[6][7] The earliest observations about the language were published by Peter Simon Pallas in 1788 in a travel diary (Путешествия по разным провинциям Русского Государства, Puteshestviya po raznim provintsiyam Russkogo Gosudarstva).

[8] In 1858, Castrén published the first grammar and dictionary (Versuch einer jenissei-ostjakischen und Kottischen Sprachlehre), which also included material on the Kott language.

A. Karger in 1934 published the first grammar (Кетский язык Ketskij jazyk), as well as a Ket primer (Букварь на кетском языке Bukvar' na ketskom jazyke), and a new treatment appeared in 1968, written by A. Kreinovich.

In the 1950s and 1960s, according to the recollections of informants, they were sent to Russian-only boarding schools, which led to the ceasing of language transmission between generations.

[9] Now, Ket is taught as a subject in some primary schools, but only older adults are fluent and few are raising their children with the language.

[11] A children's book, A Bit Lost by Chris Haughton, was translated into the language in 2013.

[13][14] Only three localities, Kellog, Surgutikha and Maduika, retain a native Ket-speaking population in the present day.

Other villages such as Serkovo and Pakulikha were destroyed in the second half of the 20th century, dispersing the local Ket population to nearby towns.

[15] Georg classifies [ɛ], [ɔ], [ʌ] and [æ] as marginal phonemes.

Furthermore, all nasal consonants in Ket have voiceless allophones at the end of a monosyllabic word with a glottalized or descending tone (i.e. [m, n, ŋ] turn into [m̥, n̥, ŋ̥]), likewise, [ɮ] becomes [ɬ] in the same situation.

Descriptions of Ket vary widely in the number of contrastive tones they report: as many as eight and as few as zero have been counted.

With some exceptions caused by certain prefixes or clitics, the domain of tones in a multisyllabic word is limited to the first two syllables.