thumb|Erzya flag

The Erzya language (, ), also Erzian or historically Arisa, is spoken by approximately 300,000 people in the northern, eastern and north-western parts of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent regions of Nizhny Novgorod, Chuvashia, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia. A diaspora can also be found in Armenia and Estonia, as well as in Kazakhstan and other 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 a language that is closely related to Moksha but has distinct phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.

Phonology

Consonants

The following table lists the consonant phonemes of Erzya together with their Cyrillic equivalents.

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

|-

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" |

! rowspan="2" | Labial

! colspan="2" | Alveolar

! rowspan="2" | (Palato-)<br />alveolar

! rowspan="2" | Velar

|-

! <small>plain</small>

! <small>pal.</small>

|-

! colspan="2" | Nasal

| м

| н

| нь

|

| н

|-

! rowspan="2" | Plosive

! <small>voiceless</small>

| п

| т

| ть

|

| к

|-

! <small>voiced</small>

| б

| д

| дь

|

| г

|-

! colspan="2" | Affricate

|

| ц

| ць

| ч

|

|-

! rowspan="2" | Fricative

! <small>voiceless</small>

| ( ф)

| с

| сь

| ш

| ( х)

|-

! <small>voiced</small>

| в

| з

| зь

| ж

|

|-

! colspan="2" | Trill

|

| р

| рь

|

|

|-

! colspan="2" | Approximant

|

| л

| ль

| й

|

|}

Palatalization is widespread in Erzya, but is contrastive only for the alveolar consonants. The labial and velar consonants have palatalized allophones before the front vowels , . The pairs – , – and – also often alternate depending on a following or preceding back vs. front vowel. E.g. the 1st person singular possessive suffix has allomorphs such as and . The palatalized consonants can natively occur also in a back vowel environment, e.g. the genitive suffix , providing minimal pairs such as 'my house' – '(a) house's'. Non-palatalized , , in a front vowel environment are limited to recent Russian loans such as 'whale'.

Note on romanized transcription: in Uralic studies, the members of the palatalized series are usually spelled as , , , , , , , , while the postalveolar sounds are spelled , , (see Uralic Phonetic Alphabet).

and are loan phonemes from Russian.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"

!

! Front

! Back

|-

! High

|

|

|-

! Mid

|

|

|-

! Low

|colspan="2"|

|}

The front vowels and have centralized variants and immediately following a plain alveolar consonant, e.g. "they", "blue".

Vowel harmony

As in many other Uralic languages, Erzya has vowel harmony. Most roots contain either front vowels (, ) or back vowels (, ). In addition, all suffixes with mid vowels have two forms: the form to be used is determined by the final syllable of the stem. The low vowel (), found in the comparative case () "the size of" and the prolative () "spatial multipoint used with verbs of motion as well as position" is a back vowel and not subject to vowel harmony.

The rules of vowel harmony are as follows:

  1. If the final syllable of the word stem contains a front vowel, the front form of the suffix is used: () "village", () "in a village"
  2. If the final syllable of the word stem contains a back vowel, and it is followed by plain (non-palatalized) consonants, the back form of the suffix is used: () "house", () "in a house"

However, if the back vowel is followed by a palatalized consonant or palatal glide, vowel harmony is violated and the "front" form of the suffix is used: () "with willow", () "with butter". Likewise, if a front-vowel stem is followed by a low back vowel suffix, subsequent syllables will contain back harmony: () "throughout its villages"

Thus the seeming violations of vowel harmony attested in stems, e.g. () "axe", () "thread (string)", are actually due to the palatalized consonants and .

One exception to front-vowel harmony is observed in palatalized non-final , e.g. () "with asphalt".

Writing

Cyrillic alphabet

The modern Erzya alphabet is the same as for Russian:

::::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

One of the modern Latin alphabet proposals:

::::a b c č ć d d́/ď e f g h i j k l ĺ/ľ m n ń o p r ŕ s š ś t t́/ť u v z ž ź

{| class="wikitable"

!Cyrillic

!Latin

|-

|а

|a

|-

|б

|b

|-

|в

|v

|-

|г

|g

|-

| rowspan="2" |д

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — d́/ď

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — d

|-

| rowspan="3" |е

|at the beginning of a word — je

|-

|after a vowel — je

|-

|after a consonant — e

|-

| rowspan="3" |ё

|at the beginning of a word — jo

|-

|after a vowel — jo

|-

|after a consonant — o

|-

|ж

|ž

|-

| rowspan="2" |з

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — ź

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — z

|-

| rowspan="3" |и

|at the beginning of a word — i

|-

|after a consonant — i

|-

|after a vowel — ji

|-

|й

|j

|-

|к

|k

|-

| rowspan="2" |л

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — ĺ/ľ

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — l

|-

|м

|m

|-

| rowspan="2" |н

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — ń

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — n

|-

|о

|o

|-

|п

|р

|-

| rowspan="2" |р

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — ŕ

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — r

|-

| rowspan="2" |с

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — ś

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — s

|-

| rowspan="2" |т

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — t́/ť

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — t

|-

|у

|u

|-

|ф

|f (only in loanwords)

|-

|х

|h (only in loanwords)

|-

| rowspan="2" |ц

|before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — ć

|-

|not before e,ë,и,ь,ю,я — c

|-

|ч

|č

|-

|ш

|š

|-

|щ

|šč/šť (only in loanwords)

|-

|ъ

|–

|-

|ы

|i

|-

|ь

|–

|-

|э

|e

|-

| rowspan="3" |ю

|at the beginning of a word — ju

|-

|after a vowel — ju

|-

|after a consonant — u

|-

| rowspan="3" |я

|at the beginning of a word — ja

|-

|after a vowel — ja

|-

|after a consonant — a

|}

Morphology

Like all other Uralic languages, Erzya is an agglutinative language which expresses grammatical relations by means of suffixes.

Nouns

Nouns are inflected for case, number, definiteness and possessor. Erzya distinguishes twelve cases (here illustrated with the noun "ground, earth"). Number is systematically distinguished only with definite nouns; for indefinite nouns and nouns with a possessive suffix, only the nominative case has a distinct plural.

!Erzya (Transliteration)

!English

|-

|Весе ломантне чачить олякс, ёнчинзэ ды праванзо коряс вейкетекс. Сынст улить превест ды чамачист, вейкень-вейкень коряс пряст сыненст ветяма ялгань ёжо марто.

|Veśe lomańt́ńe čačit́ oĺaks, jončinze di pravanzo koŕas vejket́eks. Sinst uĺit́ pŕevest di čamačist, vejkeń-vejkeń koŕas pŕańt́ sinenst vet́ama jalgań jožo marto.

|All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

|}

See also

  • Erzya people
  • Erzya literature
  • Erzyan Mastor

Bibliography

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

References

  • 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): [https://web.archive.org/web/20051018190124/http://library.finugor.ru/]
  • Erzjanj Mastor&nbsp;– The society for preserving the Erzya language (in Erzya and Russian)
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20061029185215/http://www.info-rm.com/er/index.php News in the Erzya and Moksha Mordvinian languages
  • [https://archive.today/20081021051746/http://www.erzan.ru/erzjanskij-jazyk] Эрзянский язык
  • Erzya – Finnish/English/German/Russian dictionary (robust finite-state, open-source) <!-- https://web.archive.org/web/20170602000344/http://valks.oahpa.no/ -->
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20170113190126/http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~rueter/rsc/erzya-studies-reference-bibliography.shtml] Erzya studies reference bibliography under construction.
  • Russian-Moksha-Erzya Dictionary
  • Russian-Erzya Dictionary