Northern Mansi (, ) is the sole surviving member of the Mansi languages, spoken in Russia in the KhantyâÂÂMansi Autonomous Okrug and Sverdlovsk Oblast.
Northern Mansi has strong Russian, Komi, Nenets, and Northern Khanty influence, and is the literary Mansi language. There is no accusative case; that is, both the nominative and accusative roles are unmarked on the noun. and have been backed to and .
This article focuses on the Severnaya Sosva dialect of Northern Mansi, considered the literary language.
Dialects are named after the rivers their speakers originally lived next to. Mutual intelligibility between dialects can vary.
The main difference between dialects is phonetic, grammar is usually universal across the Northern Mansi, though vocabulary differences also occur.
Which could be considered the literary dialect of Northern Mansi, has several differentiating features:
It is the second most used dialect of Northern Mansi, after the Sosva dialect, its features consist of:
They don't have an official written form in Cyrillic writing, but their phonetic features include:
The inventory presented here is a maximal collection of segments found across the Mansi varieties. Some remarks:
Northern Mansi has a largely symmetric system of 8 vowels, though lacking short ** and having a very rare long :
Remarks:
The highlighted letters, and àwith the value , are used only in names and loanwords. The allophones /ÃÂ/ and /sò/ are written with the letter é or the digraph áì respectively.
Northern Mansi is an agglutinating, subjectâÂÂobjectâÂÂverb (SOV) language.
One way to express a noun's definiteness in a sentence is with articles, and Northern Mansi uses two articles. The Indefinite is derived from the demonstrative pronominal word ðýà('now'), the definite is derived from the number ðúòð/ðúò ('one'); ðýà('the'), ðúò ('a/an'). They both are used before the defined word. And if their adverbial and numeral meanings are to be expressed; ðýàalways stands before the verb or a word with a similar function and is usually stressed, ðúò behaves the same and is always stressed.
It's worth noting that the Northern Mansi newspaper, Là «imàsÃÂripos (ÃÂïøüðàÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂøÿþÃÂ), doesn't use the before-mentioned words as articles.
Definiteness (determination) can also be expressed by the third (less often second) person singular possession marker, or in case of direct objects, using transitive conjugation. E.g. ðÃÂüÿ (âÂÂdogâÂÂ) â ðÃÂüÿõ (âÂÂhis/her/its dogâÂÂ, âÂÂthe dogâÂÂ); àðÃÂÿ (âÂÂboatâÂÂ) â àðÃÂÿ ýðÃÂûÃÂò-ýðÃÂÃÂóÃÂðà(âÂÂhe/she pushed a boat in the waterâÂÂ) â àðÃÂÿ ýðÃÂûÃÂò-ýðÃÂÃÂóÃÂðÃÂÃÂà(âÂÂhe/she pushed the boat in the waterâÂÂ).
There is no grammatical gender. Mansi distinguishes between singular, dual and plural number. Six grammatical cases exist. Possession is expressed using possessive suffixes, for example -ÃÂü, which means "my".
There are 5 ways the case suffix can change.
Missing cases can be expressed using postpositions, such as àðûýÃÂû (ÃÂalnÃÂl, 'of, out of'), ÃÂðøà(sait, 'after, behind'), etc.
Possession is expressed with possessive suffixes, and the suffix change is determined by the last letter of a word. There are 5 ways that the suffixes can change:
Northern Mansi conjugation has three persons, three numbers, two tenses, and five moods. Active and passive voices exist.
There is no clear distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs.
The verb can conjugate in a Definite and Indefinite way which depends on if the sentence has an object, which the action depicted by the verb refers to directly.
Personal suffixes are attached after the verbal marker. The suffixes are the following:
Tenses are formed with suffixes except for the future.
The tense suffix precedes the personal suffix. The form of the present tense suffix depends on the character of the verbal stem, as well as moods. Tense conjugation is formed with the suffixes -ÃÂó, -ÃÂÃÂó, -ø, -ÃÂ, -ÃÂÃÂ, -ó, or -ò. In the following examples, the tense suffix is in bold and the personal ending is in italic.
The present tense suffix -ÃÂÃÂó is used if the following personal marker contains a consonant or a highly reduced vowel; the suffix -ÃÂó is used if the following personal marker has a stronger vowel, as it is the case in 2nd person dual and plural. 1st person dual has no tense marker but rather a àbetween the verb stem and personal ending.
Verb stems that end in a vowel, have -ó as verbal marker. Verb stems that end with the vowel àhave -ò as verbal marker.
