| Also Known As: Imbatski-ket,Yenisei Ostyak,Yenisey Ostiak
Description:
The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, a Siberian language long thought to be an isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family, is spoken along the middle Yenisei Basin by the Kets.
Attempts have been made by Soviet scholars to establish a relationship with either Burushaski or the Sino-Tibetan languages, and it frequently forms part of the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. None of these attempts have been conclusive. Joseph Greenberg proposed a link between Ket and other Yeniseian languages and the Na-Dene language group of North America in his final study of Eurasiatic languages. More recently, in February 2008, linguist Edward Vajda also submitted a paper on the proposed link between Ket with the Na-Dene languages. His paper has been favorably reviewed by several experts on Na-Dene and Yeniseic languages, including Michael Krauss, Jeff Leer, James Kari, and Heinrich Werner, as well as a number of other well-known linguists, including Bernard Comrie, Johanna Nichols, Victor Golla, Michael Fortescue, and Eric Hamp.
The language is threatened with extinction—the number of ethnic Kets that are native speakers of the language has dropped from 1,225 in..... full article at Wikipedia |
