Mari language - WikiHQ

The Mari language (, ; ), formerly known as the Cheremiss language, spoken by approximately 400,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation, as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari, are found also in the Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions.

Mari is the titular and official language of its republic, alongside Russian.

The Mari language today has three standard forms: Hill Mari, Northwestern Mari, and Meadow Mari. The latter is predominant and spans the continuum Meadow Mari to Eastern Mari from the Republic into the Ural dialects of Bashkortostan, Sverdlovsk Oblast and Udmurtia), whereas the former, Hill Mari, shares a stronger affiliation with the Northwestern dialect (spoken in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and parts of the Kirov Oblast). Both language forms use modified versions of Cyrillic script. For the non-native, Hill Mari, or Western Mari, can be recognised by its use of the special letters "ӓ" and "ӹ" in addition to the shared letters "ӱ" and "ӧ", while Eastern and Meadow Mari utilise a special letter "ҥ".

The use of two "variants", as opposed to two "languages", has been debated: Maris recognise the unity of the ethnic group, and the two forms are very close, but distinct enough to cause some problems with communication.

Ethnonym and glottonym

The Mari language and people were known as "Cheremis" (, cheremisy, cheremisskiy yazyk). In medieval texts the variant forms Sarmys and Tsarmys are also found, as well as ; and , Śarmăs before the Russian Revolution. The term Mari comes from the Maris' autonym ().

Sociolinguistic situation

Most Maris live in rural areas with slightly more than a quarter living in cities. In the republic's capital, Yoshkar-Ola, the percentage of Maris is just over 23 percent. At the end of the 1980s (per the 1989 census) Maris numbered 670,868, of whom 80% (542,160) claimed Mari as their first language and 18.8% did not speak Mari. In the Mari Republic, 11.6% claimed Mari was not their first language. In a survey by the Mari Research Institute more than three quarters of Maris surveyed considered Mari language to be the most crucial marker of ethnic identity, followed by traditional culture (61%) and common historical past (22%), religion (16%), character and mentality (15%) and appearance (11%) (see Glukhov and Glukhov for details). A gradual downward trend towards assimilation to Russian has been noted for the Communist period: the 1926 census indicated more than 99% of Maris considered Mari their first language, declining to less than 81% in 1989. Some qualitative evidence of a reversal in recent years has been noted.

There was no state support for Mari language in Imperial Russia, and with the exception of some enthusiasts and numerous ecclesiastical texts by the Russian Orthodox Church, there was almost no education in Mari language. After the October Revolution, there was a period of support of all lesser national cultures in the Soviet Union, but eventually Russification returned. While the development of Mari literary language continued, still, only elementary-school education was available in Mari in the Soviet period, with this policy ending in village schools in the 1970–1980s. The period of glasnost and perestroika in the 1990s opened opportunities for a revival of efforts expand the use of Mari in education and the public sphere. In the 1990s, the Mari language, alongside Russian, was proclaimed in the republican constitution to be an official language of Mari El. By the beginning of the 21st century, Mari language and literature was taught in 226 schools. At the History and Philology Department of the Mari State University and the Krupskaya Teachers' Training Institute (Yoshkar-Ola), more than half of the subjects are taught in Mari. However, by 2024, only 9% of ethnic Mari children were being taught Mari in just 81 schools.

Dialects

[[File:Mari language dialect map.svg|thumb|right|400px|The four main dialects of Mari:

]]

The principal division between Mari varieties is the West and the East. According to the Soviet linguist Kovedyaeva (1976:9-15, 1993:163-164) the Mari macrolanguage is divided into four main dialects:

Hill Mari, spoken mainly on the right upper bank of the Volga River around Kozmodemyansk (hence the name), but also on the left bank and in the mouth of Vetluga.
Northwestern Mari
Meadow Mari, spoken on the left Volgan bank on the central and eastern plain ("meadow") of Mari El around the republican capital, Yoshkar-Ola.
Eastern Mari is scattered to the east of Mari El from Vyatka through Kama to Ufa.

