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.

Unfortunately, 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—perhaps as few as ten to twenty—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 been facing big challenges. In the 1930s, many Ket people were moved to large farms. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, children were sent to schools where they only learned 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 (Upper Inbatz), Central, and Northern (together called Lower Inbatz). These dialects are very similar, and people from different groups can usually understand each other. The Southern dialect was most commonly 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 groups certain sounds as less common in the language.

Consonants

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

The way these sounds are pronounced can change depending on their position in a word, and 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 slightly in certain places.

Tone

People who study Ket disagree on how many different 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 made a writing system using Latin letters, but they only used it for a short time.

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

Morphosyntax

Ket is a synthetic language. Verbs use prefixes, while suffixes are rare outside the noun area. The basic word order is subject–object–verb (SOV).

Nouns have a basic case for subjects and direct objects and a system of secondary cases for spatial relations. There are three noun classes: masculine, feminine, and inanimate.

Ket uses verbal prefixes, which are classified into five conjugation types. These prefixes can be added to verbs in specific ways.

Ket also uses incorporation, where parts of speech like nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and bound morphemes can be included within the verb. This can describe the tool of an action, the result of an action, or add extra meaning to the verb.

The division between morphemes is based on fusion. Sandhi is common, and the name marking is of Ezāfe-type.

Number

Ket has two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. This is shown by adding suffixes like -n for individuated plural or -ŋ for collective plural. There is also an old singulative suffix -s on some singular forms.

Noun declension

Verb paradigm

Ket uses a system of prefixes in specific positions to show meaning in verbs. The positions are P8, P6, P4, P3, P1, and P-1, with P0 being the verb root. Each position has a specific role, such as marking the subject, object, or tense.

All verb conjugations except the second mark P8, but sometimes the subject person morpheme in P8 is dropped if certain other prefixes are used.

Example conjugations show how different conjugation classes work, with changes in prefixes to show tense and other meanings.

Lexicon

The Ket language mostly uses words made of just one syllable, coming from its own Yeniseian roots. Recently, it has taken in words from Russian. Long ago, it also picked up words from nearby Samoyedic, Uralic, Turkic, and Tungusic (Evenki) languages.

Some important words and actions in Ket look very similar to those in the Athabascan languages from North America. This has led some people to 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, with superscript 0 marking the root word and superscript 7 marking 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.]