Udmurt language

Udmurt (; Cyrillic: Удмурт) is a Permic language spoken by the Udmurt people who are native to Udmurtia. As a Uralic language, it is distantly related to languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian. The Udmurt language is co-official with Russian within Udmurtia.

It is written using the Cyrillic alphabet with the addition of five characters not used in the Russian alphabet: Ӝ/ӝ, Ӟ/ӟ, Ӥ/ӥ, Ӧ/ӧ, and Ӵ/ӵ. Together with the Komi and Permyak languages, it constitutes the Permic grouping of the Uralic family. The Udmurt language shares similar agglutinative structures with its closest relative, the Komi language. Among outsiders, it has traditionally been referred to by its Russian exonym, Votyak. Udmurt has borrowed vocabulary from neighboring languages, mainly from Tatar and Russian.

In 2010, per the Russian census, there were around 324,000 speakers of the language in the country, out of the ethnic population of roughly 554,000. Ethnologue estimated that there were 550,000 native speakers (77%) out of an ethnic population of 750,000 in the former Russian SFSR (1989 census), a decline of roughly 41% in 21 years.

Dialects

Udmurt varieties can be grouped into three broad dialect groups:

Northern Udmurt, spoken along the Cheptsa River
Southern Udmurt
Besermyan, spoken by the strongly Turkified Besermyans

A continuum of intermediate dialects between Northern and Southern Udmurt is found, and literary Udmurt includes features from both areas. Besermyan is more sharply distinguished.

The differences between the dialects are not major and mainly involve differences in vocabulary, largely attributable to the stronger influence of Tatar in the southern end of the Udmurt-speaking area. A few differences in morphology and phonology still exist as well; for example:

Southern Udmurt has an accusative ending -ыз , contrasting with northern -ты .
Southwestern Udmurt distinguishes an eighth vowel phoneme .
Besermyan has in place of standard Udmurt (thus distinguishing only six vowel phonemes), and in place of standard Udmurt .

Phonology

Unlike other Uralic languages such as Finnish and Hungarian, Udmurt does not distinguish between long and short vowels and does not have vowel harmony.

Consonants

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

! colspan="2" |

! Labial

! Alveolar

! Post- alveolar

! (Alveolo-) palatal

! Velar

! colspan="2" | Nasal

! rowspan="2" | Plosive

! voiceless

! voiced

! rowspan="2" | Affricate

! voiceless

| ()

! voiced

| ()

! rowspan="2" | Fricative

! voiceless

| ()

! voiced

! colspan="2" | Approximant

! colspan="2" | Lateral

! colspan="2" | Trill

The consonants are restricted to loanwords, and are traditionally replaced by respectively. As in Hungarian, Udmurt exhibits regressive voicing and devoicing assimilations (the last element determines the assimilation), but with some exceptions (mostly to distinguish minimal pairs by voicing).

Vowels

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

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

! Front

! Central

! Back

|- class=small

! colspan="2"| Unrounded

! Round

! colspan="2" | Close

! colspan="2" | Mid

! colspan="2" | Open

| colspan="2" |

Orthography

Udmurt is written using a modified version of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet:

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

!Cyrillic!!Latin!!IPA!!Letter name!!Notes

| А а || A a || || а ||

| Б б || B b || || бэ ||

| В в || V v || || вэ ||

| Г г || G g || || гэ ||

| Д д || D d Ď ď || ~ɟ] before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь || дэ ||

| Е е || JE je E e|| after coronals д, т, з, с, л, н || е ||

| Ё ё || JO jo O o || after д, т, з, с, л, н || ё ||

| Ж ж || Ž ž || || жэ ||

| Ӝ ӝ || DŽ dž || || ӝэ || Д + Ж

| З з || Z z Ź ź || before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь || зэ ||

| Ӟ ӟ || DŹ dź || || ӟе || Дь + Зь

| И и || I i || after д, т, з, с, л, н || и ||

| Ӥ ӥ || I i || when preceded by д, т, з, с, л, н || точкаен и, точкаосын и ("dotted i") || Like Komi і. Non-palatalizing form of и.

| Й й || J j || || вакчи и ("short i") ||

| К к || K k || || ка ||

| Л л || Ł ł L l || before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь || эл ||

| М м || M m || || эм ||

| Н н || N n Ň ň || before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь || эн ||

| О о || O o || || о ||

| Ӧ ӧ || Õ õ || ~ || ӧ ||

| П п || P p || || пэ ||

| Р р || R r || || эр ||

| С с || S s Ś ś || before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь || эс ||

| Т т || T t Ť ť || ~c] before е, ё, и, ю, я, ь || тэ ||

| У у || U u || || у ||

| Ф ф || F f || || эф || In loanwords.

| Х х || H h || || ха || In loanwords.

| Ц ц || C c || || цэ || In loanwords.

| Ч ч || Ć ć || || чэ || Ть + Сь

| Ӵ ӵ || Č č || || ӵэ || Т + Ш

| Ш ш || Š š || || ша ||

| Щ щ || ŠČ šč || || ща || In loanwords.

| Ъ ъ || – || – || чурыт пус ("hard sign") || Distinguishes palatalized consonants ( ) from unpalatalized consonants followed by /j/ if followed by vowel; for example, and are written зё (źo) and зъё (zjo), respectively.

| Ы ы || Y y || ~ || ы ||

| Ь ь || – || || небыт пус ("soft sign") ||

| Э э || E e || || э ||

| Ю ю || JU ju || after д, т, з, с, л, н || ю ||

| Я я || JA ja || after д, т, з, с, л, н || я ||

Grammar

Udmurt is an agglutinating language. It uses affixes to express possession, to specify mode, time, and so on.

