Talk:Khanty language

It would be nice if someone could provide a recording of this language.

The origin of "sot"

Right now, there is a notice at the end of the numeral section, to wit:

"Sot is similar to Russian sto "a hundred"; this is a coincidence. It was not borrowed."

I certainly would not believe that Khanty borrowed this from Russian; but is this really a "coincidence"? This is in disaccord with what I've heard about the Finnish word "sata" for "a houndred". I've heard that this is assumed to be borrowed from some "Satem language", more precisely of the Iranian group (and I just noted that the wiktionary entry claims the same); and is taken as one of the indications for the linguistic forefathers of Finns to have lived in the vicinity of speakers of some language of the Iranian branch of the Aryan languages at some prehistoric time. This would actually make Finnish sata a cognate of Russian sto, not by direct borrowing but by a several thousand years old common descent. In any case, I'd be rather surprised if Uralian linguist expert do not consider Finnish sata and Khanty sot as cognates.

This would make sot and sto cognates, too, wouldn't it; although the similarities of the present-day forms partly would be due to independent but incidently similar simplification of the original satem-language form, probably something similar to Avestan satəm.

Does anyone who has access to more reliable sources than my vague memories a possibility to check this? JoergenB (talk) 05:21, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm to tired to think clearly. If the words are cognates as I proposed, the youngest common origin of course would be placed back at the differentiation of the proto-Slavic and the proto-Aryan groups.JoergenB (talk) 05:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It could be at any time, right? Slavic doesn't have to be a descendant of the source language, only a cousin. However, the borrower would have to be proto-Fenno-Ugric or earlier, unless there were a second borrowing. kwami (talk) 06:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Was it borrowed at such an early time? Really, I can't deny it, I might have been uncareful in putting this statement in. I'll remove the statement from the article then; on the other hand, perhaps you can tell us where you read the claim that the Uralic languages - for clearly if it has been borrowed it must have been at a very early moment indeed, before Finnic and Ugric split! - borrowed satem from the satem-languages. Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 07:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I read it here! My point was just that, if the Khanti and Finnic words are cognate, then they inherited it from their last common ancestor - unless they borrowed it independently from IE or from each other. If the latter is the case, there's no more sense in pointing this word out as a Fenno-Ugric cognate than there is in saying that the Arabic, Japanese, and Aymara words for 'radio' are cognate. kwami (talk) 08:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Follow the wikt link I gave: sata! (I'll try to find out where I read it; but it might be from a book, "Uraliska språk" by Björn Collinder, which I've lent out 20 years ago and haven't got back yet...)-JoergenB (talk) 17:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Dialect Phonology, Orthography

Several requests:
1) If the three main literary dialects are Kazym, Shuryshkar, and middle-Ob, it would be nice to have some phonological information on these dialects.
2) It would also be useful to map the alphabet with the phonology. For example, what cyrillic characters does the Kazym dialect use, and what are the sounds of these letters?
3) For the examples given in this article, is there mention of which dialect it is?
languagegeek (talk) 18:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)