Talk:Merya language

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There was a re-direct here, but since other wikipedias have a seperate page for Merya, i decided to make one. If Moderators or other people feel this is not okay to do, feel free to take my edits away. Also part of the stuff i did was translated from the Finnish wikipedia --ValtteriLahti12 (talk) 19:10, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Meryan probably has the most real content around for it out the 3–4 extinct Uralic languages of SW Russia by now. Please try to keep a close eye on the reliability of sources though; we should not give extrapolated guesses as appearing in the various "neo-Meryan" materials as if they were established facts about historical Meryan. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:34, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I did mention that this is the reconstructed form and not 100% sure meryan, however you are right. Also about the grammar section, do you think it should be there or not?. Also the grammar source i think was O.B.Tkachenko's. (see ), 4th file. (Also on a sidenote the edits you did were good, its way better to read now). --ValtteriLahti12 (talk) 17:18, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm indeed so far skeptical of Tkachenko's reconstruction — even a quick examination of the current examples shows that it seems to contain a mix of at least two languages, one of them more Finnic-like, the other more Mari-like, e.g.

• Finnic-like:
  • čiga 'pig' ~ Finnic *cika > e.g. Veps siga (Mari sösna)
  • jä 'ice' ~ Finnic *jää > e.g. Veps jä (Mari i)
  • lešma 'cow' ~ Finnic *lehmä < *lešmä (Mari uškal)
  • pert 'house' ~ Finnic *pirtti > e.g. Veps pert (Mari kuðo)
  • us 'new' ~ Finnic *uuci > e.g. Veps uź (Mari u)
• Mari-like:
  • jokšo 'swan' ~ Mari jüksö (Finnic *jouccën)
  • kok 'two' ~ Mari kok (Finnic *kakci)
  • muraš 'to sing' ~ Mari mure- : muraš (Finnic *laula-)
  • tymo 'oak' ~ Mari tumo (Finnic *tammi)
  • vur 'blood' ~ Mari wür (Finnic *veri)

It might be worth seeing if there have been any scholarly reviews and if they have pointed this out. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 13:28, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

@Tropylium: I took the examples from Malyshev 2013, who for some of these reconstructions included many possible theorized forms, and i picked them randomly. However there are more established reconstructions, which I put to the new example table. Most of the examples I took to the old table, were not made by Tkachenko. Also:

* kuðo is not exclusive Mari form, cognates are found in Finnic languages, such as Karelian "Kodi"
* Us was theorized to be either "us" or "u".
* uškal in Mari is a permic borrowing, thus not a Mari form.
* sösna in Mari is a Turkic borrowing, thus not a Mari form

Also even then, it is already debated if Merya was close to Mari or Finnic, because Merya toponyms have cognates in both families. --ValtteriLahti12 (talk) 21:52, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

To explain, Malyshev 2013 is basically a compiling of the reconstructions of many people, while making some new ones too. However the book gives a source for each reconstruction. --ValtteriLahti12 (talk) 08:05, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

It would be indeed good to note where each reconstruction comes from. Also, if there are forms that are simply "made" by applying reconstructed Meryan sound changes (with neither toponym nor loanword evidence behind them), this is conlanging and not reconstruction, and such words should not be listed.

Loanwords being "not Mari forms" makes no sense, but in any case my point is just that some proposed Meryan forms are clearly Finnic-esque and have no Mari cognate (what the Mari equivalent actually is is beside the point). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:43, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

@Tropylium: By Mari form i ment "native Mari" and in the new table i made, it should have more toponymic and dialectal reconstructions instead of the sound change reconstructions, which i took out. Malyshev included many of these reconstructions made with sound changes, but thankfully he gave a source to each reconstruction so i could take better ones. Reconstructions made by Tkatsenko are almost always more Finnic like. --ValtteriLahti12 (talk) 18:50, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I can scroll trough the book made by Malyshev and find more words with the origin of "toponym" later --ValtteriLahti12 (talk) 18:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

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