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
Indo-Uralic languages borrowed between them, most often from Indo-European languages into Uralic ones. An example of a Uralic word that cannot be original is Finno-Ugric *"śata" "hundred". The Proto-Indo-European form of this word was *"ḱm̥tóm" (compare Latin "centum"), which became *"ćatám" in early Indo-Iranian (reanalyzed as the neuter nominative–accusative singular of an "a" stem > Sanskrit "śatá-", Avestan "sata-"). This is evidence that the word was borrowed into Finno-Ugric from Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan. This borrowing may have occurred in the region north of the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 2100–1800 BC, the approximate floruit of Indo-Iranian (Anthony 2007:371–411). It provides linguistic evidence for the