The Mari language (Mari: марий йылме, Russian марийский язык), spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group and is part of the Volgaic subgroup of the Finnic languages together with Mordvin (though this relationship is contested; see Klima 2004 for discussion). It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic (Mari: Марий Эл ‘Mari Land’, Russian: Марийская республика) of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vjatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari are found also in the Tatarstan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions. Mari today has a unified standard form with two variants (Hill vs. Meadow or Western and Eastern, with the Eastern variant prevailing in everyday usage), using a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet, and is the titular and official language of its republic, alongside Russian. The use of two "variants," as opposed to two "languages," has been hotly debated: on the one hand, Maris recognize the unity of the ethnic group; on the other hand, the structural differences between Hill and Meadow Mari are at least as substantial, if not more so, than those found in the successor languages to what used to be called Serbo-Croatian. In its final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union consisted of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR), often called simply Soviet republics. ... The Mari El Republic (Russian: Респу́блика Мари́й Эл; Mari: Марий Эл Республика) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... The Republic of Bashkortostan or Bashkiria (Russian: Респу́блика Башкортоста́н or Башки́рия; Bashkir: ) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... Capital Kazan (Qazan) Area - total - % water 47th - 67,836. ... The Udmurt Republic (Russian: ; Udmurt: Удмурт Элькун) or Udmurtia (Russian: Удму́ртия) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). ... An oblast (Slavonian verbalism or term, Czech: oblast, Slovak: oblasÅ¥, Russian, Ukrainian: о́бласть, Bulgarian: о́бласт) English equivalent area, province or zone. ... Nizhny Novgorod Oblast (Нижегоро́дская о́бласть) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). ... Kirov Oblast (Russian: ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). ... Sverdlovsk Oblast (Russian: , tr. ... Orenburg Oblast (Russian: ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). ... Perm Krai (Russian: ) is a federal subject of Russia that came into existence on December 1, 2005 as a result of the 2004 referendum on the merger of Perm Oblast and Permyakia Autonomous District. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Geographical distribution of Samoyedic, Finnic, Ugric and Yukaghir languages The Uralic languages form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. ... Approximate geographical distribution of areas where indigenous Finno-Ugric languages are spoken. ... The Finno-Permic languages are a large branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. ... Finno-Volgaic languages include the Mari language(s) and the two Mordvinian languages the Moksha language and the Erzya language. ... The Mari El Republic (Russian: Респу́блика Мари́й Эл; Mari: Марий Эл Республика) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Unicode is an industry standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... Approximate geographical distribution of areas where indigenous Finno-Ugric languages are spoken. ... Finno-Volgaic languages include the Mari language(s) and the two Mordvinian languages the Moksha language and the Erzya language. ... The Mari El Republic (Russian: Респу́блика Мари́й Эл; Mari: Марий Эл Республика) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... Map of Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains (Russian: Уральские горы = Урал) also known simply as the Urals and as the Riphean Mountains in Greco-Roman antiquity, is a mountain range that runs roughly north and south through western Russia. ... The Mari (also known as Cheremis in Russian and ÇirmeÅŸ in Tatar) are a Volga-Finnic people in the Volga area, the natives of Mari El, Russia. ... Capital Kazan (Qazan) Area - total - % water 47th - 67,836. ... The Udmurt Republic (Russian: ; Udmurt: Удмурт Элькун) or Udmurtia (Russian: Удму́ртия) is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). ... Perm (Пермь, pop. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... The standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages differ in various aspects as outlined below. ...

Ethnonym and glottonym

The Mari language and people were known as "Cheremis" (Russian черемисы, черемисский язык; in medieval texts the variant forms черемись, сармыс, цармис are also found) before the Russian Revolution. The term Mari comes from the Maris' self-designation марий (mari), which is thought to have been borrowed from Indo-Aryan *mar- (< PIE *mer-) 'man, mortal'. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a political movement in Russia which reached its peak in 1917 with the overthrow of the Provisional Government that had replaced the Russian Czarist system, and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, which lasted until its collapse in 1991. ... The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ...

Sociolinguistic situation

Most Maris live in rural areas with slightly more than a quarter living in cities. In the republican capital, Yoshkar-Ola, the percentage of Maris is just over 23%. At the end of the 1980s (per the 1989 census) Maris numbered 670,868, of whom 80% (542,160) claimed Mari as their first language and 18.8% did not speak Mari. In the Mari Republic 11.6% claimed Mari was not their first language. In a survey by the Mari Research Institute more than 3/4 of Maris survey considered Mari language to be the most crucial marker of ethnic identity, followed by traditional culture (61%) and common historical past (22%), religion (16%), character and mentality (15%) and appearance (11%) (see Glukhov and Glukhov for details). A gradual downward trend towards assimilation to Russian has been noted for the Communist period: the 1926 census indicated more than 99% of Maris considered Mari their first language, declining to less than 81% in 1989. Some qualitative evidence of a reversal in recent years has been noted.

