Nenets languages languages are classified in the Uralic language family, making them distantly related to some national languages spoken in Europe – namely Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian – in addition to other minority languages spoken in Russia. Both of the Nenets languages have been greatly influenced by Russian. Tundra Nenets has, to a lesser degree, been influenced by Komi and Northern Khanty. Forest Nenets has also been influenced by Eastern Khanty. Tundra Nenets is well documented, considering its status as an indigenous and minority language. It has a literary tradition going back to the 1930s, while Forest Nenets was first written during
Uralic–Yukaghir languages linguistic science may yet be able to resolve some of these seemingly intractable issues (cf. Vajda 2008). Häkkinen (2012) rejects a genetic link between Uralic and Yukaghir, arguing that the grammatical systems show too few convincing resemblances, especially the morphology, and proposes instead that many apparent Uralic–Yukaghir cognates are really borrowed from an early stage of Uralic (ca. 3000 BC; he dates Proto-Uralic at ca. 2000 BC) into an early stage of Yukaghir, while Uralic was (according to him) spoken near the Sayan region and Yukaghir near the Upper Lena River and near Lake Baikal. Aikio (2014) agrees that Uralic–Yukaghir