Each main dialect is divided into their own smaller local subdialects. Only Hill and Meadow Mari have their own literary written standard varieties, based on the dialects of Kozmodemyansk and Yoshkar-Ola respectively.

Eastern and Meadow Mari are often united as a Meadow-Eastern supra-dialect. Northwestern Mari is transitional between the Hill and Meadow dialects, and its phonology and morphology are closer to Hill Mari.

Phonology

Vowels

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

! rowspan="2" |

! colspan="2" | Front

! rowspan="2" | Central

! colspan="2" | Back

! unrounded

! rounded

! unrounded

! rounded

! Close

| // и/i

| // ӱ/ü

| // у/u

! Mid

| // е/e

| // ӧ/ö

| //, //1 ы/y, ӹ/ÿ

| // о/o

! Open

| //1 ӓ/ä

| // а/a

Only in Hill Mari

The schwa and its fronted counterpart are usually transcribed in Finno-Ugric transcription as ə̑ (reduced mid unrounded vowel) and ə (reduced front unrounded vowel) respectively. The former has sometimes been transcribed in IPA as , but phonetically the vowel is most strongly distinguished by its short duration and reduced quality. Descriptions vary on the degree of backness and labialisation.

The mid vowels , , have more reduced allophones , , at the end of a word.

Word prosody

Stress is not phonemic in Mari, but a dynamic stress system is exhibited phonetically, the stressed syllable being higher in pitch and amplitude and greater in length than an unstressed syllable. Generally, there is one prominent syllable per word and prominence may be found in any syllable of the word. Post- and prefixes behave as clitics, i.e., they do not have their own stress. For example, пӧ́рт (pört, "house") гыч (gəč, "out of") (); or му́ро (muro, "song") дене (dene, "with") ().

Consonants

Consonants are shown in Cyrillic, Latin, and the IPA:

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

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

! rowspan="2" | Labial

! rowspan="2" | Dental

! colspan="2" | Alveolar

! rowspan="2" | Post- alveolar

! rowspan="2" | Palatal

! rowspan="2" | Velar

|- class=small

! plain

! pal.

! colspan="2" | Nasal

| // м/m

| // н/n

| // н(ь)/n(')2

| // ҥ3/ŋ

! rowspan="2" | Plosive

! voiceless

| // п/p

| // т/t

| //1 т(ь)/t'[ť]2

| // к/k

! voiced

| // б/b

| // д/d

| // г/g

! colspan="2" | Affricate

| //1 ц/c

| // ч/č

! rowspan="2" | Fricative

! voiceless

| //1 ф/f

| // с/s

| // ш/š

| //1 х/h

! voiced

| ()4 в/v

| ()4 д/d

| // з/z

| // ж/ž

| ()4 г/g

! colspan="2" | Rhotic

| // (or //) р/r

! rowspan="2" | Approximant

! central

| // й/j

! lateral

| // л/l

| // л(ь)/l(ľ)2

Only in Russian loanwords, in Hill Mari also onomatopoeia and Chuvashian loanwords.
Palatalisation is marked in different ways. A following a palatalised consonant is written as , and following a palatalised consonant is written as . If the vowel following a palatalised consonant is an е or an и, palatalisation is not marked at all. In other cases, the soft sign ь is used to mark palatalisation.
The modified Cyrillic letter for the velar nasal () combines the Cyrillic letter with and , where the rightmost post of Н is conflated with the vertical post of : . Although Hill Mari has this sound too, this character is only used in Meadow Mari.
In Russian loanwords and after nasals, are voiced stops. Word-finally and before a consonant, there is free variation between voiced fricatives () and voiceless stops .

