Eastern Mansi

Eastern or Konda Mansi is an extinct member of the Mansi languages, and was spoken in Russia in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug around the river Konda. It became extinct in 2018, when its last speaker Maksim Shivtorov (Максим Семенович Шивторов) died. It has Khanty and Siberian Tatar influence. There is vowel harmony, and for it has , frequently diphthongized.

In Russian linguistics, the Konda dialect used to be called the "southern Mansi (Kondinsky) dialect" () or "eastern Mansi dialect group" ().

Dialects

• Lower Konda Mansi
• Middle Konda Mansi
• Upper Konda Mansi
• Jukonda Mansi

Phonology

Consonants

Some remarks:

1. Neither in Middle nor Lower Konda do these appear at the beginning of words.
2. In Middle Konda it does not appear in the beginning of words, but in Lower Konda it does.
3. /ŋ/ is also spelled with just н if it comes before к or х. This rule does not include suffixes; like in мынгым /mənɣəm/

Vowels

(KM=Present in Middle Konda | KU=Present in Lower Konda | K=Present in both)

Some remarks:

1. Only present in palatal environments.
2. It has the allophone /iː/.
3. Neither in Middle nor Lower Konda do these appear in non-initial syllable positions.
4. Neither in Middle nor Lower Konda do /aː/ appear in first syllable positions.

Diphthongs

In Middle Konda, the diphthongs are /øæ/ or /øæ̯/ and /oɒ/ found in both first and non-initial syllable positions.

In Lower Konda, the /æø/ diphthong is usually realized as [œ] which is only found in first syllable positions, while /øæ/ is found in both first and non-initial syllable positions.

Alphabet

In the few instances that Eastern Mansi literature was printed and was from the native areas, it used an unchanged Russian-Cyrillic script like this:

The highlighted letters are found in loanwords, except нг which represents a single nasal consonant and г is substituted with the letter й in some dialects.

The Yukonda dialect had a specialized alphabet, found in E. A. Kuzakova's book:

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

• Баландин А.Н., Вахрушева М.П. Мансийско-русский словарь с лексическими параллелями из южно-мансийского (кондинского) диалекта. Л., 1958. (in Russian)
• Gavriil Popov (translator), Das Evangelium Matthäi in den Dialect der kondischen Wogulen im Gouvernement Tobolsk, Strangeways et Walden, London, 1868
• :Translation of the Gospel of Matthew into the Konda Mansi dialect