Mator language
Encyclopedia
Mator or Motor was a Uralic language
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...

 belonging to the group of Samoyedic languages
Samoyedic languages
The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 30,000 speakers altogether....

, extinct since the 1840s. It was spoken in the northern region of the Sayan Mountains
Sayan Mountains
The Sayan Mountains are a mountain range between northwestern Mongolia and southern Siberia, Russia.The Eastern Sayan extends from the Yenisei River at 92° E to the southwest end of Lake Baikal at 106° E...

 in Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

, close to the Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

n north border. The speakers of Mator lived in a wide area from the eastern parts of the Minusinsk
Minusinsk
Minusinsk is a historic town in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It serves as the administrative center of Minusinsky District, although it is not administratively a part of it. Population: 44,500 ....

 District (okrug
Okrug
Okrug is an administrative division of some Slavic states. The word "okrug" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "district", or "region"....

) along the Yenisei River
Yenisei River
Yenisei , also written as Yenisey, is the largest river system flowing to the Arctic Ocean. It is the central of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean...

 to the region of Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...

. Three dialects of Mator were recorded: Mator proper as well as Taygi and Karagas (occasionally considered as separate languages, but their differences are few).

Today the term "Mator people" is simply an alternate name of the Koibal
Koibal
The Koibal are one of the subdivisions of the Khakass people of Southern Siberia. Although they speak the Turkic Koybal language, the Koibal have mixed ancestry. They formed in the late 19th century from the merger of the Abugach, Baikot, Kandyk, Tarazhak, Kol and Arsh peoples...

, one of the five territorial sub-division groups of the Khakas
Khakas
The Khakas, or Khakass , are a Turkic-speaking people, who live in Russia, in the republic of Khakassia in southern Siberia. They speak the Khakas language.The origin of the Khakas people is disputed...

. (Note that the name "Koibal" likewise derives from the related Samoyedic Koibal language.)

Mator has been frequently grouped together with Selkup
Selkup language
Selkup language is a language of the Selkups, belonging to the Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. It is spoken by some 1,570 people in the region between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers . The language name Selkup comes from the Russian "" , based on the native name used in the Taz dialect, ...

 and Kamassian
Kamassian language
Kamassian or Kamas is an extinct Samoyedic language, included by convention in the Southern group together with Mator, Koibal, and Selkup . The last native speaker, Klavdiya Plotnikova, died in 1989. Kamassian was spoken in Russia, east of the Ural mountains, by Kamasins.A historical name for Kamas...

 as "South Samoyedic". This is however an areal grouping not considered to constitute an actual sub-branch of the Samoyedic languages.

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