Talk:Moksha language

Logographic script
Unless I see some actual source for this script, I am going to delete the section DGG (talk) 22:29, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Is DGS trying to hit again? Let it be as it is, otherwise you are cultural barbar without any knowlwdge of Finno Ugrian languages. Peharps the writer can name those faceless persons in Moskova which formed the team (under Iosif Dzhugasvili´s orders to Commissar of Education toveri Bubkin?). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.122.217 (talk) 15 March 2009
 * Well, this information needs a clear citation, with at least an ISBN or something so that it can be verified that it exists. Mo-Al (talk) 23:16, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Also I believe the names should be in Cyrillic rather than transliteration, otherwise it is difficult to search for the source. Mo-Al (talk) 23:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know how to provide ISBN for 100 y older sources. I guess, if European scientists didn't have opportunity to study old Volga Finnish script it doesn't mean this script never existed--Khazar II (talk) 13:23, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Proto Uralian (Uralic) Language and its variant developing later to Moksha Dialect Language
These reconstructed words have become now in light of this early common language spoked by all Finno Urgrians c. 3700 BC also in the Rava / Rav bend area as well as in Finland and Estonia.
 * pexli = edge, ippi = father in law, ina / inajppi = mother in law, toli = come. weti = water, witti / wixti / witi = five, kanta = to bear, käktä = two, juka = river, pithkä = long, putci = pipe, sala = secret, jingsi = bow, kaxsi = spruce, miksa = pay, poskij = cheek, silmä = eye, moski = wash, cecä = uncle, meni = to go, ämä / emä = mother, tumti = feel, jänti = string, nixli = arrow, nüthi = stem, thümä = glue, katha = dissapear, lomi = snow, käxli = tongue / langue, kunili = tear, wengiw / wängiw = son-in-law, päjwä = sun / day / warm, pithiwti = lenght / height, kaja = sun.

Here are only few of about 150 words which are know. Source: Tapani Lehtinen: Kielen vuosituhannet 2007. The earliest Indo-Iranian loan words appeared 1000 years later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.122.217 (talk) 11:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Jimmy Holmes
You destroyed at ones the work to expand the history of Moksha language history even before I had finished it. Four hours work based to reliable Finnish and other reliable academic sources including also Marija Gimbutas and Mallory. Four hours work for magpies. Strange policy in English Wikipedia. Human is not god decising what can be published in Discussion page of main article. This is angry and bitter comment against those who think they know everything. Too sensitive matter for some people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.122.217 (talk) 06:29, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Moksha Cyrillic
I’ve got a question concerning the comment that the vowels /æ/ and /ə/ are not indicated in a consistent way. It is my understanding that the letter я represents the vowel /æ/ (where it occurs after a consonant) and the letter ъ represents /ə/ (where it occurs in the first root syllable). My Moksha phonology isn’t that great, but I’m fairly sure that /æ/ only occurs after consonants (where it indicates palatalized consonants when appropriate), and that /ə/ is predictable everywhere except the first syllable of a root. Thus it seems that the orthography is quite consistent in its rendering of /æ/ and /ə/. I hope a Moksha speaker familiar with linguistics can help out here as I’m certainly not a specialist in the language. languagegeek (talk) 19:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi,Languagegeek. I'm Mokshan, I speak Moksha and I studied linguistics. I can give you a couple of examples and you will understand all. Words /pinæ/, /æRJkæ/, /erjavi/, /valjmæ/, /ərjvæ/, /mərgə/ are пине, эрьхке, эряви, вальма, рьвя, мрга in Cyrillic. It is just normal Russian alphabet used for writing Mokshan words as they are heard to Russian ear. Actually there are front /ə/ and back /ə/, but we recently started using ъ representing only one /ə/, before 1990s there was no rule for /ə/ at all. There is only one /i/ phoneme in Moksha but ы is used in all cases when it just resembles Russian ы.--Numulunj pilgae 09:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Numulunj pilgae (talk • contribs)


 * Thanks Numulunj pilgae, I appreciate the help. I see that /æRJkæ/ and /erjavi/ truly show the fault in the system. When /æ/ occurs at the beginning of a word, there’s no way to write it, and when /a/ occurs after a palatalised consonant, there’s no way to write it. The others seem to me to show irregular spelling more than a broken orthography: couldn’t /ərjvæ/ be written ърьвя? As for the ы, would that be used when /i/ follows a non-palatal consonant?
 * So there would have to be something like ӓ for /æ/ which does not occur after a palatalised consonant, and я for /æ/ elsewhere. And йа for /ja/. Or something like that. That makes /æRJkæ/ ӓрьхкя and /erjavi/ эрйави.
 * I’ve been looking at the few Moksha language books I can find here in Canada in either French or English, and find the language very interesting and fun. But it is difficult for me to be sure of my pronunciation due to the spelling. Thanks again. languagegeek (talk) 17:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

