The Ket People

Dr. Edward Vajda spent a year in Siberia studying the Ket people, one of the last hunter-gatherer groups in Asia. There are only 1200 Ket left, and their language is dying out, perhaps to be gone within a generation. Ket is an isolate, like Basque in Spain, completely unrelated to neighboring languages, and contains many typologically rare linguistic features. At the end of the clip a native speaker of Ket tells a folk-tale in her native language, "How the Cuckoo Came to Be."

Part of the Innovative Teaching Showcase 2005-06, created by the Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment at Western Washington University: http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/showcase2005/

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  Education

[waterborn]

what's the name of the music piece in the begining?

[Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment]

◦Music: Winter, from The Four Seasons

Composed by Antonio Vivaldi, performed by the Furman Chamber Orchestra, Furman University, Greenville South Carolina

[moleculesnmorphemes]

The Ket people have the highest proportion of Y-chromosome haplogroup Q outside of the 'New' World. In other words, Native Americans (North and South) have the highest numbers of males, on average, in Hg Q. (92 - 100%) The Kets are #2 with around 90-95% of their males. The Selkups, who are a Samoyedic people not far from the Kets, have the 3rd highest rate. Around 70 - 75% of Selkup males are in Y-chrom haplogroup Q. Other rates are 9% in N. Iran, 4-5% in Norway and Iceland and 3% in Hungary.

[Tim Upham]

Ket, along with Yug are the only Paleo-Asiatic languages. Yug is basically extinct, but exist in the form of the New Testament. In order to keep Ket alive, there must first be a language immersion program, and to be able to use Ket in retail stores and in bank transaction. For when a language loses its currency in the market place, then it because endangered or extinct. Hopefully, Russia recognizes this, because when you lose a language, you lose a culture.

[centrum99]

All these groups mentioned above belong(ed) to the "clan Q" that came into being in Central Asia. Its closest relatives (in the paternal lineage) are R-lineages, R1 and R2. This means that linguists, who would want to establish further relationships of Paleoindian "Q-languages" with other groups, should start to study Basque (R1b) and Burushaski (R2). But this connection is more than 40 000 years old and I think that it is impossible to verify.

[ProudUkie]

Can anyone tell me, what Ket villages are left with a majority of Kets, no intermarriage with Russians, and enough people to marry each other and have children (other than Sulomay)?

[KateeAngel]

heh, no) Kets have never lived in Americas. Vice versa, Native Americans lived in Siberia

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[coolranchsoda]

i'm so glad that Professor Vajda does this work, respecting the native language of Ket people while also helping me (and lots of others) learn Russian!

[mongolxel]

The story stold by the woman at 5:00 is common to Siberan cultures, I heard it in mongolian

Search "The Mongolian Folk Tale"

[El Diablo Matamoros]

The cell phone (and Russian conversation) interrupting the recitation of the Ket folk tale illustrates how the culture is under assault from the relentless push of modernity.

[Jonathan Begay]

Ket is suppose to mirror the Navajo language (:

[xhemexx]

Kets are Yenesian people, the other languages of the Yenesian language family are extinct

[okjhum]

This is very interesting! Dr Vajda speaks so well about the people as well as the language, that you wish you could go with him on an ethnolinguistic journey! Thank you for this, and good luck in your work on the preservation and furtherment of the Ket language and culture!