Northern Khanty language

Northern Khanty
хӑнты йасәӈ hănty jasəṇ
Pronunciation[xanti jaːsəŋ]
Native toRussia
RegionKhanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
Ethnicity15,000 Northern Khanty
Native speakers
5,000 - 10,000 (2019)
Uralic
Dialects
  • Middle Ob
  • Kazym
  • Obdorsk
  • Shuryshkar
Cyrillic
Official status
Recognised minority
language in
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (all Khanty varieties)
Language codes
ISO 639-3
1of
 kca-nor
Glottolognort3264  Northern Khanty
ELPNorthern Khanty
Map of regions where those who speak the
Northern Khanty language.(2020/21)
  75%-100%
  35%-75%
  15%-35%
Northern Khanty is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)

Northern Khanty is a Uralic language, frequently considered a dialect of a unified Khanty language, spoken by between 5,000 and 10,000 people. It is the most widely spoken out of all the Khanty languages, the majority composed of 5,000 speakers in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, in Russia. The reason for this discrepancy is that dialects of Northern Khanty have been better preserved in its northern reaches, and the Middle Ob and Kazym dialects are losing favor to Russian. All four dialects have been literary, beginning with the Middle Ob dialects, but shifting to Kazym, and back to Middle Ob, now the most used dialect in writing. The Shuryshkar dialects are also written, primarily due to an administrative division between the two, as the latter is spoken in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.