Selkup is the
language of the
Selkups, belonging to the
Samoyedic group of the
Uralic language family. It is spoken by some 1,570 people (1994 est.) in the region between the
Ob and
Yenisei Rivers (in
Siberia). The language name Selkup comes from the
Russianселькуп, based on the native name used in the Taz dialect, шӧльӄумыт әтыšöľqumyt әty, lit. 'forest-man language'. Different
dialects use different names.
Selkup is fractured in an extensive
dialect continuum whose ends are no longer
mutually intelligible. The three main varieties are the
Taz (Northern) dialect (тазовский диалект, tazovsky dialekt), which became the basis of the Selkup
written language in the 1930s,
Tym (Central) dialect (тымский диалект, tymsky dialekt), and
Ket dialect (кетский диалект, ketsky dialekt). It is not related to the
Ket language.
Voicing is not phonemic. Stops and fricatives may be voiced between vowels or after
sonorant consonants.
The palatalized stop and fricative /tʲ/, /ʃʲ/ are most typically rendered as an alveolo-palatal
affricate[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].
Before
front 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/ have
optional fricative allophones [f], [x], [χ] when occurring before /s/ or /ʃʲ/.
Vowel length is phonemic. /ɔː/ alone, deriving from proto-Selkup */aː/, has no short counterpart.
The
tenseness 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/.
Selkup has a syllable structure (C)V(C). Word-initial /ŋ/ and word-final /tʲ/ or /w/ do not occur. Various
consonant clusters and
geminate consonants such as /nt/,/rm/,/ʃʲʃʲ/ may occur, though many potential combinations occurring morphologically are simplified.
Stress in Selkup is marginally phonemic. Generally the rightmost long vowel in a word is stressed, or otherwise the first syllable, but certain suffixes with short vowels may acquire stress, leading to minimal pairs such as [ˈtɕɛlʲtɕalqo] 'to stamp down' vs. [tɕɛlʲˈtɕalqo] 'to stamp once'.
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