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Mansi
маньси/моаньсь
Spoken natively in	Russia
Region	Khanty–Mansi
Ethnicity	Mansi
Native speakers	2,750[1]  (2002)
Language family	Uralic Ugric ? Mansi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mns
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Mansi language (also Vogul, although this is obsolete, and Maansi) is spoken by the Mansi people in Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Sverdlovsk Oblast. According to the 1989 census, there were 3,184 Mansi-speaking people in Russia.

The base dialect of the Mansi literary language is the Sosva dialect, a representative of the northern dialect; the discussion below is based on the standard language. Fixed word order is typical in Mansi. Adverbials and participles play an important role in sentence construction. The written language was first published in 1868 and in 1937 was revised using a form of Cyrillic.

Contents 1 Dialects 2 Phonology 3 Alphabet 4 Grammar 4.1 Article 4.2 Nouns 4.2.1 Grammatical cases, declining 4.3 Verbs 4.3.1 Tenses 4.3.2 Moods 4.3.3 Personal suffixes 4.3.4 Active/Passive voice 4.3.5 Verbal prefixes 5 Numbers 6 Example 6.1 Comparison with Hungarian 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

  Dialects

The Mansi language is subdivided into four main dialects which are to a large degree mutually unintelligible, and therefore best considered four languages.

Northern Mansi (Sosva, Upper Lozyvin) has strong Russian, Komi, Nenets, and Northern Khanty influence. There is no accusative case; that is, both the nominative and accusative roles are unmarked on the noun. */æ/ and */æː/ have been backed to [a] and [aː].

Western Mansi (Pelym, Vagily, Middle and Lower Lazyvin) went extinct ca. 2000. It had strong Russian and Komi influences. Long vowels were diphthongized.

Eastern Mansi (Kondin) is spoken by 100–200 people. It has Khanty and Tatar influence. There is vowel harmony, and for */æː/ it has [œː], frequently diphthongized.

Southern Mansi (Tavdin) went extinct ca. 1900. It had vowel harmony and a strong Tatar influence and displayed several archaisms such as retention of /y/ (elsewhere merged with */æ/), /tsʲ/ (elsewhere deaffricated to /sʲ/), and /aː/ (elsewhere raised to /oː/).

  Phonology

Northern Mansi consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	(Alveolo-) Palatal	Velar
				Plain	Labialized
Stops	/p/ п	/t/ т	/c/ ть	/k/ к	/kʷ/ кв
Nasals	/m/ м	/n/ н	/ɲ/ нь	/ŋ/ ӈ	/ŋʷ/ ӈв
Fricatives		/s/ с	/ɕ/ сь	/x/ /ɣ/ х г	/xʷ/ хв
Approximants			/j/ й		/w/ в
Laterals		/l/ л	/ʎ/ ль
Trill		/r/ р

• /w/ acts the labialized counterpart of the only voiced fricative /ɣ/.
• In some dialects a postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ appears (written ш).

Northern Mansi vowels

	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i(ː) ы/и	u(ː) у/ю
Mid	e(ː) э/е	o(ː) о/ё
Mid	(ə)
Open	a(ː) а/я

  Alphabet

The first publication of the written Mansi language was a translation of the Gospel of Matthew published in London in 1868. In 1932 a version of Latin alphabet was introduced with little success. The former Latin alphabet:

A, B, D, E, F, G, H, Һ, I, J, K, L, Ļ, M, N, Ņ, Ŋ, O, P, R, S, S, T, Ţ, U, V, Z, Ь

In 1937, Cyrillic replaced the Latin.

The highlighted letters, and Г with the value /ɡ/, are used only in names and loanwords.

А /a/

Б /b/

В /◌ʷ/

Г /ɡ/, /ɣ/

Д /d/

Е /ʲe/

Ё /ʲo/

Ж /ʒ/

З /z/

И /i/

Й /j/

К /k/

Л /l/, /ʎ/

М /m/

Н /n/, /ɲ/

Ӈ /ŋ/

О /o/

П /p/

Р /r/

С /s/

Т /t/

У /uː/

Ў /w/

Ф /f/

Х /χ/

Ц /t͡s/

Ч /t͡ʃʲ/

Ш /ʃ/

Щ /ʃʲtʃʲ/

Ъ /-/

Ы /ɪ/

Ь /◌ʲ/

Э /ə~ɤ/

Ә /æ/

Ю /ʲu/

Я /ʲa/

  Grammar

Mansi is an agglutinating, SOV language.^[2]

  Article

There are two articles in Mansi: definite ань (aɲ), which also means "now" when placed before verbs, and indefinite акв (akʷ), literally "one".^[3]

  Nouns

There is no grammatical gender. Mansi distinguishes between singular, dual and plural number. Six grammatical cases exist. Possession is expressed using possessive suffixes, for example -зм, which means "my".

  Grammatical cases, declining

Example with: пут /put/ (cauldron)

case	sing.	dual	plural
nom.	пут put	путыг putɪɣ	путэт putət
loc.	путт putt	путыгт putɪɣt	путэтт putətt
lat.	путн putn	путыгн putɪɣn	путэтн putətn
abl.	путнэл putnəl	путыгнэл putɪɣnəl	путэтнэл putətnəl
trans.	путыг putɪɣ	-	-
instr.	путэл putəl	путыгтэл putɪɣtəl	путэтэл putətəl

Missing cases can be expressed using postpositions, such as халнэл (χalnəl, 'of, out of'), саит (sait, 'after, behind'), etc.

