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 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 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


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 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.
А аБ бВ вГ гД дЕ еЁ ё
Ж жЗ зИ иЙ йК кЛ лМ м
Н нНг нгО оП пР рС сТ т
У уФ фХ хЦ цЧ чШ шЩ щ
Ъ ъЫ ыЬ ьЭ эЮ юЯ я-

The Yukonda dialect had a specialized alphabet, found in E. A. Kuzakova's book:
А аА̄ а̄Ӓ ӓӒ̄ ӓ̄А̊ а̊А̊̄ а̊̄Б бВ вГ гД д
Е еЕ̄ е̄Ё ёЁ̄ ё̄Ж жЗ зИ иӢ ӣЙ йК к
Л лЛ̆ л̆М мН нӇ ӈО оО̄ о̄Ӧ ӧП пР р
С сТ тУ уӮ ӯӰ ӱӰ̄ ӱ̄У̊ у̊Ф фХ хЦ ц
Ч чШ шЩ щъыьЭ эЭ̄ э̄Ю юЮ̄ ю̄
Я яЯ̄ я̄--------
---