Enets language

Enets is a Samoyedic language spoken by the Enets people along the lower Yenisei River in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. There are two distinct dialects - Forest Enets and Tundra Enets - which may be considered separate languages. There are only about seventy speakers in total, with slightly more speaking Forest Enets. Most speakers are middle-aged or older, and all speak Russian as a second language. It is closely related to Nenets, of which it was formerly regarded as a dialect, and to Nganasan.

Orthography

Although an alphabet was developed for the Enets language at the end of the 1980s, it has yet to be made official. In spite of this, it has been used to produce three books, including a Russian-Enets student dictionary. Enets is written with an adapted form of Cyrillic, incorporating the supplemental letters ԑ, ӈ and ҫ.

Forest Enets

Forest Enets is the smaller of the two Enets dialects. In the winter of 2006/2007, approximately 35 people spoke it (6 in Dudinka, 20 in Potapova and 10 in Tukhard, the youngest of whom was born in 1962 and the oldest in 1945). Many of these speakers are trilingual, with competence in Forest Enets, Tundra Nenets and Russian, preferring to speak Tundra Nenets.

Literature

• Mikola T.: Morphologisches Wörterbuch des Enzischen. Szeged, 1995 (= Studia Uralo-Altaica 36)
• Сорокина, И. П.; Болина, Д .С.: Энецкий словарь с кратким грамматическим очерком : около 8.000 слов. Санкт-Петербург: Наука 2009, 488p. ISBN 978-5-9818730-4-1
• Сорокина, И. П.: Энецкий язык. Санкт-Петербург: Наука 2010, 411p. ISBN 978-5-02-025581-4

External links

• Ethnologue report for Forest Enets
• Ethnologue report for Tundra Enets
• The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire
• Enets bibliography
• Bibliography on Enets studies
• Linguistic items (Texts, vocabularies, links, ...)