  Verbs

Mansi conjugation has three persons, three numbers, two tenses, and four moods. Active and passive voices exist.

Intransitive and transitive conjugations are distinguished. This means that there are two possible ways of conjugating a verb. When the speaker conjugates in intransitive, the sentence has no concrete object (in this case, the object is nothing or something like something, anything). In the transitive conjugation, there is a concrete object. This feature also exists in the other Ugric languages.

  Tenses

Mansi uses suffixes to express the tense. The tense suffix precedes the personal suffix.

Tense	Suffix	Example
Present	-г (lat.[4] -g)	минагум (lat. minagum – I am going)
Past	-с (lat. -s)	минасум (minasum – I went)

The language has no future tense; the future is expressed in other ways.

  Moods

There are four moods: indicative, conditional, imperative and precative.

Indicative mood has no suffix. Imperative mood exists only in the second person.

This section requires expansion. (June 2008)

  Personal suffixes

The suffixes are the following:

Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	-ум	-умен	-ув
2nd	-эн	-эн	-эн
3rd	(no suffix)	-ыг	-эт

Thus, the conjugation of the verb мина (lat. mina [go]), in past tense (remember the suffix -с):

Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	минасум (minasum)	минасумен (minasumen)	минасув (minasuv)
2nd	минасэн	минасэн	минасэн
3rd	минас	минасыг	минасэт

  Active/Passive voice

Verbs have active and passive voice. Active voice has no suffix; the suffix to express the passive is -ве-.

  Verbal prefixes

Verbal prefixes are used to modify the meaning of the verb in both concrete and abstract ways. For example, with the prefix эл- (el-) (away, off) the verb мина (mina) (go) becomes элмина (elmina), which means to go away. This is surprisingly close to the Hungarian equivalents: el- (away) and menni (to go), where elmenni is to go away

ēl(a) – 'forwards, onwards, away'

jōm- 'to go, to stride'	ēl-jōm- 'to go away/on'
tinal- 'to sell'	ēl-tinal- 'to sell off'

χot – 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity'

min- 'to go'	χot-min- 'to go away, to stop'
roχt- 'to be frightened'	χot-roχt- 'to take fright suddenly'

  Numbers

#	Mansi	Hungarian
1	аква (akʷa)	egy
2	китыг (kitiɣ)	kettő
3	хурум (xuːrəm)	három
4	нила (ɲila)	négy
5	ат (at)	öt
6	хот (xoːt)	hat
7	сат (saːt)	hét
8	нёллов (ɲololow)	nyolc
9	онтэллов (ontolow)	kilenc
10	лов (low)	tíz
20	хус (xus)	húsz
100	сат (saːt/janiɣsaːt)	száz
1000	сотэр (soːtər)	ezer

Numbers 1 and 2 also have attributive forms: акв (1) and кит (2); compare with Hungarian két, and Old Hungarian "kit").

  Example

ам хул алысьлаӈкве минасум. – I went fishing (literally "I fish catch went").

  Comparison with Hungarian

Here are some invented sentences in Northern Mansi (IPA transcription) and Hungarian. They demonstrate well the relationship between Hungarian and Mansi.

Mansi	Approximate pronunciation using Hungarian spelling	Hungarian	English
ˈxuːrəm neː ˈwitnəl ˈxuːlpəl xus xuːl ˈpuːɣi.	Húrem né vitnel húlpel husz húl púgi	Három nő a vízből hálóval húsz halat fog.	Three women are catching twenty fish with a net from the water.
ˈxuːrəm-saːt-xus ˈxulax-sam ˈampəm ˈwitn̩ ˈoːli	Húrem-szát-husz hulah-szam ampem viten óli	Háromszázhúsz hollószemű ebem vízen él.	The three hundred and twenty dogs of mine with raven eyes live on water.
luː ˈlaːɕal ˈmini toː ˈseːln̩	Lú lásal mini tó szélen	Ló lassan megy a tó szélén.	A horse is slowly walking on the shore of the lake.

  Notes

  References

• Nyelvrokonaink. Teleki László Alapítvány, Budapest, 2000.
• A világ nyelvei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest
• Kálmán, Béla. 1965. Vogul Chrestomathy. Indiana University Publications. Uralic and Altaic Series, Vol. 46. Mouton, The Hague. [In English.]
• Munkácsi, Bernát and Kálmán, Béla. 1986. Wogulisches Wörterbuch. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest. [In German and Hungarian.]
• Riese, Timothy. Vogul: Languages of the World/Materials 158. Lincom Europa, 2001. ISBN 3-89586-231-2
• Ромбандеева, Евдокия Ивановна. Мансийский (вогульский) язык, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Linguistics, 1973. [In Russian.]

  External links

• Mansi at Omniglot
• Mansi language dictionary
• Red Book of the Peoples – Mansi history
• Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia – Mansi education

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