Khanty or Xanty language, also known previously as the Ostyak language, is a language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

 of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi

Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug

Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug , also known as Yugra, is a federal subject of Russia . Population: The people native to the region are the Khanty and the Mansi, known collectively as Ob Ugric people...

 and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous

Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug

Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug , is a federal subject of Russia . Its administrative center is the town of Salekhard. Population: -Geography and natural history:...

 okrugs, as well as in Aleksandrovsky

Alexandrovsky District, Tomsk Oblast

Alexandrovsky District is an administrative and a municipal district of Tomsk Oblast, Russia. It is located in the northwestern portion of the oblast and borders with the territory of the town of Strezhevoy, with Kargasoksky District, and with Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. The area of the...

 and Kargosoksky districts of Tomsk Oblast

Tomsk Oblast

Tomsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia . It lies in the southeastern West Siberian Plain, in the southwest of the Siberian Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Tomsk. Population:...

 in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. According to the 1994 Salminen and 1994 Janhunen study, there were 12,000 Khanty-speaking people in Russia.

The Khanty language is known to have a large number of dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s. The western group of dialects includes the Obdoria

Salekhard

-International relations:-Twin towns/sister cities:Salekhard is twinned with:*Azov, Rostov Oblast, Russia-External links:*...

n, Ob

Ob River

The Ob River , also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the world's seventh longest river. It is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean .The Gulf of Ob is the world's longest estuary.-Names:The Ob is known to the Khanty people as the...

, and Irtysh

Irtysh

The Irtysh River is a river in Siberia and is the chief tributary of the Ob River. Its name means White River. Irtysh's main affluent is the Tobol River...

 dialects. The eastern group of dialects includes the Surgut

Surgut

Surgut is a city in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Russia, located on the Ob River near its junction with the Irtysh River, the largest in the autonomous okrug and the second largest in Tyumen Oblast. Population:...

 and Vakh

Vakh River

The Vakh River is a river in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is a right tributary of the Ob River. The Vakh River is 964 km long; the area of its basin is 76,700 km². It begins at the watershed of the basin of the Ob, the Yenisei, and the Taz Rivers. The Vakh River's main...

-Vasyugan

Vasyugan River

Vasyugan is a river in the southern West Siberian Plain of Russia. It is a tributary of the Ob River on the left side, and its course from its source in the Vasyugan Swamp is entirely within the Kargasok district of Tomsk Oblast.- Statistics :...

 dialects, which, in turn, are subdivided into thirteen other dialects. All these dialects significantly differ from each other by their phonetic

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

, morphological

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

, and lexical

Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...

 features – to the extent that the three main "dialects" (the northern group as the third) are mutually unintelligible. Thus, based on their significant multifactorial differences western and eastern Khanty could be considered individual but closely related languages.

Alphabet

Cyrillic (version as of 2000)

А а	Ӓ ӓ	Ӑ ӑ	Б б	В в	Г г	Д д	Е е
Ё ё	Ә ә	Ӛ ӛ	Ж ж	З з	И и	Й й	К к
Қ қ	Л л	Ӆ ӆ	Ԓ ԓ	М м	Н н	Ң ң	Ӈ ӈ
О о	Ӧ ӧ	Ө ө	Ӫ ӫ	П п	Р р	С с	Т т
У у	Ӱ ӱ	Ў ў	Ф ф	Х х	Ҳ ҳ	Ц ц	Ч ч
Ҷ ҷ	Ш ш	Щ щ	Ъ ъ	Ы ы	Ь ь	Э э	Є Ukrainian Ye Ukrainian Ye is a character of the Cyrillic script. It is considered as an individual letter of modern Ukrainian alphabet and as a variant form of Ye in modern Church Slavonic language...  є
Є̈ є̈	Ю ю	Ю̆ ю̆	Я я	Я̆ я̆

Cyrillic (version as of 1958)

А а		Б б	В в	Г г	Д д	Е е	Ё ё
Ә ә		Ж ж	З з	И и	Й й	К к
Л л	Л’ л’	М м	Н н		О о		Ө ө
	П п	Р р	С с	Т т	У у		Ф ф
Х х	Ц ц	Ч ч	Ч’ ч’	Ш ш	Щ щ	Ъ ъ	Ы ы
Ь ь	Э э	Ю ю	Я я

Latin (1931–1937)

A a	B в	D d	E e	Ә Schwa (Cyrillic) Schwa is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is currently used in Abkhaz, Bashkir, Dungan, Kalmyk, Kazakh, Kurdish and Tatar...  ә	F f	H h	Һ һ
I i	J j	K k	L l	Ļ L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet...  ļ	Ł ł	M m	N n
Ņ N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...  ņ	Ŋ Eng (letter) Eng or engma is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used to represent a velar nasal in the written form of some languages and in the International Phonetic Alphabet.-History:...  ŋ	O o	P p	R r	S s	Ş ş
T t	U u	V v	Z z

History of the literary language

The Khanty written language

Written language

A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....

 was first created after the October Revolution

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...

 on the basis of the Latin script in 1930, and then with the Cyrillic alphabet (with the additional letter <ң> for /ŋ/) from 1937. Khanty literary works are usually written with the use of three dialects, such as the Kazym, Shuryshkar, and middle-Ob dialects. Newspaper reporting and TV and radio broadcasting are usually done in the Kazymian dialect.