1930's Proposed Latin Alphabet
There is inconsistency between the graphic of the 1930's alphabet and the text. The graphic shows the 3rd and 4th letters as c and з while the text has c and ç. In other Uralic 1930's Latin orthographies, c represents /ts/, ç is /tɕ/ or /tsʲ/, and з is /dʒ/. Judging from Moksha phonology, I would assume that the correct symbols are c and ç, but it is possible that the proposed Latin Alphabet for Moksha had some unique characteristics. The other Uralic 1930's orthographies also use a subscript diacritic to indicate palatalization. From the descriptions here and on the Russian page, it appears that neither Moksha nor Erzya used such a diacritic, and I'd have to assume that something like j was used instead. Could someone please let me know if what I've described is accurate? languagegeek (talk) 18:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

unexpected letters
д?! That looks like de (Cyrillic) on my screen, maybe it looks like something else to you? —Tamfang (talk) 06:46, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That's not IPA, so shouldn't be there. I removed these from the sounds column. --JorisvS (talk) 17:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Moksha Hieroglyphic Script is a Hoax
DGG, I'm an expert in writing systems and I have a suspicion that the Moksha Script is a hoax. I can read and transliterate Russian so I might actually try to look up said "sources". However, I just want you to know that I think it's a hoax. I've never heard of it before and it's a significantclaim.

To elaborate, it's not in Peter Daniel's Writing Systems of the World. Neither does it appear anywhere else on the internet. More telling is that it sounds unlikely. You see, in the past few years I've only come across a few scripts I never read about before, Alaska Script and Carolines Script, and both of these are probably contact syallbaries like Cherokee or even Rongo-Rongo. But a hieroglyphic writing system like this would definitely appear somewhere in the books.

What's more, its presentation appears fake. No writing system known has 3,000 glyphs. Maybe 3,000 glyph-combinations (Chinese), but not glyphs. And non-Chinese writng systems don't organize glyph-combinations so simply as to make 3,000 distinct combinations. The way the glyphs are presented looks fake. The phonetic values would be C, V, CV, or CVC. But all that is given is whole words, as if the hoax-maker doesn't really understand how hieroglyphic writing systems work.

Furthermore, the glyphs look fake. Glyphs only look pictoral if employed on monuments or very near their creation. Soon after, like Egyptian, Chinese, Sumerian, they decay to abstract scribbles.

What they're proposing is like the Yi Script (southern China). But the Yi Script hasn't been pictoral since it was first invented, thousands to hundreds of years ago. And the Yi Script is a derivation of Chinese. What would Moksha be a derivation of? Egyptian or Hittite Hieroglyphic. So then, where's the empire? Archaeologically, Mordovia was barbaric during that time frame. Empires, even kingdoms, leave behind tell-tale evidence of existence, the world over.

The hoax wouldn't be a big deal because the learned could see through it. But these people are being rascals disrespectful of history and people's eagerness to trust Wikipedia.

Blissglyphs (talk) 19:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I worked with the reference librarians and those documents don't exist. It was kind of a fun hoax though, but I'd prefer it if it was better done yet. I'm not going to tell you how.

