The Russian Federation is a huge multilingual country with many dialects and nationalities. The Republic of Mordovia is the closest to the capital of Russia, Moscow. This is probably why today some people want to learn such exotic Mordovian languages.
Republic of Mordovia: general information
If you want to learn the Mordovian language, it doesn't hurt to first learn the basic information about the territory where it is spoken. Most of the inhabitants who are native speakers of this language and its dialects live on the territory of the Republic of Mordovia. It is located in the European part of Russia. Saransk is considered the capital. This city in 2011 was recognized as the most comfortable in the territory of the federation. Until the 20th century, the people of the modern republic did not have their own statehood, although the Mordovian princes had been known for a long time. Information about them was found in the writings of historians from Western Europe who lived and worked in the 13th century.
What you need to know about the languages of Mordovia?
Firstly, it should be remembered that the Mordovian languages are the languages of the Erzya and Moksha peoples, common tothe territory of the Mordovian Republic, as well as in such regions as Saratov, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk, Penza, Nizhny Novgorod, Ulyanovsk, as well as in Chuvashia, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. These languages belong to the so-called Finno-Ugric family of the Finno-Volga group. According to the census conducted in the Russian Federation in 2012, Mordovian languages were native to 615,000 people. In 1989, the number of speakers in them exceeded 800,000. Of the entire Mordovian population, about two-thirds are precisely Erzya. At the same time, if you decide to learn this language, be prepared for some difficulties, because it consists of 5 separate dialects - these are Shoksha, Western, Central, Southeastern, Northwestern, which are slightly different from each other.
History of the Erzya Mordovian language
Before the Erzya people joined the Russian state in the 15th century, they had no so-called phonetic writing. Therefore, the Mordovian Erzya language begins its history from this very moment. Writing was born on the basis of the spelling of the Russian language. Today, the central dialect is considered basic. It was only in the mid-1930s that the spelling norms that are known to this day were formed. The Mordovian languages largely coincide with Russian, especially in the alphabet.
Where can I learn Mordovian?
On the territory of some republics and regions of the Russian Federation (where the Erzya people live) Mordovian languagestaught in primary and secondary schools. That is why you can find a certain amount of not only educational literature, but also journalistic and fiction. There are also magazines and newspapers, television programs and radio broadcasts.
Dialects of the Mordovian language
As mentioned above, the Mordovian language, whose words are in many ways reminiscent of Russian, has five separate dialects. The central one became widespread in the majority in the east of the Mordovian Republic (Chamzinsky district, Atyashevsky and some territory of Ichalkovsky). Insarsky, or western, spread along the course of the Insar River, from which it got its name. Prialatyrsky, or northwestern, is distributed along the course of the Alatyr River and its tributaries. This territory includes Ardatovsky and Bolsheignatovsky, Poretsky and Alatyrsky districts. The Prisursky, or southeastern, dialect spread along the tributaries of the Sura. The Shoksha dialect is historically isolated from other Erzya languages and is widespread on the territory of the Tengushevsky region.
Features of the typology of the Mordovian languages
If we talk about the expression of grammatical meanings, then the Erzya language can be classified as synthetic. That is, all meaning can be found within words. As a rule, it is expressed only with the help of suffixes, since there are practically no prefixes in this language. Speaking about the boundaries between morphemes, the language can be attributed to the so-called agglutinative group, that is, in order to createa new word, various affixes are "strung" on the basis. Each affix has only one meaning. Most often, words in sentences have a stable order. First comes the subject, then the object, then the predicate. Sometimes you can find this order: subject - predicate - object. The Erzya language consists of 28 consonants and 5 vowels. Words can be stressed on any syllable. Interesting is the so-called vowel harmony, which is found in some Mordovian languages (including Erzya). This means that either back vowels or front vowels can be used in the same word. Mixing the two types is almost impossible to find.
Mordovian on the Internet
Of course, you can easily learn the Erzya language on your own. To do this, you may need various educational literature, which you can also find on the Internet. There are separate lessons that can be downloaded by any user. If you are going to visit the Mordovian Republic, but do not want to learn the Mordovian language, the phrase book will solve this problem. You will not waste time studying, but you will be able to talk with the local population in their dialect. The phrasebook will help you translate the most popular phrases into Mordovian.
Also on the net you can find many different groups and forums that gather those who want to learn the Erzya languages. There are also many here who do not currently live on the territory of the Mordovian Republic or the Russian Federation, but do not want to lose touchwith historical homeland. Of course, learning the Mordovian language from self-study books and with the help of other educational literature is quite difficult, so it’s better to find a teacher. It is not easy to do this today, because Mordovian is not a very common language. But if you set a goal for yourself, you can find the right teacher. Otherwise, use the material that you find on the Web and published literature.