No gender distinction is made in nouns or personal pronouns.

Cases

Udmurt has fifteen cases: eight grammatical cases and seven locative cases.

There is no congruency between adjectives and nouns in neutral Udmurt noun phrases; in other words, there is no adjective declension as in the inessive noun phrase ("in a big village"; cf. Finnish inessive phrase ', in which ' "large" is inflected according to the head noun).

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Udmurt cases

! Case !! Suffix !! Example !! Translation

! colspan="4" | Grammatical

|nominative|| – || || village

|genitive

| - || || of a village / village's

|accusative|| -/-/-/- || || village (as an object)

|ablative

| - || || from a village

|dative

| - || || to a village

|instrumental

| -/-/- || || by means of a village

|abessive

| - || || without a village

|adverbial

| - || || in a village way

! colspan="4" style="background:#efefef" | Locative cases*

|inessive|| - || || in a village

|illative|| -/-/- || || into a village (or house)

|elative|| - || || from a village

|egressive|| - || || starting from a village

|terminative|| - || || end up at a village

|prolative|| -/-/-/- || || along a village

|allative|| - || || towards a village

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Of all the locative cases, personal pronouns can only inflect in the allative (also called approximative).

Plural

There are two types of nominal plurals in Udmurt. One is the plural for nouns -/- and the other is the plural for adjectives -/-.

Nominal plural

The noun is always in plural. In attributive plural phrases, the adjective is not required to be in the plural:

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Attributive plural

!Udmurt

!Transliteration

!English

|ćeber(eś) nyljos

|(the) beautiful girls

The plural marker always comes before other endings (i.e. cases and possessive suffixes) in the morphological structure of plural nominal.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Morphological order

!Udmurt

!Transliteration

!English

|nyljosly

|to the girls

|gurtjosazy

|to/in their villages

Predicative plural

As in Hungarian and Mordvinic languages, if the subject is plural, the adjective is always plural when it functions as the sentence's predicative:

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Attributive plural

!Udmurt

!Transliteration

!English

|nyljos ćebereś

|the girls are beautiful

|toljos kuźeś

|the winters are long

Udmurt pronouns are inflected much in the same way that their referent nouns are. However, personal pronouns are only inflected in the grammatical cases and cannot be inflected in the locative cases.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Udmurt personal pronouns are used to refer to human beings only. However, the third person singular can be referred to as it. The nominative case of personal pronouns are listed in the following table:

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Personal pronouns

! singular

! plural

! 1st person

! 2nd person

! 3rd person

More details:

There are self-intensifier forms: ачим '[I] myself', ачид '[you] yourself', ачиз '[he/she/it] himself', асьмеос '[we] ourselves', асьтэос '[you] yourself', асьсэос '[they] yourself'.

The 1st person plural has two forms according to clusivity: асьмеос is "inclusive we" and "ми" is "exclusive we". The younger speakers seem to favor always using "ми" (probably under the influence of Russian 'my' for "we"), so that for older generation the verse from a popular song "Ойдо, нылаш ми тонэн пумиськом!" sounds strange: its intended meaning is "Hey girl, let us meet!", while in the traditional thinking it reads "Hey girl, let we all meet with you!" The expected proper phrase would be: "Ойдо, нылаш асьмеос пумиськом!" and 'ми тонэн' is a calque from the Russian phrase 'my s toboi' meaning "me and you", but the word-by-word translation is "we with you".

Media

thumb|Bus and trolleybus stop tag in Russian and Udmurt languages in Izhevsk

Eurovision runners-up Buranovskiye Babushki, a pop group composed of Udmurt grandmothers, sing mostly in Udmurt.

The romantic comedy film Berry-Strawberry, a joint Polish-Udmurt production, is in the Udmurt language.

In 2013, the film company "Inwis kinopottonni" produced a film in the Udmurt language called Puzkar ("nest").

The Bible was first completely translated into Udmurt in 2013.

Bibliography

References

External links

Udmurtology: Udmurt Language, History and Culture
Literature
The First Udmurt Forum
Udmurt State University (has Udmurt Language Program for English speakers)
Udmurt language, alphabet and pronunciation
Vladimir Napolskikh. Review of Eberhard Winkler, Udmurt, München 2001 (Languages of the World. Materials 212)
Udmurt – Finnish/Komi Zyrian dictionary (robust finite-state, open-source)
Learning Udmurt words
BGN/PCGN romanization tool for Udmurt