Nganasan language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nganasan ня’’ næʔ
Spoken in:	Russia
Region:	Taymyr Autonomous Okrug
Total speakers:	505 (2002 census)
Language family:	Uralic Samoyedic Northern Samoyedic Nganasan
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`mis`
ISO 639-3:	`nio`
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Nganasan language (formerly called тавгийский, tavgiysky, or тавгийско-самоедский, tavgiysko-samoyedsky in Russian; from the ethnonym тавги, tavgi) is a language of the Nganasan people. It was spoken by 1,063 (1989 est.) and by 750 people (1970 est.) in the southwestern and central parts of the Taymyr Peninsula. The Nganasan language belongs to the northern Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. There are two main dialects in the Nganasan language: the Avam dialect (авамский говор, avamsky govor) and the Vadeyev dialect (вадеевский говор, vadeyevsky govor). Phonetic features of the Nganasan language include eight vowels, two so called diphthongoids (with the status of diphthongs, i.e. /ⁱa/ and /^ua/), probably no diphthongs (but vowelsequences) and about twenty consonant phonemes.

One of the main features of Nganasan is the consonant gradation, which concerns the consonant phonemes b, t, k, s (s') and their nasal combinations mb, nt, ŋk, ns.

The Cyrillic-based writing system was invented in the 1990s:

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