Eastern Khanty language
Eastern Khanty is a Uralic language, frequently considered a dialect of a Khanty language, spoken by about 1,000 people. The majority of these speakers speak the Surgut dialect, as the Vakh-Vasyugan and Salym varieties have been rapidly declining in favor of Russian. 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.
Classification
Dialects
Classification of Eastern Khanty dialects:
The Vakh, Vasyugan, Alexandrovo and Yugan dialects have less than 300 speakers in total.
Transitional
The Salym dialect can be classified as transitional between Eastern and Southern. The Atlym and Nizyam dialects also show some Southern features.
Examples
Surgut; Љаљ, икита пэканәта катԓәмтәта мосәԓ. ― The war has begun, men must take up arms Vakh; Пÿкинит ӛсäт пäни Ӄоԓӄǝт ӛсäт ǝйтхынǝ вǝлвǝлт.
Phonology
Eastern Khanty corresponds to in the northern and southern languages.
Vakh
Vakh has the richest vowel inventory, with five reduced vowels and full. Some researchers also report.
Surgut
Surgut Khanty has five reduced vowels and full vowels.
Alphabet
The Khanty letters with a tick or tail at bottom, namely Қ Ԯ Ң Ҳ Ҷ, are sometimes rendered with a diagonal tail, i.e., and sometimes with a curved tail, i.e.. 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, the reasoning being that it would be an allograph rather than a distinct letter. [ Comments on CYRILLIC CHE WITH HOOK’s use in Khanty and Tofa .]
Grammar
The Vakh dialect is divergent. It has rigid vowel harmony and a tripartite case system, where the subject of a transitive verb takes the instrumental case suffix -нә-, 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.
Verbs
Eastern Khanty verbs must agree with the subject in person and number. There are two paradigms for conjugation. Subjective conjugation agrees only with the subject, and objective conjugation agrees with both the subject and the object. In a sentence with both a subject and an object, the subjective conjugation puts the object in focus, and the objective conjugation puts the object as a topic.