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Map of Khanty and Mansi varieties in the early 20th century, with Eastern Khanty
Eastern Khanty is a Uralic language, frequently considered a dialect of a Khanty language, spoken by about 1,000 people.[2][3][4][5] The majority of these speakers speak the Surgut dialect, as the Vakh-Vasyugan and Salym varieties have been rapidly declining in favor of Russian.[6] The former two have been used as literary languages since the late 20th century, with Surgut being more widely used due to its less isolated location and higher number of speakers.[6]
The Vakh, Vasyugan, Alexandrovo and Yugan (Jugan) dialects have less than 300 speakers in total.[1]
Transitional
The Salym dialect can be classified as transitional between Eastern and Southern (Honti 1998 suggests closer affinity with Eastern, Abondolo 1998 in the same work with Southern). The Atlym and Nizyam dialects also show some Southern features.
Phonology
Eastern Khanty [k] corresponds to [x] in the northern and southern languages.
Vakh
Vakh has the richest vowel inventory, with five reduced vowels /ĕø̆ə̆ɑ̆ŏ/ and full /iyɯueøoæɑ/. Some researchers also report /œɔ/.[9][10]
^/tʲ/ can be realized as an affricate [tɕ] in the Tremjugan and Agan sub-dialects.
^ abThe velar/uvular contrast is predictable in inherited vocabulary: [q] appears before back vowels, [k] before front and central vowels. However, in loanwords from Russian, [k] may also be found before back vowels.
^The phonemic status of [ʃ] is not clear. It occurs in some words in variation with [s], in others in variation with [tʃ].
^In the Pim sub-dialect, /ɬ/ has recently shifted to /t/, a change that has spread from Southern Khanty.
^The labialized postvelar approximant [ʁ̞ʷ] occurs in the Tremjugan sub-dialect as an allophone of /w/ between back vowels, for some speakers also word-initially before back vowels. Research from the early 20th century also reported two other labialized phonemes: /kʷ~qʷ/ and /ŋʷ/, but these are no longer distinguished.
The Khanty letters with a tick or tail at bottom, namely ҚԮҢҲҶ, are sometimes rendered with a diagonal tail, i.e. ⟨Ӆ Ӊ⟩, and sometimes with a curved tail, i.e. ⟨Ӄ Ӈ Ԓ Ӽ⟩. However, in the case of Surgut such graphic variation needs to be handled by the font, because there are no Unicode characters to hard-code Ҷ with a diagonal tail, and Unicode has refused a request to encode a variant of Ҷ with a curved tail (, approximated in unicode as Ч̡ч̡), the reasoning being that it would be an allograph rather than a distinct letter. (The same is true of the other curved-tail variants in Unicode; those were encoded by mistake.)[14]
Grammar
The Vakh dialect is divergent. It has rigid vowel harmony and a tripartite (ergative–accusative) case system, where the subject of a transitive verb takes the instrumental case suffix -nə-, while the object takes the accusative case suffix. The subject of an intransitive verb, however, is not marked for case and might be said to be absolutive. The transitive verb agrees with the subject, as in nominative–accusative systems.
^"Хантыйский язык" [Khanty language]. Историческая энциклопедия Сибири (in Russian). Новосибирск. 2009.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^ abSalminen, Tapani (2023). "Demography, endangerment, and revitalization". In Abondolo, Daniel Mario; Valijärvi, Riitta-Liisa (eds.). The Uralic languages. Routledge Language Family (2nd ed.). London New York: Routledge. p. 103. ISBN978-1-138-65084-8.
^Honti, László (1981), "Ostjakin kielen itämurteiden luokittelu", Congressus Quintus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum, Turku 20.-27. VIII. 1980, Turku: Suomen kielen seura, pp. 95–100
Gulya, János (1966). Eastern Ostyak chrestomathy. Indiana University Publications, Uralic and Altaic series. Vol. 51.
Abondolo, Daniel Mario; Valijärvi, Riitta-Liisa, eds. (2023). The Uralic languages. Routledge language family (2nd ed.). Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN978-1-315-62509-6.
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