The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language long thought to be an isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family. It is spoken along the middle Yenisei basin by the Ket people.
The language is threatened with extinction—the number of ethnic Kets that are native speakers of the language had dropped from 1,225 in 1926 to 537 in 1989. Another Yeniseian language, Yugh, is believed to have recently become extinct.
Read more about Ket Language: Classification, Documentation, Incorporation, Ket Alphabet, Literature
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“While you are divided from us by geographical lines, which are imaginary, and by a language which is not the same, you have not come to an alien people or land. In the realm of the heart, in the domain of the mind, there are no geographical lines dividing the nations.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)