Yamal Residents Wrote A Dictation In Four Languages Of The Indigenous Peoples Of The North

In Yamal-Nenets autonomous okrug, a dictation “Our Language Perfected For Centuries” was held in the languages of the indigenous northerners. The event was organized within the framework of the regional project “Peoples of the Arctic” aand devoted to the International Mother Language Day celebrated on February 21.

The dictation was held online and offline at 45 venues with over 600 offline participants.

The texts were read by teachers and native speakers in four languages and dialects: the tundra and forest dialects of the Nenets language, the Shuryshkar, Ural and Surgut dialects of the Khanty language, the Izhma dialect of the Komi and the Selkup language.

This year the texts were based on the works of northern authors. The text in the tundra dialect of the Nenets language tells about the life of a nomad and the relationship of his family with deer.

Irina Nenyang, a teacher of the native language and literature at the Tazovskaya boarding school, for the first time became one of the experts.

“I teach the Nenets language in the middle classes. This is about 150 students. From my experience, the level of proficiency in the native language among children is distributed approximately equally – 50 to 50 between the children from tundra families and the residents of the village. When the children from tundra come to the village, they continue to speak Nenets. The villagers usually speak Russian,” – said Irina Nenyang, Nenets teacher at the Tazovskaya boarding school.

Tazovskaya boarding school helds native literature and language lessons three times a week. The Week of the Native Language ended at the boarding school the other day. The teachers prepared an interesting program: competitions of readers, essays, quizzes, concerts and a competition of wall newspapers in native languages.

The text in the Shuryshkar dialect of the Khanty language was in a verse form. This was a fragment of a heroic legend of the famous Khanty writer, storyteller and journalist Vladimir Enov.

The dictationl in the village of Vosyakhovo, Shuryshkarsky district, was written in the Khanty and Komi languages. The teachers took into account the age of the participants and offered their own version of the text, adapted to the children’s audience. About 10 students from 11 to 17 years old participated in the Khanty language dictation read by school teacher Raisa Koneva. The Komi language dictation was written by eight students and read by the teacher of the school Ulyana Svalova.

In the Selkup language, the participants got acquainted with an excerpt from “Hare Paws” by Konstantin Paustovsky translated by Margarita Morokova, an expert in the Selkup language. The passage tells about a hunter who witnessed a forest fire and got out with the help of a hare.

The text in the Izhma dialect of the Komi language was read by Irina Terentyeva, a chairwoman of the regional public movement “Izvatas”. It is based on the memoirs of old residents and is dedicated to traditional holidays and meetings of the Komi people based on the materials of the book “Tundraly sӧlӧm” by Nadezhda Chuprova from the Izhemsky district of the Komi Republic.

Before the event, the participants received forms with ID numbers that will help to find out the results. The scores will be announced on March 30. The results can be found on the websites of the National Library and the Yamal-Nenets Department of Indigenous Affairs.

The annual dictation “Our Language Perfected For Centuries” has been held for the seventh time. In 2022, 815 residents of the region aged 10 to 81 took part in it. For them, the dictation was organized at 37 venues in 13 municipalities.

The project partner is the National Library, as well as regional media and periodicals in the Nenets and Khanty languages, such as the newspapers of “Naryana Ngerm” and “Lukh Avt”.

In 2022, Russia has declared the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. 5,300 children in 40 educational institutions of eight municipalities stidy native languages in Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

Some projects on the preservation of indigenous languages are being implemented within grant support. These are federal and regional budget funds. Preservation of the native languages and the folklore of indigenous peoples is also supported. There are 20 types of regional grants and awards.