Erzya language (erzyan' kel') — the language of the Erzya, one of the two Mordvinic languages of the Uralic family; the other is Moksha. In the Republic of Mordovia it holds official status alongside Moksha and Russian, while in Nizhny Novgorod Region it is spoken in about fifteen villages in the south — most densely in Lukoyanovskiy District.[1][2][3] The main declension of a noun has eleven cases, there is no grammatical gender whatsoever, and "hello" sounds the same in Erzya and Moksha — "shumbrat" — though "good" already differs: Erzya "vadrya" versus Moksha "tseber'".[4][2][3]
Place within the family
Erzya belongs to the Mordvinic group of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic languages; its closest relative is Moksha.[1] The common label "Mordva" is an exonym: neither the Moksha nor the Erzya use it of themselves, and the language's own name is erzyan' kel'.[1]
There are five dialects: Central (Atyashevsky, Chamzinsky, and partly Ichalkovskiy Districts of Mordovia), Western — the Pri-Insar dialect, Northwestern — the Pri-Alatyr dialect, Southeastern — the Pri-Sura dialect, and the distinct Shoksha dialect in the northwest of Mordovia, surrounded by Moksha-speaking communities.[1] The literary standard is based on the speech of the village of Kozlovka in Atyashevsky District.[1]
According to a UNESCO estimate from 2010, the language has no fewer than ninety thousand speakers; its status is described as the beginning of language shift.[1] Writing based on the Russian alphabet has been in use since the eighteenth century and is associated with translations of the New Testament and missionary texts; by the early twentieth century some fifty dictionaries had been compiled in the Mordvinic languages and more than three hundred literary works had been created.[1]
How it works
The noun declines in three declensions — basic, demonstrative, and possessive. The basic declension has eleven cases, and nearly all of them are formed by adding suffixes to an invariable stem: tumo "oak" — tumoso "in the oak," tumosto "from the oak," tumoks "by the oak," tumovtomo "without the oak."[4]
The Erzya language has no grammatical gender at all. The verb has two conjugations — objective and non-objective — and separate negative forms; from a single stem a long series unfolds: sokams "to plow" — sokan "I plow," sokas' "he plowed," sokak "plow! (imperative)," sokaklin' "I would have plowed."[4]
Erzya has few suffixes, and compensates for this by compounding stems: pokshtya "grandfather" is poksh "elder" and tetya "father"; cher'guy "a thin aquatic worm" is cher' "hair" and guy "snake"; and yamt-kashat "dishes, food" is a paired word made from "cabbage soup" and "porridge."[4]
Nizhny Novgorod Erzya people describe their language themselves through its difficulty and its sound: "Our language is quite complex — 11 cases, with particular features in pronunciation."[3]
| Case | Form |
|---|---|
| Nominative | tumo |
| Genitive | tumon' |
| Dative | tumonen' |
| Ablative | tumodo |
| Locative | tumoso |
| Elative | tumosto |
| Illative | tumos |
| Prolative | tumova |
| Translative | tumoks |
| Comparative | tumoshka |
| Abessive | tumovtomo |
We and the Moksha speak different languages, have different cultures, different dress… But the greeting "hello!" sounds the same among both the Moksha and the Erzya: "Shumbrat!"
Where it is spoken in Nizhny Novgorod Region
Historically, the Erzya lived here between the Sura, the Volga, and the Oka.[2] Today, Erzya speech survives in the Lukoyanovskiy, Bolsheboldinsky, Shatkovsky, Sechenovskiy, Pilninskiy, Sergachsky, and Gaginsky districts; the principal sela are Pikshen, Kardavil, and the Lukoyanov-area villages of Ivantsevo, Shandrovo, Pichingushi, and Chirgushi.[2][5]
The number of speakers is declining: the mid-1990s census recorded thirty-six thousand Erzya in the Region, the next one gave twenty-five thousand, and the census discussed in 2016 by Mikhail Bezaev, chairman of the council of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Association of Finno-Ugric Peoples, showed just over twenty thousand.[2]
The language has nearly disappeared from schools. Until 1956, Erzya was taught in rural schools across the Region, and before the Revolution a secondary school certificate could be issued in Erzya as well; by 2016, elective Erzya classes were operating in two schools in the Region, with Erzya culture clubs in two more.[2] There is neither a newspaper nor a television channel in Erzya in the Region, whereas in Mordovia "Erzyan Pravda" and "Erzyan Mastor" are published, along with the journals "Syatko" and "Chilisema," and radio broadcasts daily programs in the Mordovian languages.[1][2]
The Teryukhan dialect
The northern group of Nizhny Novgorod's Mordva — Teryukhane of the Teryushevskaya volost — spoke Erzya, yet lost the language earlier than any other group: as early as 1867, Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky wrote that the local Mordva had "already almost entirely forgotten their language."[6]
By the late 1970s, all that remained of the Teryukhan speech were names: an onomastic survey conducted across twenty-eight settlements of Dalnekonstantinovsky District yielded Russian-sounding micro-toponymy with scattered Erzya elements — the Kirmet stream, the Kuzmyr forest, Mordovskie Kladbishchi hill, Molennaya Polyana (Prayer Glade).[7]
The Teryukhan case is not unique in the region, but it is the earliest: it shows that a people and their language do not disappear together — ritual, dress, and ethnic identity persisted in Bolshoye Teryushevo and Sarley for another century and a half after the language had ceased to be spoken.[6][7]
Erzya Language Day
The date of April 16 was declared Erzya Language Day in 1993, and in the Lukoyanov District the holiday has long become an annual event: in 2024 it was celebrated for the twelfth time at the Shandrovskoye House of Culture, and in 2026 the festival "Tiryn Kel" — "Native Language" — was held there for the fourteenth time.[5][8]
The program of the celebration is built around rituals. It opens with "Toramo" — a call for the unity of Finno-Ugric peoples — followed by the lighting of a shtатol candle in a carved wooden candleholder, a re-enactment of the "Oznoma" prayer ceremony, and a communal round dance.[5][8] Schoolchildren recite poems and sing on stage, librarians give talks on traditional dress, and the foyer hosts an exhibition of books by Erzya authors alongside a domestic-life corner with a quiz on oral counting in Erzya.[5]
On this day, guests are taught a few words: shumrat — hello, syukprya — thank you, yalginyet — girlfriends, vastоmazоnok — goodbye.[5] The day ends with a communal meal of homemade pies and fish soup cooked in the open air.[5]
Тиринь келем — монь кекшезь сюпавчим, монь оймень уличим (My native tongue — my hidden treasure, the wealth of my soul)
Who keeps the language alive today
It is kept alive by rural community centers and libraries. In Chirgushi, librarian Mariya Lazareva leads tours through a room dedicated to the history of Erzya daily life, assembled from surviving exhibits of a school museum, and records the recollections of long-time residents; of the library's five thousand books, more than four hundred are local history titles, almost all dealing with Erzya culture, and the most widely read is the novel-chronicle Purgaz by Kuzma Abramov.[9]
Erzya-language vocal ensembles include "Umarina" from Shandrovo, "Rodniki" from Ivantsevo, "Erzyanochka" from Pichinguши, and "Istoki" from Shandrovo — all laureates of the gubernatorial prize "Soul of Russia," where elderly village women perform ancient ritual songs.[5][8] In Lukoyanov there is the Erzya Culture Museum, the only museum in the country dedicated exclusively to the Erzya, while Erzya Radio gives the language a voice beyond the villages.[2]
The language lives differently from family to family. The Naумоvs, Nizhny Novgorod Erzya who moved from a Mordva village, speak Erzya among themselves, and their eldest daughter picked up the language on her own by listening to her parents; in their parents' generation the opposite was sometimes true — children were deliberately spoken to in Russian "so they wouldn't have an Erzya accent": many people were ashamed of their native language back then.[3]
Traces of the language remain even where it has long since ceased to be spoken. The suffix "ley" in place names is the Erzya word for "stream, ravine," and it can still be seen today on road signs across the south of the Region.[3] Villages where the language is still spoken are discussed in greater detail in the article on Erzya villages, and the Teryukhans themselves are covered in the article devoted to that group.[2]
Sources
- minlang.iling-ran.ru — Minor Languages of Russia — Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences — Erzya Language: range, dialects, writing system, functioning (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — Land of the Erzya, 2 June 2016 (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — Alina Malinina. Shumbrat, or Hello! Nizhny Novgorod Erzya on how they preserve their people's traditions today, 17 April 2026 (archive)
- minlang.iling-ran.ru — Minor Languages of Russia — Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences — A Grammatical Sketch of the Erzya Language (archive)
- lukgazeta.ru — Lukoyanovskaya Pravda — Alla Gorshkova. My Native Language — My Treasure (Erzya Language Day in Shandrov), 2024 (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — Otkryty Tekst — P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky. Sketches of the Mordva, Introduction (Russky Vestnik, 1867) (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — Otkryty Tekst — I. L. Mininzon. Onomastics of the Teryukhans (field surveys of 1978–1980) (archive)
- lukgazeta.ru — Lukoyanovskaya Pravda — "Our roots run deep, and the future is bright": the Tirin Kel festival in Shandrov, April 2026
- lukgazeta.ru — Lukoyanovskaya Pravda — A library with an Erzya flavour: Chirgushi village