Khanty language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Khanty ханты |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Russia | |
| Region: | Khantia-Mansia | |
| Total speakers: | 14,000 | |
| Language family: | Uralic Finno-Ugric Ugric Ob-Ugric Khanty |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | ||
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | kca | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Khanty or Xanty language, also known as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs, as well as in Alexandrovsky and Kargosoksky Districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1970 Census, there were over 14,000 Khanty-speaking people in Russia. The Khanty and Mansi languages are the Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian) members of the Finno-Ugric languages.
The Khanty language is known to have a large number of dialects. The western group of dialects includes the Obdorian, Ob, and Irtysh dialects. The eastern group of dialects includes the Surgut and Vakh-Vasyugan dialects, which, in turn, are subdivided into thirteen other dialects. All these dialects significantly differ from each other by their phonetical, morphological, and lexical features.
The Khanty written language was first created after the October Revolution on the basis of the Latin script in 1930, and then with the Cyrillic alphabet (with the additional letter <ң> for /ŋ/) from 1937. Khanty literary works are usually written with the use of three dialects, such as the Kazym, Shuryshkar, and middle-Ob dialects. Newspaper reporting and TV and radio broadcasting are usually done in the Kazymian dialect.
Contents |
[edit] Vakh dialect
The Vakh dialect is divergent. It has rigid vowel harmony and a tripartite (ergative-accusative) case system: The agent ("subject") of a transitive verb takes the instrumental case suffix -nə-, while the object takes the accusative case suffix. The "subject" of an intransitive verb, however, is not marked for case and might be said to be absolutive. The transitive verb agrees with the agent, as in nominative-accusative systems.
[edit] Ob’ dialect
The Ob’ phonemic inventory is p t tʲ k, s ʃ ɕ x, m n ɲ ŋ, l ɾ j w, short vowels i a o u, long vowels eː aː oː uː, and a reduced vowel ə which is never word-initial. Unlike Vakh, it does not have vowel harmony.
[edit] The noun
The nominal suffixes include dual -ŋən, plural -(ə)t, dative -a, locative/instrumental -nə.
For example:
- xot "house" (Hungarian ház, Finnish koti "home")
- xotŋəna "to the two houses"
- xotətnə "at the houses" (cf. Finnish kotona "at home", kodot "homes").
Singular, dual, and plural possessive suffixes may be added to singular, dual, and plural nouns, in three persons, for 33 = 27 forms. A few, from məs "cow", are:
- məsem "my cow"
- məsemən "my 2 cows"
- məsew "my cows"
- məstatən "the 2 of our cows"
- məsŋətuw "our 2 cows"
[edit] Pronouns
The personal pronouns are, in the nominative case:
| SG | DU | PL | |
| 1st person | ma | min | muŋ |
| 2nd person | naŋ | nən | naŋ |
| 3rd person | tuw | tən | təw |
The case of ma are accusative manət and dative manəm.
The demonstrative pronouns and adjectives are:
- tamə "this", tomə "that", sit "that yonder": tam xot "this house".
Basic interrogative pronouns are:
- xoy "who?", muy "what?"
[edit] Numerals
Khanty numerals, compared with Hungarian, are:
| Khanty | Hungarian | |
| 1 | yit, yiy | egy |
| 2 | katn, kat | kettő, két |
| 3 | xutəm | három |
| 4 | nyatə | négy |
| 5 | wet | öt |
| 6 | xut | hat |
| 7 | tapət | hét |
| 8 | nəvət | nyolc |
| 9 | yaryaŋ (= short of ten?) | kilenc |
| 10 | yaŋ | tíz |
| 11 | yixosyaŋ (1 and 10) | tizenegy (1 over 10) |
| 12 | katxosyaŋ (2 and 10) | tizenkettő (2 over 10) |
| 20 | xus | húsz |
| 30 | xutəmyaŋ (3 tens) | harminc |
| 100 | sot | száz |
Except for "ten" and the compound forms, these are quite similar in the two languages. Note also the regularity of [xot]-[haːz] "house" and [sot]-[saːz] "hundred".
[edit] Syntax
Both Khanty and Mansi are basically nominative-accusative languages, but have innovative morphological ergativity. In an ergative construction, the object is given the same case as the subject of an intransitive verb, and the locative is used for the agent of the transitive verb (as an instrumental) . This may be used with some specific verbs, for example "to give": the literal anglicisation would be "by me (subject) a fish (object) gave to you (indirect object)" for the equivalent of the sentence "I gave a fish to you". However, the ergative is morphological (marked using a case) only, not syntactic, so that, in addition, these may be passivized in a way resembling English. For example, in Mansi, "a dog (agent) bit you (object)" could be reformatted as "you(object) were bitten, by a dog(instrument)".
| Finno-Ugric languages | |||
| Ugric | Hungarian | Khanty | Mansi | ||
| Permic | Komi | Komi-Permyak | Udmurt | ||
| Finno-Volgaic | Mari | Erzya | Moksha | Merya† | Meshcherian† | Muromian† | ||
| Sami | Akkala Sami† | Inari Sami | Kemi Sami† | Kildin Sami | Lule Sami | Northern Sami | Pite Sami | Skolt Sami | Southern Sami | Ter Sami | Ume Sami | ||
| Baltic-Finnic | Estonian | Finnish | Ingrian | Karelian | Kven | Livonian | Ludic | Meänkieli | South Estonian | Veps | Votic | Võro | ||
