ARKHANGELSK, December 19. /TASS/. Scientists of the Northern Arctic Federal University made an audio collection of 500 most commonly used words in different dialects of the Nenets language in the Nenets Autonomous Region, the project's manager, director of the university's Institute for Strategic Arctic Development, Alexander Saburov, told TASS. The collected materials will be used in work on a Nenets-Russian online dictionary.
"The main idea is that it is very important not just to fix the written language, but also to provide every user of the online dictionary with an option to hear how the word sounds and how it is pronounced in different dialects of the Nenets language," he said. "The project's result will be an online dictionary, and most common words there will be pronounced."
Among those words, of course, is "deer", as well as others words related to everyday life and to life in the tundra.
The university's specialists and representatives of the Yasavey Nenets People's Association recorded nine native speakers of different generations, both women and men, where the youngest participant was 17 years old. Special attention was paid to preserving the natural sounding of speech, its lively intonation and unique phonetic features of the tundra Nenets language.
"In addition to the approach to use different dialects, our colleagues have paid attention to attracting people of different genders and ages to have a maximum representation," he added. "And besides, certain users may prefer to hear a man's voice, and others, on the contrary, may prefer a woman's voice. This is also for the comfort of the dictionary users."
The university specialists used professional equipment to have high sound quality, while the recording was conducted in a free manner to make sure it is natural speech. The researchers additionally recorded folklore texts, poems, and songs.