” writes another Soviet researcher, E. A. Kreinovich. “Winter and summer movements of the Kets down the river are also denoted by different verbs. And the verb denoting moving down the river by boat in the summertime is formed differently, depending on whether the movement down the Yenisei and its large tributaries, for example Podkamennaya Tunguska, is indicated, or along small rivers that flow into the Yenisei or its tributaries !" Kets appeared on the lower Yenisei relatively recently. Also in XVII-XVIII centuries their ancestors lived much further south, in the area of ​​present-day Yeniseisk, Krasnoyarsk, Achinsk.

As a matter of fact, the Ket language, which is native to nine hundred Kets (the rest of the Kets switched to Russian) is just one of the languages ​​once spread along the Yenisei, right up to its sources, as well as in the upper reaches of the Ket and Chulym rivers, tributaries of the Ob . Travelers and scientists of the 18th century were able to compile small dictionaries of the now extinct Arin, Assan, Pumpokol, Kott languages, related to Ket. They form a special family - the Yenisei. In addition to Ket, another Yenisei language, Yugsky, has survived. He owns...

8 people living in the Russian villages of Vorogovo and Yartsevo, located a hundred kilometers south of the Ket villages. Most of the Yenisei languages ​​disappeared not because their speakers died out. Just after the upper reaches of the Yenisei were occupied by the Turkic peoples, part of the Yenisei, the ancestors of the current Kets, went north along the course of the great Siberian river.

And those who remained gradually mixed with the newcomers and began to speak Turkic. Apparently, there are descendants of the Turkicized Yenisei among the modern Khakass (along with the Turkicized descendants of the Samoyeds).

It is possible that the Shors living on the territory bordering the Khakass and Gorno-Altai Autonomous Regions have the same origin. In Tuva, many river names can only be explained with the help of the Yenisei languages. This means that before the arrival of the Turks, tribes related to the Kets once lived here. They probably participated in the formation of the Tuvan people.

So, the birthplace of the Yenisei languages ​​\u200b\u200bis the Sayan Mountains? There are many facts that indicate that here, as later in the lower reaches of the Yenisei, the ancestors of the Kets came from somewhere in the south. Not so long ago, Professor Pullyblank, one of the world's best experts in Sino-Tibetan languages, came up with a sensational hypothesis.

Comparing the words of the Xiongnu language that have come down to us in Chinese texts, which were considered the ancestors of the Turks, with the Yenisei words, he came to the conclusion that the Xiongnu spoke the Yenisei language! Hun and Yenisei words meaning "son", "stone", "milk", "horse" sound very similar. But most historians still believe that it is impossible to put an equal sign between the ancient Xiongnu and the Yenisei. Most likely, the ancestors of the Kets were part of the huge power of the Xiongnu, along with the ancestors of the Turks, Mongols, and possibly other peoples.

A number of foreign scientists are also inclined to see in the Yeniseians, in their last representatives - the Kets, one of the "islands" of the most ancient Paleo-Eurasians, along with the Caucasians, Burishes and Basques. By the way, these non-Borea languages ​​have something in common in both grammar and vocabulary. For example, a root with the meaning "water".

In the Borean proto-proto-language, it sounded like wete, in Indo-European changed to wodor (hence Russian water, Hittite vatar, German Wasser, English water). In the Ural proto-language, he gave the sound wete (hence the Estonian vesi, the Hungarian visa), etc. But in the Basque language, water is called the word ur. In the Yenisei languages, the same word sounds like ul or ur.

So in the future, perhaps, it will turn out that two amazing languages ​​- Basque and Ket - are related to each other. But so far there is little evidence. There were attempts to find traces of the relationship of the Yenisei languages ​​with the dialects of Tibet, as well as with the Austrian languages. However, no convincing results have yet been obtained here either: there are only isolated coincidences.

It would be extremely interesting to look for links between the Yenisei family and the languages ​​of the New World. The Indians, according to anthropologists, are a large branch of the Mongoloids. And yet, many features, such as a characteristic aquiline nose, sharply distinguish the indigenous inhabitants of the New World from typical Mongoloids (but not skin color - only a few Indian tribes have bronze-red skin, while most Indians have dark skin).

Scientists explain this by the fact that the settlement of America happened a very long time ago, back in those days when Mongoloid race not fully formed. And only a few peoples of Asia have preserved the most ancient racial type: these include the Kets and some small peoples of Tibet. This interesting hypothesis of anthropologists is echoed by the hypotheses of linguists who are trying to find similarities between the languages ​​of the Indians of America, the Ket and Tibetan dialects. An outstanding researcher of the peoples of Siberia, V. G. Bogoraz, believed that the Ket language is the extreme western link in the chain connecting the Paleo-Asiatic languages ​​(Nivkh, Ainu, etc.)