3rd person dual has no personal ending. If the verbal stem ends in a vowel, the tense suffix becomes -ÃÂó.
1st person plural personal ending is -ò if the verbal stems ends in a consonant; the personal ending becomes -ÃÂò if the verbal stem ends in a vowel.
The past tense suffix if the verb stem is monosylabalic is -ÃÂÃÂ- and if the verb is polysyllabic it is -ðÃÂ-:
3rd person dual in past tense has a -ÃÂÃÂó personal ending.
The 1st person plural personal suffix turns into -ÃÂò.
To represent the Future, the verb ÿðÃÂÃÂÃÂúòõ (not dissimilar to Hungarian use of the verb fogni) is used as an conjugated in the Present Indicative:
Verbs can conjugate two ways to show agreement with the sentence's object.
In conjugations, no object is present. Any suffix does not represent it.
In conjugations there are three ways the verb can represent the direct object's number.
The singular object is expressed with the -ÃÂû- suffix which changes depending on the mood and tense.
The dual object is expressed with the -ÃÂÃÂó- suffix which changes depending on the mood and tense.
The plural object is expressed with the -ÃÂÃÂý- suffix which changes depending on the mood and tense.
There are four moods: indicative, mirative, optative, imperative and conditional.
Indicative mood has no suffix. Imperative mood exists only in the second person. Optative and Imperative don't have tenses.
Is a mood presented in the present indefinite by the -ýõ suffix and by the -ýþ in definite.
In the past tense it is represented by the -ðü suffix, both in indefinite and definite.
The mood is represented by the -ýïò and -ýÃÂò suffixes, determined by the vowel in the next suffix.
It exists only in the second person, and in indefinite conjugation, it doesn't show any personal markers, and it is represented by the -ÃÂý and -ÃÂÃÂý suffixes.
Verbs have active and passive voice. Active voice has no suffix; the suffix to express the passive is -òõ-.
Verbal prefixes are used to modify the meaning of the verb in both concrete and abstract ways.
ÃÂÃÂû â 'away'
ÃÂò â 'back'
àþàâ 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity'
The vocabulary of the Mansi languages is distinguished by a fairly large number of forms for denoting concepts related to hunting, reindeer husbandry, fishing (the main traditional occupations of the Mansi). For example, there are about seven words are used to define different types of swamps. At the same time, the language almost lacks its socio-political vocabulary. To denote such concepts that appeared in the life of Mansi in the 20th century; compounding, derivation (rarely affixation), and or borrowings were used. For example, "hospital" can be described by a borrowing ÿïûÃÂýøÃÂð and derivation ÿÃÂÃÂüðûÃÂðý úþû literally "medicinal/curative house".
Words from extinct dialects could also be revitalized in the literary language
Northern Mansi differentiates between relatives based on from which side of the family they came from and also their relative age, for example:
Siblings are similarly differentiated to Hungarian and other Uralic languages:
Numbers 1 and 2 also have attributive forms: ðúò (1) and úøà(2); compare with Hungarian két, Old Hungarian kit).
The üðÃÂýàand ÃÂýÃÂó before 7 and 100 are there to differentiate between the two if both are in the same number or sentence; meaning small and big respectively.
The Mansi numbering system is different in this range than after twenty.
Here, you form a number with the word àÃÂùÿ (above, more than);
Therefore, ðúòàÃÂùÿûþò means "one over/above ten", in a similar way to other Uralic languages.
Numbering in this range uses the word ýÃÂÿÃÂû (towards);
Therefore, òðÃÂàýÃÂÿÃÂû ðúòð means "Towards thirty with one".
Exepction can be found in the Ob dialects, where the postposition of ýÃÂÿÃÂû isn't used;
Above 89, the postposition of ýÃÂÿÃÂû isn't used;
You just add the number after the biggest number;
In the Ob dialect, the word denoting the number that counts approaches is suffixed with the -ý, similarly when counting from 21 to 89.
Since 1989, the Là «imàsÃÂripos ("Northern dawn") newspaper has been the only and most prominent Mansi media. As of 2024 "Listen to articles", most articles on the site of the news agency, have their authors read the articles out loud, so people can not just read the news in their native language but listen to it as well. This initiative was taken as the UN declared 2022-2032 as the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
said (Galina Kondina) the head editor of the newsagency.
The Gospel of Mark in Northern Mansi is available online on Finugorbib site, audio recordings can also be found
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Northern Mansi:
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
Article 1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Northern Mansi:
Article 1 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in English: