Mari language
This article relates to the Mari language spoken in Russia. For the language spoken in New Guinea see Mari language (New Guinea)The
Mari language (Mari:
марий йылме, Russian
марийский язык), spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the
Finno-Ugric language group and is part of the
Volgaic subgroup of the Finnic languages together with
Mordvin (though this relationship is contested; see Klima 2004 for discussion). 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.
The Mari language and people were known as "Cheremis" (Russian
черемисы,
черемисский язык, in medieval texts the variant forms
черемись,
сармыс,
цармис are also found;
Tatar Çirmeş/Чирмеш;
Chuvash Сармǎç) 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'.
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.
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.
Alphabet and Phonology
A display of the Mari alphabet: http://www1.peoples.org.ru/alfmari.html
Vowels
| Height | Front rounded | Front unrounded | Back unrounded! Back rounded | | Close | ÿ/ü [] | и/i [] | - | | Mid | ö/ö [] | е/e [] | ы/ə [] | | Open | - | - | а/a [] | - |
|---|
Note: The sounds (high back unrounded), and (low front unrounded) occur 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, пö́рт 'house' гыч 'out of' ' ; мýро 'song' дене 'with' ' .
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: кÿтÿ́ 'herd' ' кÿтÿ́штö '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: агýр 'whirlpool' ' агýрышто 'in the whirlpool' (Зорина, Крылова, Якимова 1990: 9).
Consonants
| Manner | Labial | Dental | Palatal! Velar | | Fortes stops | п/p [] | т/t [] | - | | Lenes stops | б/b [] | д/d [] | - | | Voiceless fricatives | - | с/s [] | ш/š [] | | Voiced fricatives | - | з/z [] | ж/ž [] | | (Voiceless) affricates | - | ц/c [] | ч/č [] | | Nasals | м/m [] | н/n [] | нь/n' [] | | Laterals | - | л/l [] | ль/l' [] | | Trill/tap | - | р/r [/[]] | - | - |
|---|
| Glide | - | - | j [] | - |
Notes: To the left of the slash (/) are the Cyrillic letters used in modern standard Mari. Latin transcription is given to the right of the slash, alongside with its counterpart in
IPA. The modified Cyrillic letter for the velar nasal () combines the Cyrillic letter Н н with and " г, where the rightmost post of Н is conflated with the vertical post of ": Ҥ, ҥ. The letters Ф ф (f) and Х х (x, h) are used in loanwords, especially from
Russian,
Tatar, and
Chuvash.
Note that the accent mark, which denotes the place of stress, is not part of the Mari orthography.
* Пóро кéче/Póro kéče - Good day
* Кýгу тáу/Kúgu táu - Thank you (very much)
* ик, кок, кум, ныл, вич/ik, kok, kum, nyl, vič - one, two, three, four, five
* куд, шым, кандáш, индéш, лу/kud, šym, kandáš, indéš, lu - six, seven, eight, nine, ten
* мут/mut - word
* 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 '. П., Черемисско-русский словарь, Kazan', 1894 (Hill and Meadow);
* Szilasi M., Cseremisz szótár, Budapest, 1901 (Mari [Hill and Meadow], Hungarian, German);
* Ramstedt C., Bergtscheremissische Sprachstudien, Helsinki, 1902 (Hill);
* Beke О., Cseremisz nyelvtan, Budapest, 1911 (Hill and Meadow);
* 'асильев '. М., Записки по грамматике народа мари, Kazan', 1918 (Hill and Meadow);
* Шорин '. С., Маро-русский словарь горного наречия, Kazan', 1920 (Hill);
* Кармазин ". "., Материалы к изучению марийского языка, Krasnokokshajsk, 1925 (Meadow);
* Кармазин ". "., Учебник марийского языка лугово-восточного наречия, Yoshkar-Ola, 1929 (Meadow);
* 'асильев '. 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);
* "алкин, И. С., Историческая грамматика марийского языка, vol. I, II, Yoshkar-Ola, 1964, 1966;
* Иванов, И. "., История марийского литературного языка, Yoshkar-Ola, 1975;
* Иванов, И. "., Марий диалектологий, Yoshkar-Ola, 1981;
* Зорина, З. "., ". 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. ""орномарийский 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/
* "алкин, 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
*
The Mari newspaper "Marij El"*
The Mari Language (in English, Mari, and Japanese)
*
Mari El OnLine (Web portal in Russian and Mari) The интервью 'interview' link leads to wmv-format files with interviews in Mari language
*
MariUver (in Mari, Estonian, English and Russian - covers news, politics, society, education, science, art and culture)
*
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)
*
Mari State University Department of Mari Languages (in Russian)
*
Mari State University Department of Finno-Ugric Languages (in Russian)
*
The Mari State Teacher's Training Institute (MGPI)*
RFE/RL report on Mari language, Finno-Ugristics, and Russian politics*
Kimberli Mäkäräinen's Meadow Mari Grammar
