Mansi language Totally Explained

Everything about The Mansi Language totally explained

The Mansi language (also known as Vogul, though this name is now old-fashioned and not widely used), is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, along the Ob River and its tributaries, and parts of Sverdlovsk Oblast in Russia. According to the 1990 census, there were 3,184 Mansi-speaking people in Russia.
The Mansi language belongs to the Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian) subfamily of the Finno-Ugric languages. It is subdivided into a number of dialects, which differ from each other significantly; in fact, the four main "dialects" (East, South, West and North Mansi) are mutually unintelligible - or were: some of them are extinct. The base dialect of the Mansi literary language is the Sosva dialect; the discussion below is based on the standard language. Fixed word-order is typical for the Mansi language. Adverbials and participles play an important role in sentence construction. The written language was created in the 1930s using a form of the Russian alphabet.

The alphabet

The Mansi alphabet:
А, Б, В, Г, Д, Е, Ё, Ж, З, И, Й, К, Л, М, Н, Ң, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь, Э, Ю, Я The Latin Mansi alphabet (not used):
A, B, C, 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

Grammar

Mansi is an agglutinating language.

Article

In Mansi, no articles exist - neither definite, nor indefinite.
It means that "cauldron", "the cauldron" and "a cauldron" all translate to "пут".

Nouns

There is no grammatical gender. Mansi distinguishs 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 (cauldron)

case	sing.	dual	plural
nom.	пут	путыг	путэт
loc.	путт	путыгт	путэтт
lat.	путн	путыгн	путэтн
abl.	путнэл	путыгнэл	путэтнэл
trans.	путыг	-	-
instr.	путэл	путыгтэл	путэтэл

Missing cases can be expressed using postpositions, such as халнэл (of, out of), саит (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's 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. -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 blandishing.
Indicative mood has no suffix. Imperative mood exists only in the second person.

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 (χūrəm)	három
4	нила (ńila)	négy
5	ат (at)	öt
6	хот (χōt))	hat
7	сат (sāt)	hét
8	нёллов (ńololow)	nyolc
9	онтэллов (ontolow)	kilenc
10	лов (low)	tíz
20	хус (χus)	húsz
100	сат (sāt/janiɣsāt)	száz
1000	сотэр (sōtər)	ezer

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

Example

ам хул алысьлаңкве минасум. - I went fishing (literally "I fish catch went").

Comparison with Hungarian

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

Mansi	Hungarian	English
Hurem né vituel huligel husz hul pugi.	Három nő a vízből hálóval húsz halat fog.	Three women are catching twenty fish with a net from the water.
Huremszáthusz hulachszäm ampem viten äli.	Háromszázhúsz hollószemű ebem vízen él.	The three hundred and twenty dogs of mine with raven eyes live on water.
Pegte lau lasinen manl tou szilna.	Fekete ló lassan megy a tó szélén.	A black horse is slowly walking on the shore of the lake.

Further Information

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