M. Holmer believes that once there was a Paleo-Eurasian language type, traces of which are found in the space from the Pyrenees to the Bering Strait. He suggests a connection between the Basque, Caucasian, Burushaski, Yenisei, Paleo-Asiatic languages ​​and tries to trace their family ties with Indian languages America. True, they tried to build a bridge to the languages ​​of the New World not only with the help of the Ket and Paleo-Asiatic (Nivkh, Itelmen) languages.

About half a century ago, the American linguist E. Sapir suggested that the languages ​​of the Athabaskans and some other Indian tribes inhabiting the northwestern corner of America are related to Sino-Tibetan. The famous Americanist Paul Rivet found similarities between the Austronesian languages ​​(especially those spoken in Melanesia) and the languages ​​of the California Indians. He also found a number of matches in the dictionaries of the languages ​​of Australia, the Indians of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia. Illustrious traveler Thor Heyerdahl discovers traces of Indian languages South America in geographical names Easter Island and other islands of Polynesia. All these hypotheses, although sometimes too bold, are nevertheless based on some historical and linguistic justification. In addition to them, there are a huge number of absolutely fantastic assumptions.

The languages ​​of the Indians of America are brought closer to the Sumerian, Phoenician, Ancient Greek, Hittite, Sanskrit, and the languages ​​of the Guinean coast of Africa. Moreover, a number of seemingly striking coincidences are found here. For example, in Greek "theos" means "god", and in the language of the Indians Central America"god" is rendered by the word "teotl".

However, the coincidence of individual words in the languages ​​of the Old and New Worlds will not seem striking, given that before the Europeans began the colonization of America, they spoke ... 2 thousand different languages! And even now, despite the fact that the number of Indian tribes has declined sharply, there are still at least a thousand Indian dialects in the New World. And to find in them words that coincide in sound and meaning with the words of the languages ​​of the Old World (and there are also a huge number of them!) Is not so difficult.

And what if we compare not just individual languages ​​of the Old and New Worlds, but proto-languages, the most ancient forms, and look for regular sound correspondences in words that are close in meaning? And not in one or two, but in hundreds of roots? ..

Unfortunately, such work is not yet feasible, because there is still no reconstruction of most of the proto-languages ​​of the Indians of America. That is why scientists do not know whether all Indian dialects go back to one single proto-language or are divided into several independent families. Moreover, different linguists also count a different number of these families - from five to several hundred!

According to the Ket language

Variants of the name and self-name of the language

• Ket language
• Yenisei-Ostyak language
• chilled ka’

Latikova (Tyganova) Olga Vasilievna (born in 1917). The oldest among the Kets, a connoisseur of the Ket language and folklore, the most experienced informant who worked with E.A. Kreinovich, A.P. Dulzon, E.A. Alekseenko
Photo by O.A. Kazakevich, 2004, pos. Sulomai

Genetic affiliation

The Ket language is practically the last representative of the Yenisei language family. The last reliable record of the use of its closest relative, the Yug language, dates back to the 1970s. Other related languages ​​- Pumpokol, Arin, Kott (Assan) - fell out of use as early as the 18th-19th centuries. Experts suggest that the Yenisei languages ​​are distantly related to the North Caucasian (Adyghe-Abkhazian and Nakho-Dagestanian) and Sino-Tibetan languages.

Geography of language distribution

Kets are the indigenous population of the taiga part of the Yenisei basin (from the Podkamennaya Tunguska river in the south to the Kureika river in the north). At present, most of the Kets (as of 01.01.1999, 742 people) live in settlements along the Yenisei and its tributaries on the territory of the Turukhansky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Almost a third of the Ket population of the region (228 people) is concentrated in the village. Kellogg, the rest settled in the village. Maduika, Goroshikha, Baklanikha, Surgutikha, Vereshchagino, Verkhne-Imbatsk, Bakhta. Since the early 1990s quite a lot of Kets moved to the regional center of Turukhansk (on 01.01.1999 there were 80 Kets there) and to a large settlement. in the south of the district - Bor (71 people). The only settlement outside the Turukhansk region with a compact Ket population is Sulomai, located on the territory of the Evenk Autonomous Okrug on Podkamennaya Tunguska, 80 km from the mouth. To date, Kets make up the majority of the population only in the village. Kellogg, Maduika and Sulomai. Some Kets live in cities, mainly in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, primarily in Krasnoyarsk itself.

