Language Information

Nenets, formerly known as Yurak, is spoken in the northernmost part of the Soviet Union, in an area extending from the White Sea on the west to the Yenisei River on the east, a distance of about 1,500 miles. Its speakers, who are known as Nentsy, number about 25,000. Most of them live in the Yamal-Nenets National District, with its capital at Salekhard; about 3,500 live in the Nenets National District, whose capital is Naryan Mar. Nenets is the most widely spoken of the Samoyed languages, one of the two branches of the Uralic family.

Family: Uralic
Subgroup: Samoyed

Writing Sample

Translation

In the northern polar countries there were bears everywhere. The fearless animals bravely roamed the great expanses of the Arctic or lived placidly on the islands of the Arctic Ocean. Occasionally bears were discovered at the mouths of the Siberian rivers. By floating on ice floes they reached the Bering Sea, and a few years ago trappers caught a white bear in the Sea of Okhotsk.