The Ket language

1. Sociolinguistic data
2.  

1.     Names of the language

Currently its main name is the Ket language, brought into academic use in the early 20 ^th century. Its base is the Ket word for a human being (ke’t)

From M.A.Castren’s time (mid-19 ^th century) to the late 1930s, the name of the Yenisei Ostyak language was in use.

Its endonym is ostyganna ka’ (literally “word of Ostyaks”).

2.     General characteristics

• Number of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group

Number of speakers: 199 people. Source: those who recorded speaking the language in the 2010 Census.

Number of speakers in traditional settlements according to the 2010 Census: _ people. Source: the 2010 Census.

The size of the ethnic group (according to the 2010 Census): 1219 people

Commentaries: One has to point out that the number of Ket speakers in the 2010 Census is exaggerated. Our estimates based on a series of sociolinguistic research projects from 1996 to 2015 in various settlements of Krasnoyarsk Krai suggest that the number of those who could speak Ket to some degree (from being fluent in it to just being able to say a few phrases) in 2010 was no higher than 60 (5 percent of the total number of Kets): the majority of Ket speakers were concentrated in the settlement of Kellog in Turukhanski District and spoke the Yloguysk sub-dialect of the southern dialect. There were only a handful of speakers of the central and northern dialect left. The youngest speaker of Ket were 40 back then, the majority were over 55-60.

2.2.. Age of speakers

For the age of speakers we can show one of these:

Ket is spoken by a small number of old people +

Commentary. The youngest speakers of Ket are 53-55 now, they live only in Kellog and there just a few of them. 

2.3. Sociolinguistic characteristics

2.3.1. General characteristics

All Kets speak Russian now, only a few speak Ket. The linguistic shift (from Ket to Russian) took place at various times in various groups of Kets: it started earlier in the settlements along the Yenisei river, in the 1960s-1970s; away from this big river, along the Yeloguy and the Kureika rivers, the process happened starting from the early 1980s onwards. The language was adversely affected by shutting down small settlements and migration of their residents along the Yenisei (shutting down Pakulikha, whose residents were moved to the Russian-speaking settlements of Baklanikha and Vereshchagino, and the liquidation of Serkovo, whose residents were moved to Goroshikha and Maduyka).

The 2010 Census data on the languages of indigenous minority languages of Russia are comparable to the data of the 1989 and 2002 Censuses in different parameters. On the one hand, the data of the 2010 and 1989 Censuses are comparable in “recognising an ethnic language as native”, on the other hand, the 2010 and 2002 Censuses are comparable on “speaking an ethnic language” within an ethnic group.

Since the 2010 census form contained both the question about the native language and the question about being able to speak the language, one can compare the correlation of answers to these two questions. In case of Kets, as well as many other minority ethnic groups in the RF, the number of members of ethnic groups who recorded their ethnic language as their native language is bigger than the number of those who recorded their being able to speak the language. In the 2010 Census, this difference was not so great for Kets – just 32 people, which made around 14 percent of people who recorded Ket as their native language. Among those who recorded being able to speak Ket, there must have been a few who spoke it not as their first language, but as their second language, which means that the number of those who claimed Ket was their native language, but could not speak it, was greater than 32, but since the 2010 Census did not include a point about being able to speak ethnic languages, one has to ignore this refinement and suggest that at least 32 Kets named Ket their native language, but could not speak this language. For them, the ethnic language was a means of ethnic identification, not a means of communication.

Consequently, when analysing the number of Ket speakers from the data of the 1989 Census, one has to make allowances for there being a number of respondents who do not include being able to speak the language into the notion of the native language. 

In 2010, the proportion of Kets who named the Ket language as their native language, decreased as compared to 1989 from 48.8 percent to 18.9 percent, while the proportion of Kets who recorded being able to speak the Ket language decreased as compared to 2002 from 24.4 percent to 16.3 percent. It is worth noting that the number of Ket speakers in the 2010 Census is exaggerated. Our estimates based on a series of sociolinguistic research projects from 1996 to 2015 in various settlements of Krasnoyarsk Krai suggest that the number of those who could speak Ket to some degree (from being fluent in it to just being able to say a few phrases) today is no higher than 50 (5 percent of the total number of Kets): the majority of Ket speakers were concentrated in the settlement of Kellog in Turukhanski District and spoke the Yeloguy sub-dialect of the southern dialect. There are only a handful of speakers of the Sulomai subdialect of the southern dialect, of the central and northern dialects left. The youngest speaker of Ket are 53-55 back then, the majority are over 65.