Language contacts

• Yugian language.
• Selkup language.
• Evenki language.
• Enets language.
• Russian

Number of native speakers

The size of the ethnic group in 1989 in the USSR was 1113 people (1089 people in Russia); the 2002 census gives 1,494. According to our assessment, based on the materials obtained in the course of a series of sociolinguistic surveys of the Ket settlements. On the territory of the Turukhansky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Evenk Autonomous Okrug, conducted in 1999–2005, today there are no more than 150 native speakers of the Ket language, and not all of them are fully literate in the Ket language. In the 2002 census materials presented on the CD, 485 people who speak the Ket language are noted, which in no way corresponds to reality.

Presence of dialects

Difference between dialects the Ket language. (northern, central and southern, the latter in turn is subdivided into dialects Yeloguy and Podkamennotungussky) are relatively small, but the dialect speakers themselves are clearly aware of the difference between their own version and those of their neighbors and, as a rule, consider their own version to be the only correct one, and all other dialects are distortions of the Ket language.

Linguistic characteristics of the language

Phonological information

Vocalism: 11 vowels that are opposed in rise (upper - i, y, u; medium closed - e, b, o; medium open - ε , , ; lower - d, а, (е)) and row (front - i, e, ε, ä ; average- u, b, a; rear - u, oh, (å )).

consonantism: occlusive - p, b, t, d, k, g, q, ; slotted - ( v), s, s´, (γ ), h; affricates - c, j; nasal - m, n, n', ; side - l, z; trembling - r.

Prosody: four tones are found in the Ket language. They differ most clearly in isolated monosyllabic words. In polysyllabic words, tones are preserved only in stressed syllables.

Morphology

An agglutinative-synthetic language that uses all types of affixation: prefixation, infixation and suffixation. In the conjugation of the verb, prefixation and infixation are mainly used, in the inflection of a noun - suffixation.

Parts of speech: noun, adjective, numerals, pronouns, verb, adverb, particles, postpositions, interjections. Unions are borrowed from the Russian language

Nouns have a selective category of the matching class (male/female/property). The inflectional categories of a noun include the number (singular / plural). As for the presence of the category of case, this issue is still controversial, different researchers have different points of view on this matter. G.K. Werner distinguishes 11 cases: absolute, genitive, dative, original, denotative, local-personal, local, tool-joint, longitudinal, deprivative, vocative.

Adjective has the category of number (singular / plural) and can be formed by predicative suffixes.

Verb has selective categories of aspect, mode of verbal action and voice. The inflectional categories of the verb include mood (indicative, imperative, surreal, incentive-permissive), tense (present-future/past), class, person and number. In the paradigm of the Ket verb, there are indicators of the subject, as well as direct and indirect object.

Negation is expressed by negative particles.

Semantic-grammatical information

The counting system is decimal, but it retains the features of the five-fold and seven-fold systems, which, apparently, preceded the decimal.

Most of the borrowings in reflect ancient language contacts and cannot be traced back to a specific source language. It has only been established that part of this vocabulary has parallels in Nostratic languages, and part - in Sino-Tibetan. Of later borrowings, Selkup and, in an insignificant number, Turkic are revealed. The latest are borrowings from the Russian language. Some of them (the earliest borrowings) have undergone significant phonetic and grammatical adaptation. Currently, Russian vocabulary is borrowed with minimal phonetic adaptation.

Syntax information

The language of the nominative system, although some researchers find in it relics of ergative and active syntactic structures.

Simple offer. The sentence is dominated by the verb word form. There is a tendency to reflect in its structure all members of the sentence, and the order of arrangement of the formal elements of the scheme of subject-object relations in the verbal word form, as a rule, coincides with the order of the corresponding members of the sentence: SVO (or OVS). In an attributive syntagma, the definition precedes the defined.

The question is formulated using interrogative words or intonation.

Complex sentences are organized from simple ones with the help of intonation, conjunctions (many borrowed conjunctions from the Russian language), case indicators that form the predicate of the subordinate clause, and postpositions.

Sociolinguistic characteristics of the language

Legal status, current state of the language

The language of the indigenous people of the Russian Federation. On the territory of the Turukhansky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Evenk Autonomous Okrug, the Ket language has the status of an encouraged language.

