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Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences 4 (2018 11) 654-662
~ ~ ~
УДК 811.553
The Ket Language
Alexandra A. Sitnikova*
Siberian Federal University
79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041, Russia
Received 06.03.2018, received in revised form 11.04.2018, accepted 14.04.2018
This article is of the applied research nature, which was carried out within the framework of the
cultural project on preserving the culture of the Krasnoyarsk Krai indigenous peoples by creating
the children’s literature in these peoples’ languages. The article presents the key characteristics of
the Ket language and culture: the place of the Kets’ residence, the issue of ethnogenesis, the Kets’
art, shamanism, totem beliefs and other aspects. The main part of the article analyzes the available
linguistic materials about the Ket language and describes the corpus of texts in the Ket language that
are currently available to the public. Particular emphasis is given to the value of digitizing the linguistic
data on the Ket language in the context of modern culture virtualization and need for interdisciplinary
researches of the Ket language (linguistics and cultural studies). The article hypothesizes that the
linguistic data on the Ket language, which were accumulated during the 20th – the beginning of the 21st
centuries, can be used as the basis for further culturological research of the key concepts of the Ket
culture (the “bear”, for example). They will allow to reconstruct the picture of the world in the culture
of the indigenous peoples of the Siberian North. They will also result in a social design of the methods
for the Kets’ authentic culture effective preservation and development by publishing the children’s
literature in the Ket language for teaching the native Kets their language from pre-school age.
Keywords: the Ket language, the Ket culture, the Yenisei languages, the culture of the Krasnoyarsk
Krai indigenous peoples, the text corpora in the Ket language.
The reported study was funded by Krasnoyarsk Regional Fund of Science according to the research
project: «Development of scientic and methodological support for the preservation of a unique
cultural heritage for the Ket and Enets ethno-cultural groups of indigenous small peoples of the North,
Siberia and the Far East living on the territory of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370 - 0257.
Research area: culturology.
© Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
* Corresponding author E-mail add ress: sem _dobrianka@mail.ru
Introduction
The most topical contemporary cultural
problems for Krasnoyarsk Krai are the need to
understand the peculiar features of culture of the
indigenous peoples living in the territory of the
krai, as well as the analysis of the opportunities
and development of effective technologies for
preserving the indigenous peoples’ traditional
culture and languages on the verge of extinction.
The Ket culture and the Ket language are those
of the eight cultures of the indigenous peoples
living in Krasnoyarsk Krai together with the
Nganasans, Dolgans, Evenks, Selkups, Nenets,
Enets and Chulyms. They are in need of the special
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Alexand ra A. Sitnikova. The Ket Language
measures for preservation and, possibly, further
development. Despite the fact that the number of
the Kets, living mainly in Turukhansk district of
Krasnoyarsk Krai, is not so great (according to
the 2010 all-Russian census, they were only 957),
the Ket language can be considered quite properly
studied. The language was subject to the analysis
by the scholars from the end of the 18th cen t u ry.
So, it is thoroughly analyzed from a linguistic
point of view. Due to the fact that the Ket lang uage
is the only Yenisei language that survived, its
sounding and existence in the natives’ speech
are documented with the help of audio and video
equipment; the documentary materials, collected
during the expeditions by different groups of
scholars, are digitized and made available to the
public. Moreover, the development of the corpus
of the Ket texts has been actively carried out by
several groups of scholars, the materials of the
corpus of the Ket texts being partly presented
on the Internet. This article aims at providing
an analytical overview of currently available
resources for the study of the Ket language and at
identif ying the prospective areas for cult urological
studies of the Ket language.
Literature review
The scientic literature on the Ket language
can be divided into several groups.
The rst group presents the studies of the
Ket language in the Russian Empire (late 18th –
early 20th centuries). At this time the Ket language
was rst described by the scholars. P.S. Pallas,
a German scientist, in his Travels Through the
Provinces of the Russian State and M.A. Castrén,
a Finnish linguist, in his Journey to Siberia
(1845–1849) (Reiseberichte und Briefe aus den
Jahre n 1845 – 1849) made their rst attempts to
reect over the Ket culture and the uniqueness
and logic of the Ket language.
The second group focuses on the studies
of the Ket language in the Soviet Union.
