Pronunciation [nʲɐʔ] Native speakers 130 (2010 census) | Native to Russia | |
Region Taymyr Autonomous Okrug Ethnicity 860 Nganasans (2010 census) Language family Uralic
Samoyedic
Nganasan | ||
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. In 2002 it was spoken by 500 out of 830 Nganasan people in the southwestern and central parts of the Taymyr Peninsula.
Contents
Classification
Nganasan is the most divergent language of the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic language family (Janhunen 1998). There are two main dialects, Avam (авамский говор, avamsky govor) and Vadeyev (вадеевский говор, vadeyevsky govor). Vocabulary can be traced elements of the unknown substrate origin.
Phonology
The language has 10 vowels and about 20 consonant phonemes.
Several bisyllabic sequences of vowels are possible:
One of the main features of Nganasan is the consonant gradation, which concerns the consonant phonemes /b, t, k, s (sʼ)/ and their nasal combinations /mb, nt, ŋk, ns/.
Orthography
The language's Cyrillic-based alphabet was devised in the 1990s: