Mansi language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mansi
маньси/моаньсь
Spoken in: Russia 
Region: Khantia-Mansia
Total speakers: 3,184
Language family: Uralic
 Finno-Ugric
  Ugric
   Ob-Ugric
    Mansi
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3: mns

The Mansi language (also known as Vogul, though this name is now old-fashioned and largely disused), is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, along the Ob River and its tributaries, and parts of Sverdlovsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1990 census, there were 3,184 Mansi-speaking people in Russia.

The Mansi language belongs to the Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian) subfamily of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is subdivided into a number of dialects, which differ from each other significantly; in fact, the four main "dialects" (East, South, West and North Mansi) are mutually unintelligible - or were: some of them are extinct. The base dialect of the Mansi literary language is the Sosva dialect; the discussion below is based on the standard language. Fixed word-order is typical for the Mansi language. Adverbials and participles play an important role in sentence construction. The written language was created in the 1930s using a form of the Russian alphabet.

Contents

The Mansi alphabet:

А, Б, В, Г, Д, Е, Ё, Ж, З, И, Й, К, Л, М, Н, Ң, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь, Э, Ю, Я

The Latin Mansi alphabet (1931):

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, Һ, I, J, K, L, Ļ, M, N, Ņ, Ŋ, O, P, R, S, S, T, Ţ, U, V, Z, Ь

Mansi is an agglutinating language.

In Mansi, no articles exist - neither definite, nor indefinite.

It means, that "cauldron", "the cauldron" and even "a cauldron" translates to simply "пут". (Of course, we can say the number of cauldrons with акв, or any other number: one cauldron - but this is not an article but a number.

There is no grammatical gender. We distinguish between singular, dual and plural number. Six grammatical cases exist. Possession is expressed using possessive suffixes, for example -зм, which means "my".

Example with: пут (cauldron)

case sing. dual plural
nom. пут путыг путэт
loc. путт путыгт путэтт
lat. путн путыгн путэтн
abl. путнэл путыгнэл путэтнэл
trans. путыг - -
instr. путэл путыгтэл путэтэл

Missing cases can be expressed using postpositions, such as халнэл (of, out of), саит (after, behind), etc.

Mansi conjugation has three persons, three numbers, two tenses, and four moods. Active and passive voices exist.

Intransitive and transitive conjugations are distinguished. This means that there are two possible ways of conjugating a verb. When the speaker conjugates in intransitive, the sentence has no concrete object (in this case, the object is nothing or something like something, anything). In the transitive conjugation, there is a concrete object. This feature also exists in the other Ugric languages.

Mansi uses suffixes to express the tense. The tense suffix precedes the personal suffix.

Tense Suffix Example
Present -г (lat.[1] -g) минагум (lat. minagum - I am going)
Past -с (lat. -s) минасум (minasum - I went)

The language has no future tense; the future is expressed in other ways.

There are four moods: indicative, conditional, imperative and blandishing.

Indicative mood has no suffix. Imperative mood exists only in the second person.

The suffixes are the following:

Person Singular Dual Plural
1st -ум -умен -ув
2nd -эн -эн -эн
3rd (no suffix) -ыг -эт

Thus, the conjugation of the verb мина (lat. mina [go]), in past tense (remember the suffix -с):

Person Singular Dual Plural
1st минасум (minasum) минасумен (minasumen) минасув (minasuv)
2nd минасэн минасэн минасэн
3rd минас минасыг минасэт

Verbs have active and passive voice. Active voice has no suffix; the suffix to express the passive is -ве-.

As in Hungarian, verbal prefixes are used to modify the meaning of the verb in both concrete and abstract ways. For example, with the prefix эл- (away, off) the verb мина (go) becomes элмина, which means to go away.

ēl(a) - 'forwards, onwards, away'

jōm- 'to go, to stride' ēl-jōm- 'to go away/on'
tinal- 'to sell' ēl-tinal- 'to sell off'

χot - 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity'

min- 'to go' χot-min- 'to go away, to stop'
roχt- 'to be frightened' χot-roχt- 'to take fright suddenly'

# Mansi Hungarian
1 аква (akʷa) egy
2 китыг (kitiɣ) kettő
3 хурум (χūrəm) három
4 нила (ńila) négy
5 ат (at) öt
6 хот (χōt)) hat
7 сат (sāt) hét
8 нёллов (ńololow) nyolc
9 онтэллов (ontolow) kilenc
10 лов (low) tíz
20 хус (χus) húsz
100 сат (sāt/janiɣsāt) száz
1000 сотэр (sōtər) ezer

Numbers 1 and 2 also have attributive forms: акв (1) and кит (2; compare with Hungarian két).

ам хул алысьлаңкве минасум. - I went fishing (literally "I fish catch went").

Here are some invented sentences in Mansi (Latin transcription) and Hungarian.[2] They demonstrate well the relationship between Hungarian and Mansi.

Mansi Hungarian English
Hurem né vituel huligel husz hul pugi. Három nő a vízből hálóval húsz halat fog. Three women are catching twenty fish with a net from the water.
Huremszáthusz hulachszäm ampem viten äli. Háromszázhúsz hollószemű ebem vízen él. The three hundred and twenty dogs of mine with raven eyes live on water.
Pegte lau lasinen manl tou szilna. Fekete ló lassan megy a tó szélén. A black horse is slowly walking on the shore of the lake.

  1. ^ *lat.: With Latin script.
  2. ^ Note: The transcription is written with Hungarian orthography to provide a clearer comparison; if you do not know the correct pronunciation, see Hungarian alphabet.

  • Nyelvrokonaink. Teleki László Alapítvány, Budapest, 2000.
  • A világ nyelvei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest
  • Riese, Timothy. Vogul: Languages of the World/Materials 158. Lincom Europa, 2001. ISBN 3895862312
Finno-Ugric languages
Ugric Hungarian | Khanty | Mansi
Permic Komi | Komi-Permyak | Udmurt
Finno-Volgaic Mari | Erzya | Moksha | Merya† | Meshcherian† | Muromian†
Sami Akkala Sami† | Inari Sami | Kemi Sami† | Kildin Sami | Lule Sami | Northern Sami | Pite Sami | Skolt Sami | Southern Sami | Ter Sami | Ume Sami
Baltic-Finnic Estonian | Finnish | Ingrian | Karelian | Kven | Livonian | Ludic | Meänkieli | South Estonian | Veps | Votic | Võro
† denotes extinct
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