In the 1920s, the Soviet scholars began the
development of the written Ket language, and
primarily the compilation of the alphabet (the
Ket language in Latin was compiled in 1934 by
Nestor Konstantinovich Karger, a Leningrad
ethnographer, for the middle-Ket dialect, which
is considered the least common dialect of the
language). But in 1935 the scholar was subject
to repression and, consequently, the attempts to
create the Ket written language were suspended
for some time. The studies of the Ket culture
and the Ket language continued in the late
1960s. E.A. Alekseenko’s book Kety. Istoriko-
etnogracheskie ocherki (The Kets. Historical
and Ethnographic Essays) presents the
materials describing the Kets’ life, geography
of settlement, beliefs, language, as well as
changes in the places of the Kets’ traditional
residence in the Soviet era, the materials being
valuable for culturological studies. In the late
1960s, the research centre for the study of the
Ket culture and language moved to Tomsk, and
namely to Tomsk State Pedagogical University,
a plac e whe re And rei Pet r ov ich Dul’zon worked.
Dul’zon was a linguist, ethnographer and
archaeologist and received the state prize for
Ketskii Iazyk (The Ket Language (1968)), one of
the fundamental works in this eld. Nowadays,
the university organizes the famous “Dulzon
readings” highlighting the current researches
and issues of Siberian languages. Genrikh
Kasparovich Verner was Dul’zon’s student. He
developed the Ket written language, including
the Ket alphabet in Cyrillic letters, the ABC
book, and school textbooks that were initially
used for teaching the language in some places
of the Kets’ residence (e.g., Kellog). It should be
noted that Verner’s textbooks, written for the
schoolchildren in a simple and clear language
and offering not only a formal scientic
description of various linguistic characteristics
of the language but also the explanations of
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Alexand ra A. Sitnikova. The Ket Language
some meaningful logic of the language, serve
the sources for identifying the conceptual
meanings of the Ket culture. In Soviet times,
such scholars as V.N. Toporov, B.A. Uspenskii
and others stud ied the Ket language. They based
their researches on the materials they got during
their eld expeditions.
The third group presents the latest research
and scientic development in the eld of the Ket
language in the late 20th – early 21st centuries. At
the present stage of a scientic interest to the Ket
language there function several research centres
and there distinguished several scientic elds
of research. Tomsk (Tomsk State Pedagogical
University) should be denitely mentioned as a
scientic centre of the Ket language analysis. It was
Dul’zon who founded the most serious scientic
linguistic school for the study of Siberian, Yenisei
languages (and the Ket language, in particular).
E.A. Kriukova is one of the key representatives
of this scientic school. The second important
centre for the research of the Ket, Selkup and
Evenki languages is the Research Computing
Centre of Moscow State University named after
M.V. Lomonosov. Since 2001 O.A. Kazakevich
has been supervising a digital project “Siberian
Lang. Minority Languages of Siberia: Our
Cultural Heritage” providing the access to the
text, audio and video les with the recordings of
the native Kets’ speech. This resource contains
a whole range of materials on the basis of which
the text corpora in the Ket language can be
developed, it being one of the most essential tasks
of modern linguistics. In some other Siberian
cities the linguistic research of the Ket language
is also carried out. For example, in Novosibirsk
(Novosibirsk State Technical University) a
considerable number of articles on the Ket
linguistics were written by S.S. Butorin. Yet, we
can hardly say that autonomous scientic schools
were founded in these cities. At the beginning
of the 21st century, in Krasnoyarsk the studies of
ethnography and culture of the Siberian peoples
and, more specically, of the indigenous peoples
living in the territory of Krasnoyarsk Krai are
there are actively carried out. V.P. Krivonogov
and N.P. Koptseva, the head of the scientic staff
of the Department of Cultural Studies at Siberian
Federal University, are involved in collecting and
culturological interpretation of the materials as
well as development of modern effective methods
of the Siberian indigenous peoples’ culture
preservation. Yet, the Ket people’s culture has not
been in the centre of attention for the scholars of
the department up until present.
Apart from the Russian researchers, the
Ket language is also studied by Edward Vajda,
an American linguist from the University of
Alaska at Fairbanks. He has been carrying out
a comparative research of the Ket language
and the Na-Dene peoples’ language in North
America, and has revealed the similarities of
these languages.
