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The Finno-Ugric Languages of Russia | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4779 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes  Speaks: Russian | Message 1 of 14 11 January 2012 at 6:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks to this forum, I know a little about the most well-known Finno-Ugric languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, but what about the Russian members of this family? They are unknown to the outside world. But some of them have quite a few speakers, like
Erzya (the head of the Russian Orthodox Church is Erzya) Moksha Mari Udmurt Komi Maybe these minorities just blend in to the rest of Russian society. I don't know. They are not often mentioned on Russian-language news. What is the future of these languages? Maybe their situation is kind of like the Celtic languages of Great Britain. They say Welsh is making a slow comeback with generous government support. I know there is Finno-Ugric media in Russia. Is any of it available through podcasts or shortwave? This is not the kind of thing you would find on Craigslist. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 2 of 14 11 January 2012 at 6:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Erzya and Moksha are quite strong, Komi is weaker, Udmurt is weaker.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 14 11 January 2012 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
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From what I understand Finno-Ugric languages in Russia are in a difficult position including the ones which have relatively large bodies of native speakers (Erzya, Moksha and Komi). However it doesn't seem accurate to heap all of the blame on the Kremlin.
On one hand, there seems to be the common problem for the minority language standing alongside the majority language. Not only is bilingualism common but socioeconomic advancement in general is tied more closely to being proficient in the majority's language. Apparently even those in the minority language's community work with this situation in mind and support for the minority language (even if native) is not that high. On the other hand, it seems that at least for Komi, there's a policy where those living in the Komi Republic must learn Komi regardless of whether it's actually relevant or useful for the students' situation. Apparently such blunt imposition (from the local government?) is backfiring in that people subjected to this policy tend to develop negative feelings toward the language. See this thread for more about this topic. I would guess that their situation is vaguely similar to that of the Celtic languages, although it's harder to judge since the viability of Finno-Ugric minority languages is hardly a common topic of conversation or news reports outside the regions where they're used natively. To get at least some sense of the situation of Finno-Ugric communities in Russia, check out MariUver for Mari, and Christopher Culver's blog with various observations and opinions about Finno-Ugric languages spoken near the junction of the Volga and Kama rivers (mainly Mari, but there's the odd post about Udmurt and Komi too). Culver is a graduate student working on a thesis about comparing verbs of motion in Mari and Chuvash. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 4 of 14 14 January 2012 at 7:49am | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry for offtopic, but I would like to give a link to this Erzya song
колмо штатолт It sounds a little bit Russian, doesn't it? Although the languages are unrelated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| j0nas Triglot Groupie Norway Joined 5543 days ago 46 posts - 70 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German | Message 5 of 14 14 January 2012 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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is there any finno-ugric substratum of russian?
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 6 of 14 14 January 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Probably not.
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| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 14 14 January 2012 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Sounds very much Russian, the intonation, articulation and motif. Sounds exactly what a Russian would sound like singing gibberish, of course it's not and there's some distinctly un-Russian artifacts in the way words are formed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 14 14 January 2012 at 10:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interestingly, as I was trying to see something familiar from Finnish (nothing except the word kolmo - the number three - kolme in Finnish), to me this didn't really sound similar to Russian.
I know they're trying to promote Udmurt by arranging free classes, even here in Moscow - my friend attends them just because he's a geek hehe. The thing that never came up in the thread linked above is that Finno-Ugric languages are difficult. Or different, from the POV of those who love them;) As it was pointed out, even pakkoruotsi in Finland and French in Canada cause negative feelings - imagine being forced to learn a "useless" language with unfamiliar vocabulary and *gasp* 16 cases! Having started to learn Finnish at the age of 15, even I myself am not sure that I'd have enjoyed this as a 8-10 year old. I remember I didn't like Polish TV at this age:( I think something to look into would be high education in the minority languages. Here in Russia practically everyone tries to enter a university after school, for males also as a way to avoid or at least delay the dreaded army service. If the choice is between paying for your education and studying in the local language for free, I'm sure many families would encourage kids to learn it. Of course there's again a fine line between encouraging and forcing, but at least there would be some purpose. Edited by Serpent on 14 January 2012 at 10:31pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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