Kamas

Kamas (Kaŋmažən šəkət) is an extinct Samoyedic language formerly spoken by the Kamasins. It is included by convention in the Southern Samoyedic group together with Mator and Selkup (although this does not constitute a subfamily). The last native speaker of Kamas, Klavdiya Plotnikova, died in 1989. It has been noted that at present a few activists still have knowledge of the Kamasin language, however. Kamas was spoken in Russia, north of the Sayan Mountains, by Kamasins. The last speakers lived mainly in the village of Abalakovo, where they moved from the mountains in the 18th to 19th centuries. Prior to its extinction, the language had been strongly influenced by Turkic and Yeniseian languages.

The term Koibal is used as the ethnonym for the Kamas people who shifted to the Turkic Khakas language. The modern Koibal people are mixed Samoyed–Khakas–Yeniseian. The Kamas language was documented by Kai Donner in his trips to Siberia along with other Samoyedic languages, but the first documentation attempts started in the 1740s. In 2016 the university of Tartu published a Kamas e-learning book. Linguists managed to record about 1,550 words of the Kamasin language. The grammar and vocabulary of Kamas are well documented. In 2024, a Kamas learning book was made by the Russian Geographical Society for the purpose of reviving the Kamas language.