Veps language, spoken by Vepses, belongs to the Baltic-Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric languages.
According to Soviet statistics 8,000 people were self-designated Veps speakers at the end of the 1970s. The statistics are however considered extremely unreliable by most non-Soviet linguists, not changing the situation that the language must be understood as in stern threat of extinction.
According to the location of the people, the language is divided into three main dialects: Northern Veps (at Lake Onega to the south of Petrozavodsk, to the north of river Syväri, including the Veps Autonomous Rural district), Central Veps (in the Saint Petersburg region), and Southern Veps (in the Vologda Oblast). The Northern dialect is somewhat more distinct than the others, but it is nevertheless possible for the members of the different dialect groups to understand each other. The speakers of the Northern dialect call themselves Ludi, or Ludilainen. Their speech is sometimes classified as a dialect of Karelian.
External links:
The Peoples of the Red Book: THE VEPS (http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/veps.shtml)
Veps schools were closed, textbooks were burned, teachers were put in prison, and some ethnic intellectuals even lost their lives as a result of their nationality (among them a Veps ethnographer, Stepan Makaryev).
In 1989, a Veps Cultural Society was formed, with the aim of rekindling a Veps' sense of identity, and increasing the Veps' respect for their language, history and culture.
The Veps were discovered for academia by A. Sjögren in 1824, but it took decades before a distinct picture could be formed of the habitation and population of the Veps.
Veps consonants can be hard or soft, voiced or unvoiced.
Stress in Veps, as in the other Balto-Finnic languages, is always on the first syllable.
The following parts of speech are found in the Veps language: substantives, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, postpositions and prepositions, and interjections.
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