Udmurt language

 ( Permic Languages ) 

Udmurt (; Cyrillic: Удмурт) is a Permic languages language spoken by the Udmurt people who are native to Udmurtia. As a Uralic languages language, it is distantly related to languages such as Finnish language, Estonian, Mansi language, Khanty language, and Hungarian. The Udmurt language is co-official with Russian language within Udmurtia.

It is written using the Cyrillic alphabet with the addition of five characters not used in the Russian alphabet: Ӝ/ӝ, Ӟ/ӟ, Ӥ/ӥ, Ӧ/ӧ, and Ӵ/ӵ. Together with the Komi language and Permyak languages, it constitutes the Permic grouping of the Uralic Language family. The Udmurt language shares similar Agglutination structures with its closest relative, the Komi language.

Among outsiders, it has traditionally been referred to by its Russian exonym, Votyak. Udmurt has borrowed vocabulary from neighboring languages, mainly from Tatar language and Russian language.

In 2010, per the Russian census, there were around 324,000 speakers of the language in the country, out of the ethnic population of roughly 554,000. Ethnologue estimated that there were 550,000 native speakers (77%) out of an ethnic population of 750,000 in the former Russian SFSR (1989 census), Ethnologue code=UDM a decline of roughly 41% in 21 years.

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Dialects Udmurt varieties can be grouped into three broad dialect groups:

• Northern Udmurt, spoken along the Cheptsa River
• Southern Udmurt
• Besermyan, spoken by the strongly Turkification

A continuum of intermediate dialects between Northern and Southern Udmurt is found, and literary Udmurt includes features from both areas. Besermyan is more sharply distinguished.

The differences between the dialects are not major and mainly involve differences in vocabulary, largely attributable to the stronger influence of Tatar in the southern end of the Udmurt-speaking area. A few differences in morphology and phonology still exist as well; for example:

• Southern Udmurt has an accusative ending -ыз , contrasting with northern -ты .
• Southwestern Udmurt distinguishes an eighth vowel phoneme .
• Besermyan has in place of standard Udmurt (thus distinguishing only six vowel phonemes), and in place of standard Udmurt .

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Phonology Unlike other Uralic languages such as Finnish language and Hungarian, Udmurt does not distinguish between long and short vowels and does not have vowel harmony.

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Consonants The consonants are restricted to loanwords, and are traditionally replaced by respectively. As in Hungarian, Udmurt exhibits regressive voicing and devoicing assimilations (the last element determines the assimilation), but with some exceptions (mostly to distinguish minimal pairs by voicing).

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Vowels

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Orthography Udmurt is written using a modified version of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet:

Д + Ж

Дь + Зь

Like Komi language і. Non-palatalizing form of и.

In loanwords.

In loanwords.

In loanwords.

Ть + Сь

Т + Ш

In loanwords.

Distinguishes palatalized consonants ( ) from unpalatalized consonants followed by /j/ if followed by vowel; for example, and are written зё ( źo) and зъё ( zjo), respectively.

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Grammar

Udmurt is an [[agglutinating]] language. It uses [[affix]]es to express possession, to specify mode, time, and so on.
     

No gender distinction is made in or personal pronouns.

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Cases Udmurt has fifteen Grammatical case: eight grammatical cases and seven locative cases.

There is no congruency between adjectives and nouns in neutral Udmurt noun phrases; in other words, there is no adjective declension as in the inessive noun phrase бадӟым гурт ын ("in a big village"; cf. Finnish grammar inessive phrase iso ssa kylä ssä, in which iso "large" is inflected according to the head noun).

+ Udmurt cases
village
genitive case	of a village / village's
village (as an object)
ablative	from a village
dative	to a village
instrumental	by means of a village
abessive	without a village
adverbial case	in a village way
in a village
into a village (or house)
from a village
starting from a village
end up at a village
along a village
towards a village

*Of all the locative cases, personal pronouns can only inflect in the allative (also called approximative).

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Plural There are two types of nominal plurals in Udmurt. One is the plural for nouns -ос/-ëс and the other is the plural for adjectives -эсь/-есь.

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Nominal plural The noun is always in plural. In attributive plural phrases, the adjective is not required to be in the plural:

+ Attributive plural !Udmurt !Transliteration !English
italic=unset	ćeber(eś) nyl jos	(the) beautiful girls

The plural marker always comes before other endings (i.e. cases and possessive suffixes) in the morphological structure of plural nominal.

+Morphological order !Udmurt !Transliteration !English
ныл ъёслы	nyl josly	to the girls
гурт ъёсазы	gurt josazy	to/in their villages

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Predicative plural As in Hungarian and Mordvinic languages, if the subject is plural, the adjective is always plural when it functions as the sentence's predicative:

+ Attributive plural !Udmurt !Transliteration !English
italic=unset	nyljos ćeber eś	the girls are beautiful
italic=unset	toljos kuź eś	the winters are long

Udmurt are inflected much in the same way that their referent nouns are. However, personal pronouns are only inflected in the grammatical cases and cannot be inflected in the locative cases.

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Pronouns

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Personal pronouns Udmurt are used to refer to human beings only. However, the third person singular can be referred to as it. The nominative case of personal pronouns are listed in the following table:

+ Personal pronouns ! ! singular ! plural

More details:

• There are self-intensifier forms: ачим 'I myself', ачид 'you yourself', ачиз 'he/she/it himself', асьмеос 'we ourselves', асьтэос 'you yourself', асьсэос 'they yourself'.

