Home > Samoyedic languages

Together with the Finno-Ugric languages they form the Uralic branch of the Ural-Altaic linguistic phylum. Nowadays the unity of Ural-Altaic is doubted.

The language and respective ethnic groups include:

• Nenets,
• Yenets or Enets, the tribe by Yenisei River,
• Nganasan or Tavgi ,
• Selkup , also called Ostyak Samoyeds; the name can cause certain confusion, because some observers labelled the Khants with the name Ostyaks,
• Kama Samoyeds (extinct).

The first three are mutually intelligible, Selkup being more divergent.

Samoyed territory extends from the White Sea to the Laptev Sea, along the Arctic shores of European RussiaThe Russian Federation ( Russian: , transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija , or Russia (Russian: , transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija , is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. With, including southern Novaya ZemlyaThe archipelago of Novaya Zemlya ( Russian: "New Land"; formerly known as Nova Zembla consists of two major islands in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia, separated by the narrow Matochkin Strait, and a number of smaller ones. The two main islands ar, the Yamal Peninsula , the mouths of the Ob and the Yenisei and into the TaimyrTaimyr or Taymyr ( Russian: ) may mean: a peninsula in Siberia that forms the most northern part of mainland Asia, see Taimyr Peninsula a river in the Taimyr Peninsula, see Taimyr River a lake from which the Taimyr River flows, see Lake Taimyr. peninsula in northernmost SiberiaSiberia ( Russian: , common English transliterations: Sibir Sibir' is a vast region of Russia and northern Kazakhstan, constituting all of northern Asia, and extending eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and southward from the Arctic Oc. Their economy is based on reindeer herding. They are contiguous with the trans-Ural Ugric speakers and the cis-Ural Permic FinnsThe Finns as the term is used today, denotes the population of Finland. The 20th century history of Finland has made it natural for the Finns to emphasize their bond to their country, independent only since 1917. The severe divisions between social classe to the south, but they are cut off from the Baltic Finns by the Russians in the west and, in the east, by the north Turkic Yakut from the Yukaghir. A substantial Samoyed city grew up at Mangazeya in 16th century as a trade city, to be destroyed at the beginning of the 17th century.