Erzya language

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Erzya Эрзянь Кель
Spoken in:	Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
Region:	Mordovia, Nizhny Novgorod, Chuvashia, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Penza, Saratov, Orenburg, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan
Total speakers:	Ethnologue: in Russia 440,000 worldwide 517,575
Language family:	Uralic  Finno-Ugric   Finno-permic    Finno-Volgaic     Mordvinic      Erzya
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	myv
ISO 639-3:	myv
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Erzya language (Эрзянь Кель (Erzjanj Kelj)) is spoken by about 500,000 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, Kazakhstan and the other newly independent states of Central Asia. Erzya is currently written using the Cyrillic alphabet with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language. In Mordovia, Erzya is co-official with Moksha and Russian.

The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of Finno-Volgaic languages a sub-branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. Erzya is closely related to Moksha, but is distinct in its phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.

SIL code: MYV

ISO 639-2: myv

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Vowels 1.2 Consonants 2 Writing 3 See also 4 External links 5 Bibliography

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	(ɨ)	u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

[edit] Consonants

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	hard	/m/		/n/
	soft			/nʲ/
Plosive	hard	/p/   /b/		/t/   /d/			/k/   /g/
	soft			/tʲ/   /dʲ/
Affricate	hard			/ʦ/	/ʧ/
	soft			/ʦʲ/
Fricative	hard		/f/   /v/	/s/   /z/	/ʃ/   /ʒ/		/x/
	soft			/sʲ/   /zʲ/
Trill	hard			/r/
	soft			/rʲ/
Approximant	hard			/l/
	soft			/lʲ/		/j/

[edit] Writing

Modern Cyrillic alphabet: А/а, Б/б, В/в, Г/г, Д/д, Е/е, Ё/ё, Ж/ж, З/з, И/и, Й/й, К/к, Л/л, М/м, Н/н, О/о, П/п, Р/р, С/с, Т/т, У/у, Ф/ф, Х/х, Ц/ц, Ч/ч, Ш/ш, Щ/щ, Ъ/ъ, Ы/ы, Ь/ь, Э/э, Ю/ю, Я/я

Latin alphabet (officially approved by government of Nizhne-Volzhskiy kray in 1932, but was never used) a в c ç d ә e f g y i j k l m n o p r s ş t u v x z ƶ ь

[edit] See also

• Erzya people

[edit] External links

• Finno-Ugric Electronic Library by the Finno-Ugric Information Center in Syktyvkar, Komi Republic (interface in Russian and English, texts in Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya and Moksha languages): [1]
• Erzjanj Mastor - The society for preserving the Erzya language (in Erzya and Russian)
• http://www.info-rm.com/er/index.php News in the Erzya and Moksha Mordvinian languages

[edit] Bibliography

• A.I. Bryzhinskiy, O.V. Pashutina, Ye.I. Chernov. Писатели Мордовии Биобиблиографический справочник. Saransk: Mordovskoye Knizhnoye Izdatelystvo, 2001. ISBN 5-7595-1386-9.
• Vasilij D'omin. Сюконян тенк... Эрзянь писательде ёвтнемат. Saransk, 2005. ISBN 5-7595-1665-5.
• Ksenija Djordjevic & Jean-Leo Leonard. Parlons Mordve. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006, ISBN 2-296-00147-5.
• D.V. Tsygankin. Память запечатленная в слове: Словарь географических названий республики Мордовия. Saransk, 2005. ISBN 5-7493-0780-8.

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