Enets language

language
name=Enets
nativename= Онаь базаан
states=Russia
region=Krasnoyarsk Krai, along the lower Yenisei River
speakers=70
familycolor=Uralic
fam2=Samoyedic
fam3=Northern
iso2=mis
lc1=enf|ld1=Forest Enets|ll1=none
lc2=enh|ld2=Tundra Enets|ll2=none

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, which it was formerly regarded as a dialect of, 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 the Cyrillic alphabet, incorporating the supplemental letters Unicode|ԑ, Unicode|ӈ and Unicode|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.

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=enf Ethnologue report for Forest Enets]
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=enh Ethnologue report for Tundra Enets]