Nenets (Ненэця’ вада/Nenėcjaˀ vada)

Nenets belongs to the Samoyedic branch of the Finno-Ugaric languages. It is spoken by about 27,000 people in Siberia, particularly in the Nenets, Yamalo-Nenets, and Taymyr Autonomous Okrugs, in the Komi Republic, and in the eastern parts of Murmansk Oblast on the Kola peninsula.

There are two main dialects of Nenets: Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets, and there is only limited mutual intelligibility between them. About 95% of Nenets speakers speak Tundra Nenets.

Nenets first appeared in written form in the 1830s in reglious texts published by archimandrite Venyamin Smirnov. Before then the Nenets used various pictographic symbols called tamga to mark property. In 1931 a standard, Latin-based orthography was established, then the Cyrillic alphabet was adopted in 1937.

Nenets alphabet and pronunciation

Information about Nenets pronunciation compiled by Wolfram Siegel

Links

Information about the Nenets language and people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nenets_language
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/tn.html
http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/nenets.shtml

Forest Nenets - English Glossary
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3259/fnen-eng.html

Related languages

Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Komi, Livonian, Mari, Nenets, Saami, Võro, Votic

Other languages written with the Cyrillic alphabet