Veps language
Veps, also known as Vepsian, is an endangered Finnic language from the Uralic language family, that is spoken by Vepsians. The language is written in the Latin script, and is closely related to Finnish and Karelian.
According to Soviet statistics, 12,500 people were self-designated ethnic Veps at the end of 1989. There were 5,900 self-designated ethnic Veps in 2010, and around 3,600 native speakers.
According to the location of the people, the language is divided into three main dialects: Northern Veps, Central Veps, and Southern Veps. The Northern dialect seems the most distinct of the three; however, it is still mutually intelligible for speakers of the other two dialects. Speakers of the Northern dialect call themselves "Ludi", or lüdilaižed.
In Russia, more than 350 children learn the Veps language in a total of five national schools.
Classification and history
Veps is the easternmost surviving member of the Finnic languages. Having developed in relative isolation, the language lacks several features found in its relatives, such as consonant gradation and the length contrast in consonants. Original vowel length has mostly been lost as well. At the same time, it retains a number of archaic features.The closest relative of Veps is Ludic, connecting Veps to the wider Finnic dialect continuum.
Veps also shows some characteristic innovations such as the vocalization of original syllable-final*l, and the expansion of the local case system.
Birch bark letter no. 292 is the first known document in any Finnic language; it is considered to be closest to modern Karelian or Veps. The document was discovered near Novgorod in Russia and is dated to the early 13th century.
Distribution
According to Ethnologue there were 3,160 speakers of Veps in 2010, located in the Republic of Karelia and in the Leningrad and Vologda Oblasts.Dialects
Veps shows substantial dialectal variation, affecting both phonetics and grammatical features. Three main dialect areas can be distinguished, the northern, central and southern dialects.Northern
Northern Veps is spoken in the Republic of Karelia along the coast of Lake Onega south of Petrozavodsk. It is also spoken in a few small villages in Leningrad Oblast. Villages speaking Northern Veps include Shyoltozero,, and, as well as the city of Petrozavodsk itself.Characteristics of Northern Veps are:
- Diphthongs are either preserved in their historical form, or the first component is raised.
- Combinations of vowel + l are usually preserved.j is fortified to dʹ word-initially, and medially after consonants.
- The last consonant of the stem is lengthened in the third-person singular present indicative, and stem-final e becomes o.
- Only traces of vowel harmony are retained.
Central
Central Veps dialects are rather distinct from each other compared to Northern and Southern Veps, which are relatively homogeneous. They are spoken around a long line stretching from Tervenichi in the Lodeinopolsky District of Leningrad Oblast to near Lake Beloye. The largest locality speaking Central Veps dialects is Vinnitsy.Characteristics of Central Veps are:
- Diphthongs are usually modified.
- Combinations of vowel + l are vocalized to diphthongs in Kuya and Pondala, and usually preserved elsewhere.al and el are vocalized to ou or uu in the adessive and ablative case forms.
- Word-final consonants are palatalized after i.
- In Kuya village, the vowel in the allative ending depends on the preceding stem vowel. After i the ending is -le, after a it is -la and after other vowels it is -lo.j is preserved in most dialects, mostly in the west. j is fortified to dʹ in Kuya. It is fortified to gʹ in Pondala, Voylahta, Nemzha, and Shimozero.
- Final obstruent devoicing in Kuya Veps.
- Unrounding of ü and ö in a few villages.ä > e in Shimozero.
- Vowel harmony is weakly preserved, most prominently in the eastern and south-western areas.
Southern
Southern Veps is spoken in the Boksitogorsky District of Leningrad Oblast, including the villages of Radogoshcha and.Characteristics of Southern Veps are:
- Diphthongs are monophthongized to long vowels, especially in non-initial syllables.
- Combinations of vowel + l are usually preserved.al and el are vocalized to aa and oo in the adessive and ablative case forms.l and n are palatalized before e in non-initial syllables when followed by a case ending or person-and-number ending. r is not palatalized.
- Word-final consonants are palatalized after i, in for example the past indicative, the conditional and some case forms.j is preserved.