Only elementary-school education was available in Mari through the Communist period, with this policy ending in village schools in the 1970-1980s. The period of glasnost and perestroika in the 1990s opened opportunities for a revival of efforts expand the use of Mari in education and the public sphere. In the 1990s the Mari language, alongside Russian, was proclaimed in the republican constitution to be an official language of Mari El. By the beginning of the 21st century, Mari language and literature was taught in 226 schools. At the History and Philology Department of the Mari State University and the Krupskaya Teachers' Training Insitute (Yoshkar-Ola), more than half of the subjects are taught in Mari. State motto (Russian): Пролетарии всех стран, соединяйтесь! (Transliterated: Proletarii vsekh stran, soedinyaytes!) (Translated: Workers of the world, unite!) Capital Moscow Official language None; Russian (de facto) Government Federation of Socialist republics/ Communist state Area  - Total  - % water Largest on the planet 22,402,200 km² ?% Population  - Total  - Density 3rd before collapse 293,047,571 (July... Glasnost (Russian: гла́сность, â–¶(?)) was one of Mikhail Gorbachevs policies introduced to the Soviet Union in 1985. ... Poster showing Mikhail Gorbachev Perestroika â–¶ (help· info) (Перестро́йка) is the Russian word (which passed into English) for the economic reforms introduced in June 1987 by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. ... Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (Russian: , scientific transliteration Nadežda Konstantinovna Krupskaja; 26 February (O.S. 14 February) 1869 - February 27, 1939) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary. ...

Dialects

Traditionally there are two macrodialects of Mari: Hill Mari, spoken on the upper bank of the Volga River, near Kozmodemyansk, and Meadow Mari on the lowland bank in and around the republican capital, Yoshkar-Ola. Specialists today refer to four dialects: Hill (right-bank of the Volga and part of the left bank), Meadow (at the confluence of the Kokshaga and Vyatka rivers), Eastern (east of the Vyatka), and North-Western. Some Mari also speak Tatar. Russian and Tatar have strongly influenced Mari, especially Meadow Mari. The Volga river in Western Russia, Europes longest river, with a length of 3,690 km (2,293 miles), provides the core of the largest river system in Europe. ... Yoshkar-Ola (Йошка́р-Ола́) is a city in Russia, capital of the Mari El republic. ... The Tatar language (Tatar tele, Tatarça) is an Turkic language belonging to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages. ...

Grammar

Alphabet and Phonology

A display of the Mari alphabet: http://www1.peoples.org.ru/alfmari.html

Vowels

Note: The sounds ɯ (high back unrounded), and æ (low front unrounded) occur in Hill Mari.

Word prosody and vowel harmony

Stress is not phonemic in Mari, but a dynamic stress system is exhibited phonetically, the stressed syllable being higher in pitch and amplitude and greater in length than an unstressed syllable. Generally, there is one prominent syllable per word and prominence may be found in any syllable of the word. Post- and prefixes behave as clitics, i.e., they do not have their own stress. For example, пö́рт 'house' гыч 'out of' → ['pørt γəʧ]; мýро 'song' дене 'with' → ['muro δene].

As in other Uralic languages, Mari displays vowel harmony, including harmony of both round/unround and front/back. If the stressed vowel in the word is rounded, then the suffix will contain a rounded vowel: кÿтÿ́ 'herd' → кÿтÿ́штö 'in the herd'; if the stressed vowel is unrounded, then the suffix will contain an unrounded vowel: ки́д 'hand' → ки́дыште 'in the hand'. If the stressed vowel is back, then the suffix will end in a back vowel: агýр 'whirlpool' → агýрышто 'in the whirlpool' (Зорина, Крылова, Якимова 1990: 9).

Consonants

Notes: To the left of the slash (/) are the Cyrillic letters used in modern standard Mari. Rough equivalents in Latin letters are given to the right of the slash. The modified Cyrillic letter for the velar nasal (ŋ) combines the Cyrillic letter Н н with and Г г, where the rightmost post of Н is conflated with the vertical post of Г: Ҥ, ҥ. The letters Ф ф (f) and Х х (x, h) are used in loanwords, especially from Russian, Tatar, and Chuvash. The Tatar language (Tatar tele, Tatarça, Татар теле, Татарча) is a Turkic language belonging to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages. ... Chuvash language [CHOO-vahsh] (Чăваш чěлхи, also known as Chuwash, Chovash, Chavash or ÇuaÅŸ) is a Turkic language spoken west of the Urals in central Russia. ...

Some common words and phrases

Note that the accent mark, which denotes the place of stress, is not part of the Mari orthography.

