Erzya language

Erzya
Эрзянь Кель / erzänj kelj / eŕźań keĺ
Spoken in	Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
Region	Mordovia, Nizhny Novgorod, Chuvashia, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Penza, Saratov, Orenburg, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan
Native speakers	697,000  (2002 census)
Language family	Uralic Mordvinic Erzya
Writing system	Cyrillic
Language codes
ISO 639-2	myv
ISO 639-3	myv

The Erzya language (эрзянь кель) is spoken by about 500,000 people in the northern and eastern and north-western parts of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent regions of Nizhniy Novgorod, Chuvashia, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia. A diaspora can also be found in Armenia, Estonia as well as in Kazakhstan and other newly independent states of Central Asia. Erzya is currently written using Cyrillic with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language. In Mordovia, Erzya is co-official with Moksha and Russian.

The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of the Uralic languages. Erzya is closely related to Moksha, but is distinct in its phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Minimal pairs between /i/ and /ɨ/ include:

• /viʃka/ "small" vs. /vɨʃka/ "antenna"
• /mirnesʲ/ "the little world" vs. /mɨrnesʲ/ "she meowed"
• /bɨznɨ/ "[a bumblebee] buzzes" vs. /biznɨ/ "[a mosquito] squeals", (see Rueter 2010: 16, 59-60)

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
			plain	pal.
Nasals		m	n	nʲ			ŋ
Plosives	voiceless	p	t	tʲ			k
	voiced	b	d	dʲ			ɡ
Affricates	voiceless		t͡s	t͡sʲ	t͡ʃ
Fricatives	voiceless	f	s	sʲ	ʃ		x
	voiced	v	z	zʲ	ʒ
Trills			r	rʲ
Approximants			l	lʲ		j

Minimal pairs between /n/ and /ŋ/ include:

• /janga/ "along the path (at the declension level, the alveolar /n/ of the stem is retained before the prolative case ending "Ga")" vs. /jaŋga/ "(the connegative form of the verb jaŋgams 'to break')"
• /jonks/ "good (subject or object complement in "ks" translative)" vs. /joŋks/ "direction; area", (see Rueter 2010: 58)

Writing

The modern Erzya alphabet is the same as for Russian:

А /a/	Б /b/	В /v/	Г /ɡ/	Д /d/	Е /je/	Ё /jo/	Ж /ʒ/	З /z/	И /i/	Й /j/
К /k/	Л /l/	М /m/	Н /n/	О /o/	П /p/	Р /r/	С /s/	Т /t/	У /u/	Ф /f/
Х /x/	Ц /t͡s/	Ч /t͡ʃ/	Ш /ʃ/	Щ /ʃt͡ʃ/	Ъ /-/	Ы /ɨ/	Ь /◌ʲ/	Э /e/	Ю /ju/	Я /ja/

The pre-1929 version of the Erzya alphabet included the additional letter Cyrillic ligature En Ge (Ҥ ҥ) in some publications, (cf. Evsevyev 1928).

The highlighted letters were used in loanwords from Russian only, with the specification that the soft sign ь appearing after non-alveolar consonants is a sign of loan words.^{[citation needed]}

А /a/	Б /b/	В /v/	Г /ɡ/	Д /d/	Е /je/	Ё /jo/	Ж /ʒ/	З /z/	И /i/	Й /j/	К /k/
Л /l/	М /m/	Н /n/	нг /ŋ/	О /o/	П /p/	Р /r/	С /s/	Т /t/	У /u/	Ф /f/	Х /x/
Ц /t͡s/	Ч /t͡ʃ/	Ш /ʃ/	Щ /ʃt͡ʃ/	Ъ /-/	Ы /ɨ/	Ь /◌ʲ/	Э /e/	Ю /ju/	Я /ja/	ä /æ/	ə /ə/

A Latin alphabet was officially approved by the government of Nizhne-Volzhskiy Kray in 1932, but it was never used:

a в c ç d ә e f g y i j k l m n o p r s ş t u v x z ƶ ь

See also

• Erzya people
• Erzya literature
• Erzyan Mastor

Bibliography

• A.I. Bryzhinskiy, O.V. Pashutina, Ye.I. Chernov. Писатели Мордовии Биобиблиографический справочник. Saransk: Mordovskoye Knizhnoye Izdatelystvo, 2001. ISBN 5-7595-1386-9.
• Vasilij D'omin. Сюконян тенк... Эрзянь писательде ёвтнемат. Saransk, 2005. ISBN 5-7595-1665-5.
• Ksenija Djordjevic & Jean-Leo Leonard. Parlons Mordve. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006, ISBN 2-296-00147-5.
• Makar E. Evsev'ev. Основы мордовской грамматика, Эрзянь грамматика. С приложением образцов мокшанских склонений и спряжений. Москва: Центральное издательство народов СССР, 1928.
• Jack Rueter. Adnominal Person in the Morphological System of Erzya. Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia 261. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, 2010, ISBN 978-952-5667-23-3 [print], ISBN 978-952-5667-24-0 [online].
• D.V. Tsygankin. Память запечатленная в слове: Словарь географических названий республики Мордовия. Saransk, 2005. ISBN 5-7493-0780-8.

External links

• Finno-Ugric Electronic Library by the Finno-Ugric Information Center in Syktyvkar, Komi Republic (interface in Russian and English, texts in Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya and Moksha languages): [1]
• Erzjanj Mastor - The society for preserving the Erzya language (in Erzya and Russian)
• http://www.info-rm.com/er/index.php News in the Erzya and Moksha Mordvinian languages
• [2] Эрзянский язык
• [3] Erzya studies reference bibliography under construction.
• Russian-Moksha-Erzya Dictionary
• Russian-Erzya Dictionary