High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Khanty (Xanty), known previously as Ostyak, is the language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty–Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs as well as in Aleksandrovsky and Kargosoksky districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1994 Salminen and Janhunen study, there were 12,000 Khanty-speaking people in Russia.