| Northern Khanty | |
| Nativename: | хӑнты йасәӈ |
| Familycolor: | uralic |
| States: | Russia |
| Ethnicity: | 15,000 northern Khanty |
| Region: | Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug |
| Date: | 1993 |
| Ref: | [1] |
| Fam2: | Khanty |
| Dia2: | Kazym |
| Dia3: | Obdorsk |
| Dia4: | Shuryshkary |
| Dia1: | Middle Ob |
| Map: | File:6-Ob_Ugric-languages.png |
| Mapcaption: | Map of Khanty and Mansi varieties in the early 20th century, with |
| Linglist: | 1of |
| Linglist2: | kca-nor |
| Isoexception: | dialect |
| Glottoname: | Northern Khanty |
| Glotto: | nort3264 |
| Elp: | 8550 |
| Script: | Cyrillic |
| Minority: | Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (all Khanty varieties) |
Northern Khanty is a Uralic language, frequently considered a dialect of a unified Khanty language, spoken by about 9,000 people.[2] It is the most widely spoken out of all the Khanty languages, the majority composed of 5,000 speakers in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, in Russia.[3] The reason for this discrepancy is that dialects of Northern Khanty have been better preserved in its northern reaches, and the Middle Ob and Kazym dialects are losing favor to Russian. All four dialects have been literary, beginning with the Middle Ob dialects, but shifting to Kazym, and back to Middle Ob, now the most used dialect in writing.[4] The Shuryshkary dialects are also written, primarily due to an administrative division between the two, as the latter is spoken in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
Dialects of Northern Khanty:
The Kazym dialect distinguishes 18 consonants.
| Bilabial | Dental | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | pal. | |||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | nʲ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Plosive | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Fricative | central | pronounced as /link/ | sʲ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| lateral | pronounced as /link/ | ɬʲ | ||||||
| Approximant | central | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| lateral | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Trill | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
The vowel inventory is much simpler. Eight vowels are distinguished in initial syllables: six full pronounced as //i e a ɒ o u// and four reduced pronounced as //ĭ ă ŏ ŭ//. In unstressed syllables, four values are found: pronounced as //ɑ ə ĕ ĭ//.[5]
A similarly simple vowel inventory is found in the Nizyam, Sherkal, and Berjozov dialects, which have full pronounced as //e a ɒ u// and reduced pronounced as //ĭ ɑ̆ ŏ ŭ//. Aside from the full vs. reduced contrast rather than one of length, this is identical to that of the adjacent Sosva dialect of Mansi.
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ ~ pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Affricate | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| Lateral | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Trill | pronounced as /ink/ pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
The Obdorsk dialect has retained full close vowels and has a nine-vowel system: full vowels pronounced as //i e æ ɑ o u// and reduced vowels pronounced as //æ̆ ɑ̆ ŏ//.
However, it has a simpler consonant inventory, having the lateral approximants /l lʲ/ in place of the fricatives /ɬ ɬʲ/ and having fronted to /s n/.
A new alphabet scheme was published in 2013. The various written standards, such as Kazym (Northern Khanty) and Surgut (Eastern Khanty), have their own versions of this alphabet, with some different letters. The influential (Enlightenment/Education) publishing house, which publishes many of the textbooks and early literacy material for the smaller languages of Russia, designed curved-tail variants of the letters ԯ and ң with a tick, namely ԓ and ӈ, and these have been redundantly encoded in Unicode as separate characters.[6] These hooked forms have been chosen as the preferred allographs of these letters for the Kazym alphabet.[7] However, the respected Khanty-language journal uses the diagonal-tail forms ӆ and ӊ for Kazym.[8]
| Ӑ ӑ | В в | И и | Й й | К к | Л л | Ԓ ԓ[9] | |
| Љ љ | М м | Н н | Ӈ ӈ | Њ њ | О о | Ө ө | П п |
| Р р | С с | Т т | | У у | Ў ў | Х х | Ш ш |
| Щ щ | Ы ы | Є є | Э э | Ә ә |
| ӑ | в | и | й | к | л | ԯ | љ | м | н | њ | ң | о | ө | п | р | с | т | | у | ў | х | ш | щ | ы | є | э | ә | |||
| IPA | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ |
|---|
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Kazym Khanty:
Hułyjewa mirăt wəł’nja pa imurtăn wəłty sjira sêma pitłăt. Ływ numsaṇăt pa ływjeła jełêm atum ut wêrty pa kŭtełn ływ łəhsăṇa wəłłăt.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Northern Mansi:
Šuši mirăt ijaha muj pa atełta wəłty sjir tăjłăt, hułyjewa hănnêhəjt pa mêt wułaṇ wəł’nja wêrăt, sjităt mŭwtêł mirăt wêrăt wantty pa tŭṇmatty tăhi mŭwtêł mirăt wəłty sjir djeklaracija nêpjekn hănšman pa artałuman wəłłăt.
Article 1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in English:
Indigenous peoples have the right to the full enjoyment, as a collective or as individuals, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognized in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law.