Veps

Vepsian script

Завсектором языкознания Института языка, литературы и истории КарНЦ РАН, доктор филологических наук Зайцева Н. Г.

  The Vepsian language is currently included in the Red Book of languages of the peoples of Russia (see: Red Book, 1994. P. 21-22). It belongs to languages with an interrupted written tradition.

  The Vepsian script was created in 1931 on the basis of the Latin script (Mullonen 1967), but in 1937 it was converted to Cyrillic, and a few months later its use was banned. Work on the creation of Vepsian script, conversion of school education into the native language, training of teachers for Vepsian schools and specialists for party and political work among Vepsians was carried out in the Leningrad region, where a special department for work with national minorities was established in 1931. A committee of the new alphabet, based on the Latin script, began to work on the creation of writing systems for the Izhors, Vepsians, and Sami. Preparation of Vepsian script and school textbooks was entrusted to a working group headed by M. M. Hämäläinen (later it was headed by N. I. Bogdanov), formed of teachers who spoke Vepsian. In February 1931 the Vepsian alphabet in Latin script was approved and the ‘First Vepsian alphabet and reading book’ was prepared, which was published only in November 1932.

  In 1932, Vepsian departments were opened in two pedagogical technical schools - Domozhirovsky and Lodeynopolsky. Teachers for Vepsian schools were also trained at short-term courses. With the appearance of the first Vepsian textbooks, 48 literacy centres were opened. The process of transition of Vepsian children to education in their native language in the Leningrad region was completed by 1935.

  According to official statistics, in the 1935/1936 school year there were 2533 pupils in 53 Vepsian primary schools and 554 pupils in 7 incomplete secondary schools. By the 1935/1936 school year the system of school education in the native language for Vepsians of the Leningrad region provided primary and incomplete secondary education in the native language. During the whole period of Vepsian writing, about 30 books in Vepsian language were published, which were mainly translations of standard textbooks.

  In the second half of the 1930s, the country's national policy changed dramatically. The state switched from promoting the ethnic and cultural development of the non-Russian peoples of the country to the formation of a more homogeneous national composition of the country's population. A number of actions were taken, primarily aimed at assimilating small peoples and ethnic groups that did not have their own national-state and national-territorial formations or lived outside the country. The first step was the decision in 1936 to replace the alphabets created on the basis of the Latin alphabet with the Cyrillic alphabet. The choice of the Latin alphabet was declared erroneous as leading to an artificial separation of indigenous peoples from the Russian language and Russian culture.

  In the Leningrad region in 1937 the reorganisation of national schools ‘into Soviet schools of ordinary type’ began. In the course of ‘reorganisation’ not only was education transferred from Vepsian to Russian, but also its teaching in school as a subject was excluded. The use of Latin-based Vepsian writing was prohibited, so previously published literature in Vepsian was withdrawn from school libraries. All information on the history, culture and language of the Vepsian people was excluded from history, geography and local history courses. At the same time, teacher training at Vepsian departments of pedagogical schools was stopped.

  Only in 1989 it became possible to revive the Vepsian script (Vepsy 2007: 115-116). By the decision of the Government of the Karelian ASSR, the Vepsian script was revived in two scripts: Latin and Cyrillic, and two alternative primers were created (Zaiceva, Mullonen 1991; Maximova, Kottina 1992). However, all subsequent books, textbooks and teaching aids, as well as fiction, used only the Latin script. Therefore, in 2007 the government of the Republic of Karelia corrected the previous decision and approved an alphabet based on the Latin script as the only alphabet for the Vepsian language, which also maintained the continuity of tradition with the first period of the Vepsian written language, and also allowed to be in the same written field with related peoples: Karelians, Finns, Estonians.

  Research work in the field of Young-Writing Vepsian has so far focused on compiling Vepsian-Russian (Zaiceva, Mullonen 1996; Zaiceva 2010) and Russian-Vepsian dictionaries (Zaiceva, Mullonen 2007), bulletins of new vocabulary and terminology (2001-2, 2004), and textbooks for schools and universities. To date, textbooks and reading books for schools, some textbooks for universities, and dictionaries have been created.

  The Veps language as a subject is taught in three schools in the Republic of Karelia and one school in Babaevsky District, Vologda Oblast. At present, due to the closure of small schools, schools in the Vepsian hinterland have suffered first of all: schools in the Podporozhsky district of the Leningrad Oblast in the village of Ozero and in the village of Yaroslavichi have been closed, and the school in the village of Kurbe, which was famous for its school museum and the most serious attitude to teaching the Vepsian language, is practically not functioning.

  The period of 20 years has had an impact on the development of the young written language, which has been enriched with new vocabulary and terminology; work is underway to form orthography norms; Vepsian literature and mass media have appeared; in recent years, textbooks have begun to be retrained to take into account the changes that have taken place in the language over this period. It cannot be said that the situation with the Vepsian language has changed radically, but some progress has been made. Certain features of the young written Vepsian language, the problems of its creation, periods and prospects of development, and the principles of selecting certain dialectal phenomena for it are covered in a number of articles by the head of this project ‘Vepsian Corpus’ (see e.g. Zaitseva 2006: 119-135, 2007: 126-154).

  The creators hope that the idea of the Vepsian Corpus may become a factor of national revival, stimulate Russian and foreign research involving Vepsian materials and may indirectly influence the popularisation of the Vepsian language and culture in general. The Vepsian Corpus project can become a kind of museum of the Vepsian language with a wide and accessible range of exhibits.

  At the same time, the solution of the specific tasks set for the corpus will make it possible to talk about the development of a model for the documentation of the languages of small-numbered peoples, which may disappear from the linguistic map of Russia in the coming decades.

 

Dialects of the Veps language

 

  The Vepsian language is heterogeneous in its structure. There are three dialects: Northern Vepsian, or Prionezhsky, Middle Vepsian and Southern Vepsian. North Vepsian is spoken by the inhabitants of the Vepsian villages of the Prionezhsky district, which are located along the south-western shore of Lake Onega in Karelia. Some speakers of the dialect live in the city of Petrozavodsk.

  The Middle Vepsian dialect is scientifically divided into eastern and western dialects. The eastern dialect is spoken by the inhabitants of the Vologda Oblast. But even here we should also single out the Kuisko-Pondalsky, Pyazhozersky, and Shimozersky dialects, which in the area of verb grammar differ significantly from the western dialects and from some eastern dialects. Their dialectal differences are so serious that they may serve as a basis for revising the dialectal division of Vepsian speech (see Zaitseva N. G., 2002). The western speakers of the Middle Vepsian dialect, or also called Priyatsky, are widespread in the territory of the Leningrad Oblast in the Podporozhsky (a considerable part), Tikhvin, and Lodeynopolsky districts. In the Boksitogorsky District of the Leningrad Region live representatives of the South Vepsian dialect.

  The dialect features are described most fully in the works of E. A. Tunkelo (Tunkelo 1946, s. 1-18), M. M. Hämäläinen (1966, pp. 99-100), Viytso T.R. (1958), Zaitseva M. I. (1981), Zaitseva N. G., Yakovlev L. P. (1991, pp. 91-92). Summarising all the information known in the above-mentioned field, we can name the following most striking features of Vepsian dialects.

  The North Vespian dialect is noted in this series:

  1. by the presence of d’ in place of j at the beginning of the word: d’äniš ‘hare’, " ' "o 'already', d" ' "umal ‘god’, d" ' "äritada 'crush', d" ' "on ‘(I) drink’, d" ' "ättab '(he) will leave';
  2. irregular representation of ancient long vowels in the first syllable of a word: maa 'earth, land', puul' e 'on the tree', suuhu 'in the mouth';
  3. the presence of geminate consonants kgtdpbz, z in the 3rd person singular form of the Indicative preposition: kattab ‘(he) will cover’, laddib ‘(he) will adjust’, teggob ‘(he) will do’, l' ubbub '(he) will rise', hüppib '(he) jumps', läzzub '(he) liyng down';
  4. considerably more softening than in other dialects of the consonants lnr before -е in nominative forms (e.g. in the allative: sizarel‘e 'to sister', mamal" ' "e ‘to mum’), as well as in personal forms of verbs possessing on a base -e: tul" ' "en "(I) will come", pan" ' "ed '(you) put', pur" ' "ed '(you) bite', man" ' "e '(you) go!', tul" ' "e ‘(you) come!’;
  5. on the contrary, the absence of the softening of consonantal sounds after -i-, so characteristic of other dialects: lehmid ‘cows’, heil ‘at them’, voil ‘butter’; tulid ‘(you) came’, kavelin ‘(I) walked’, söizin ‘(I) would eat’;
  6. short personal ending of the 1st and 2nd person plural of the main conjugation: -m or -d(-t, –tt): löudam ‘(you) will find’, sanud (sanut) ‘(you) will say’;
  7. from contracted diphthongs oiui to diphthong ii and monophthong i: kaniid~kanid ‘kur’ (compare in other dialects kanoid), sanid ‘(you) said’; sanizid ‘(you) would say’ (compare in other dialects sanuid, sanuizid);
  8. use of the indicative in the 3rd person singular preposition and imperfect with few exceptions (verbs like panoba ‘(they) put’, mäba ‘(they) go’) indefinite-personal (or in other terminology, passive) in origin: mändaze ‘(they) go’, tehtaze ‘(they) do’; mändihe ‘(they) walked’, tehtihe ‘(they) did’.