Out of the 141 Kets living in the Tomsk Oblast, none can speak Ket.

It is hard to say who are those 32 people who, according to the 2010 Census, lived outside the area of concentrated residence of Kets and knew Ket. Now a relatively large group of Kets moved to Krasnoyarsk under the program of migration from the North. There are a few Krasnoyarsk Kets who know the language well, though it is mostly passive knowledge.

2.3.2. Vitality status.

Following the existing scale, the vitality status for Kellog is 2A Interrupted

For Sulomay, Surgutikha, Maduyka, Turukhansk, Krasnoyarsk – 1Б Silent

For other places between 1Б Dormant and 1A Extinct.

Table No.1 The classification of vitality statuses

2.4. Information about the writing system

Although the first Ket alphabet was developed back in the 1920s-1930s, and in 1934, N.K.Karger published a Ket ABC book based on the central Ket dialect using the Latin letters, the actually functioning Ket writing system emerged only in the late 1980s, when first in Krasnoyark (1988) and later in Leningrad (1991) there came out the ABC book compiled by G.K.Verner and G.Kh.Nikolaeva based on the southern dialect, and teaching Ket as a school discipline started. The new Ket writing system was based on the Russian alphabet with addition of several special symbols. This writing system was solely used to publish textbooks and study materials for primary schools, including one collection of Ket tales, all the other publications of Ket folklore used different types of transcription. It is worth pointing out that the published textbooks and study materials contained only a few original small-size works (short stories and poems), but a considerable number of translations from Russian. The one exception is G.K.Verner’s poem Song about My Brother (1999), written in Ket, using ideas from Selkup legends and life stories and published along with Russian and German translations. After teaching Ket at schools was abandoned (due to lack of teachers of the language), the main areas of use of the Ket writing system have been the internet (chats and sites) and contests for best literary small-size works in the languages of the indigenous minority ethnic groups of the North. Outside these spheres, Kets write only in Russian.

The Ket lphabet in primary school Ket textbooks include practically all of the Russian letters (Аа, Бб, Вв, Гг, Ӷӷ, Дд, Ее, Ёё, Жж, Зз, Ии, Йй, Кк, Ӄӄ, Лл, Мм, Нн, Ӈӈ, Оо, Өө, Пп, Рр, Сс, Тт, Уу, Фф, Хх, Цц, Чч, Шш, Щщ, Ъъ, Әә, Ыы, ь, ’, Ээ, Юю, Яя) supplemented with a few graphemes to convey specific Ket phonemes or allophones. 

ӷ   [ɣ]

ӈ  [ŋ]

ӄ  [q]

ә  [ә]

ө  [ɔ]

’  [ˀ]

3. Geographic characteristics

3.1. Subjects of the Russian Federation with compact population of native speakers

Krasnoyarsk Krai

Kets are residents of the taiga zone of the Central Siberia. They are assumed to have arrived in this area from the south of Siberia, slowly migrating north along the Yenisei. Their traditional activities were fishing, hunting and gathering wild crops. It seems that in the 19 ^th century a number of Kets adopted transport reindeer husbandry from their neighbours, Selkups and Enets. Reindeer were used longest – up to the 1980s – in the northernmost Ket settlement, Maduyka. Nowadays, Kets live in the middle reaches of the Yenisei and its left-hand and right-hand tributaries, the Yeloguy, the Podkamennaya Tunguska, the Kureika rivers. It is mostly within the Turukhanski District of Krasnoyarsk Krai. There is a small group of Kets living in the south-west of the Evenki Municipal District.