Writing and spelling

Although the Ket alphabet was developed in the 1920s–1930s, and in 1934 N.K. Karger compiled and published a Ket primer for the Middle Ket dialect, which used the Latin graphic base, a really functioning writing in the Ket language appeared only at the end 1980s, when first in Krasnoyarsk (1988), and then in Leningrad (1991) a primer compiled by G.K. Werner and G.Kh. Nikolaeva for the South Ket dialect, and began teaching the Ket language at school as a subject. The new Ket graphics were developed based on the Russian alphabet with the addition of several special characters. Only textbooks and study guides for elementary school, including a collection of Ket tales, other publications of Ket folklore used various types of transcription. It should be noted that the published textbooks and teaching aids contain a number of original works of small genres (stories and poems) and a fairly significant number of translations from the Russian language. The only sphere of use of the Ket writing today is education (school and university). Outside this sphere, the Kets write exclusively in Russian.

Public functions of the language

Traditional areas of functioning of the Ket language are family, industry(hunting, fishing and transport reindeer herding), folklore(folklore).

The Ket language was once intensively used in religious practice (the Kets are animists, to communicate with other worlds and the spirits of the world around them, they resorted to the help of shamans who had helper spirits and were able to control these spirits), but today there are no practicing shamans among the Kets, and only very few elderly people still remember texts of shamanic chants heard in childhood.

Population census data record a steady decline in the percentage of Kets who consider Ket as their native language: from 74.9% in 1970 to 60.2% in 1979 and finally to 48.8% in 1989 (48.3% Kets former USSR). Research conducted by V.P. Krivonogov in 1991-1992 gave an even more modest figure - 35%, and his own studies conducted 10 years later show a further decrease in the figure. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that not everyone who recognizes the Ket language as their native language can really speak it. The native language for the Kets, as well as for representatives of many other indigenous peoples of Siberia, is increasingly turning from a means of communication into an emblem of ethnic self-identification. Today, no more than 15% of the entire Ket population actually speaks the Ket language, and to varying degrees. These are almost exclusively representatives of the older generation, those over 50, and even in this generation they speak the Ket language. far from universal. Among the representatives of the middle generation (35-50 years old) who speak the Ket language. also occur, but much less frequently. The vast majority of children and young people do not know the Ket language at all, except for a few words. At the same time, all Kets speak Russian either as their native language or as a second language. Among the older generation in the village. Surgutikha, Baklanikha and Vereshchagino, as well as in the village. Kellogg, the Ket-Selkup-Russian trilingualism is still found, and in the north one can still meet the Ket-Evenki-Russian trilingualism.

Education is the only sphere of use of the Ket language regulated by the state. According to the regional administration of public education, in 1992/93 account. the Ket language was taught in primary school schools in the village Kellogg, Goroshikha, Vereshchagino, Surgutikha, Baklanikha and Sulomai. At Kellogg, Ket was also taught in high school as an elective. At that time, many Ket teachers were very enthusiastic about their work, hoping that teaching the Ket language at school would revive interest in the language of their ancestors in Ket children and help curb the process of crowding out the Ket language from almost all spheres of communication, which was gaining momentum. However, faced with the harsh reality, the enthusiasm began to fade, and the teaching of the Ket language in schools began to fade away. As a result, in 1998/99 the Ket language was taught only in the schools of the village. Bohr, Kellogg and Sulomai. In the reports for the 2001/02 account. sent to the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, it is indicated that the teaching of the Ket language as a subject was carried out this academic year in eight schools in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and in some schools from grades 1 to 9. It is difficult to say whether this indicates an increase in attention to the Ket language on the part of the regional administration, however, of course, an increase in the number of schools where the Ket language is taught should be welcomed in every possible way. However, unfortunately, we have to state that today the effectiveness of teaching the Ket language at school is extremely low.

