Northern Selkup
шöйӄумый этыšöľqumyt əty
Native to	Russia
Region	Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug,Krasnoyarsky Krai
Ethnicity	northernSelkups (ʃølʲqup)
Native speakers	600 (2019–2024)[1]
Language family	Uralic Samoyedic (core) Kamas–Selkup Selkup Northern Selkup
Writing system	Cyrillic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguist List	1oo
Glottolog	tazz1244
ELP	Northern Selkup
Distribution of Selkup dialects
Northern Selkup is classified as Severely Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Northern Selkup is aSamoyedic language spoken inYamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug andKrasnoyarsk Krai inRussia, by about 600 people. Despite institutional support and grassroots activism, its future "appears gloomy".^[2] Some villages have parents transmitting it to their children, but not most.

It is considered to be a dialect of a greaterSelkup language by most Russian sources, but an individual language by others. According tolexicostatistics, it can be considered to be an individual language.^[3] TheEndangered Languages Project states that the differences between the Selkup dialects are "comparable to those between, for example,Ket,Yug, andPumpokol".^[4]

The dialect classification of Northern Selkup is as follows:^[5][6]

The full list of dialects is UpperTaz (around 250 speakers), Middle Taz (about 120 speakers), Baixa andTurukhan (about 40 speakers), andJeloguj (1 speaker). Both Taz dialects are used in education.^[5]

Northern Selkup developed from a 17th-century offshoot of the Tym dialect of Central Selkup.^[7]

There are 25 vowel and 16 consonantphonemes in the Taz dialect.

• Voicing is not phonemic. Stops and fricatives may be voiced between vowels or aftersonorant consonants.
• The palatalized stop and fricative/tʲ/,/ʃʲ/ are most typically rendered as an alveolo-palatalaffricate[tɕ] and fricative[ɕ]. Depending on the speaker, the former can be also realized as the stop[tʲ], the latter as a non-palatalized fricative, postalveolar[ʃ] or retroflex[ʂ].
• Beforefront vowels, palatalized variants of other consonants are also found.
• [ɴ] and[ʀ] are allophones of/q/ when occurring before nasals and liquids, respectively.
• The non-coronal stops/p/,/k/,/q/ haveoptional fricative allophones[f],[x],[χ] when occurring before/s/ or/ʃʲ/.
• Across morpheme boundaries,sandhi is widespread. This also occurs in all other dialects.

• Vowel length is phonemic./ɔː/ alone, deriving from proto-Selkup*/aː/, has no short counterpart.
• Thetenseness contrast, an innovation of northern Selkup, is independent of length (e.g./i/,/iː/,/ɪ/,/ɪː/ all contrast).
• The full range of vowel quality contrasts is only possible in the initial syllable of a word: in later syllables,/e//ø//ɘ//y//ɨ/ of either length do not occur, nor does long/uː/. (Shown on a darker gray background.)
• The non-phonemic lax central vowel[ɪ̈~ə] only occurs in unstressed non-first syllables; it is normally treated equivalent with short tense/ɨ/.
• Certain vowels cannot occur before certain consonants. For example,/i/,/iː/,/e/,/eː/ do not occur after/t/,/q/,/n/,/l/.^[5]

Stress in Selkup varies considerably from dialect to dialect for certain words,

Stress in Selkup is rarely phonemic. Some examples are[ˈkɨkɨ-tɨʎ] 'wanted, wanting'—[ˈkɨ-ˈkɨtɨʎ] 'riverless', and[ˈyr-t-æʃʲ] 'make fat'—[yr-ˈt-æʃʲ] 'lose'.^[5]

The Selkups, before the introduction of writing, used a rudimentary way of recording numbers; individual lines for units, crosses for tens, and stars for hundreds, as well as the usage oftamgas.^[9]

In 1931, the first Northern Selkup alphabet, in theLatin script, was developed.^[10]

A a, B в, Ç ç, D d, E e, Ə ə, G g, Ƣ ƣ, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, Ŋ ŋ, O o, Ɵ ɵ, P p, Q q, R r, S s, Ş ş, T t, U u, W w, Y y, Z z, Ʒ ʒ, Ь ь, Æ æ

In the end, however, it was slightly modified. This version is the one in which literature was published in.

The Middle Taz dialect was chosen as the base due to a large speaker base and minimal influence from Russian.^[9] Letters D d, F f, and H h were only used in loanwords.

The primerŅarqь wəttь usesꞒ ꞓ andꞨ ꞩ instead of Ç ç and Ş ş.^[11]

In 1937, the alphabet, like all those of the languages of the Soviet Union, wastransliterated into Cyrillic. The first such alphabet took the form of the Russian alphabet, with the extra letters аʼ, нг, оʼ, оа, уʼ, эʼ.^[12] Books were first published in this alphabet in 1940.

The next alphabet was introduced in 1953, in a primer. The alphabet itself took the form of the Russian alphabet with the extra letters еʼ, кʼ, нʼ, уʼ.^[13]

Following this, the only other literature in Northern Selkup until the 1980s was two songs in the collection "Северные россыпи", published in 1962.^[12]

Writing in the Northern Selkup language was revived in 1986 with the publication of a primer in the Middle Taz dialect, which was followed by other literature. Teaching was also resumed. The first dictionary, published in 1988, used the following alphabet.^[14]

А а, Б б, В в, Г г, Д д, Е е, Ё ё, Ж ж, З з, И и, й, К к, Ӄ ӄ, Л л, М м, Н н, Ӈ ӈ, О о, Ө ө, П п, Р р, С с, Т т, У у, Ӱ ӱ, Ф ф, Х х, Ц ц, Ч ч, Ш ш, Щ щ, ъ, Ы ы, ь, Э э, Ю ю, Я я

The letters Ӧ ӧ and Ә ә were introduced later.^[15]

Since the 2000s, with the introduction of the letters Ӓ ӓ and І і, the alphabet has taken the following form.^[16]

Vowel length is indicated by amacron. Letters Б б, Г г, Д д, Ж ж, З з, Ф ф, Х х, Ц ц, Щ щ, Ъ ъ are only found in loanwords fromRussian.^[17]

• Selkup people
• Southern Samoyedic languages
• Indigenous languages of Siberia

• CS1 Russian-language sources (ru)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Selkup-language text
• Language articles with Linglist code
• Dialects of languages with ISO 639-3 code
• Dialects with Linguist List code
• Languages without ISO 639-3 code but with Glottolog code
• Articles with unnamed Glottolog code
• Pages with plain IPA