Kets’ neighbours in the north are Selkups, Kets have had long and close contacts with them. In the first quarter of the last century, Kets contacted with Enets in the north, and with the Evenki in the east. If Ket-Selkup relationships were friendly, as a rule, and there were quite a number of intermarriages, the contacts with the Evenki were quite strained, and could erupt into military conflicts now and again. Throughout the area of their residence, Kets have been in contact with Russians for over four centuries, and throughout the last century with other ethnic groups from the European part of Russia and the neighbouring countries from the former USSR.

According to the 2010 Census, there were 121 ethnic Kets in Tomsk Oblast, but there is no information about their being able to speak the Ket language. Our 2010 field research suggests that there are Kets in Verkhneketski District of Tomsk Oblast, but none of them speak Ket and their parents could not speak it either.

There are no speakers of Ket in other countries.

3.2. Total number of traditional native settlements

From 8 to 12, depending on what limitation is put on the number of Ket population (not fewer than…) for the settlement to be call a traditional native settlement.

3.3. List of settlements (according to the 2010 Census)

Table of entities and districts, total population, size of the ethnic group corresponding to the language, number of speakers, the state of preservation of the language, dialect.

Kets live in small settlements in the middle reaches of the Yenisei river and its tributaries within Turukhanski District and in one settlement (Sulomay) of Evenki District, Krasnoyarsk Krai. The largest group of Kets live in the settlement of Kellog (222 people), making the majority of the population there (by January 1 ^st , 2014, there were 329 people living in Kellog). The second largest group of Kets are concentrated in the district centre, Turukhansk (209 people), but they are a minority there (the population of Turukhansk is 5,641 people). Kets also make a majority in the settlements of Maduyka (47 out of 51 people) and Sulomay (147 people out of 186 residents). In other settlements (Bor, Bakhta, Verkhneimbatsk, Surgutikha, Baklanikha, Vereshchagino, Goroshikha, Farkovo) Kets are a minority. In recent years, more and more people have been moving to the district centres – Turukhansk and Tura. A small number of Kets live in cities, mostly within Krasnoyarsk Krai, first of all, in Krasnoyarsk itself.

In Kellog and Verkhneimbatsk, speakers of Yeloguy subdialect of southern Ket dialect live, in Sulomay – speakers of Podkamenno-Tungus subdialect of the southern dialect. Speakers of the central Ket dialect live in Surgutikha, Baklanikha and Vereshchagino, as well as in Bor. In Bakhta, there are descendants of speakers of the central Ket dialect from Surgutikha, as well as descendants of speakers of Podkamenno-Tungus subdialect of the southern dialect, but no one speaks Ket there anymore. Sporadic speakers and semi-speakers of the northern Ket dialect live in Maduyka, descendants of speakers of this dialect live in Goroshikha, but no one speaks Ket there anymore. But in Turukhansk, where young people migrate to find jobs and elderly people move because they are no longer strong enough to carry water from wells and light fires in their stoves, one can meet speakers or semi-speakers of all three dialects.

4. Historical dynamics

Number of speakers and the corresponding ethnic group according to different censuses (starting with 1897) and other sources

1. Linguistic data

1.. Position in the genealogy of world languages

Yeniseian family > northern Yeniseian (Ket-Yugh) branch.

The Ket language is the last extant representative of the Yeniseian language family. The last authoritative record of the use of its closest relative, long perceived as its dialect – the Yugh language – was in the 1970s. Other related languages – Pumpokol, Arin, Kott (Asan) – became extinct back in the 18 ^th -19 ^th centuries. Linguists believe that Yeniseian languages are distantly related to the North Caucasian (Abkhazo-Adygean and Nakh-Dagestanean) and Sino-Tibetan languages.

Currently, there is a popular hypothesis about the relation of the Yeniseian language with the Athabaskan languages, but serious comparatists believe that even if one can assume these languages being related, the relation is very distant and requires far more substantial proof than those supplied by the supporters of this hypothesis

2. Dialect situation

There are three dialects of the Ket language: northern, central and southern (which breaks into Yeloguy and Podkamenno-Tungus, in its turn). The differences between these subdialects and dialects are not great, but the speakers are aware of the peculiarities of their own local variant and tend to consider their own variant the only correct variant of the language, while all the others are perceived as distortions.