Caлaм лийжe!
What is Mari? The basics
Mari is a Uralic language spoken in mostly Mari-El, the Mari Republic in Russian Federation. The language is spoken by roughly half a million people (and it seems to be increasing). The language has its own subsection in the Uralic languages but it’s in general seen as closer to the Ugric languages so it’s a distant cousin to both Finnish and Hungarian of the more known Uralic languages.
It is a bit complicated as to how many Mari languages (or dialects) there are, the biggest two are Hill Mari and Meadow Mari, both have distinct written languages and I used first for the title and the second for the first line. There are also two other dialects: Eastern Mari and North-western Mari, each related to the main two. The connection between all four is clear but they are often seen as at least two different main dialects, sometimes different languages. Still, the Mari people often identify as one group to the outside world.
The language dates back to a long time but the first written examples come from the 18th century. They think that it originally developed west of where it is spoken today but there is little concrete history. These days both main Mari languages are official languages in Mari-El but are spoken second to Russian.
Phonology and orthography
Mari language uses mostly Cyrillic alphabet but has Latin alphabet additions like ö, ä, ÿ and so on (more information here). The additions expand the vowel list as Cyrillic itself does cover a lot of ground with consonants. Some letters of the alphabet are only used for Russian words as they are not native to Mari. Examples of alphabets here.
Mari has a lot of vowels and like many other Uralic languages (Finnish, for example), they utilize vowel harmony. This means that vowels are divided into groups and if a vowel of one group is present at the beginning of the word (or is the main vowel), the suffix must use one from the same group, they can’t be mixed. In addition to the usual front/back (named after where your tongue is) harmony, Mari also has round/unround harmony which means that if the main stressed vowel in the word is rounded (you round your lips to say it), the suffix also has to use a rounded vowel. Uralic languages love vowels a lot!
Grammar
Nouns
Like many other Uralic languages, Mari has no gendering of words and does not use articles. It does utilize cases, though. Mari has nine cases, out of those three are locative. Interestingly, locative cases are only used for inanimate objects (you don’t go into a person, for example). If you do need to go to a person, you use postpositions instead.
Mari does not have a clear morpheme to indicate plurality. Instead, there are three particles that are attached with a hyphen to indicate plural form.
Mari language uses suffixes for cases and there are suffixes for “also” and so on. But Mari also has personal possessive suffixes (like in Finnish, Hebrew and many other languages), indicating possession. In Hill Mari, “my name is...” is “Мӹньӹн лӹмем …“ and the ем indicates „my“. The same in Meadow Mari is “Мыйын лӱмем …“
Verbs
In Mari, verbs conjugate in six persons, three tenses (two pasts) and three moods. Other tenses can also be formed but through existing tenses. Similar to Estonian and Finnish, there is also a negative form of a verb and it is derived from the base form of the word and used with a negative form of “be”. Example: I go, he goes – лектам, лектеш; I do not go, he does not go - ом лек, огеш лек. The verb form does not change.
In general, a lot of Mari grammar is similar to other Uralic languages and some similarities to other surrounding languages. More on the language and grammar (including links to all the grammar terms used here) can be found on the Mari wiki site which I partially used and also here.
Examples
I am a big fan of Uralic folk songs so here are some examples: one song and a whole collection of Mari culture. And here is an example of Mari language learning. I don't speak the language but that should be mostly Meadow Mari. And here is a news story in Mari (though some stuff is in Russian, for example, the protest interview).
Interesting, how do I learn more?
I used English sources and linked them above but the promotion of Mari (and other Uralic languages from Russia) is often done by Estonia and Finland (not sure how involved Hungary is these days) so I used sources in those languages as well. If you want to learn Mari, there are some basic online resources but most of the proper teaching happens in those two countries and in Mari-El, of course. But feel free to share things in the comments. And maybe there are some native speakers, let us know and correct me if I got anything wrong.
Thank you for reading! Tay!
[link] [comments]
from Dia dhaoibh | Languagelearning https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/hm3rv8/шäлä_this_weeks_language_of_the_week_is_mari/
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment