Mansi languages

Not to be confused with Mantsi language or Munsee language.

The Mansi languages are spoken by the Mansi people in Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, in the Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Sverdlovsk Oblast. Traditionally considered a single language, they constitute a branch of the Uralic languages, often considered most closely related to neighbouring Khanty and then to Hungarian.

Mansi
Vogul Mansic
Geographic distribution	Khanty–Mansi, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen
Ethnicity	Mansi people
Native speakers	2,200 (2021)
Linguistic classification	Uralic Ob-Ugric? (disputed) Mansi
Subdivisions	Southern † Eastern † Northern Western †
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mns
Glottolog	mans1269
Khanty and Mansi languages at the beginning of the 20th century

The base dialect of the Mansi literary language is the Sosva dialect, a representative of the northern language. Fixed word order is typical in Mansi. Adverbials and participles play an important role in sentence construction.

In the 2020–2021 census, 2229 people claimed to speak Mansi natively. All current speakers use Northern Mansi, as the other variants have become extinct.

Dialects

Mansi is subdivided into four main dialect groups which are to a large degree mutually unintelligible, and therefore best considered four languages. A primary split can be set up between the Southern variety and the remainder. Several features are also shared between the Western and Eastern varieties, while certain later sound changes have diffused between Eastern and Northern (and are also found in some neighboring dialects of Northern Khanty to the east).

Individual dialects are known according to the rivers their speakers live(d) on:

Proto‑Mansi

Southern Mansi (Tavda)† Core Mansi Central Mansi Western Mansi † Pelym North Vagil Mansi Language South Vagil Mansi Language Lower Lozva Mansi Language Middle Lozva Mansi Language Eastern Mansi (Konda) "†" Lower Konda Mansi Language Middle Konda Mansi Language Upper Konda Mansi Language Jukonda Mansi Language Northern Mansi Upper Lozva Mansi Language Severnaya Sosva Mansi Language Sygva Mansi Language Ob Mansi Language

The sub-dialects given above are those which were still spoken in the late 19th and early 20th century and have been documented in linguistic sources on Mansi. Pre-scientific records from the 18th and early 19th centuries exist also of other varieties of Western and Southern Mansi, spoken further west: the Tagil, Tura and Chusovaya dialects of Southern and the Vishera dialect of Western.

The two dialects last mentioned were hence spoken on the western slopes of the Urals, where also several early Russian sources document Mansi settlements. Placename evidence has been used to suggest Mansi presence reaching still much further west in earlier times, though this has been criticized as poorly substantiated.

Northern Mansi has strong Russian, Komi, Nenets, and Northern Khanty influence, and it forms the base of the literary Mansi language. 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 was described as "probably extinct" already in 1988. Although the last speaker is not known, it is considered certain that none were left at the end of the 20th century. It had strong Russian and Komi influences; dialect differences were also considerable. Long vowels were diphthongized.

Eastern Mansi became extinct in 2018, when its last speaker Maksim Šivtorov (Максим Семенович Шивторов) died. It has Khanty and Siberian Tatar influence. There is vowel harmony, and for */æː/ it has [œː], frequently diphthongized.

Southern (Tavda) Mansi was recorded from area isolated from the other Mansi varieties. Around 1900 a couple hundred speakers existed; in the 1960s it was spoken only by a few elderly speakers, and it has since then become extinct. It had strong Tatar influence and displayed several archaisms such as vowel harmony, retention of /y/ (elsewhere merged with */æ/), /tsʲ/ (elsewhere deaffricated to /sʲ/), /æː/ (elsewhere fronted to /aː/ or diphthongized) and /ɑː/ (elsewhere raised to /oː/).

Phonology

Consonants

Mansi consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	(Alveolo-) Palatal	Velar
				Plain	Labialized
Nasal	/m/	/n/	/nʲ/	/ŋ/	/ŋʷ/
Stop	/p/	/t/	/tʲ/	/k/	/kʷ/
Affricate			/ɕ/1 ~ /sʲ/
Fricative		/s/		/x/2 /ɣ/	/xʷ/3 *ɣʷ4
Semivowel			/j/		/w/
Lateral		/l/	/lʲ/
Trill		/r/

The inventory presented here is a maximal collection of segments found across the Mansi varieties. Some remarks:

1. /ɕ/ is an allophone of /sʲ/.
2. The voiceless velar fricatives /x/, /xʷ/ are only found in the Northern group and the Lower Konda dialect of the Eastern group, resulting from spirantization of *k, *kʷ adjacent to original back vowels.
3. According to Honti, a contrast between *w and *ɣʷ can be reconstructed, but this does not surface in any of the attested varieties.
4. The labialization contrast among the velars dates back to Proto-Mansi, but was in several varieties strengthened by labialization of velars adjacent to rounded vowels. In particular, Proto-Mansi *yK → Core Mansi *æKʷ (a form of transphonologization).

Vowels

The vowel systems across Mansi show great variety. As typical across the Uralic languages, many more vowel distinctions were possible in the initial, stressed syllable than in unstressed ones. Up to 18–19 stressed vowel contrasts may be found in the Western and Eastern dialects, while Northern Mansi has a much reduced, largely symmetric system of 8 vowels, though lacking short **/e/ and having a very rare long [iː]: