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Mansi language
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The Mansi language (also Vogul, although this is obsolete) is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast. According to the 1990 census, there were 3,184 Mansi-speaking people in Russia.
The Mansi language belongs to the Ob-Ugric subfamily of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is subdivided into four main dialects (East, South, West and North Mansi) which are mutually unintelligible, of which Southern and Western are extinct.
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Encyclopedia
The Mansi language (also Vogul, although this is obsolete) is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast. According to the 1990 census, there were 3,184 Mansi-speaking people in Russia.
The Mansi language belongs to the Ob-Ugric subfamily of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is subdivided into four main dialects (East, South, West and North Mansi) which are mutually unintelligible, of which Southern and Western 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 first published in 1868, and in 1937 was revised using a form of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Alphabet
The first publication of the written Mansi language was in a translation of the Gospel of Matthew, published in London in 1868. In 1937, the Cyrillic alphabet replaced the Latin.
Grammar
Mansi is an agglutinating language.
Article
In Mansi, no articles exist - neither definite, nor indefinite.
It means that "cauldron", "the cauldron" and "a cauldron" all translate to "???".
Nouns
There is no grammatical gender. Mansi distinguishs between singular, dual and plural number. Six grammatical cases exist. Possession is expressed using possessive suffixes, for example -??, which means "my".
Grammatical cases, declining
Example with: ??? (cauldron)
Missing cases can be expressed using postpositions, such as ?????? (of, out of), ???? (after, behind), etc.
Verbs
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.
Tenses
Mansi uses suffixes to express the tense. The tense suffix precedes the personal suffix.
| Tense | Suffix | Example | | Present | -? (lat. -g) | ??????? (lat. minagum - I am going) | | Past | -? (lat. -s) | ??????? (minasum - I went) | |
The language has no future tense; the future is expressed in other ways.
Moods
There are four moods: indicative, conditional, imperative and blandishing.
Indicative mood has no suffix. Imperative mood exists only in the second person.
Personal suffixes
The suffixes are the following:
| Person | Singular | Dual | Plural | | 1st | -?? | -???? | -?? | | 2nd | -?? | -?? | -?? | | 3rd | (no suffix) | -?? | -?? |
Thus, the conjugation of the verb ???? (lat. mina [go]), in past tense (remember the suffix -?):
| Person | Singular | Dual | Plural | | 1st | ??????? (minasum) | ????????? (minasumen) | ??????? (minasuv) | | 2nd | ??????? | ??????? | ??????? | | 3rd | ????? | ??????? | ??????? |
Active/Passive voice
Verbs have active and passive voice. Active voice has no suffix; the suffix to express the passive is -??-.
Verbal prefixes
Verbal prefixes are used to modify the meaning of the verb in both concrete and abstract ways. For example, with the prefix ??- (el-) (away, off) the verb ???? (mina) (go) becomes ?????? (elmina), which means to go away. This is surprisingly close to the Hungarian equivalents: el- (away) and menni (to go), where elmenni is to go away
el(a) - 'forwards, onwards, away'
| jom- 'to go, to stride' | el-jom- 'to go away/on' |
| tinal- 'to sell' | el-tinal- 'to sell off' |
?ot - 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity'
| min- 'to go' | ?ot-min- 'to go away, to stop' |
| ro?t- 'to be frightened' | ?ot-ro?t- 'to take fright suddenly' |
Numbers
| # | Mansi | Hungarian | | 1 | ???? (ak?a) | egy | | 2 | ????? (kiti?) | ketto | | 3 | ????? (?ur?m) | három | | 4 | ???? (nila) | négy | | 5 | ?? (at) | öt | | 6 | ??? (?ot)) | hat | | 7 | ??? (sat) | hét | | 8 | ?????? (nololow) | nyolc | | 9 | ???????? (ontolow) | kilenc | | 10 | ??? (low) | tíz | | 20 | ??? (?us) | húsz | | 100 | ??? (sat/jani?sat) | száz | | 1000 | ????? (sot?r) | ezer |
Numbers 1 and 2 also have attributive forms: ??? (1) and ??? (2; compare with Hungarian két).
Example
?? ??? ??????????? ???????. - I went fishing (literally "I fish catch went").
Comparison with Hungarian
Here are some invented sentences in Mansi (Latin transcription) and Hungarian. They demonstrate well the relationship between Hungarian and Mansi.
| Mansi | Hungarian | English | | Hurem né vituel huligel husz hul pugi. | Három no a vízbol hálóval húsz halat fog. | Three women are catching twenty fish with a net from the water. | | Huremszáthusz hulachszäm ampem viten äli. | Háromszázhúsz hollószemu 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. |
Another interesting example of the relation between Hungarian and Mansi is the name of the language. According to the most accepted linguistic studies, Finno-Ugric words in Hungarian became shorter through time, and they got a harder-sounding ending, while Khanty and Mansi better conserved the original Finno-Ugric forms. Thus, we may assume, that the word "Mansi" first became "Mans", then (with a harder ending) "Magy". So the Mansi people call themselves in fact "Magyars".
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