Blissglyphs (talk) 20:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm no linguist. but I'd consider the symbols in the figure not   pictorial but the sort of abstractions that seems characteristic of invented languages. The  word choice in that figure looks highly unlikely to me, as well. there's a nice little book In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent ISBN 9780385527880 (including a good chapter on Chinese).   DGG ( talk ) 23:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Does this suspicions also apply to the numeral system discussed at Mokshan numeric system? Fences  &amp;  Windows  00:34, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Number of Moksha speakers
According to the 2010 All-Russian census there were nearly 750,000 Mordvins, i.e. Erzyas and Mokshas, in Russia. For some reason it has been common practice to say that there are two Erzyas for every one Moksha. This practice stems from the result of the 1926 census, in which there was an official interest in finding the actual number of Erzyas and Mokshas. Since then Official counts have not been made distinguishing actual numbers of Erzyas and Mokshas. Since half a million is twice the number of what one might expect (250,000), the number of Mokshas indicated on this page struck me as peculiar. There are no real officially documented facts in favor or opposing this claim. It is only theoretical practice that would state the number of Moksha speakers is double of what is expected. Rueter (talk) 09:43, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I've referenced the number. I don't really get your objection. We don't go by gut feelings, but by sources. --JorisvS (talk) 15:41, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * No, he has a point. Ethnologue's 614K in '02 is indeed the total number of Mordvinic speakers, as you can check from the primary census results (see links eg. via Demographics of Russia). Thus, not a reliable number, seems like. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:13, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Right, they list the same figure under Erzya, and then give another 'in all countries' figure. Can we find something reliable? --JorisvS (talk) 20:28, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Teaching Moksha
If the machine translation of the site gives the correct impression, the source says that compulsory study of Moksha as part of the curriculum is illegal, which something very different from what the sentence "Since 2010 teaching of Moksha language in schools is illegal" means. --JorisvS (talk) 14:18, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, JorisvS, there is the word compulsory in the text. In fact that is an assimilation policy word play - "this thing is not banned but just not allowed". Excluding the language compulsory study as part of the curriculum is still nothing but excluding. It's much easier to find reasons why not teaching on voluntary basis. Is it compulsory for children to study their mother language in schools as a subject (using Moksha as the language of instruction in schools banned since 1938)? 100% population in Moksha areas are Moksha speaking. Is it important for them using their first language? Never seen legal documents with phrases like 'yes, we officially ban here using some language as a part of our assimilation policy'.--Numulunj pilgae 05:19, 19 December 2012 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Numulunj pilgae (talk • contribs)
 * We can discuss whether it is a good thing that in a natively Moksha-speaking area people are not obliged to learn Moksha (I think it is not), but that's a very different issue. If teaching and learning Moksha is allowed on a voluntary basis, even if only allowed on a voluntary basis, that means that teaching Moksha is not illegal. At Wikipedia we must report the facts straightforwardly and without interspersing it with our opinions. --JorisvS (talk) 10:14, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree 'not allowed' not always = 'illegal' but to be precise we need to pay attention to the Prosecutor's office source comments. "Compulsory study of Mordvinian language (in Russia they use this term Mordvinian language instead Mokshan and Erzyan in spite of the fact Mordvinian language never existed) in schools is illegal and violates constitutional rights of the young persons (under age 18 in Russian Federation) for free choice of the language of communication, education, training and creative work". What kind of choice is it? It needs at least 2 options to make a choice. Why Moksha speaking child may not choose his own language even as a subject in school? Because teaching this language is illegal. Why illegal? The Prosecutor's office explaines why compulsory study is illegal, that is Russian Federation 'Education Law' Article 50, para 4 "all persons under age 18 have the right to study in accordance with federal state educational standarts" which of course are in Russian. According to the source "Kochkurovo school principal and all other school principals in the same rayon were warned". If I were a school principal wishing to continue teaching Moksha or Erzya language to children at least as a subject (it's clear that schools cannot provide full study on voluntary basis after classes) I had to prove there is some sufficient number of volunteers, collect all their parents confirmations etc. Does the school principal take a risk? Of course. In case of second Prosecutor's warning this person can be charged to penalty payments or inprisonment. So, to be on the safe side the principals have to stop teaching this language at all. According to UNESCO information in cases when a language is not used in such areas as media, schools, employment it means this language future is in danger. Today there is 1 newspaper and 1 magazine in Moksha (there were at least 18 in 1930s in Moksha and Erzya) and only the newspaper has opportunity to offer subscription and web version. Using this language in employment is not allowed too. Moksha language is marked as 'definitely endangered' according to UNESCO classification . Where you can use it? Speak it at home. That is the meaning of 'not allowed' in this case. --Numulunj pilgae (talk) 05:32, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Your post is rather long, and though I may well agree with you, I get the impression that your aim is beyond what is said in the source, which would make anything inspired by that likely to be at least original research and maybe, if we combine it with what other sources say, synthesis. --JorisvS (talk) 12:03, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I made it long in order to comment the situation. I could use only one sentence like According to the Prosecutor's office information officials defend the right of Russian and Moksha speaking children to study and communicate only in Russian. That is what literally said. Doesn't it sound absurd? If adding UNESCO information it is clear that officials prevent any efforts to save the endangered language. My language is dying in spite of that fact one can read in Russian sources that this is one of the offcial languages in Mordovia. That was my aim: to show a skeleton in the wardrobe while according to the official information it is considered a living person. So, no synthesis or original researches, only facts.--Numulunj pilgae (talk) 10:21, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, it sounds quite absurd. And it is very bad that Moksha is under such pressure from Russian! Nevertheless, if there is no reliable source saying what you are saying, we cannot include it in the article, because that would make it original research (OR), however true it may be. If there is a reliable source that says it, it is a simple matter of using that. --JorisvS (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree. I guess we can solve this by adding more information on bans and repressions in Moksha language history. Many information can be found in the source I. T. Kreindler, "The Mordvinians: A doomed Soviet nationality?" and in Moksha and Russian sources. I will add 'History' part like it is made in Lithuanian language etc. --Numulunj pilgae (talk) 13:56, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, and when adding a piece of information, just make sure you're true to the source without literally copying it. --JorisvS (talk) 11:13, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Phonology section
Some notes: In textbooks they are usually described as "like in Russian" and "they are always non-palatalized" that lead me to the conclusion that from the IPA point of view it's better to write them as /ʂ, ʐ/. However, in other works that use a UPA-like transcription these are written as simple ⟨š, ž⟩ not ⟨ṣ̌, ẓ̌⟩ I propose to write /ʂ ʐ/ in the consonant table but ⟨š, ž⟩ in other places.
 * 1) Maybe I was not too attentive and do not know some researches but I did not find a proper description of post-alveolar (?) sibilants. According to Feoktistov they are: alveolar-cacuminal (альвеолярно-какуминальные) (1966); palatal (нёбные) (1975); dento-alveolar (дентально-альвеолярные) (1993). Zaicz (1998) names them "alveolar", but Raun (1988) does not explain.
 * 1) In a UPA-like transcription Mokshan ⟨ы⟩ is written as ⟨i⟩ with ⟨<⟩ below. So for simplicity's sake I propose to write ⟨į⟩ here.
 * 2) Same goes for ⟨R, L, Ŕ, Ĺ, J⟩.
 * 3) Cyrillic is less understood than Latin so I propose to write with a UPA-like transcription (we have not to follow it strictly). This way is used by Rauno (1988) and Feoktistiv (1975, 1993). Moreover, Cyrillic does not unambiguously represent some vowels, we would have always to write phonemic transcription after it.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm indeed mainly following the UPA transcription. If you can look up a phonetic study of Moksha (there is probably one out there somewhere), that'd clear things, but all basic treatments of Mordvinic languages (e.g. Paasonen's dialect dictionary with materials from the early 1900s, or the recently published Aasmäe et al. Moksha Prosody) persistently seem to use only š, ž. I think we can rule out subapical retroflexes proper, but it's unclear if the most proper IPA value would be laminal postalveolar or apical postalveolar . Do we have any precedents from sources that use IPA transcription?
 * We could probably use either IPA or Latin transcription (which could be either after the narrow UPA standard or something else), but I think the Cyrillic orthography deserves to be included in some way. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 06:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I know only works in Russian, here is a good bibliography, but I have no access to any of those books. Anyway articulatory phonetics has never been a strong side of Soviet/Russian linguistics, I doubt they explain the articulation properly there.
 * As for on-line sources I found some interesting abstract of a dissertation. She says on the page 8 about "velar [š] and [ž]". On the page 14, when she describes the consonantism of the ä-dialect (close to Standard Mokshan): "the consonants [š] and [ž] are exclusively hard, even the front vowels come out in their retracted variants before these consonants" (cогласные [š] и [ž] исключитслыю твердые, даже гласные переднего ряда после них выступают в своем заднерядном варианте). Both descriptions could be easily taken for retroflexes. But! In some dialect there are "soft" [š’] and [ž’] also. Probably the best solution is /ʃ~ʂ/, /ʒ~ʐ/ in the consonant table.
 * As for the IPA I'm strongly against it outside of the phonology section as we have no clear sources which might use it. But it's much better using the "Finno-Ugric" transcription that is close to the sources (it's in fact rather broad, not narrow, and might be not the UPA in the strict sense of the term). Cyrillic is OK, if it would really help. In the grammar section I plan to use Cyrillic plus this broad Latin transcription.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:26, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess the note on dialects with "soft šʹ" probably refers to those dialects that have a four-way contrast between e.g., not to the realization of the plain š series?
 * IPA is not necessary outside of the phonology section, I agree on that. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:25, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * From the abstract of the above-mentioned dissertation (p.14): In the Rybkinо-Mamolaevo (Kovylkinsky District) subdialects of the ä-dialect palatal (палатальные) [š’], [ž’] as well as [š’č’] have developed: [š’äč’s’] "(he) was born", [t’už’ä] "yellow", [š’č’ät’ä] "maternal grandfather".
 * (p.16): Unlike the majority of the ä- and e-dialects, in the i-dialects at the beginning of the words there can be pronounced either hard [š], [ž] or soft [š’], [ž’]: [šovda] "dark", [šadə̑] "flood", but [š’ovə̑n’] "back of the head," [š’ə̑van’e] "thin", [ž’ar’ams] "to fry", [ž’ol’n’ams] "to purl".

