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51-754: The modern representatives of Volga Finns live in the basins of the Sura and Moksha rivers , as well as (in smaller numbers) in the interfluve between the Volga and the Belaya rivers . The Mari language has two dialects, the Meadow Mari and the Hill Mari . Traditionally the Mari and the Mordvinic languages ( Erzya and Moksha ) were considered to form a Volga-Finnic or Volgaic group within

102-552: A close-mid back unrounded /ɤ/ (but a close central unrounded /ɨ/ in Livonian), as well as loss of *n before *s with compensatory lengthening . (North) Estonian-Votic has been suggested to possibly constitute an actual genetic subgroup (called varyingly Maa by Viitso (1998, 2000) or Central Finnic by Kallio (2014) ), though the evidence is weak: almost all innovations shared by Estonian and Votic have also spread to South Estonian and/or Livonian. A possible defining innovation

153-519: A Swedish encyclopedia published between 1904 and 1926, now in the public domain . Sura River The Sura ( Russian : Сура́ , Chuvash : Сăр , Săr ) is a river in Russia, a north-flowing right tributary of the Volga . Its mouth on the Volga is about halfway between Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan . It flows through Penza Oblast , Mordovia , Ulyanovsk Oblast , Chuvashia and Nizhny Novgorod Oblast . It

204-622: A branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples . There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia . Traditionally, eight Finnic languages have been recognized. The major modern representatives of the family are Finnish and Estonian , the official languages of their respective nation states. The other Finnic languages in

255-458: A lesser extent, Baltic languages . Innovations are also shared between Finnic and the Mordvinic languages , and in recent times Finnic, Sámi and Moksha are sometimes grouped together. There is no grammatical gender in any of the Finnic languages, nor are there articles or definite or indefinite forms. The morphophonology (the way the grammatical function of a morpheme affects its production)

306-684: A transitional group between Moksha and Erzya. They are also called Shoksha (or Shokshot ). They are isolated from the bulk of the Erzyans, and their dialect/language has been influenced by the Mokshan dialects. The Muromians ( Old East Slavic : Мурома , Muroma ) lived in the Oka River basin. They are mentioned in the Primary Chronicle and by the Rogosk Chronicler . The Muromas as an ethnic group

357-546: Is 841 kilometres (523 mi) long, and has a drainage basin of 67,500 square kilometres (26,100 sq mi). It is navigable for 394 km from the mouth. The city of Penza , and smaller towns Alatyr , Shumerlya , Yadrin lie along the Sura. At the confluence with the Volga lies the settlement of Vasilsursk . The principal tributaries of the Sura are the Penza , the Pyana , and

408-438: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Nizhny Novgorod Oblast location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Penza Oblast location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Ulyanovsk Oblast location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Finnic languages The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute

459-608: Is a part of the Estonian literary language and is an essential feature in Võro , as well as Veps , Karelian , and other eastern Finnic languages. It is also found in East Finnish dialects, and is only missing from West Finnish dialects and Standard Finnish. A special characteristic of the languages is the large number of diphthongs . There are 16 diphthongs in Finnish and 25 in Estonian; at

510-420: Is complex. Morphological elements found in the Finnic languages include grammatical case suffixes, verb tempus, mood and person markers (singular and plural, the Finnic languages do not have dual ) as well as participles and several infinitive forms, possessive suffixes, clitics and more. The number of grammatical cases tends to be high while the number of verb infinitive forms varies more by language. One of

561-402: Is interesting because it is not observed in other Volga Finnic peoples. Like other medieval Volga Finns, animal bones were present in the burials as funeral food. Horses were buried separately, bridled and saddled, giving them a pose imitating a living animal lying on its belly with legs tucked up and head raised (it was placed on a step in the grave). In 2023, 13 Muroma tombs were excavated on

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612-555: Is now wide agreement that Proto-Finnic was probably spoken at the coasts of the Gulf of Finland. The Finnic languages are located at the western end of the Uralic language family. A close affinity to their northern neighbors, the Sámi languages , has long been assumed, though many of the similarities (particularly lexical ones) can be shown to result from common influence from Germanic languages and, to