Research
Key characteristics of the Ket language
and culture
The Kets are an indigenous people of
Siberia. They live mainly in the territory of
Turukhansk region of Krasnoyarsk Krai. In
Krasnoyarsk Krai there are six geographically
compact groups of the Kets’ settlements: Elogui
(Kellog village on the Elogui river), Surgutikha
(Surgutikha village on the river with the same
name), Pakulikh (Baklanikha village on the
Yenisei), and Kurei (Serkovo village on the
Kureika river and Maduika village on the lake
Maduiskoe) groups are in Turukhansk district;
Sym group (Sym village on the river Sym) in
Yenisei district; and Podkamennotungus group
(Sulomai village on the Podkamennaia Tunguska
river). According to the 2010 all-Russian census,
957 Kets live in Krasnoyarsk Krai. The data about
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Alexand ra A. Sitnikova. The Ket Language
the Kets’ number vary (for example, according to
the Ethnologue. Languages of the World resource
their number reaches 1220 people; Professor
V.P. Krivonogov’s expedition in 2003 states that
the Kets are only 885 people. When analyzing
the number of the Kets, the researchers always
emphasize the fact that not all the Kets speak
their native language; thus, the number of the
Kets who are native speakers of this language is
much fewer (most scholars believe that these Kets
are no more than 150 people).
The name of the nation comes from the
Ket word ket which means “a man”. The Kets
belong to the Yenisei peoples who were quite
numerous in the 18th–19th centuries. The Arins,
Assans, Kotts, Yugs and Pumpokolls were among
them. By the 21st century only the Kets survived.
According to G.K. Vagner, having disappeared,
these peoples did not leave precise information
about their origin, and thus the issue of the
Yenisei peoples’ and the Kets’ ethnogenesis is still
open. Various hypotheses are put forward. They
suggest the Kets connection with the peoples of
Tibet, the Caucasus, southern Siberia and the
North American Indians (due to their linguistic
kinship). According to the most common theory,
the Kets’ ancestors lived in southern Siberia. In
the 9th–13th centu r ie s the group s of the Kets bega n
moving to the north after they had met with other
nationalities and faced the climatic factors. The
Kets’ distinctive culture developed in the process
of their contacts with the Khanty people and
the Selkups, as well as of the Enets people’s
assimilation.
The Kets’ traditional occupations are
hunting for ungulate animals, mass shing, and
furs. Initially they led a nomadic life. What
distinguishes the Kets from many other peoples
of the Siberian north is the fact that reindeer
herding is not a determinant type of this people’s
economic activity, although there is a group of
the deer Kets.
The peculiar features of the Ket culture
are ethnic costumes, musical instruments (a
jew’s harp, a musical bow, a stringed lute). The
developed ne arts were embroidery with a deer’s
hair, fur appliqué work.
The Kets’ beliefs are connected with the
cult of worshiping the forces of nature and
shamanism. Yet, unlike many other cultures
of the indigenous peoples of Siberia, the Kets
have their Supreme God Es’, who lives in heaven
in the upper circle of being. Identication of
the Supreme God made it possible for some
researchers to draw parallels between the Kets’
beliefs and Christianity. In the Ket religion
the old woman Hasiadiam confronts the kind
and wise Es’. She is the head of the earthly
world. She was exiled there by Es’ and, thus,
confronted the good forces and was the source
of threats and misfortunes for the people. Some
totem animals were signicant for the Kets, the
main animal being the bear. The loon, the swan,
and the eagle were culturally important birds.
Their family shrine was the re.
The Ket language belongs to the group of
the Yenisei languages. It is considered to be
under the threat of extinction, being, perhaps,
the second one after the Enets language
regarding the degree of the threat of extinction
among the the Krasnoyarsk Krai indigenous
peoples’ languages. There are three types of
the Ket language dialects: 1) the southern Ket
dialect (Sumarokovo, Sulomai, Bor, Bakhta,
Verkhneimbatsk, Kellog) is divided into the
Elogui and Podkamennotungus speeches; 2)
the central dialect (Surgutikha, Vereshchagino,
Baklanikha, Farkovo, Turukhansk); 3) the
northern dialect (Maduika, Sovrechka, Igarka,
Goroshikha). The differences between the
dialects are minor. Their speakers are capable
to understand each other. The most common
southern dialect of the Ket language was used as
a lit e r ary model in the wr i t t e n la n g u ag e cr e a t ion.
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Alexand ra A. Sitnikova. The Ket Language
Linguistic research of the Ket language
Since the Ket language is the only preserved
Yenisei language (this implies that nowadays the
native speakers of the Ket language can be found
in the places of the Kets’ traditional residence),
the linguistic researches are actively carried out
regarding all the levels of language – lexical,
phonetic, morphological, grammatical and
syntactic. The Russian scholars’ key publications,
presented in the RSCI database, serve the evidence
that the Ket language is given a proper linguistic
description: the phonetic features of the language
are dened, the main parts of speech in the Ket
language are distinguished, the word formation
system is analyzed, the grammatical features and
principles of building the sentences in the Ket
language are specied (the latter are very often
compared with the Russian language). The works
on the Ket language lexicology are probably
of the greatest interest for the culturologists.
