Марий тілі: тарихы, таралуы және қазіргі жағдайы

the Uralic language spoken in Russia
Uralic language

The Mari language (Mari: марий йылме, marij jylme; марийский язык, mariyskiy yazyk), formerly known as the Cheremiss language, spoken by approximately 400,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic (Mari: Марий Эл, Marij El, i. e., 'Mari land') of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals. Mari speakers, known as the Mari, are found also in the Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, and Perm regions. Mari is the titular and official language of its republic, alongside Russian. The Mari language today has three standard forms: Hill Mari, Northwestern Mari, and Meadow Mari. The latter is predominant and spans the continuum Meadow Mari to Eastern Mari from the Republic into the Ural dialects of Bashkortostan, Sverdlovsk Oblast and Udmurtia), whereas the former, Hill Mari, shares a stronger affiliation with the Northwestern dialect (spoken in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and parts of the Kirov Oblast). Both language forms use modified versions of Cyrillic script. For the non native, Hill Mari, or Western Mari, can be recognized by its use of the special letters "ӓ" and "ӹ" in addition to the shared letters "ӱ" and "ӧ", while Eastern and Meadow Mari utilize a special letter "ҥ". The use of two "variants", as opposed to two "languages", has been debated: Maris recognize the unity of the ethnic group, and the two forms are very close, but distinct enough to cause some problems with communication.

The Mari language and people were known as "Cheremis" (черемисы, черемисский язык, cheremisy, cheremisskiy yazyk). In medieval texts the variant forms Sarmys and Tsarmys are also found, as well as ; and , Śarmăs before the Russian Revolution. The term Mari comes from the Maris' autonym марий (mari).

Most Maris live in rural areas with slightly more than a quarter living in cities. In the republic's capital, Yoshkar Ola, the percentage of Maris is just over 23 percent. At the end of the 1980s (per the 1989 census) Maris numbered 670,868, of whom 80% (542,160) claimed Mari as their first language and 18.8% did not speak Mari. In the Mari Republic, 11.6% claimed Mari was not their first language. In a survey by the Mari Research Institute more than three quarters of Maris surveyed considered Mari language to be the most crucial marker of ethnic identity, followed by traditional culture (61%) and common historical past (22%), religion (16%), character and mentality (15%) and appearance (11%) (see Glukhov and Glukhov for details). A gradual downward trend towards assimilation to Russian has been noted for the Communist period: the 1926 census indicated more than 99% of Maris considered Mari their first language, declining to less than 81% in 1989. Some qualitative evidence of a reversal in recent years has been noted. There was no state support for Mari language in Imperial Russia, and with the exception of some enthusiasts and numerous ecclesiastical texts by the Russian Orthodox Church, there was almost no education in Mari language. After the October Revolution, there was a period of support of all lesser national cultures in the Soviet Union, but eventually Russification returned. While the development of Mari literary language continued, still, only elementary school education was available in Mari in the Soviet period, with this policy ending in village schools in the 1970–1980s. The period of glasnost and perestroika in the 1990s opened opportunities for a revival of efforts expand the use of Mari in education and the public sphere. In the 1990s, the Mari language, alongside Russian, was proclaimed in the republican constitution to be an official language of Mari El. By the beginning of the 21st century, Mari language and literature was taught in 226 schools. At the History and Philology Department of the Mari State University and the Krupskaya Teachers' Training Institute (Yoshkar Ola), more than half of the subjects are taught in Mari.

Mari is mostly written with the Cyrillic script.

Stress is not phonemic in Mari, but a dynamic stress system is exhibited phonetically, the stressed syllable being higher in pitch and amplitude and greater in length than an unstressed syllable. Generally, there is one prominent syllable per word and prominence may be found in any syllable of the word. Post and prefixes behave as clitics, i. e., they do not have their own stress. For example, пӧ́рт (pört, "house") гыч (gəč, "out of") ; or му́ро (muro, "song") дене (dene, "with") .

Like several other Uralic languages, Mari has vowel harmony. In addition to front/back harmony, Mari also features round/unround harmony. If the stressed vowel in the word is rounded, then the suffix will contain a rounded vowel: for example, кӱтӱ́ ([kyˈty] 'herd') becomes кӱтӱ́штӧ ([kyˈtyʃtø], 'in the herd'); if the stressed vowel is unrounded, then the suffix will contain an unrounded vowel: ки́д ([kid], 'hand') becomes ки́дыште ([ˈkidəʃte], 'in the hand'). If the stressed vowel is back, then the suffix will end in a back vowel: агу́р ([aˈgur], 'whirlpool') becomes агу́рышто ([aˈgurəʃto], 'in the whirlpool').

Like other Uralic languages, Mari is an agglutinating language. It lacks grammatical gender, and does not use articles.

Two nouns can be put against each other to form nominal predication. According to Saarinen (2022) both nouns and adjectives appear in the nominative case and do not agree with the subject in number in nominal predication. Saarinen (2022) notes that when the sentence is in the indicative mood with 3sg, a copula is not used. However, a copula is obligatory and appears clause final and in other persons, tenses, and moods.

Saarinen (2022) points out that the object is marked with the accusative in transitive clauses. However, the object can appear in the nominative case in non finite constructions. When the clause is ditransitive, the direct object appears in the accusative case and the indirect takes the dative case. However, Saarinen (2022) notes that in dialects and with verbs such as йӱкты /jyktə / 'water' and пукшы /pukʃə / 'feed' both objects appear in the accusative case.