663-698: Is the loss of *h after sonorants ( *n, *l, *r ). The Northern Finnic group has more evidence for being an actual historical/genetic subgroup. Phonetical innovations would include two changes in unstressed syllables: *ej > *ij , and *o > ö after front-harmonic vowels. The lack of õ in these languages as an innovation rather than a retention has been proposed, and recently resurrected. Germanic loanwords found throughout Northern Finnic but absent in Southern are also abundant, and even several Baltic examples of this are known. Northern Finnic in turn divides into two main groups. The most Eastern Finnic group consists of

714-632: Is traditionally assumed to have been a member of the Volga-Finnic group. This view has been challenged: Eugene Helimski supposes that the Merya language was closer to the "northwest" group of Finno-Ugric ( Balto-Finnic and Sami ), and Gábor Bereczki supposes that the Merya language was a part of the Balto-Finnic group. The Meryans were stated to have fought with the Bulgars in wars against Tatars . Some of

765-512: Is unattested, and theories on its affiliation remain speculative. Some linguists think that it might have been a dialect of Mordvinic , while Pauli Rahkonen has suggested on the basis of toponymic evidence that it was a Permic or closely related language. Rahkonen's speculation has been criticized by other scientists, such as by the Russian Uralist Vladimir Napolskikh . Some toponyms which Rahkonen suggested as Permic are

816-801: The Alatyr . Sura is an epithet of the gods in Sanskrit, as well as a divine drink. In addition, Sura is the Hindu goddess of wine. The exact translation from Sanskrit is "God". "Su" - "having power", "Ra" - "The Supreme Lord". "Suras" - "having power from the Supreme Lord" Sura - so named two rivers, in the area of Simbirsk and in the basin of the Northern Dvina and two cities in the Arkhangelsk and Penza regions have such names. This Chuvash Republic location article

867-688: The East Finnish dialects as well as Ingrian, Karelian and Veps; the proto-language of these was likely spoken in the vicinity of Lake Ladoga . The Western Finnic group consists of the West Finnish dialects, originally spoken on the western coast of Finland, and within which the oldest division is that into Southwestern, Tavastian and Southern Ostrobothnian dialects. Among these, at least the Southwestern dialects have later come under Estonian influence. Numerous new dialects have also arisen through contacts of

918-646: The Friar Julian sets out to visit the Hungarians who remain in the east. In his second travelogue, he mentions that the Tatars have conquered a country called Merovia. One hypothesis classifies the Merya as a western branch of the Mari people rather than as a separate tribe. Their ethnonyms are basically identical, Merya being a Russian transcription of the Mari self-designation, Мäрӹ (Märӛ) . The unattested Merya language

969-710: The Hungarians , or Bulgars , as they are listed by the Rogosk Chronicler , among the peoples who inhabited the Carpathian Basin in 897. During the excavation of the Muroma tombs, archaeologists uncovered a rich archaeological legacy. Weapons were among the best in the surrounding areas in terms of workmanship, and the jewellery, which is found in abundance in the burials, is remarkable for its ingenuity of form and meticulous workmanship. The Muroma were characterised by arc-shaped head ornaments woven from horsehair and strips of leather, which were spirally braided with bronze wire. This

1020-628: The Meshchera Lowlands . The first Russian written source which mentions them is the Tolkovaya Paleya , from the 13th century. They are also mentioned in several later Russian chronicles from the period before the 16th century. This is in stark contrast to the related tribes Merya and Muroma , which appear to have been assimilated by the East Slavs by the 10th and the 11th centuries. Ivan II , prince of Moscow, wrote in his will, 1358, about

1071-690: The Volga and Kama rivers in Russia. The majority of Maris today live in the Mari El Republic, with significant populations in the Tatarstan and Bashkortostan republics. The Mari people consists of three different groups: the Meadow Mari, who live along the left bank of the Volga, the Mountain Mari, who live along the right bank of the Volga, and Eastern Mari, who live in the Bashkortostan republic. In

