Native to Russia | Native speakers 40 (2010 census) | |
Region Krasnoyarsk Krai, along the lower Yenisei River Ethnicity 230 Enets people (2010 census) Language family Uralic
Samoyedic
(core)
Enets–Nenets
Enets ISO 639-3 Either:
enf – Forest Enets
enh – Tundra Enets | ||
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 (Bai) Enets and Tundra (Madu or Somatu) Enets, which may be considered separate languages. There are only about forty speakers in total, with slightly more speaking Tundra 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.
Contents
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 a Cyrillic alphabet, including the letters ԑ, ӈ and ҫ which are not used in the Russian alphabet.
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.