Native to Russia Official language in Mordovia (Russia) | Writing system Cyrillic | |
Region Mordovia, Nizhny Novgorod, Chuvashia, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Penza, Saratov, Orenburg, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan Native speakers 390,000 (together with Moksha) (2010 census) Language family Uralic
Mordvinic
Erzya | ||
The Erzya language (эрзянь кель, erzäny kel) is spoken by about 260,000 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.
Contents
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.
Consonants
Minimal pairs between /n/ and /ŋ/ include:
Vowel harmony
As in many other Uralic languages, Erzya has vowel harmony. Most roots contain either front vowels (/i/, /e/) or back vowels (/u/, /o/). 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 (/a/), found in the comparative case -шка (ška) "the size of" and the prolative -ка/-га/-ва (ka/ga/va) "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:
- If the final syllable of the word stem contains a front vowel, the front form of the suffix is used: веле (vele) "village", велесэ (velese) "in a village"
- If the finial 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: кудо (kudo) "house", кудосо (kudoso) "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: кальсэ (kalʲse) "with willow", ойсэ (ojse) "with butter". Likewise, if a front-vowel stem is followed by a low back vowel suffix, subsequent syllables will contain back harmony: велеванзо (velʲevanzo) "throughout its villages"
Thus the seeming violations of vowel harmony attested in stems, e.g. узере (uzere) "axe", суре (sure) "thread (string)", are actually due to the palatalized consonants (ź) and (ŕ).
One exception to front-vowel harmony is observed in palatalized non-final (/lʲ/), e.g. асфальт (asfalʲtso) "with asphalt".
Writing
The modern Erzya alphabet is the same as for Russian:
The pre-1929 version of the Erzya alphabet included the additional letter Cyrillic ligature En Ge (Ҥ ҥ) in some publications, (cf. Evsevyev 1928).
A Latin alphabet was officially approved by the government of Nizhne-Volzhskiy Kray in 1932, but it was never used:
The other version of Latin alphabet exists: