Ket language

The Ket (/ˈkɛt/ KET) language, also known as Imbak and formerly called Yenisei Ostyak (/ˈɒstiæk/ OSS-tee-ak), is the last remaining language in the Yeniseian language family. It is spoken by the Ket people who live along the middle Yenisei River.

The Ket language is in danger of disappearing. Many years ago, in 1926, over a thousand people still spoke it. By 1989, that number had fallen to just over five hundred. Today, only a handful of people still speak the language as their mother tongue. Another related language, Yugh, stopped being used completely in the 1970s.

History

The Ket language has a long history. The first notes about it were written in 1723 by a traveler named Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt. For a long time, people thought the Ket were part of another group called the Khanty. In 1934, a book about the Ket language was published for the first time.

The Ket language has faced big challenges. In the 1930s, many Ket people were moved to large farms. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, children went to schools where they learned only Russian. This made it hard for the language to be passed down to new generations. Today, only a few older people still speak Ket well, and it is mostly taught in schools in one town called Kellog. Some special books help children learn about their language and culture. Sadly, there are no children who only speak Ket anymore. Only a few places still have people who speak the language.

Dialects

The Ket language has three dialects: Southern, Central, and Northern. These dialects are very similar, and people from different groups can usually understand each other. The Southern dialect was often used for writing in Ket.

People in different places speak different dialects. Southern Ket is spoken in Kellog, Central Ket in Surgutikha, and Northern Ket in Maduika.

Phonology

Vowels

Georg says some sounds are used less in the Ket language.

Consonants

Vajda says Ket has only 12 main consonant sounds. This is rare because it does not use two sounds found in many other languages. This is similar to Arapaho, Una (Goliath), Obokuitai, Palauan, Efik, as well as classical Arabic and some modern Arabic dialects.

The way these sounds are said can change depending on where they are in a word. There is a lot of variation in how they sound.

For example, some sounds become quieter at the end of a word, and others can change a little in some places.

Tone

People who study Ket do not all agree on how many ways the voice rises and falls when speaking it. Some say there are many, while others say there are none. Experts like Edward Vajda and Stefan Georg say that Ket does use tone, but it is not used on every syllable. Instead, each word has one main tone.

Orthography

In the 1930s, people created a way to write the Ket language using Latin letters, but they didn’t use it for long.

Later, in the 1980s, they made a new writing system using Cyrillic letters.

Morphosyntax

Ket is a synthetic language. Verbs use prefixes, and suffixes are mostly used only with nouns. The usual word order is subject–object–verb (SOV).

Nouns have a basic form for subjects and direct objects, plus other forms for showing location. There are three noun classes: masculine, feminine, and inanimate.

Ket uses special word parts called verbal prefixes in five different ways. These prefixes attach to verbs in set positions.

Ket also uses incorporation, where parts of speech like nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and small word parts can be added inside a verb. This helps describe tools, results, or adds more meaning to the verb.

The way words are broken into smaller parts depends on fusion. Sandhi is common, and the way words are marked is of Ezāfe-type.

Number

Ket has two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. This is shown by adding endings like -n for plural groups or -ŋ for groups together. There is also an old ending -s for some single items.

Noun declension

Verb paradigm

Ket uses prefixes in set places to show meaning in verbs. The places are P8, P6, P4, P3, P1, and P-1, with P0 as the verb root. Each place has a job, like showing who is doing the action, what is being acted on, or when it happens.

All verb changes except one use P8, but sometimes the part showing the person doing the action in P8 is left out if other prefixes are used.

Examples show how different verb groups change, with prefix changes to show time and other ideas.

Lexicon

The Ket language uses words with just one syllable. These words come from its own Yeniseian roots. It has also taken in words from Russian. Long ago, it picked up words from nearby Samoyedic, Uralic, Turkic, and Tungusic (Evenki) languages.

Some important words in Ket look very similar to words in the Athabascan languages from North America. This has made some people think these languages might share a common family.

Sample text

Example sentences

Prefix positions in finite verbs are marked with superscript numerals to show where each part fits. Superscript 0 marks the root word, and superscript 7 marks a special added meaning. The examples come from research by Vajda-Zinn (2004), Georg (2007), and Kotorova-Nefedov (2015).

• --рен (-den "Subject weeps.")
  • Дирен. (Díden. «di⁸꞊den⁰», "I am weeping.")
  • Дърен. (Də́den. «da⁸꞊den⁰», "She is weeping.")
• --к-а-тнь (-tn "Subject goes (in a single direction.)")
  • Боготнь. (Bókotnʲ. «ba⁶-k⁵-a⁴-tn⁰», "I am going.")
  • Уготнь. (Úkotnʲ. «u⁶-k⁵-a⁴-tn⁰», "She is going.")
    • [Personal inflections reside in prefix positions 8 and 6.]

The same verb root can be used in different ways, adding different parts for different meanings:

• --ӄут (-qut "Subject assumes a new position.")
  • Adding parts before the root word:
    • Дигагут. (Díkaqut. «di⁸꞊k⁵-a⁴-qut⁰», "I am climbing uphill.")
    • Дъгагут. (Də́kaqut. «da⁸꞊k⁵-a⁴-qut⁰», "She is climbing uphill.")
  • Adding special meanings to the root word: (аӈ (àŋ, "rope"))
    • Аӈбагсют. (Áŋbaks[q]ut. «aŋ⁷-ba⁶-k⁵-s⁴-qut⁰», "I am tied up.")
    • Аӈигсют. (Áŋiks[q]ut. «aŋ⁷-i⁶-k⁵-s⁴-qut⁰», "She is tied up.")
      • [Personal inflections reside in prefix positions 8 and 6.]