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Khanty | |
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Ostyak | |
Geographic distribution | Khanty–Mansi, Russia |
Ethnicity | 31,467 Khanty people (2020 census)[1] |
Native speakers | 14,000 (2020 census)[1] |
Linguistic classification | Uralic
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Subdivisions | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | kca |
Glottolog | khan1279 (Khantyic) |
Khanty (also spelled Khanti or Hanti), previously known as Ostyak (/ˈɒstjæk/),[4] is a Uralic language family composed of multiple dialect continuua, varyingly considered a language or a collection of distinct languages, spoken in the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Okrugs. There were thought to be around 7,500 speakers of Northern Khanty and 2,000 speakers of Eastern Khanty in 2010, with Southern Khanty being extinct since the early 20th century.[5] The number of speakers reported in the 2020 census was 13,900.[6][1]
The Khanty language has many dialects. The western group includes the Obdorian, Ob, and Irtysh dialects. The eastern group includes the Surgut and Vakh-Vasyugan dialects, which, in turn, are subdivided into thirteen other dialects. All these dialects differ significantly from each other by phonetic, morphological, and lexical features to the extent that the three main "dialects" (northern, southern and eastern) are mutually unintelligible.[7] Thus, based on their significant multifactorial differences, Eastern, Northern and Southern Khanty could be considered separate but closely related languages.