The Middle Vepsian dialect is characterised by:

  1. by retaining j (Western speakers) at the beginning of the word or replacing it with g" ' " (Eastern speakers): järv-g" ' "ärv ‘lake’, jüged-g" ' "üged 'heavy', jaritada-g" ' "äritada ‘to crush’, jonoštada-g" ' "onoštada 'to emphasise';
  2. by the hardness of the consonants before e: tulen ‘(I) will come’, ühtele-ühtelo ‘to one’, kandoizele ‘on the stump’;
  3. constant representation of short vowels and single consonants in place of the primitive long vowels and heminates: maha ‘ into the ground’, sos 'into the swamp’, puhu ‘into the tree’; katab ‘(he) will cover’, lugeb ‘(he) reads’, libub ‘(he) rises’;
  4. by softening the endings expressed by a single consonant after i: puid’ 'of the trees', lehtesil’ 'on the foliage’; nuuzid’ ‘(you're) awake', libui.d’ ‘(you're) up', panizi.d’ ‘(you) would put it down';
  5. by the presence in the endings of the 1st and 2nd person plural, except -m и –t , of the sound combinations -ai и –ei: tulemai ‘(we) will come’, sötei ‘(you) eat’;
  6. by the presence of the personal-numerical ending in the 3rd person plural Imperfect -ba: lugiba ‘(they) read’, paniba ‘(they) put’, tuliba ‘(they) came’.

The South Vepsian dialect is characterised by:

  1. ancient j beginning of the corresponding words: juma ‘god’, joda ‘drink’, jur 'root';
  2. late long vowels in place of diphthongs on i и на u: hag (compare in other dialects haug, houg) 'wood', picune 'small' (compare to picuine), mul'last year' (compare to muloi);
  3. many long vowels of secondary origin in place of combinations of vowel sounds with the consonant -l, explained by vocalisation of -l (l> l> u) and the subsequent likening of the vocalised consonant sound to the vowel in front of it, thus becoming a long vowel: meja ” у нас” (ср. mejal, mijou); edu ‘before’ (compare to edel, eduu), logo ‘in the mowing’ (compare to logol, logou);
  4. the 1st and 2nd person plural endings of an asset have a long vowel a: nägita ‘(you) have seen’, kulima ‘(you) have heard’, tulema ‘(we) will come’, teget‘(you) will do’;
  5. in the negative 3rd person plural form preposition and imperfect of the asset, the negative verb is in the form of eba, which is not characteristic of the Northern and Middle Vepsian dialects: eba tule '(they) will not come', eba uju '(they) not swim' eba pezend '(they) did not wash' eba ajand '(they) did not leave'

 

  Peculiarities of transcription of Vepsian dialect speech


The peculiarities of Finno-Ugric transcription are presented in the most detail in Suomalais-ugrilainen tarkekirjoitus (‘Finno-Ugric Transcription’, 1970). The dialectal texts presented in the Vepsian corpus are recorded with a simplified phonetic transcription.

  Geminates are labelled with the same two letters (sötta ‘feed’, cappab ‘cuts’).

  The long vowel is represented by a dash above the letter, as was most commonly accepted in phonetic records of Vepsian speech earlier (puhu ‘into the wood’, vaged ‘white’). Diphthongs, which are only descending in Vepsian, are represented by two letters without indicating the unaccented character of the second component of the diphthong (laud ‘board’, poig ‘son’).

  Palatalisation of consonant sounds is indicated by a softening sign above the letter (in some cases after the letter, since this is how it was presented in the sources as well. In Vepsian written language, the softening sign is also placed after the letter on the top right as a comma [‘]: son “vein”, meil’ ‘we have’). Consonant sounds before the front and middle vowels ä, ö, ü, e, i are almost always palatalised, i.e. the softening is positional, so it does not need constant marking. In this case, in the dialectal texts of the corpus, the placement of the mitigation mark is minimised. However, when it is observed in the case of individual use in words, as well as in some special cases of softening of consonants in the North Vepsian dialect as opposed to, for example, the Middle Vepsian dialect, it is necessarily marked (mänen ‘(I) go’).

  The softening of consonants at the end of a word or syllable, if any, as well as the softening of consonants before back vowels is marked obligatory (e.g. mel‘ “mind”, nor’ ‘young’; val'l'astada ‘to harness’, pal'l'az ‘naked’, etc.). Softening in this case is often meaning-distinctive, i.e. phonemic (e.g. nor' “young”, nor “rope”). In dialectal texts, softening is also indispensable in those cases when from the point of view of modern Vepsian it cannot be explained by the conditions of combinations of sounds, although from the point of view of history it is quite explainable (for example: sar'v ‘horn’, sor'm ‘finger’).

  In Vepsian, all consonant sounds can be palatalised, but the sounds v, m, k are softened much weaker than, for example, l, n, s, t.

  Instead of pausing signs in the writing of dialect texts, dots and commas have been placed, making the text more readable for all categories of users.

 

Alphabet of the Vepsian language

 

  The alphabet of the Vepsian language includes 28 letter signs plus a softening sign (29th), which is placed at the end of the alphabet, but it is not taken into account when placing words alphabetically: a b c c d e f g h i j k l m n o p r s š z z t u v ü ä ö ’

http://vepsian.krc.karelia.ru/about/#script

 

Literature

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