• Пóро кéче/Póro kéče - Good day
• Кýгу тáу/Kúgu táu - Thank you (very much)
• ик, кок, кум, ныл, вич/ik, kok, kum, nyl, vič - one, two, three, four, five
• куд, шым, кандáш, индéш, лу/kud, šym, kandáš, indéš, lu - six, seven, eight, nine, ten
• мут/mut - word

Bibliography

• Castrén M. A., Elementa grammaticae tscheremissicae, Kuopio, 1845 (Hill);
• Wiedemann F., Versuch einer Grammatik der tscheremissischen Sprache, Saint Petersburg, 1847 (Hill);
• Budenz J., Erdéi és hegyi cseremisz szótár, Pest, 1866 (Mari [Hill and Meadow], Hungarian, Latin);
• Троицкий В. П., Черемисско-русский словарь, Kazan', 1894 (Hill and Meadow);
• Szilasi M., Cseremisz szótár, Budapest, 1901 (Mari [Hill and Meadow], Hungarian, German);
• Ramstedt C., Bergtscheremissische Sprachstudien, Helsinki, 1902 (Hill);
• Beke О., Cseremisz nyelvtan, Budapest, 1911 (Hill and Meadow);
• Васильев В. М., Записки по грамматике народа мари, Kazan', 1918 (Hill and Meadow);
• Шорин В. С., Маро-русский словарь горного наречия, Kazan', 1920 (Hill);
• Кармазин Г. Г., Материалы к изучению марийского языка, Krasnokokshajsk, 1925 (Meadow);
• Кармазин Г. Г., Учебник марийского языка лугово-восточного наречия, Yoshkar-Ola, 1929 (Meadow);
• Васильев В. М., Марий Мутэр, Мoscow, 1929 (Hill and Meadow);
• Räsänen M., Die tschuwassischen Lehnwörter im Tscheremissischen, Helsinki, 1920;
• Lewy E., Tscheremissische Grammatik, Leipzig, 1922 (Meadow);
• Wichmann Y., Tscheremissische Texte mit Wörterverzeichnis und grammatikalischem Abriss, Helsingfors, 1923 (Hill and Meadow);
• Räsänen, Die tatarischen Lehnwörter im Tscheremissischen, Helsinki, 1923.
• Sebeok, T. A. and A. Raun. (eds.), The First Cheremis Grammar (1775): A Facsimile Edition, Chicago, 1956.
• Ingemann, F. J. and T. A. Sebeok, An Eastern Cheremis Manual: Phonology, Grammar, Texts and Glossary (= American Council of Learned Societies, Research and Studies in Uralic and Altaic languages, project nos. 6 and 31), Bloomington, 1961 (Meadow);
• Галкин, И. С., Историческая грамматика марийского языка, vol. I, II, Yoshkar-Ola, 1964, 1966;
• Иванов, И. Г., История марийского литературного языка, Yoshkar-Ola, 1975;
• Иванов, И. Г., Марий диалектологий, Yoshkar-Ola, 1981;
• Зорина, З. Г., Г. С. Крылова, and Э. С. Якимова. Марийский язык для всех, ч. 1. Йошкар-Ола: Марийское книжное издательство, 1990;
• Коведяева, Е. И. "Марийский язык", Языки мира: Уральские языки. Moscow, 1993: 148-164.
• Коведяева, Е. И. "Горномарийский вариант литературного марийского языка", Языки мира: Уральские языки. Moscow, 1993: 164-173.
• Glukhov, N. and V. Glukhov, "Mari Men and Women as Bearers of the Mari Language and Identity," Wiener elektronische Beiträge des Instituts für Finno-Ugristik, 2003. Available, along with other papers on Finno-Ugric languages and cultures, at http://webfu.univie.ac.at/archiv.php
• Klima, L. "The linguistic affinity of the Volgaic Finno-Ugrians and their ethnogenesis," 2004: http://mek.oszk.hu/01700/01794/
• Галкин, И. С., "Происхождение и развитие марийского языка", Марийцы. Историко-этнографические очерки/Марий калык. Историй сынан этнографий очерк-влак, Yoshkar-Ola, 2005: 43-46.

• • A bibliography of further works, mostly in Russian, can be found here: Народы Удмуртии - История и культура марийского. Язык и письменность народа: http://213.24.184.98:8101/content/folk/mari/mari4.htm

External links

• The Mari newspaper "Marij El"
• The Mari Language (in English, Mari, and Japanese)
• Mari El OnLine (Web portal in Russian and Mari) The интервью 'interview' link leads to wmv-format files with interviews in Mari language
• MariUver (in Mari, Estonian, English and Russian - covers news, politics, society, eduction, science, art and culture)
• Finno-Ugric Electronic Library by the Finno-Ugric Information Center in Syktyvkar, Komi Republic (interface in Russian and English, texts in Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya and Moksha languages)
• Mari State University Department of Mari Languages (in Russian)
• Mari State University Department of Finno-Ugric Languages (in Russian)
• The Mari State Teacher’s Training Institute (MGPI)
• RFE/RL report on Mari language, Finno-Ugristics, and Russian politics