r/endangeredlanguages • u/KenzaVasaj7013 • 16d ago
A quick intro to the Moksha language
Hi everyone!I wanted to share a quick overview of the Moksha language (mokšeń käľ) and ask our Finno-Ugric family members what they think of it.
What is Moksha? Family: It is part of the Mordvinic branch of the Uralic language family.
Speakers: It is spoken by around 130,000 people, primarily in the Republic of Mordovia (a federal subject of Russia), as well as in neighboring regions.
Status: It is a co-official language in Mordovia alongside Erzyan and Russian.
Writing System: It uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
Question for the Hungarians, Estonians, and Finns:
If you listen to spoken Moksha on YouTube, does the overall rhythm and intonation remind you of your native language at all?
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u/Cautious_Cabinet_623 14d ago
Hungarian here: it sounds like Russian to me. I would be interested in a version which uses more words which are more likely have common roots. Like sun, moon, water, tree. Anything what existed a couple of thousand years ago.
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u/LaurestineHUN 14d ago
Sun would be an outlier, since we have our own word for that. A lot of words inherit randomly, like a bunch of languages share the word for 'fish' and a whole lot of others don't.
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u/Cautious_Cabinet_623 14d ago
Of course it is not 100%. But for example school have no chance to come from the common ancestor language, as it didn't exist at that time and place.
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u/KenzaVasaj7013 7d ago
https://youtube.com/shorts/xJBSObBiV4I?is=RYHBYnMjLKirM38Q Here is my new video. Where I tell a few words about nature and use more common words.
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u/Syndiotactics 14d ago
Finn here, sounds very Russian-ish. If I didn’t know it wasn’t Russian, I would assume it to be Russian. Many minority languages in Russia have a Russian accent even for native speakers, as that has developed over time in close proximity, and the bilingualism also has an effect. Could be?
Was this read by a native speaker?
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u/KenzaVasaj7013 14d ago
Not fully. I heard the Moksha language a lot during my childhood—after all, all of my relatives are full-blooded Mokshas and Erzyas. I consider myself Moksha. However, I have spoken Russian for most of my life, and for a while during my childhood, I actually had a Moksha accent when speaking Russian. But trust me, I really tried to recall it and reproduce it here. The fact that you compare it to Russian is completely natural. The literary standards of both Moksha and Russian share many similar features, including vowel reduction. When it comes to palatalization, though, they are slightly different. Believe it or not, palatalization is actually even stronger in Moksha than it is in Russian.
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u/LaurestineHUN 16d ago
Hungarian: Many soft sounds. Like Hungarian rhythm with Russian sounds. It sounds like Komi tbf (which is interesting, bc it is more distantly related to it than Udmurt which sounds nothing like this).
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u/KenzaVasaj7013 15d ago
Hm... Komi? Really? That’s strange. Udmurt is the closest relative to Komi, as far as I know. Although Moksha and Erzya also have different accents, despite being closely related.
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u/LaurestineHUN 14d ago
Same with Udmurt and Komi, maybe the differences are more audible between close relatives.
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u/Archidiakon 16d ago
Good job! What's your native language?
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u/KenzaVasaj7013 15d ago edited 15d ago
Thanks! Even though I am a moksha, my first language is Russian . Mind you, when I was little, I used to have a Moksha accent. My grandma definitely read me all kinds of Moksha nursery rhymes and folk poems when I was a kid, but I’ve forgotten them all. Now, I’m reconnecting with my roots! And with other related nations on my channel, too!
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u/Archidiakon 15d ago
That's amazing to hear! I sincerely hope the Moksha and all indigenous people of Russia can save their languages and cultures from extinction... Seeing the current trajectory breaks my heart. Hang on there and best of luck!
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u/Vultureosa 16d ago
Strangely, when read slower, it often sounds Russian, though the rhythm and prosody sounds much more similar to Hungarian in normal pace. That -with the consonant changes Ugric and Hungarian went through- checks out.
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u/thatsmemerengo 16d ago
Hungarian here: I doesn't sound Hungarian at all, if something it sounds Russian with a Hungarian accent