In colloquial practice, the Ket language is used today to a very limited extent. In settlements on the Yenisei, it is sometimes spoken among themselves by representatives of the older generation, mostly those over 70. Some representatives of the middle generation use the Ket language in conversation with older relatives and acquaintances, preferring to speak Russian among themselves; they switch to the Ket language only when they want to hide the content of the conversation from others, for example, from children. Somewhat better than elsewhere, the Ket language is preserved in Kellogg. However, the natural transmission of language within the family from parents to children is interrupted everywhere. It is not the first generation of parents, regardless of the degree of proficiency in the Ket language, who speaks exclusively Russian with their children, even in mono-ethnic Ket families (such families in the early 1990s accounted for a little more than 40% of the total number of Ket families, but by the present time, their share has decreased to 30%), not to mention mixed families. As a result, today the Russian language is the main means of communication for the Kets in all spheres, including family and even traditional crafts (hunting and fishing). The prestige of the Ket language, which rose somewhat in the early 1990s, is again steadily declining. Among the reasons for this fall, far from the last is the disastrous economic situation in which the majority of Ket families find themselves today. Sociolinguistic survey of the Ket population of the village. Baklanikha, Vereshchagino, Surgutikha and Turukhansk, conducted by O.A. Kazakevich and O.S. Parfyonova in 1999, revealed a disappointing trend: about 30% of the Kets surveyed said that neither they nor their children needed the Ket language, moreover the largest number similar responses account for informants aged 40 to 60 years. On the whole, the position of the Ket language can be defined as critical. Hopes that the teaching of the Ket language at school could at least to some extent slow down its displacement by the Russian language did not come true. The experience gained since the beginning of the 1990s turned out to be mostly negative, the reason for which was the unsettled teaching system, the lack of a sufficient number of qualified teachers, the inability to adapt classes to the specific situation of each individual village, the lack of due attention and methodological assistance from the district department education, as well as the absence of any material incentives for both teachers and students. And yet, approximately 60% of the Ket parents surveyed still want their children to learn the Ket language in school. At the same time, many stipulate that it is the dialect of this village that should be taught, and not some other, alien and “wrong”, in their opinion, version of the language. Perhaps these comments of local residents will suggest how the teaching of the Ket language should be organized in the future.

Degree of study and history of language learning

The study of the Ket language was started in the middle of the 19th century by M.A. Castren. In the second half of the 20th century, a real breakthrough was made in the description of the language. However, even today the Ket language continues to be an extremely popular object of study, primarily due to the complexity of its verbal morphology.

Language sound pattern

Photo of representatives of the ethnic group

Ket language

KET LANGUAGE (obsolete Yenisei-Ostyak) language of the Kets. It belongs to the Yenisei group of Paleoasiatic languages. Writing is being developed on the basis of the Russian alphabet.

Ket language

The Yenisei-Ostyak language is the last surviving representative of the Yenisei family of languages, previously widespread, according to hydronymy, right up to the south of Western Siberia. K. i. belongs to the Ket-Pumpokol subgroup, which is different from the extinct southern Arino-Assano-Kott subgroup, known from the records of the 18≈19 centuries. On K. I. say about 900 people. (1970, census) in the Turukhansk and Baykitsk districts of the Krasnoyarsk Territory of the RSFSR. The two main dialects - Imbat (Northern) and Sym, or Yugsky (less than 10 people), diverged so much that they can be considered different languages. The phonological composition of K. i. characterized by a typologically rare combination of the presence of opposition between soft and hard consonants and tone differences (up to 5 tones in various dialects). The noun has a form of the main case (subject and direct object) and a system of secondary developed cases with spatial meanings. In nouns, a class of things stands out, opposed to animate classes (male and female). Most of the grammatical meanings in the verb are transmitted using prefixes and infixes (less often suffixes), incorporation is widely developed. Writing for K. Ya. was founded in 1934 by the Soviet scientist N. K. Karger.

Lit .: Dulzon A.P., Ket language, Tomsk, 1968; Kreinovich E. A., Ket language, in collection: Languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR, vol. 5, L., 1968: his own, Verb of the Ket language, L., 1968; Toporov V.N., Bibliography on the Ket language, in the book: Ket collection, M., 1969; Castrén M. A., Versuch einer jenissei-ostjakischen und kottischen Sprachlehre nebst Wörterverzeichnissen aus den genannten Sprachen, St.-Petersburg, 1858.

V. V. Ivanov:

Wikipedia

Ket language

Ket language - isolated language, the only living representative of the Yenisei family of languages. It is spoken by the Kets in the area of ​​the Yenisei river basin. Russian scientists have attempted to establish relationships between the Ket language and the Burushaski language, as well as with the Sino-Tibetan languages ​​​​and the languages ​​\u200b\u200bof the North American Na-Dene Indians, whose self-name is similar to the self-name of the Kets. Often the Yenisei languages ​​are included in the hypothetical Sino-Caucasian macrofamily. The language is endangered - the number of ethnic Kets, for whom the Ket language is native, decreased from 1225 people in 1926 to 537 people in 1989, 365 people. in 2002 and 213 people. in 2010. According to the results of field research, the number of speakers of the Ket language is estimated at 150 people. (1999-2005). Another Yenisei language - Yugsky, apparently finally died out quite recently.