Erzya language
The Erzya language, or Erzian, is spoken by about 37,000 people in the northern, eastern and north-western parts of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent regions of Nizhny 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 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.
The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of the Uralic languages. Erzya is a language that is closely related to Moksha but has distinct phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.
Phonology
Consonants
The following table lists the consonant phonemes of Erzya together with their Cyrillic equivalents.Note on romanized transcription: in Uralic studies, the members of the palatalized series are usually spelled as ń, ť, ď, ċ, ś, ź, ŕ, ľ, while the postalveolar sounds are spelled č, š, ž.
Minimal pairs between and include:
- "along the path", in which the alveolar of the stem is retained before the prolative case ending, vs., the connegative form of the verb "to break"
- "good", subject or object complement in translative, vs. "direction; area". See Rueter 2010: 58.
Vowels
The front vowels and have centralized variants and immediately following a plain alveolar consonant, e.g. siń "they", seń "blue".
Vowel harmony
As in many other Uralic languages, Erzya has vowel harmony. Most roots contain either front vowels or back vowels. 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, found in the comparative case -шка "the size of" and the prolative -ка/-га/-ва "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 "village", велесэ "in a village"
- If the final syllable of the word stem contains a back vowel, and it is followed by plain consonants, the back form of the suffix is used: кудо "house", кудосо "in a house"
Thus the seeming violations of vowel harmony attested in stems, e.g. узере "axe", суре "thread ", are actually due to the palatalized consonants and.
One exception to front-vowel harmony is observed in palatalized non-final, e.g. асфальтсо "with asphalt".
Morphology
Like all other Uralic languages, Erzya is an agglutinative language which expresses grammatical relations by means of suffixes.Nouns
Nouns are inflected for case, number, definiteness and possessor. Erzya distinguishes twelve cases. Number is systematically distinguished only with definite nouns; for indefinite nouns and nouns with a possessive suffix, only nominative case has a distinct plural.Plural possessors follow the pattern of second person singular possessors.
Verbs
Erzya verbs are inflected for tense and mood, and are further conjugated for person of subject and object. Traditionally, three stem types are distinguished: a-stems, o-stems and e-stems. A-stems always retain the stem vowel a in the non-third person present tense forms, and in the third person first past tense forms. With many o-stems and e-stems, the stem vowel is dropped in these forms, but there also o- and e-stem verbs which retain the vowel. Rueter therefore divides verb stems into vowel-retaining stems and vowel-dropping stems.In indicative mood, three tenses are distinguished: present/future, first past, second past.
The third person singular form in present tense is also used as present participle. The second past tense is formed by adding the past tense copula -ľ to the present participle.
The other mood categories are:
- conditional
- conjunctive
- conditional-conjunctive
- desiderative
- optative
- imperative
| conditional | conjunctive | conditional-conjunctive | desiderative | |
| 1sg | ярс-ындеря-н jars-ińďeŕa-n | ярсa-влинь jarsa-vľiń | ярс-ындеря-влинь jars-ińďeŕa-vľiń | мор-ыксэлинь mor-ikseľiń |
| 2sg | ярс-ындеря-т jars-ińďeŕa-t | ярсa-влить jarsa-vľiť | ярс-ындеря-влить jars-ińďeŕa-vľiť | мор-ыксэлить mor-ikseľiť |
| 3sg | ярс-ындеря-й jars-ińďeŕa-j | ярсa-воль jarsa-voľ | ярс-ындеря-воль jars-ińďeŕa-voľ | мор-ыксэль mor-ikseľ |
| 1pl | ярс-ындеря-тано jars-ińďeŕa-tano | ярсa-влинек jarsa-vľińek | ярс-ындеря-влинек jars-ińďeŕa-vľińek | мор-ыксэлинек mor-ikseľińek |
| 2pl | ярс-ындеря-тадо jars-ińďeŕa-tado | ярсa-влиде jarsa-vľiďe | ярс-ындеря-влиде jars-ińďeŕa-vľiďe | мор-ыксэлиде mor-ikseľiďe |
| 3pl | ярс-ындеря-йть jars-ińďeŕa-jť | ярсa-вольть jarsa-voľť | ярс-ындеря-вольть jars-ińďeŕa-voľť | мор-ыксэльть mor-ikseľť |
| infinitive | ярса-мс jarsa-ms | ярса-мс jarsa-ms | ярса-мс jarsa-ms | мора-мс mora-ms |
| 'eat' | 'eat' | 'eat' | 'sing' |
Writing
Cyrillic alphabet
The modern Erzya alphabet is the same as for Russian:The letters ф, х, щ and ъ are only used in loanwords from Russian. The pre-1929 version of the Erzya alphabet included the additional letter Cyrillic ligature En Ge in some publications,.
In combination with the alveolar consonants т, д, ц, с, з, н, л, and р, vowel letters are employed to distinguish between plain and palatalized articulations in a similar way as in Russian: а, є, ы, о, у follow plain alveolars, while я, е, и, ё, ю follow palatalized alveolars, e.g. та /ta/, тє /te/, ты /ti/, то /to/, ту /tu/ vs. тя /tʲa/, те /tʲe/, ти /tʲi/, тё /tʲo/, тю /tʲu/. If no vowel follows, palatalization is indicated by ь, e.g. ть /tʲ/. Following non-alveolar consonants, only а, е, и, о, у occur, e.g. па /pa/, пе /pe/, пи /pi/, по /po/, пу /pu/.
Latin alphabet
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: