Southern Selkup language

The name of Ostyak Samoyed was used since the days of M. Kastrena (mid-19th century) until the late 1930s. Then the notion of the Selkup language, encompassing both Northern and Southern Selkup dialects, was introduced into scientific and official use in the 1930s. It was based on the self-designation of the Northern group of Selkups. But the name did not catch on among Southern Selkups (Selkups of Tomsk Oblast), who continued to refer to themselves as Ostyaks, even in the 2002 and 2010 Censuses.

Until recently, there was a question of a single Selkup language. Several years ago, it was suggested to divide it into two languages – Northern and Southern Selkup – based on numerous linguistic and sociolinguistic data. And while Northern Selkup is easy to see as a separate language with its dialect division, Southern Selkup is more like an array of separate dialects. The key arguments for combining these dialects into one single language and separating it from Northern Selkup were the lack of mutual intelligibility between these two variants and the lexicostatistical calculations that showed that the Southern dialects were close enough to be considered the dialects of the same language (the percentage of lexical similarity between them varies between 91 and 95%). An additional argument in favor of reuniting local variants of the Southern Selkup was the fact that it is currently on the verge of extinction and many of its dialects and even the entire dialect groups have no native speakers anymore, thus, these are just the remains of a former local diversity.