Vowels subsection
My style might be not so good (I'm not a writer, even in Russian I write "too plain and bare"). But still my original explanation looks for me more clear then now. For "clarification":
 * 1) /e/ and /æ/ do always occur after palatalized consonant. The key point here that for non-paired consonants (i.e. that have no phonemically palatalized pair) this palatalization is purely allophonic. E.g. words like мяк "even" and менель "sky" phonemically /mæk/ and /menʲəlʲ/, but phonetically [mʲæk] and [mʲenʲəlʲ].
 * 2) Strictly speaking /ʲa/ and /æ/ might be considered allophones. As it was said, /ʲa/ only exists in /Cʲ_C  in the middle of words, while /æ/ only in /Cʲ_Cʲ and /Cʲ_.
 * 3) As from #1 the letter ⟨э⟩ appears only at the beginning of native words and can means both /æ/ and /e/. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:15, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Re #1: checking some sources, it seems that while in most cases Erzya Ce- corresponds to Moksha Cʲe-, Cʲä-, there are also a few exceptions such as seks 'dirt', sezəm 'heartwood'. These are per Paasonen's old dictionary though and I suppose the situation in modern standard Moksha could be different. Re #2, this seems to rather indicate a neutralization of the ä/a contrast than a clearly phonemically analyzable situation.
 * As an aside, do you have a specific source for the transcription of ä as, or are you going off the UPA? I've usually seen in more phonetically-minded sources. -- Trɔpʏliʊm  • blah 16:48, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, many Moksha and Erzya sounds correspond quite straightforward: M ä : E e, M Cʲa : E Cʲa. According to Rédei's dictionary (p. 755) PFU *säksä > M seksa, E seks(´e). In Moksha seksa (obsolete) may be from e-dialects or a loanword from Erzya. Śezəm (сезом) exists in modern Moksha.
 * For ä: All sources describe it as a low front vowel, a front counterpart of a, that is /æ/. As I understand the UPA ä is the IPA æ, while the IPA ɛ is the UPA ɛ.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:02, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

