Mari language

Mari
марий йылме marij jəlme
Spoken in
Total speakers	more than 600,000
Language family	Uralic Finno-Ugric Finno-Permic Finno-Volgaic Mari
Official status
Official language in	Mari El
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	chm
ISO 639-3	variously: chm – Mari (generic) mhr – Meadow Mari (Eastern Mari) mrj – Hill Mari (Western Mari)
Linguasphere
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Mari language (Mari: марий йылме, marii jylme, 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, Marii El, i.e., 'Mari land') of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka 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.

Ethnonym and glottonym

The Mari language and people were known as "Cheremis" (Russian: черемисы, черемисский язык, in mediæval texts the variant forms Cheremis', Sarmys, Tsarmys (Russian: черемись, сармыс, цармис) are also found; Tatar Cyrillic: Чирмеш, Latin: Çirmeş; Chuvash: Çармăс, Çarmâs) 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'.

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 Institute (Yoshkar-Ola), more than half of the subjects are taught in Mari.

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 Volga rivers), Eastern (east of the Vyatka), and North-Western. Some Mari also speak Tatar language.

Orthography

The Mari alphabet in a primer from 1887

Draft version of the Latin alphabet from 1930

Meadow Mari alphabet

Hill Mari alphabet

Grammar

Like other Uralic languages, Mari is an agglutinating language. It lacks grammatical gender, and does not use articles.

Phonology

Vowels

1. Only in Hill Mari

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 ɣət͡ʃ]; 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).

Consonants

Consonants are shown in Cyrillic, Latin, and the IPA:

1. Only in Hill Mari and in loanwords.
2. Palatalisation is marked in different ways. A у following a palatalised consonant is written as ю, an а following a palatalised consonant is written as я. If the vowel following a palatalised consonant is an е or an и, palatalisation is not marked at all. In other cases, the soft sign ь is used to mark palatalisation.
3. In Russian loanwords, б/д/г are pronounced as b/d/g. Some speakers pronounce them as such in general, due to Russian influence on the language.
4. 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. While Hill Mari has the sound too, the character is only used in Meadow Mari.

Declension

Case

Meadow Mari has 9 productive cases, of which 3 are locative cases. The usage of these is restricted to inanimate objects.

Many cases, aside from their basic function, are used in other situations, such as in expressions of time.

• Nominative

The nominative case is used for subjects, predicatives and for other grammatical functions.

• Genitive

The genitive case is used for possessive constructions.

• Dative

The dative is the indirect object's case.

• Accusative

The accusative is the direct object's case.

• Comitative

The comitative is used as when a subject or an object can be split up into parts, or in adverbials expressing the involvement of an object in an action.

• Comparative

The comparative is used to express the likeness to something.

• Inessive

The inessive used to state where something is.

• Illative

The illative is used to state where something is going.

• Lative

The lative is used to express, into what something is going.

1. The illative has a short form, equivalent to the long form in meaning.

If a locative statement was to be made about an animate object, postpositions would be used.

Additionally, terms denoting family members have Vocative forms. These are, however, not created with a specific paradigm, and only exist in a few pre-defined cases.

Hill Mari has these cases, plus the Caritative case, which is used to form adverbials stating without the involvement or influence of what an action happens.

Number

Mari, though an agglutinative language, does not have a separate morpheme to signify plurality. There are three particles, which are attached to the end of words with a hyphen, used to signify plural.

• -влак (-vlak) - Standard plural form.
• -шамыч (-šaməč) - Alternative standard plural, used in many dialects. There is no difference in meaning between these two
• -мыт (mət) - Sociative plural. Used to signify a group of people - the members of a family, a person and his family and friends.

Possessive Suffixes

Every grammatical person in Mari has its own possessive suffix.

Additional Suffixes

Additional particles, falling into none of the categories above, can be added to the very end of a word, giving it some additional meaning. For example, the suffix -ат (-at), means 'also' or 'too'.

Arrangement of Suffixes

The arrangement of suffixes varies from case to case. While the case suffixes are after the possessive suffixes in the genitive and the accusative, the opposite is the case for the locative cases. In the dative, both arrangements are possible.

There are many other arrangements in the plural - the position of the plural particle is flexible. The arrangement here is one commonly used possibility.

Comparison

Comparison happens with adjectives and adverbs. The comparative is formed with the suffix -рак (-rak). The superlative is formed by adding the word эн (en) in front.

Conjugation

Morphologically, conjugation follows three tenses and three moods in Meadow Mari.

Conjugation Classes

In Meadow Mari, words can conjugate according to two conjugation classes. These differ from each other in all forms but the infinitive and the third person plural of the imperative. Unfortunately, the infinitive is the form denoted in dictionaries and word lists. It is, thus, necessary to either mark verb infinitives by their conjugation class in word lists, or to include a form in which the conjugation class is visible - usually, the first person singular present, which ends in -ам (or -ям) for verbs in the first declination, and in -ем (or -эм) for second declination verbs.

