Volga Finns

Approximate ethno-linguistic map of European Eastern Rus in the 9th century: the five Volga Finnic groups of the Merya, Mari, Muromians, Meshchera and Mordvins are shown as being surrounded by the Slavs to the west, the (Finnic) Veps to the northwest, the Permians to the northeast, and the (Turkic) Bulgars and Khazars to the southeast and south.

The Volga Finns[a] are a historical group of peoples living in the vicinity of the Volga, who speak Uralic languages. Their modern representatives are the Mari people, the Erzya and the Moksha (commonly grouped together as Mordvins)[3][4] as well as speakers of the extinct Merya, Muromian and Meshchera languages.[5]

The modern representatives of Volga Finns live in the basins of the Sura and Moksha rivers, as well as (in smaller numbers) in the interfluve between the Volga and the Belaya rivers. The Mari language has two dialects, the Meadow Mari and the Hill Mari.

Traditionally the Mari and the Mordvinic languages (Erzya and Moksha) were considered to form a Volga-Finnic or Volgaic group within the Uralic language family,[6][7][8] accepted by linguists like Robert Austerlitz (1968), Aurélien Sauvageot & Karl Heinrich Menges (1973) and Harald Haarmann (1974), but rejected by others like Björn Collinder (1965) and Robert Thomas Harms (1974).[9] This grouping has also been criticized by Salminen (2002), who suggests it may be simply a geographic, not a phylogenetic, group.[10]

  1. ^ Golden, Peter B. (2011). Central Asia in World History. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-19-515947-9. OCLC 587229744.
  2. ^ Hajdú, Péter (1975). Finno-Ugrian Languages and Peoples. London: Deutsch. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-233-96552-9.
  3. ^ Abercromby, John (1898) [1898]. Pre- and Proto-historic Finns. D. Nutt/Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1-4212-5307-0.
  4. ^ "Finno-Ugric religion: Geographic and cultural background » The Finno-Ugric peoples". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15th edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-10.
  5. ^ Sinor, Denis (1990). The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Cambridge University Press. p. 151. ISBN 0-521-24304-1.
  6. ^ Grenoble, Lenore (2003). Language Policy in the Soviet Union. Springer. pp. PA80. ISBN 978-1-4020-1298-3.
  7. ^ The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics; By Angela Marcantonio; p57; ISBN 0-631-23170-6
  8. ^ Voegelin, C. F.; & Voegelin, F. M. (1977). Classification and index of the world's languages. New York: Elsevier. ISBN 0-444-00155-7.
  9. ^ Ruhlen, Merritt (1991). A Guide to the World's Languages: Classification. Stanford University Press. p. 68. ISBN 0-8047-1894-6.
  10. ^ Salminen, Tapani (2002). "Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies". Helsinki.fi.


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