- Unrounding of front rounded vowels, ü > i and ö > e.
- The ending -i of the third-person singular past indicative is usually dropped, leaving palatalization of the preceding consonant.
- Vowel harmony is preserved well.
Phonology
Consonants
Palatalization
In general, palatalizable consonants are palatalized allophonically before a front vowel. However, palatalized consonants also occur in other environments, especially in word-final position or in word-final clusters.There are some cases where the front vowel is preceded by a non-palatalized consonant. In native Finnic vocabulary, this occurs where inflectional endings beginning with are attached to words with a stem ending in a non-palatalized consonant. The consonant is not palatalized by in this case, but remains non-palatalized by analogy with the other inflected forms. The vowel is backed to in this case, as in Russian, making it unclear whether the palatalization is a consequence of the front vowel, or the backing is the result of the lack of palatalization. Either analysis is possible.
Compare:
- norʹ, genitive singular noren, partitive plural norid
- nor, genitive singular noran, partitive plural norid
The phoneme can also in some cases be preceded by non-palatalized consonants, for example in the allative ending -le.
Vowels
The status of is marginal; it occurs as an allophone of after a non-palatalized consonant. See above under "Palatalization" for more information. It does not occur in the first syllable of a word.Vowel harmony
Like many other Finnic languages, Veps has vowel harmony but in a much more limited form. Words are split into back-vowel and front-vowel words based on which vowels they contain:- Back vowels:, and
- Front vowels:, and
For example:
- korged, genitive singular korktan, derived noun korktuz
' ; compare Finnish korkean, korkeus. - pimed, genitive singular pimedan, derived noun pimeduz
' ; compare Finnish pimeän, pimeys. - hüvä, illative singular hüväh'a, derived noun hüvü'z
' ; compare Finnish hyvään, hyvyys. - päiv, genitive singular päivän, illative singular päivhan; compare Finnish päivän, päivään.
- pä, illative singular päha; compare Finnish päähän.
- keza ; compare Finnish kesä.
- vävu ; compare Finnish vävy.
- üldüd'a ; compare Finnish yltyä.
- küzu'da ; compare Finnish kysyä.
Orthography
The modern Vepsian alphabet is a Latin alphabet. It consists of a total of twenty-nine characters: twenty-two are from the basic modern Latin alphabet, six are derived from basic Latin letters by the addition of diacritical marks, and the final character is the prime symbol, which signifies palatalization of the preceding sound.Veps orthography is largely phonemic, and represents each phoneme with one letter. Palatalized consonants are single phonemes, and thus the combination of a letter and a following prime symbol is a single combined letter for this purpose. The following table shows the correspondences between letters and phonemes:
Palatalization of consonants before front vowels is not indicated in the orthography, so plain consonant letters can represent both types of consonant depending on what vowel follows. For the following letters and, this is ambiguous, however: they can be preceded by both types of consonants, as noted above in the phonology section. Whether a consonant before the letter or is palatalized or not cannot be determined from the orthography and must be learned for each word. GrammarLike other Finnic languages, Veps is an agglutinating language. The preservation of the Proto-Finnic weak-grade consonants *d and *g in all positions, along with the loss of consonant gradation, has made Veps morphology relatively simple compared to the other Finnic languages. There are fewer inflectional classes, and inflections of nominals and verbs alike can be predicted from only a few basic principal parts.NounsVeps has twenty-three grammatical cases, more than any other Finnic language. It preserves the basic set of Finnic cases shared by most Finnic languages, including the six locative cases, but several more cases have been added that generally have no counterpart in the others.Notes:
Principal partsNouns have four principal parts, from which all other noun forms can be derived by replacing the endings:
If the genitive singular stem has h before the final vowel, then the ending -ze is used, and the vowel is never dropped:
VerbsEndingsVeps has innovated a special reflexive conjugation, which may have middle voice or passive voice semantics. The endings are as follows:Infinitives:
PronounsThe personal pronouns are of Finno-Ugric origin:
Sample textArticle 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: |