Erzya language Information & Erzya language Links at HealthHaven.com

Erzya
Эрзянь Кель / erzänj kelj / eŕźań keĺ
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.

The Erzya language (эрзянь кель) 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 as well as in Kazakhstan and 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 Uralic languages. Erzya is closely related to Moksha, but is distinct in its phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Vowels

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

[edit] Consonants

		Labial	Hard	Soft	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
		Labial	Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasals		/m/	/n/	/nʲ/			/ŋ/
Plosives	Voiceless	/p/	/t/	/tʲ/			/k/
Plosives	Voiced	/b/	/d/	/dʲ/			/ɡ/
Affricates	Voiceless		/ts/	/tsʲ/	/tʃ/
Fricatives	Voiceless	/f/	/s/	/sʲ/	/ʃ/		/x/
Fricatives	Voiced	/v/	/z/	/zʲ/	/ʒ/
Trills			/r/	/rʲ/
Approximants			/l/	/lʲ/		/j/

[edit] Writing

The modern Erzya alphabet is the same as for Russian:

А /a/	Б /b/	В /v/	Г /ɡ/	Д /d/	Е /je/	Ё /jo/	Ж /ʒ/	З /z/	И /i/	Й /j/
К /k/	Л /l/	М /m/	Н /n/	О /o/	П /p/	Р /r/	С /s/	Т /t/	У /u/	Ф /f/
Х /x/	Ц /t͡s/	Ч /t͡ʃ/	Ш /ʃ/	Щ /ʃt͡ʃ/	Ъ /-/	Ы /ɨ/	Ь /◌ʲ/	Э /e/	Ю /ju/	Я /ja/

The pre–1927 version of the Erzya alphabet included the additional letters a with dieresis (ä) and schwa (ə):^{[citation needed]}

The highlighted letters were used in loanwords from Russian only, with the specification that the soft sign ь appearing after non-alveolar consonants is a sign of loan words.^{[citation needed]}
А /a/	Б /b/	В /v/	Г /ɡ/	Д /d/	Е /je/	Ё /jo/	Ж /ʒ/	З /z/	И /i/	Й /j/	К /k/
Л /l/	М /m/	Н /n/	нг /ŋ/	О /o/	П /p/	Р /r/	С /s/	Т /t/	У /u/	Ф /f/	Х /x/
Ц /t͡s/	Ч /t͡ʃ/	Ш /ʃ/	Щ /ʃt͡ʃ/	Ъ /-/	Ы /ɨ/	Ь /◌ʲ/	Э /e/	Ю /ju/	Я /ja/	ä /æ/	ə /ə/

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

[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
[2] Эрзянский язык

[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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