Mari language

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This article relates to the Mari language spoken in Russia. For the language spoken in New Guinea see Mari language (New Guinea)
Mari
марий йылме marij jəlme
Spoken in: Russian Federation: autonomous republics Mari El, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Udmurtia; oblasti Nizhny Novgorod, Kirov, Sverdlovsk, Orenburg; Perm Krai
Total speakers: 600,569
Language family: Uralic
 Finno-Ugric
  Finno-Permic
   Finno-Volgaic
    Mari 
Official status
Official language of: Mari El (Russian Federation)
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: chm
ISO 639-3: variously:
chm — Mari (Russia)
mhr — Eastern Mari
mrj — Western Mari
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Mari language (Mari: марий йылме, Russian: марийский язык), spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic (Mari: Марий Эл ‘Mari Land’, Russian: Марийская республика) of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vjatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari are found also in the Tatarstan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions.

Mari today has a unified standard form with two variants (Hill vs. Meadow or Western and Eastern, with the Eastern variant prevailing in everyday usage), using a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet, and is the titular and official language of its republic, alongside Russian. The use of two "variants," as opposed to two "languages," has been hotly debated: on the one hand, Maris recognize the unity of the ethnic group; on the other hand, the structural differences between Hill and Meadow Mari are at least as substantial, if not more so, than those found in the successor languages to what used to be called Serbo-Croatian.

Contents

[edit] Ethnonym and glottonym

The Mari language and people were known as "Cheremis" (Russian: черемисы, черемисский язык, in mediæval texts the variant forms черемись, сармыс, цармис are also found; Tatar: Çirmeş / Чирмеш; Chuvash: Çармăс) before the Russian Revolution. The term Mari comes from the Maris' self-designation марий (mari), which is thought to have been borrowed from the Indo-Aryan term *mar- (< PIE *mer-) 'man, mortal'.

[edit] Sociolinguistic situation

Most Maris live in rural areas with slightly more than a quarter living in cities. In the republican capital, Yoshkar-Ola, the percentage of Maris is just over 23%. 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 3/4 of Maris survey 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 Insitute (Yoshkar-Ola), more than half of the subjects are taught in Mari.

[edit] Dialects

Traditionally there are two macrodialects of Mari: Hill Mari, spoken on the upper bank of the Volga River, near Kozmodemyansk, and Meadow Mari on the lowland bank in and around the republican capital, Yoshkar-Ola. Today linguists distinguish four dialects: Hill (right-bank of the Volga and part of the left bank), Meadow (at the confluence of the Kokshaga and Vyatka rivers), Eastern (east of the Vyatka), and North-Western. Some Mari also speak the Turkic language, Tatar. Russian and Tatar have strongly influenced Mari, especially Meadow Mari.

[edit] Grammar

[edit] Alphabet and Phonology

A display of the Mari alphabet: http://www1.peoples.org.ru/alfmari.html

[edit] Vowels

Height Front back
unrounded rounded unrounded rounded
Close и/i /i/ ӱ/ü /y/ - у/u /u/
Mid е/e /e/ ӧ/ö /ø/ ы/ə /ə/ о/o /o/
Open - - а/a /ɑ/ -

Note: The sounds ɯ (high back unrounded), and æ (low front unrounded) occur in Hill Mari.

[edit] Word prosody and vowel harmony

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 (house) гыч (out of) → [ˈpørt ɣəʧ]; му́ро (song) дене (with) → [ˈmuro ðene].

As in other Uralic languages, Mari displays vowel harmony, including harmony of both round/unround and front/back. If the stressed vowel in the word is rounded, then the suffix will contain a rounded vowel: кӱтӱ́ (herd) → кӱтӱ́штӧ (in the herd); if the stressed vowel is unrounded, then the suffix will contain an unrounded vowel: ки́д (hand) → ки́дыште (in the hand). If the stressed vowel is back, then the suffix will end in a back vowel: агу́р (whirlpool) → агу́рышто 'in the whirlpool' (Зорина, Крылова, Якимова 1990: 9).

[edit] Consonants

Consonants are shown in Cyrillic, Latin, and IPA:

Manner Labial Dental Palatal Velar
Plosive Voiceless п/p /p/ т/t /t/ - к/k /k/
Voiced б/b /β/ д/d /ð/ - г/g /ɣ/
Fricative Voiceless - с/s /s/ ш/š /ʃ/ -
Voiced - з/z /z/ ж/ž /ʒ/ -
Affricate - ц/c /ʦ/ ч/č /ʧ/ -
Nasal м/m /m/ н/n /n/ нь/n’ /ɲ/ ҥ1/ŋ /ŋ/
Lateral - л/l /l/ ль/l’ /ʎ/ -
Rhotic - р/r /r/ (or /ɾ/) - -
Approximant - - j /j/ -
  1. The modified Cyrillic letter for the velar nasal (ŋ) combines the Cyrillic letter Н н with and Г г, where the rightmost post of Н is conflated with the vertical post of Г: Ҥ, ҥ. The letters Ф ф (f) and Х х (x, h) are used in loanwords, especially from Russian, Tatar, and Chuvash.

[edit] Some common words and phrases

Note that the accent mark, which denotes the place of stress, is not used in actual Mari orthography.

  • По́ро ке́че/Póro kéče - Good day
  • Ку́гу та́у/Kúgu táu - Thank you (very much)
  • ик, кок, кум, ныл, вич/ik, kok, kum, nyl, vič - one, two, three, four, five
  • куд, шым, канда́ш, инде́ш, лу/kud, šym, kandáš, indéš, lu - six, seven, eight, nine, ten
  • мут/mut - word

[edit] Bibliography

  • Castrén M. A., Elementa grammaticae tscheremissicae, Kuopio, 1845 (Hill);
  • Wiedemann F., Versuch einer Grammatik der tscheremissischen Sprache, Saint Petersburg, 1847 (Hill);
  • Budenz J., Erdéi és hegyi cseremisz szótár, Pest, 1866 (Mari [Hill and Meadow], Hungarian, Latin);
  • Троицкий В. П., Черемисско-русский словарь, Kazan', 1894 (Hill and Meadow);
  • Szilasi M., Cseremisz szótár, Budapest, 1901 (Mari [Hill and Meadow], Hungarian, German);
  • Ramstedt G. J., Bergtscheremissische Sprachstudien, Helsinki, 1902 (Hill);
  • Beke О., Cseremisz nyelvtan, Budapest, 1911 (Hill and Meadow);
  • Васильев В. М., Записки по грамматике народа мари, Kazan', 1918 (Hill and Meadow);
  • Шорин В. С., Маро-русский словарь горного наречия, Kazan', 1920 (Hill);
  • Кармазин Г. Г., Материалы к изучению марийского языка, Krasnokokshajsk, 1925 (Meadow);
  • Кармазин Г. Г., Учебник марийского языка лугово-восточного наречия, Yoshkar-Ola, 1929 (Meadow);
  • Васильев В. М., Марий Мутэр, Мoscow, 1929 (Hill and Meadow);
  • Räsänen M., Die tschuwassischen Lehnwörter im Tscheremissischen, Helsinki, 1920;
  • Lewy E., Tscheremissische Grammatik, Leipzig, 1922 (Meadow);
  • Wichmann Y., Tscheremissische Texte mit Wörterverzeichnis und grammatikalischem Abriss, Helsingfors, 1923 (Hill and Meadow);
  • Räsänen, Die tatarischen Lehnwörter im Tscheremissischen, Helsinki, 1923.
  • Sebeok, T. A. and A. Raun. (eds.), The First Cheremis Grammar (1775): A Facsimile Edition, Chicago, 1956.
  • Ingemann, F. J. and T. A. Sebeok, An Eastern Cheremis Manual: Phonology, Grammar, Texts and Glossary (= American Council of Learned Societies, Research and Studies in Uralic and Altaic languages, project nos. 6 and 31), Bloomington, 1961 (Meadow);
  • Галкин, И. С., Историческая грамматика марийского языка, vol. I, II, Yoshkar-Ola, 1964, 1966;
  • Иванов, И. Г., История марийского литературного языка, Yoshkar-Ola, 1975;
  • Иванов, И. Г., Марий диалектологий, Yoshkar-Ola, 1981;
  • Зорина, З. Г., Г. С. Крылова, and Э. С. Якимова. Марийский язык для всех, ч. 1. Йошкар-Ола: Марийское книжное издательство, 1990;
  • Коведяева, Е. И. "Марийский язык", Языки мира: Уральские языки. Moscow, 1993: 148-164.
  • Коведяева, Е. И. "Горномарийский вариант литературного марийского языка", Языки мира: Уральские языки. Moscow, 1993: 164-173.
  • Glukhov, N. and V. Glukhov, "Mari Men and Women as Bearers of the Mari Language and Identity," Wiener elektronische Beiträge des Instituts für Finno-Ugristik, 2003. Available, along with other papers on Finno-Ugric languages and cultures, at http://webfu.univie.ac.at/archiv.php
  • Klima, L. "The linguistic affinity of the Volgaic Finno-Ugrians and their ethnogenesis," 2004: http://mek.oszk.hu/01700/01794/
  • Галкин, И. С., "Происхождение и развитие марийского языка", Марийцы. Историко-этнографические очерки/Марий калык. Историй сынан этнографий очерк-влак, Yoshkar-Ola, 2005: 43-46.
    • A bibliography of further works, mostly in Russian, can be found here: Народы Удмуртии - История и культура марийского. Язык и письменность народа: http://213.24.184.98:8101/content/folk/mari/mari4.htm

[edit] External links

Finno-Ugric languages
Ugric Hungarian | Khanty | Mansi
Permic Komi | Komi-Permyak | Udmurt
Finno-Volgaic Mari | Erzya | Moksha | Merya† | Meshcherian† | Muromian†
Sami Akkala Sami† | Inari Sami | Kemi Sami† | Kildin Sami | Lule Sami | Northern Sami | Pite Sami | Skolt Sami | Southern Sami | Ter Sami | Ume Sami
Baltic-Finnic Estonian | Finnish | Ingrian | Karelian | Kven | Livonian | Ludic | Meänkieli | South Estonian | Veps | Votic | Võro
† denotes extinct
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