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Vowels y and õ
The schwa sound is close to the Estonian õ, so õ is a good way to transcribe it, even in later syllables where it is an allophone of o. The soft schwa is an allophone of e. The hard allophone of i does not occur in any Uralic language using the Latin alphabet, but is transliterated from Russian as y. 2A00:23C7:5882:8201:A0FB:3F9C:5928:6DA2 (talk) 12:47, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

User Thadh is deleting language history

 * User Thadh doesn't like the section History and starts deleteing it line by line. Th template is absolutely inappropriate since every example is taken from corresponding scholarly source starting from 1913.Numulunj pilgae (talk) 17:31, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The only thing I've deleted was an empty section. As for the template, Beekes, for one, says absolutely nothing about the Moksha language. Most other sources are poorly given. Stetsyuk's paper isn't even published, so I'm dubious it can be regarded an authoritative source. Thadh (talk) 17:39, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * You've deleted the heading. It made the section looking bizarre and dubious. Stetsyuk is published in academia.edu, Beekes is the Greek etymology dectionary's author, he did not have to write about Moksha language. It is an exact match confirmed by two dictionaris. What are the "most sources poorly given" namely?Numulunj pilgae (talk) 19:31, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I deleted an L2 preceding another L2, that's more than reasonable (granted, you've now turned the second L2 into an L3 header, so that's also an okay fix). "Indo-Iranian Influence" at the moment is an empty header without any information, so I don't see a reason for it to stay.
 * Academia is not a respectable scientific journal and I don't see any indication the author has any credibility as a historical linguist.
 * Since you cite Beekes as proof for the relation of the Ancient Greek term and the Moksha term, it gives the impression Beekes actually said anything on the issue, while in fact he didn't. At all. The fact two words are similar aren't proof of relation, and certainly aren't proof of historic interaction.
 * Most other sources than Stetsyuk and Beekes aren't given in the reference list or have bad markup or both. Please at least fix them, so anyone can assess these. "Serebrenikov & Feoktistov 1998" alone doesn't help with identifying the source of the information you give. Thadh (talk) 19:55, 19 June 2022 (UTC)