Merya language
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| Merya | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Russia | |
| Region: | Merya | |
| Total speakers: | extinct | |
| Language family: | Uralic Finno-Ugric Finno-permic Finno-Volgaic Merya |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | > | |
| Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | ||
| ISO 639-3: | – | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Merya language was the Finno-Ugric language spoken by the Merya tribe, which lived in what is today the Yaroslavl region northwest to Moscow (near Rostov Veliky and Pereslavl-Zalessky). Very little is known about the language except for a few lexical and toponymic items identified as possibly being of Merya origin. It probably became extinct during the Middle Ages, as the Meryas were assimilated by the Slavs.
Merya language was probably related to the other Finno-Ugric languages of the adjacent region, although its exact position within the Finno-Ugric language group remains debatable. Originally it was believed that Merya was closely related to Mari, but this view has recently been challenged and an affiliation with the Northwestern Finnic languages, including Balto-Finnic and Saamic, has been explained as more likely[1].
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[edit] References
- ^ Eugene Helimski: The “Northwestern” Group of Finno-Ugric Languages and its Heritage in the Place Names and Substratum Vocabulary of the Russian North. Slavica Helsingiensia 27: The Slavicization of the Russian North. Mechanisms and Chronology. Ed. by Juhani Nuorluoto. Helsinki 2006. ISBN 952–10–2852–1, ISSN 0780–3281; ISBN 952–10–2928–5 (PDF: [1])
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