Phonological processes

Like several other Uralic languages, Mari has vowel harmony. In addition to front/back harmony, Mari also features round/unround harmony. If the stressed vowel in the word is rounded, then the suffix will contain a rounded vowel: for example, кӱтӱ́ ([kyˈty] 'herd') becomes кӱтӱ́штӧ ([kyˈtyʃtø], 'in the herd'); if the stressed vowel is unrounded, then the suffix will contain an unrounded vowel: ки́д ([kid], 'hand') becomes ки́дыште ([ˈkidəʃte], 'in the hand'). If the stressed vowel is back, then the suffix will end in a back vowel: агу́р ([aˈgur], 'whirlpool') becomes агу́рышто ([aˈgurəʃto], 'in the whirlpool').

Orthography

thumb|261x261px|Geographical distribution of the Mari language

Mari is mostly written with the Cyrillic script.

Declension

Like other Uralic languages, Mari is an agglutinative language, adhering to agglutinative typology more than other Uralic languages.

| кушко/куш (where to)

| -

| ялышке/ялыш (to a village)

| Lative

| -ш/еш/эш

| кушан (where to)

| -

| ялеш (into a village)

-влак (-vlak) – Standard plural form.
-шамыч (-šamõč) – Alternative standard plural, used in many dialects. There is no difference in meaning between these two.
-мыт (mət) – Sociative plural. Used to signify a group of people: the members of a family, a person and their family and friends.

Possessive suffixes

Every grammatical person in Mari has its own possessive suffix.

{| class="wikitable"

! Person

! Suffix

! Example

| -

| шӱргӧ (face)

| First-person singular

| -ем/эм

| шӱргем (my face)

| Second-person singular

| -ет/эт

| шӱргет (your face)

| Third-person singular

| -же/жо/жӧ/ше/шо/шӧ

| шӱргыжӧ (his/her/its face)

| First-person plural

| -на

| шӱргына (our face)

| Second-person plural

| -да

| шӱргыда (your face)

| Third-person plural

| -шт/ышт

| шӱргышт (their face)

Additional suffixes

Additional particles, falling into none of the categories above, can be added to the very end of a word, giving it some additional meaning. For example, the suffix -ат (-at), means 'also' or 'too'.

Arrangement of suffixes

The arrangement of suffixes varies from case to case. Although the case suffixes are after the possessive suffixes in the genitive and the accusative, the opposite is the case for the locative cases. In the dative, both arrangements are possible.

{| class="wikitable"

! Case

! Singular

! Example

! Plural

| Nominative

| P

| пӧртем – 'my house (subject)'

| пӧртем-влак – 'my houses (subject)'

| Genitive

| rowspan="3"| P → C

| пӧртемын – 'of my house'

| пӧртем-влакын – 'of my houses'

| Accusative

| пӧртемым – 'my house (object)'

| пӧртем-влакым – 'my houses (object)'

| Comitative

| пӧртемге – 'with my house'

| пӧртем-влакге – 'with my houses'

| Dative

| P → C, C → P

| пӧртемлан, пӧртланем – 'to my house'

| пӧртем-влаклан – 'to my houses'

| Comparative

| P → C, C → P

| пӧртемла, пӧртлам – 'like my house'

| пӧртем-влакла – 'like my houses'

| Inessive

| rowspan="3"| C → P

| пӧртыштем – 'in my house'

| пӧрт-влакыштем – 'in my houses'

| Illative

| пӧртышкем – 'into my house'

| пӧрт-влакышкем – 'into my houses'

| Lative

| пӧртешем – 'into my house'

| пӧрт-влакешем – 'into my houses'

There are many other arrangements in the plural—the position of the plural particle is flexible. The arrangement here is one commonly used possibility. Allomorphy is generally transparent, with the realisation of affixes being predictable, with the exception of some cases. This means that the object appears directly before the predicate.

{| class="wikitable"

!Example taken from Georgieva et al. (2021)

Nominal predication

Two nouns can be put against each other to form nominal predication. According to Saarinen (2022) both nouns and adjectives appear in the nominative case and do not agree with the subject in number in nominal predication.