Selkup language

Selkup
шӧльӄумыт әты šöľqumyt әty, чумыль ӄумыт әты čumyľ qumyt әty, сӱccӱ ӄумыт әты śüssü qumyt әty, шӧш ӄумыт әты šöš qumyt әty, тӱй ӄумыт әты tüj qumyt әty
Spoken in	Russia
Region	Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
Ethnicity	Selkup people
Native speakers	1,570 (1994 est.)  (date missing)
Language family	Uralic Samoyedic (core) Kamas–Selkup Selkup
Language codes
ISO 639-2	sel
ISO 639-3	sel

Selkup language is a language of the Selkups, belonging to the Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. It is spoken by some 1,570 people (1994 est.) in the region between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers (in Siberia). The language name Selkup comes from the Russian "cелькупский язык" (selkupsky yazyk), based on the native name used in the Taz dialect, шӧльӄумыт әты šöľqumyt әty, lit. forest-man language. Different dialects use different names, and these variations are shown in the infobox to the right.

Selkup is fractured in an extensive dialect continuum whose ends are no longer mutually intelligible. The three main varieties are the Taz (Northern) dialect (тазовский диалект, tazovsky dialekt), which became the basis of the Selkup written language in the 1930s, Tym (Central) dialect (тымский диалект, tymsky dialekt), and Ket dialect (кетский диалект, ketsky dialekt).

Phonology

There are 25 vowel and 16 consonant phonemes in the Taz dialect.

Taz Selkup consonants

	Labial	Dental	Palatal(ized)	Velar	Uvular
Nasals	/m/	/n/	/nʲ/	/ŋ/	[ɴ]
Stops	/p/	/t/	/tʲ/	/k	/q/
Fricatives	([f])	/s/	/sʲ/	([x])	([χ])
Trills		/r/			[ʀ]
Laterals		/l/	/lʲ/
Semivowels	/w/		/j/

• Voicing is not phonemic. Stops and fricatives may be voiced between vowels or after sonorant consonants.
• The palatalized stop and fricative /tʲ/, /sʲ/ are most typically rendered as an alveolo-palatal affricate [tɕ] and fricative [ɕ].
• Before front vowels, palatalized varieties of other consonants are also found.
• [ɴ] and [ʀ] are allophones of /q/ when occurring before nasals and liquids, respectively.
• The non-coronal stops /p/, /k/, /q/ have optional fricative allophones [f], [x], [χ] when occurring before /s/ or /sʲ/.

References

• Helimski, Eugene. 1998. "Selkup". In: Abondolo, David (ed): Uralic languages. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08198-X.

External links

• Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia: The Selkup Language
• Ethnologue report for Selkup
• The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire: The Selkups