They state the principle of geographical,
temporal, and qualitative nominations in the
Ket language, present some interesting facts
about it (for example, the information about the
colour characteristics: in Ket the non-derivative
words are used to nominate white, black and
red colours, the word for the nomination of the
yellow colour is derived from the word with
the meaning of “bile”, nominations for blue and
green are borrowed from Russian). There is other
useful information for understanding the Ket
culture in these works. The research on the origin
of the proper names and the names of objects
in the Ket language are very signicant. For
example, a special focus of attention is given to
the description of the Ket authentic proper names.
First, each person had a “surname which stated
a qualitative characteristic feature of his/her
clan”, later these surnames were replaced by the
Russian ones. So, some Ket families could have
the surname of “a man of water”, etc. This kind of
linguistic researches is often subject to the logic
of one science, to the task of making a list of the
Ket language units and their description. They
are rarely interdisciplinary in nature and leave the
“clues” for the language data to be used by other
sciences. Yet, such researches are necessary in
the light of the future ambitious goal of linguistic
science, the goal being the compilation of digital
corpora of texts in national languages, the Ket
language in particular. It is so because the text
corpora compilation requires a full description
of the text units and words (indication of the
part of speech, the specic features of the word
functioning in the text, etc.).
Many linguistic studies are focused on
the issues of the Ket population’s bilingualism
(Ket – Russian) and trilingualism (Ket – Evenki –
Russian). They describe the problems and typical
situations of switching from one language
to another in oral speech, in communication
with scientists, etc. In their conclusions these
researches often state the disappointing statistic
data indicating the absorption of Ket by the
Russian language and predict the imminent death
of the language under the pressure of the Russian
culture. Yet, unlike the Soviet period during
which the younger generation tried to emphasize
their belonging to the Russian-speaking
population, the beginning of the 21st century
shows the opposite. The Ket younger generation
is willing to know their native language, but the
opportunities to study it are extremely limited in
modern reality.
Another turn in modern linguistic research
is digital linguistics, which is developed in the
Research Computing Centre at Moscow State
University named after M.V. Lomonosov. Given
the RGNF and RFBR support, O.A. Kazakevich
has been running the project “Siberian Lang.
Minority Languages of Siberia: Our Cultural
Heritage”. Translation of documents and materials
in a disappearing language into a digital format is
one of modern forms of language data preservation.
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Alexand ra A. Sitnikova. The Ket Language
Working on such projects, the linguists interact
with IT professionals and master the programming
languages (Python is often used as the most
understandable programming language). To date,
this electronic resource provides the users with the
following documents and the opportunities to get
to know the Ket language: 1) the dictionary; 2) the
photos; 3) the texts – the episode from the sherman’s
life Mordushka (The Cage Trap) (G.M. Bal’din,
a narrator, the village of Kellog, 2005); a hunting
story Sobolinaia Doroga (The Sable Road) and the
mythological tale Ded-starik (Grandfather, the Old
Man), recorded by G.M. Korsakov, a scholar, in
1937; the description of shamanistic rituals in the
story by an inhabitant of Sulomai village in the 2004
expedition materials; the mythological tale Dotam,
recorded by G.M. Korsakov, a scholar, in 1937;
Alla Pugacheva’s pop songs translated into the Ket
language and recorded in 2005 in Kellog village;
the tale about the animals Zaiats i Glukhar’ (The
Hare and the Cock of the Wood), recorded in Kellog
village in 2009; and other stories from the Kets’ life,
recorded during the expeditions of different years
(about 5 stories); 4) video recordings of the stories;
5) the movie Kety Munduiskogo Ozera (The Kets of
the Lake Mundui) (30 min); 6) language games for
training the knowledge of the Ket language; 7) the
RFBR syntactic project (the Ket corpus of written
texts, including G.K. Verner’s Pesn’ o Moem Brate:
na ketskom iazyke (The Song About my Brother:
in the Ket Language), which tells about the Kets’
life in the Soviet era. All texts are presented on the
site with the translation into Russian. They also
contain some linguistic characteristics (phonetic
transcription) of some words and phrases in Ket.