Dialects

• Eastern
  • Far Eastern: Vach, Vasjugan
  • Vartovskoe
  • Surgut (Jugan, Malij Jugan, Pim, Likrisovskoe, Tremjugan, Tromagan)
• Western
• North: Ob(dorsk), Berjozov (Synja, Muzhi, Shurishkar), Kazym
• transitional: Sherkal, Nizyam
• South: Demjanka, Konda, Cingali, Krasnojarsk, ? Salym

The southern dialect are likely extinct. Salym is traditionally classified as Eastern.

The simplest vowel inventories are those of Nizyam, Sherkal, and Berjozov, which have full /eː aː ɔː uː/ and reduced /ɛ a o/. This is identical to that of the Sosva dialect of Mansi

Mansi language

The Mansi language is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast...

, which is adjacent.

The Vakh dialect

The Vakh dialect is divergent. It has rigid vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

 and a tripartite

Tripartite language

A tripartite language, also called an ergative–accusative language, is one that treats the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a transitive verb, and the object of a transitive verb each in different ways...

 (ergative–accusative) case system: The subject of a transitive verb

Transitive verb

In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...

 takes the instrumental case suffix -nə-, while the object takes the accusative case suffix. The subject of an intransitive verb

Intransitive verb

In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a 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.

Vach has the richest vowel inventory, with full /iː yː ɯː uː eː øː oː ɛː aː/ and possibly /œː ɔː/ (depending on the account), and reduced vowels /e ø a o/.

The Ob’ dialect

The Ob’ phonemic inventory is p t tʲ k, s ʃ ɕ x, m n ɲ ŋ, l ɾ j w, short vowels /i a o u/, long vowels /eː aː oː uː/ (in another account, full vowels /iː eː ɛː aː oː uː/ and reduced vowels /ɛ a o/), and a reduced vowel ə which is never word-initial. Unlike Vakh, it does not have vowel harmony.

The noun

The nominal suffixes include dual

Dual (grammatical number)

Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...

 -ŋən, plural

Plural

In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

 -(ə)t, dative

Dative case

The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....

 -a, locative

Locative case

Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...

/instrumental

Instrumental case

The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...

 -nə.

For example:

xot "house" (cf. Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

 ház, Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

 koti "home")

xotŋəna "to the two houses"

xotətnə "at the houses" (cf. Finnish kotona "at home", an exceptional form using the old, locative meaning of the essive case ending -na).

Singular, dual, and plural possessive suffixes may be added to singular, dual, and plural nouns, in three persons, for 3³ = 27 forms. A few, from məs "cow", are:

məsem "my cow"

məsemən "my 2 cows"

məsew "my cows"

məstatən "the 2 of our cows"

məsŋətuw "our 2 cows"

Pronouns

The personal pronouns are, in the nominative case:

	SG	DU	PL
1st person	ma	min	muŋ
2nd person	naŋ	nən	naŋ
3rd person	tuw	tən	təw

The cases of ma are accusative manət and dative manəm.

The demonstrative pronouns and adjectives are:

tamə "this", tomə "that", sit "that yonder": tam xot "this house".

Basic interrogative pronouns are:

xoy "who?", muy "what?"

Numerals

Khanty numerals, compared with Hungarian, are:

#	Khanty	Hungarian
1	yit, yiy	egy
2	katn, kat	kettő, két
3	xutəm	három
4	nyatə	négy
5	wet	öt
6	xut	hat
7	tapət	hét
8	nəvət	nyolc
9	yaryaŋ (short of ten?)	kilenc
10	yaŋ	tíz
20	xus	húsz
30	xutəmyaŋ (3 tens)	harminc
40	nyatəyaŋ (4 tens)	negyven
100	sot	száz

The formation of multiples of ten shows slavic influence in Khanty, whereas Hungarian uses the collective derivative suffix -van (-ven) closely related to the suffix of the adverbial participle

Adverbial participle

Adverbial participles are built out of a verb , and in most cases they play the role of the sentence element called adverbial in the grammar of some languages...

 which is -va (-ve) today but used to be -ván (-vén).
Note also the regularity of [xot]-[haːz] "house" and [sot]-[saːz] "hundred".

Syntax

Both Khanty and Mansi

Mansi language

The Mansi language is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast...

 are basically nominative–accusative languages, but have innovative morphological ergativity. In an ergative construction, the object is given the same case as the subject of an intransitive verb, and the locative

Locative case

Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...

 is used for the agent of the transitive verb (as an instrumental

Instrumental case

The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...

) . This may be used with some specific verbs, for example "to give": the literal anglicisation would be "by me (subject) a fish (object) gave to you (indirect object)" for the equivalent of the sentence "I gave a fish to you". However, the ergative is morphological (marked using a case) only, not syntactic, so that, in addition, these may be passivized in a way resembling English. For example, in Mansi

Mansi language

The Mansi language is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast...

, "a dog (agent) bit you (object)" could be reformatted as "you (object) were bitten, by a dog (instrument)".