Tense

The three tenses of Mari verbs are:

• Present

The present tense is used for present and future actions, for states of being and for habitual actions, among others.

• First Preterite

The first preterite is used to express observed, recent actions.

• Second Preterite

The second preterite is used for actions which lie more distantly in the past.

Additional tenses can be formed through periphrasis.

• First Periphrastic Imperfect
• Second Periphrastic Imperfect
• First Periphrastic Perfect
• Second Periphrastic Perfect

Mood

The moods are:

• Indicative

The indicative is used to express facts and positive beliefs. All intentions that a particular language does not categorize as another mood are classified as indicative. It can be formed in all persons, in all times.

• Imperative

The imperative expresses direct commands, requests, and prohibitions. It only exists in the present tense, and exists in all persons but the first person singular.

• Desiderative

The desiderative is used to express desires. It can be formed for all persons, in the present tense and in the two periphrastic imperfect.

Negation

Negation in Mari uses a 'negative verb', much like Finnish does. The negative verb is more versatile than the negative verb in Finnish (see Finnish grammar), existing in more grammatical tenses and moods. It has its own form in the present indicative, imperative and desiderative, and in the first preterite indicative. Other negations are periphrastic.

The negation verb in its corresponding form is put in front of a the stem of the negated verb, which is equal to the second person singular of a verb, much as it is in Finnish and Estonian.

The verb улаш (ulaš) - to be - has its own negated forms.

Word Forms

In order to illustrate the conjugation in the respective moods and times, one verb of the first declination (лекташ - to go) and one verb of the second declination (мондаш - to forget) will be used.

1. Bold letters are subject to Vowel harmony - they can be е/о/ӧ, depending on the preceding full vowel's properties.
2. First conjugation verb forms using the imperative second person singular as their stem are subject to the same stem changes the imperative is subject to - see imperative second person singular.

1. Bold letters are subject to Vowel harmony -- they can be е/о/ӧ, depending on the preceding full vowel's properties.
2. First conjugation verb forms using the imperative second person singular as their stem are subject to the same stem changes the imperative is subject to - see imperative second person singular.
3. If the consonant prior to the ending can be palatalized – if it is a л(l) or an н(n) – it is palatalized in this position. Note that palatalization is not marked if the vowel following a consonant is an е.
   колаш --> кольым, кольыч, кольо, колна, колда ,кольыч (to hear)

1. Bold letters are subject to Vowel harmony - they can be е/о/ӧ, depending on the preceding full vowel's properties.
2. First conjugation verb forms using the imperative second person singular as their stem are subject to the same stem changes the imperative is subject to - see imperative second person singular.

1. Bold letters are subject to Vowel harmony - they can be е/о/ӧ, depending on the preceding full vowel's properties.
2. First conjugation verb forms using the imperative second person singular as their stem are subject to the same stem changes the imperative is subject to.
3. In the first conjugation, the imperative second person singular is formed by removing the "-аш" ending from the infinitive. Four consonant combinations are not allowed at the end of an imperative, and are thus simplified—one consonant is lost.
   "кт" --> "к", "нч" --> "ч", "чк" --> "ч", "шк" --> "ш"

1. Bold letters are subject to Vowel harmony - they can be е/о/ӧ, depending on the preceding full vowel's properties.
2. First conjugation verb forms using the imperative second person singular as their stem are subject to the same stem changes the imperative is subject to - see imperative second person singular.

1. First conjugation verb forms using the imperative second person singular as their stem are subject to the same stem changes the imperative is subject to - see imperative second person singular.

1. Bold letters are subject to Vowel harmony - they can be е/о/ӧ, depending on the preceding full vowel's properties.
2. First conjugation verb forms using the imperative second person singular as their stem are subject to the same stem changes the imperative is subject to - see imperative second person singular.

Infinitive Forms

Verbs have two infinitive forms - the standard infinitive, and the necessive infinitive, used when a person must do something. The person needing to do something is put in the dative in such a situation.

Participles

There are four participles in Meadow Mari:

• Active Participle
• Passive Participle
• Negative Participle
• Future Participle

Gerunds

There are five gerunds in Meadow Mari:

• Affirmative Instructive Gerund
• Negative Instructive Gerund
• Gerund for Prior Actions I
• Gerund for Prior Actions II
• Gerund for Simultaneous Actions

Syntax

Word order in Mari is Subject Object Verb.

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, nəl, vič - one, two, three, four, five
• куд, шым, канда́ш, инде́ш, лу/kud, šəm, kandáš, indéš, lu - six, seven, eight, nine, ten
• мут/mut - word

Bibliography

• Alhoniemi, A., Marin kielioppi, Helsinki, 1985 (Hill and Meadow);
• Alhoniemi, A., Marin kielen lukemisto sanastoineen, Helsinki, 1986 (Hill and Meadow);
• 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.

External links

Mari language and useful dictionaries:

• Kimberli Mäkäräinen's Meadow Mari Grammar
• A Meadow Mari-English-German-Estonian dictionary
• Meadow Mari morphology generator