Klavdiya Plotnikova

Klavdiya Plotnikova autograph (1970)

Klavdiya Zakharovna Plotnikova-Andzhighatova (Russian: Кла́вдия Заха́ровна Пло́тникова-Анджига́това; ca. 1893-1989) was the last living speaker of the Kamassian language (and, as such, of any of the Sayan Samoyedic languages). Her father was a Russian named Zakhar Perov and her mother was a Kamassian named Afanasiya Andzhighatova. Plotnikova-Andzhighatova and her parents are on slot 14 on a chart Finnish linguist Kai Donner has made out of Abalakovo Kamassian families.^[1]

Plotnikova-Andzhighatova did not have the opportunity to speak Kamassian after 1950, because she had no friends who could speak it. Despite that, her Kamassian skills were fairly good and she was great help to philologists for the rest of her life. Plotnikova-Andzhighatova spoke fluent Russian, which she had learned in early childhood. With the decline of her native language, Russian became her only language. This affected her Kamassian skills, especially pronunciation, vocabulary and sentence structures. The Russian influence especially showed in structure of sentences and a weakening of the vocabulary: many morphologic forms and syntactic structures fell into disuse.^[2]

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