Prospects of culturological studies
of the Ket language
A perspective methodological approach
for further researches of the Ket language is
the concept-analysis of the Ket language. Thes
method allows to trace the connection of the Ket
language features with the Kets’ worldview. This
will ultimately contribute to a comprehensive
description of the picture of the world of the
indigenous population of Siberia, the harmonious
existence of the humans and nature in climatic
and economic conditions of the region. For
example, the concept bear is regarded to be
important for the research in the context of the
Ket culture since culturological information
indicates the particular signicance of this animal
in the Ket culture and language. In Ket these are
euphemisms that are used to nominate the bear
(for example, an old man). The phrase with the
meaning “the bear succumbed, surrendered to
a man” is used instead of the phrase “to kill a
bear”. According to the Kets’ religious beliefs,
the bear has a soul, is referred to as a “forest
man”, the dead ancestors’ souls transmigrate into
the bears, etc. In their ritual culture the Kets refer
to the bearish holidays with the theatrical rituals.
Thus, the bear occupies an important place in the
Kets’ hunting culture. The research, considering
the Kets’ conceptual ideas about the bear as
compared to a central role of the deer in many
other cultures of the Siberian peoples, will result
in a clearer understanding of the conceptual basis
of these indigenous peoples’ life. The second
important method of the Ket culture analysis,
which bases on the Ket language knowledge as
the basis of ethnic culture, is the social design
involving the development of a number of
effective measures to preserve the disappearing
language in the modern world. Publication of the
children’s literature in the Ket language in order
to give the younger generation of the Kets an
opportunity to learn their native language at pre-
school age is one of such tools.
Conclusions
The article presents the analysis of
contemporary studies of the Ket language,
including two areas of knowledge. These areas are
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Alexand ra A. Sitnikova. The Ket Language
fundamental linguistic works on Ket phonetics,
grammar, lexicology, morphology, and syntax and
digital linguistics, involving the introduction of
analogous documents about the Ket language to the
space of virtual communication in order to preserve
the data about the language and compilation of
the text corpora in Ket, the corpora being highly
essential at the beginning of the 21st cen t u ry.
The article lists the main resources,
which are available at the beginning of the 21st
centur y, for the research of the Ket language and
acquaintance with the authentic texts in Ket (with
their translations into Russian).
The article denes two vectors for the topical
culturological studies of the Ket language. These
are the conceptual studies of the Ket language
(for example, the study of the concept bear) and
the social design of the effective measures to
preserve the Ket language, one of the possible
measures being the creation of the children’s
literature in Ket for the younger generation of the
Kets.
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sopostavitelnyy-analiz-na-materiale-ketskogo-yugskogo-i-kottskogo-yazykov-tomsk
Кетский язык
А.А. Ситникова
Сибирский федеральный университет
Россия, 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
Настоящая статья носи т харак тер прик лад ного исследо вания: выпол нена в ра м ках культуро -
логического проекта по сохранению культуры коренных малочисленных народов Красноярско-
го края путем создания детской литературы на языках этих народов. В статье отражены
ключевые характеристики кетского языка и культуры – места проживания кетов, проблема
этногенеза, искусство кетов, шаманизм, тотемные верования и другие аспекты. В основной
части статьи проанализированы имеющиеся лингвистические материалы о кетском языке
и описан корпус текстов на кетском языке, существующих в данное время в открытом досту-
пе. Особенный акцент ставится на ценности оцифровки лингвистических данных о кетском
языке в условиях виртуализации современной культуры и необходимости проведения междис-
циплинарных исследований кетского языка (лингвистика и культурология). Выдвигается гипо-
теза, что накопленные в течение XX-начала XXI в. лингвистические данные о кетском языке
могут быть положены в основу дальнейших культурологических исследований ключевых кон-
цептов кетской культуры (например, «медведь»), которые позволят воссоздать картину мира
в культуре коренных народностей сибирского Севера, а также социального проектирования
методов эффективного сохранения и развития аутентичной культуры кетов путем издания
детской литературы на кетском языке для обучения родному языку молодого поколения кетов
с дошкольного возраста.
Ключевые слова: кетский язык, кетская культура, енисейские языки, культура коренных мало-
численных народов Красноярского края, корпус текстов на кетском языке.
Исследование выполнено при поддержке Красноярского краевого фонда науки в рамках реали-
зации проекта: «Разработка научно-методического обеспечения сохранения уникального куль-
турного наследия для кетской и энецкой этнокультурных групп коренных малочисленных на-
родов Севера, Сибири и Дальнего Востока, проживающих на территории Красноярского края.
Научная специальность: 24.00.00 – культурология.