Puneet Varma (Editor)

Udmurt language

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Native to
  
Russia

Ethnicity
  
Udmurts

Language family
  
Uralic Permic Udmurt

Region
  
Udmurtia

Native speakers
  
340,000 (2010 census)

Official language in
  
Udmurtia (Russia)

Udmurt (удмурт кыл, udmurt kyl) is a Uralic language, part of the Permic subgroup, spoken by the Udmurt natives of the Russian constituent republic of Udmurtia, where it is co-official with Russian. It is written using a Cyrillic alphabet, including five characters not used in the Russian alphabet: Ӝ/ӝ, Ӟ/ӟ, Ӥ/ӥ, Ӧ/ӧ, and Ӵ/ӵ. Together with Komi and Komi-Permyak languages, it constitutes the Permic grouping. Among outsiders, it has traditionally been referred to by its Russian exonym, Votyak. Udmurt has borrowed vocabulary from the neighboring languages Tatar and Russian.

Contents

Ethnologue estimates 550,000 native speakers (77%) in an ethnic population of 750,000 in the former USSR (1989 census).

Dialects

Udmurt varieties can be grouped in three broad dialect groups:

  • Northern Udmurt, spoken along 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 regardless 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, e.g.

  • Southern Udmurt has an accusative ending -ыз /-ɨz/, contrasting with northern -ты /-tɨ/.
  • Southwestern Udmurt distinguishes an eight vowel phoneme /ʉ/.
  • Besermyan has /e/ in place of standard Udmurt /ə/ (thus distinguishing only six vowel phonemes), and /ɵ/ in place of standard Udmurt /ɨ/.

    • Alphabet

    The Udmurt alphabet is based on the Russian Cyrillic alphabet:

  • 1 Only used in Russian loanwords and names.
  • 2 Silent, but required to distinguish palatalized consonants (/dʲ tʲ zʲ sʲ lʲ n/) from unpalatalized consonants followed by /j/ if followed by a vowel; for example, /zʲo/ and /zjo/ are written -зё- and -зъё-, respectively.

    • Phonology

    The language does not distinguish between long and short vowels and does not have vowel harmony.

    The consonants /f x t͡s/ are restricted to loanwords, and are traditionally replaced by /p k t͡ɕ/ respectively.

    Grammar

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

    Lexicon

    Depending on the style, about 10 to 30 percent of the Udmurt lexicon consists of loanwords. Many loanwords are from the Tatar language, which has also strongly influenced Udmurt phonology and syntax.

    The Udmurt language itself, together with the Tatar language, influenced the language of the Udmurt Jews, in the dialects of which the words of Finno-Ugric and Turkic origin there were recorded.

    Media in Udmurt

    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.

    References

    Udmurt language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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