Nenets (autonym: ненёця" вада) is a language spoken by the Nenets people in northern Russia. It belongs to the Samoyedic languages which form the Uralic language family with the Finno-Ugric languages. There are two major dialects—Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets—with low mutual intelligibility between the two. Most Nenetses speak Tundra Nenets. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Flag Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Russian: ), or Nenetsia, is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Arkhangelsk Oblast). ... Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Russian: ), or Yamalia, is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Tyumen Oblast). ... Taymyr Autonomous Okrug (Russian: ), or Taymyria, is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Krasnoyarsk Krai), the northernmost in mainland Russia (and thus Asia). ... The Komi Republic (Russian: ; Komi: Коми Республика) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). ... Murmansk Oblast (Russian: ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by perhaps 30,000 speakers altogether. ... Northern Samoyedic languages are a subgroup of the Samoyedic languages. ... Flag Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Russian: ), or Nenetsia, is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Arkhangelsk Oblast). ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Because of technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Nenets people (Russian name: Ненцы - Nentsy (plural)) are an indigenous people in Russia. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by perhaps 30,000 speakers altogether. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages  Yukaghir  Samoyedic  Ugric  Finnic The Uralic languages form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... Approximate geographical distribution of areas where indigenous Finno-Ugric languages are spoken. ...

Geographical distribution

Nenets is spoken by 27,273 people, of which 26,730 people are native speakers. It is spoken in the wide area in North Russia including Nenets, Yamalo-Nenets, and Taymyr Autonomous Okrugs, in the Komi Republic, and in the eastern parts of Murmansk Oblast on the Kola peninsula. Flag Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Russian: ), or Nenetsia, is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Arkhangelsk Oblast). ... Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Russian: ), or Yamalia, is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Tyumen Oblast). ... Taymyr Autonomous Okrug (Russian: ), or Taymyria, is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Krasnoyarsk Krai), the northernmost in mainland Russia (and thus Asia). ... The Komi Republic (Russian: ; Komi: Коми Республика) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). ... Murmansk Oblast (Russian: ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). ... Location of Kola south of the Barents Sea. ...

Phonology

Nenets has a CV(C) syllable structure. In other words, a syllable may contain an initial consonant, a medial vowel, and an optional terminal consonant. Examples include ya ("earth"), wada ("word"), and ngarka ("big"). The schwa or reduced vowel may sometimes appear in lieu of a terminal consonant. Although the language does not technically permit syllables to begin with vowels, in practice this sometimes occurs in western dialects, e.g. western arka ("big") versus standard east-central ngarka. A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ...

The syllabic structure is fairly consistent in all dialects, however. There are no long vowels or diphthongs, nor initial nor final consonant clusters, nor medial clusters containing more than two consonants. In linguistics, vowel length is the duration of a vowel sound. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a vowel combination in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ...

Vowels:

Some western dialects lack æ, replacing it with e.

Consonants:

The accent mark denotes palatalization, or a movement towards palatal articulation or secondary palatal articulation (i.e., the accent mark does not indicate ejectives). Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

Orthography

Nenets is written with an adapted form of the Cyrillic alphabet, incorporating the supplemental letters Ӈ, ', and ". The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ...

External links

• Tundra Nenets homepage
• Forest Nenets-English glossary
• Ethnologue report
• The Russian-Nenets Audio Phrasebook
• Comparative Nenets-Nganasan dictionary (with Russian and English equivalents)