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1122-457: The hydronyms stems: Un-, Ič-, Ul and Vil-, which can be compared to Udmurt uno 'big', iči 'little', vi̮l 'upper' and ulo 'lower'. Rahkonen also theorized the name Meshchera itself could be a Permic word, and its cognate be Komi mösör 'isthmus'. The Mordvins (also Mordva , Mordvinians ) remain one of the larger indigenous peoples of Russia . Less than one third of Mordvins live in the autonomous republic of Mordovia , Russian Federation , in

1173-539: The 2002 Russian census, 604,298 people identified themselves as "Mari," with 18,515 of those specifying that they were Mountain Mari and 56,119 as Eastern Mari. Almost 60% of Mari lived in rural areas. The Merya people ( Russian : меря , merya ; also Merä ) inhabited a territory corresponding roughly to the present-day area of the Golden Ring or Zalesye regions of Russia , including the modern-day Moscow , Yaroslavl , Kostroma , Ivanovo , and Vladimir oblasts. In

1224-594: The Baltic Sea region are Ingrian and Votic , spoken in Ingria by the Gulf of Finland , and Livonian , once spoken around the Gulf of Riga . Spoken farther northeast are Karelian , Ludic , and Veps , in the region of Lakes Onega and Ladoga . In addition, since the 1990s, several Finnic-speaking minority groups have emerged to seek recognition for their languages as distinct from the ones they have been considered dialects of in

1275-460: The Central Finnic group that must be attributed to later contact, due to the influence of literary North Estonian. Thus, contemporary "Southern Finnic" is a sprachbund that includes these languages, while diachronically they are not closely related. The genetic classification of the Finnic dialects that can be extracted from Viitso (1998) is: Viitso (2000) surveys 59 isoglosses separating

1326-516: The Coastal Estonian dialect group), Livonian and Votic (except the highly Ingrian-influenced Kukkuzi Votic). These languages are not closely related genetically, as noted above; it is a paraphyletic grouping, consisting of all Finnic languages except the Northern Finnic languages. The languages nevertheless share a number of features, such as the presence of a ninth vowel phoneme õ , usually

1377-580: The Finnic varieties recognizes the Southern Finnic and Northern Finnic groups (though the position of some varieties within this division is uncertain): † = extinct variety; ( † ) = moribund variety. A more-or-less genetic subdivision can be also determined, based on the relative chronology of sound changes within varieties, which provides a rather different view. The following grouping follows among others Sammallahti (1977), Viitso (1998), and Kallio (2014): The division between South Estonian and

1428-537: The Karelian language was not officially recognised as its own language in Finland until 2009, despite there being no linguistic confusion about its status. The smaller languages are endangered . The last native speaker of Livonian died in 2013, and only about a dozen native speakers of Votic remain. Regardless, even for these languages, the shaping of a standard language and education in it continues. The geographic centre of

1479-663: The Meshchera concerning the Kazan campaign by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. These accounts concern a state of Meshchera (known under a tentative name of Temnikov Meshchera , after its central town of Temnikov ) which had been assimilated by the Mordvins and the Tatars . Prince A. M. Kurbsky wrote that the Mordvin language was spoken in the lands of the Meshchera. The Meshchera language

1530-506: The Uralic language family, accepted by linguists like Robert Austerlitz (1968), Aurélien Sauvageot & Karl Heinrich Menges (1973) and Harald Haarmann (1974), but rejected by others like Björn Collinder (1965) and Robert Thomas Harms (1974). This grouping has also been criticized by Salminen (2002), who suggests it may be simply a geographic , not a phylogenetic , group. The Mari or Cheremis ( Russian : черемисы , cheremisy ; Tatar : Çirmeş ) have traditionally lived along