• The 1st person plural has two forms according to clusivity: асьмеос is "inclusive we" and "ми" is "exclusive we". The younger speakers seem to favor always using "ми" (probably under the influence of Russian 'my' for "we"), so that for older generation the verse from a popular song "Ойдо, нылаш ми тонэн пумиськом!" sounds strange: its intended meaning is "Hey girl, let us meet!", while in the traditional thinking it reads "Hey girl, let we all meet with you!" The expected proper phrase would be: "Ойдо, нылаш асьмеос пумиськом!" and 'ми тонэн' is a calque from the Russian phrase 'my s toboi' meaning "me and you", but the word-by-word translation is "we with you".

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Interrogative pronouns Udmurt interrogative pronouns inflect in all cases. However, the inanimate interrogative pronouns 'what' in the locative cases have the base form кыт-. The nominative case of interrogative pronouns are listed in the following table:

+ Interrogative pronouns (nominative case) !Udmurt !English
ма	what
кин	who
маос	what
кинъëс	who

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Verbs Udmurt are divided into two conjugation groups, both having the infinitive marker -ны.

There are three verbal moods in Udmurt: indicative, Conditional mood and Imperative mood. There is also an optative mood used in certain dialects. The indicative mood has four tenses: present, future, and two past tenses. In addition there are four past tense structures which include auxiliary verbs. Verbs are negated by use of an auxiliary negative verb that conjugates with personal endings.

The basic verbal personal markers in Udmurt are (with some exceptions):

+ Personal endings of verbs !Person !Ending
1st	-Ø
2nd	-д
3rd	-з
1st	-мы
2nd	-ды
3rd	-зы

+ Example conjugation: тодыны (conjugation I) !Person !Udmurt !Transliteration !English
1st	тод ӥсько*	tod iśko*	I know
2nd	тод ӥськод*	tod iśkod*	you know
3rd	тод э	tod e	he/she knows
1st	тод ӥськомы	tod iśkomy	we know
2nd	тод ӥськоды	tod iśkody	you know
3rd	тод о	tod o	they know

*The present tense in Udmurt in all but the third person, is marked with -(ӥ)сько-/-(и)сько-.

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Syntax Udmurt is an SOV language.

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Lexicon Depending on the style, about 10 to 30 percent of the Udmurt lexicon consists of . Many loanwords are from the Tatar language, which has also strongly influenced Udmurt phonology and syntax.

The Udmurt language, along with the Tatar language, influenced the language of the Udmurt Jews, in the dialects of which the words of Finno-Ugric and Turkic origin there were recorded.Altyntsev A.V., "The Concept of Love in Ashkenazim of Udmurtia and Tatarstan", Nauka Udmurtii. 2013. № 4 (66), pp. 131–132. (Алтынцев А.В., "Чувство любви в понимании евреев-ашкенази Удмуртии и Татарстана". Наука Удмуртии. 2013. №4. С. 131–132: Комментарии.) Goldberg-Altyntsev A.V., "A short ethnographic overview of the Ashkenazic Jews' group in Alnashsky District of Udmurt Republic". Die Sammlung der wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten der jungen jüdischen Wissenschaftler. Herausgegeben von Artur Katz, Yumi Matsuda und Alexander Grinberg. München, Dachau, 2015. S. 51. Гольдберг-Алтынцев А.В., "Краткий этнографический обзор группы ашкеназских евреев в Алнашском районе Удмуртской Республики / пер. с англ. яз. А.Й. Каца." Jewish studies in the Udmurt Republic: Online. Part 1. Edited by A. Greenberg. February 27, 2015 published. P. 3. Goldberg-Altyntsev A.V., "Some characteristics of the Jews in Alnashsky District of Udmurt Republic." The youth. The creativity. The science. Edited by V. Cox, A. Katz and A. Greenberg. Trenton, 2014, p. 28. (גאלדבערג-אלטינצעוו א.ו., ". איניגע באזונדערהייטן פון די יידן אין אלנאשסקער רייאן פון ודמורטישע רעפובליק" The youth. The creativity. The science. = Die Jugend. Die Kreativität. Die Wissenschaft. = נוער. יצירתיות. מדע Edited by V. Cox, A. Katz and A. Greenberg. Trenton, 2014. P. 28.)

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Media Eurovision runners-up Buranovskiye Babushki, a pop group composed of Udmurt grandmothers, sing mostly in Udmurt.

The romantic comedy film Berry-Strawberry, a joint Polish-Udmurt production, is in the Udmurt language.

In 2013, the film company "Inwis kinopottonni" produced a film in the Udmurt language called Puzkar ("nest"). "Пузкар (удмурт кино)".

The Bible was first completely translated into Udmurt in 2013.

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Bibliography

• Valentin Kel'makov (2025). 9789525150346, Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura. ISBN 9789525150346
• Jean-Luc Moreau (2025). 9782296079519, L'Harmattan. ISBN 9782296079519

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External links

• Udmurtology: Udmurt Language, History and Culture
• Literature
• The First Udmurt Forum
• Udmurt State University (has Udmurt Language Program for English speakers)
• Udmurt language, alphabet and pronunciation
• Vladimir Napolskikh. Review of Eberhard Winkler, Udmurt, München 2001 (Languages of the World. Materials 212)
• Udmurt – Finnish/Komi Zyrian dictionary (robust finite-state, open-source)
• Learning Udmurt words
• BGN/PCGN romanization tool for Udmurt

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