1581-517: The art project mater Volga, Sacrum during the "Night of Museums". In October 2014, a presentation of "Merya Language" was held at the III Festival of Languages at Novgorod University. The Meshchera ( Russian : мещера , meshchera or мещёра , meshchyora ) lived in the territory between the Oka River and the Klyazma River . It was a land of forests, bogs and lakes. The area is still called

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1632-405: The banks of the Oka River , accompanied by a number of artefacts - one of which was a belt buckle, which was most similar to the belt buckles of the conquering Hungarians . Weapons such as spears and axes, as well as coins ( dirhams ) and five lead weights, among other things, were recovered from the grave of one of the presumably noble men. The Muroma settlements were located on high ground above

1683-664: The basin of the Volga River . They consist of two major subgroups, the Erzya and Moksha , besides the smaller subgroups of the Qaratay , Teryukhan and Tengushevo (or Shoksha ) Mordvins who have become fully Russified or Turkified during the 19th to 20th centuries. The Erzya Mordvins ( Erzya : эрзят , Erzyat ; also Erzia , Erzä ), who speak Erzya , and the Moksha Mordvins ( Moksha : мокшет , Mokshet ), who speak Moksha , are

1734-475: The family into 58 dialect areas (finer division is possible), finding that an unambiguous perimeter can be set up only for South Estonian, Livonian, Votic, and Veps. In particular, no isogloss exactly coincides with the geographical division into 'Estonian' south of the Gulf of Finland and 'Finnish' north of it. Despite this, standard Finnish and Estonian are not mutually intelligible . The Southern Finnic languages consist of North and South Estonian (excluding

1785-460: The floodplain meadows. Livestock farming formed the basis of the Muroma economy, with pigs, large horned cattle, and to a lesser extent, sheep being raised. Horses played a special role, and they were also bred for meat. The Slash-and-burn agriculture played a minor role in their economy. Their commercial hunting was aimed at fur hunting . The Primary Chronicle about the Muromians: " Along

1836-524: The inhabitants of several districts of Kostroma and Yaroslavl oblasts present themselves as Meryan, although in recent censuses, they were registered as Russians . The modern Merya people have their websites displaying their flag, coat of arms and national anthem, and participate in discussions on the subject in Finno-Ugric networks. 2010 saw the release of the film Ovsyanki (literal translation: 'The Buntings ', English title: Silent Souls ), based on

1887-505: The maximum divergence between the languages is located east of the Gulf of Finland around Saint Petersburg . A glottochronological study estimates the age of the common ancestor of existing languages to a little more than 1000 years. However, Mikko Heikkilä dates the beginning of the diversification (with South Estonian as the first split) rather precisely to about 150 AD, based on loanword evidence (and previous estimates tend to be even older, like Pekka Sammallahti's of 1000–600 BC). There

1938-461: The modern Vepsian language, the word meri means ' sea ' . It is likely that they were peacefully assimilated by the East Slavs after their territory became incorporated into Rus' in the 10th century. In the 6th century Jordanes mentioned them briefly (as Merens ); later the Primary Chronicle described them in more detail. Soviet archaeologists believed that the capital of the Merya

1989-517: The more important processes is the characteristic consonant gradation . Two kinds of gradation occur: radical gradation and suffix gradation. They both affect the plosives /k/ , /t/ and /p/ , and involve the process known as lenition , in which the consonant is changed into a "weaker" form. This occurs in some (but not all) of the oblique case forms. For geminates , the process is simple to describe: they become simple stops, e.g. ku pp i + -n → ku p in (Finnish: "cup"). For simple consonants,

2040-505: The novel of the same name, devoted to the imagined life of modern Merya (or Meadow Mari) people. In the early 21st century, a new type of social movement, the so-called "Merya Ethnofuturism ", has emerged. It is distributed across central regions of Russia, for example, in Moscow , Pereslavl-Zalessky , Kostroma Oblast , and Plyos . In May 2014, the New Gallery in the city of Ivanovo opened

2091-473: The old dialects: these include e.g. the more northern Finnish dialects (a mixture of West and East Finnish), and the Livvi and Ludic varieties (probably originally Veps dialects but heavily influenced by Karelian). Salminen (2003) present the following list of Finnic languages and their respective number of speakers. These features distinguish Finnic languages from other Uralic families: Sound changes shared by

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2142-570: The past. Some of these groups have established their own orthographies and standardised languages. Võro and Seto , which are spoken in southeastern Estonia and in some parts of Russia, are considered dialects of Estonian by some linguists, while other linguists consider them separate languages. Meänkieli and Kven are spoken in northern Sweden and Norway respectively and have the legal status of independent minority languages separate from Finnish. They were earlier considered dialects of Finnish and are mutually intelligible with it. Additionally,

2193-470: The phonological variation in the stem (variation caused by the now historical morphological elements), which results in three phonemic lengths in these languages. Vowel harmony is also characteristic of the Finnic languages, despite having been lost in Livonian, Estonian and Veps. The original Uralic palatalization was lost in proto-Finnic, but most of the diverging dialects reacquired it. Palatalization

2244-417: The process complicates immensely and the results vary by the environment. For example, ha k a + -n → haan , ky k y + -n → ky v yn , jär k i + -n → jär j en (Finnish: "pasture", "ability", "intellect"). The specifics of consonants gradation vary by language (see the separate article for more details). Apocope (strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian) has, in some cases, left a phonemic status to

2295-553: The remaining Finnic varieties has isoglosses that must be very old. For the most part, these features have been known for long. Their position as very early in the relative chronology of Finnic, in part representing archaisms in South Estonian, has been shown by Kallio (2007, 2014). However, due to the strong areal nature of many later innovations, this tree structure has been distorted and sprachbunds have formed. In particular, South Estonian and Livonian show many similarities with

2346-768: The river Oka , which flows into the Volga , the Muroma , the Cheremisians, and the Mordva preserve their native languages." The Rogosk Chronicler about the Muromians: " In the year 6405 [897] there were Slavs living along the Danube , as well as the Ugrics , Muromas and the Danubian Bulgars . " [REDACTED] This article contains content from the Owl Edition of Nordisk familjebok ,

2397-475: The same time the frequency of diphthong use is greater in Finnish than in Estonian due to certain historical long vowels having diphthongised in Finnish but not in Estonian. On a global scale the Finnic languages have a high number of vowels. The Finnic languages form a complex dialect continuum with few clear-cut boundaries. Innovations have often spread through a variety of areas, even after variety-specific changes. A broad twofold conventional division of

2448-632: The two major groups. The Qaratay Mordvins live in Kama Tamağı District of Tatarstan , and have shifted to speaking Tatar , albeit with a large proportion of Mordvin vocabulary ( substratum ). The Teryukhan, living in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast of Russia, switched to Russian in the 19th century. The Teryukhans recognize the term Mordva as pertaining to themselves, whereas the Qaratay also call themselves Muksha . The Tengushevo Mordvins are

2499-615: The village Meshcherka, which he had bought from the native Meshcherian chieftain Alexander Ukovich . The village appears to have been converted to the Christian Orthodox faith and to have been a vassal of Muscovy . The Meschiera (along with Mordua , Sibir , and a few other harder-to-interpret groups) are mentioned in the "Province of Russia" on the Venetian Fra Mauro Map (ca. 1450). Several documents mention

2550-420: Was Sarskoe Gorodishche near the bank of the Nero Lake to the south of Rostov . The annalists also mention the Merya people in connection with some notable events: in 859 they were taxed by the Vikings , and in 862 they took part in the battle against them. In 882 they accompanied Oleg to Kiev, where he established his power, and in 907 they were among the participants in Oleg's Byzantine campaign. In 1235,

2601-404: Was formed around the seventh century AD, according to the date of the Muroma cemeteries. The old town of Murom still bears their name. The Muromians paid tribute to the Rus' princes and, like the neighbouring Merya tribe, were assimilated by the East Slavs in the 11th to 12th century as their territory was incorporated into the Rus' . A group of them migrated to the Carpathian Basin with

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