The Veps Language

I. Sociolinguistic Data

Existing alternative names.

Name variants (endonym, exonym)

The Veps language has many names. It is known by Vepsän keĺ in Veps, вепсский язык ( Vepsski yazyk , the Veps language) in Russian, vepsän kieli in Finnish, and vepsa keel in Estonian. The 19 ^th -century Swedish-language works used the linguonym Tschudiska språk . The 1897 census groups the Veps language and the Votian language together as “the Chude speech.” Oyat Veps also have the linguonym ĺüďi - ( pagišta ĺüďikš “to speak Veps”).

General characteristics

Total Number of Native Speakers and the Corresponding Ethnic Group

The 2010 census puts the number of the Veps at 5.936 persons, the number of native speakers at 2.362. It is mostly older generation that speaks Veps.

Sociolinguistic characteristics.

The Veps language is under the threat of extinction. The language is partially used (partially) in families, mostly by the oldest generation. It also performs a symbolic function during celebrations and various events. Furthermore, it is sometimes studied in schools as a separate subject. At the same time, the Veps literary language is being fairly actively developed.

Writing System

First attempts to create a Veps writing system were undertaken in the early 20 ^th century. In 1913, a small Russian-Veps dictionary was published in St. Petersburg ( Russian-Chude Dictionary with Some Grammar Instructions . St. Petersburg, 1913). It was intended for teachers working in Veps villages. A writing system for the Veps language was created in 1931 using the Latin alphabet with diacritics and supplemented with special letters. This alphabet was virtually the same as similar alphabets designed for the overwhelming majority of new alphabets for languages of peoples in the USSR. At that time, Veps was used as a language of instruction in elementary schools in the Leningrad region, while Karelian schools used literary Finnish.

The literary Veps language is based on the Middle Veps dialect. Once the literary language was formed, elementary school books, including readers, and the story “A Conversation and a Half” were translated into it. By 1935, virtually all Veps children were taught in their native language. In the spring of 1937, there had been plans to introduce instruction in Veps among the Karelian Veps, but it never happened because of a sharp change in the Soviet linguistic policy. Veps Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in Karelia in the fall of 1937, but this alphabet was short-lived. It was used in the district Krasnoye Sheltozero newspaper. In early 1938, instruction in Veps was ceased, all Veps schools were switched to Russian, and creators of the Veps writing system and literary language were repressed.

Since the mid-1980s, the press began discussing the problem of restoring Veps writing. In 1989, the Council of Ministers of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic approved two Veps alphabets, a Cyrillic-based and a Latin-based one. In the early 1990s, primers in Cyrillic and Latin alphabets were published. Since then, the written Veps language is beginning to develop. In addition to textbooks, Veps is used in mass media (the Kodima newspaper, Karelian TV programs), there is fiction in Veps. At the same time, the Cyrillic alphabet is not widely used, although there are some books in Cyrillic as well. The new literary language combines the features of both Northern and Middle dialects, although today’s publications in Veps demonstrate certain differences between the idiom of different authors.

Geographical characteristics

Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation with Native Speaker Communities .

The table below shows constituent entities and regions, total population numbers, numbers of the corresponding ethnic group, numbers of native speakers, language preservation in each settlement, and the dialects spoken. It deals primarily with the Leningrad Region, the Republic of Karelia, the Vologda Region, and the Irkutsk Region.

Historical dynamics

The numbers of native speakers and the corresponding ethnic group per various Censuses (staring with 1897) and other sources.

II. Linguistic data.

Position in the genealogy of world languages.

Unlike other Balto-Finnic languages, the Veps language does not have a consonant gradation, which makes Veps morphology less complex compared to other Balto-Finnic languages. For example, the Finnish luin “I was reading,” becomes luki “he was reading,” while Veps has lugiń “I was reading” and lugi “he was reading.”

One unique feature of Veps phonetics is the reduction of long vowels, which means that the Middle dialect does not have the short – long vowel opposition typical for all other Balto-Finnic languages, for instance, uź “new,” cf. Finnish uusi . The Southern dialect developed new long vowels from the combinations V+l, V+v, V+u, V+i , for instance, haraa “a [garden] rake,” cf. the Northern Veps harav . Disappearance of the short/long vowel opposition is ascribed to the influence of the Russian language.

Dialects .

There are three principal dialects: the Northern, the Middle, and the Southern. Eastern subdialects hold a special place in the Middle dialect. The Northern dialect is spoken in Karelia, while the Middle dialect is mostly spoken in the Leningrad region, while Eastern subdialects are mostly spoken in the Babaevo District of the Vologda region, and the Southern dialect is spoken in the Leningrad region. In the early 20 ^th century, some of the Veps moved to Siberia creating Veps settlements in the Irkutsk region.

Crucial differences between dialects are the following:

1. The Northern dialect has preserved long vowels in the first syllable, for instance, puu “tree,” pii “prong,” while other dialects have pu, pi . The Southern dialect has developed new long vowels from combinations of vowels +u, i, v, l: kanaa “of the hen,” cf. kanou̯ (from * kanalla ) in the Middle dialect; heboońe “little horse,” cf. heboińe in the Middle dialect; päävää “during the day” (from * päivällä ).
2. The Southern dialect’s “ü” in the first syllable passed into “i”: titroo “of the daughter,” cf. tütrel in the Northern dialect.
3. In the northern dialects and episodically in other dialects, “j” has passed into “ď” and in Eastern and Shimozero subdialects of the Middle dialect, it has passed into “gʹ,” while in the southern dialects and in most subdialects of the Middle dialects, it was preserved: cf. Southern järvʹ “lake,” Northern “ ďärvʹ ,” and Eastern Middle gʹärvʹ .
4. In various dialects, “l” and “ĺ” have been vocalized to different degrees. In the Northern dialects, they are preserved, while in the eastern subdialects of the Middle dialect vocalization is particularly frequent, and the vowel before “l” or “ĺ” in the Middle dialect is most frequently altered, and in the Southern dialect, it becomes long: cf. Northern sild “bridge,” Eastern Middle süu̯d , Southern siid ; Northern and Southern siĺm “eye,” Eastern Middle süu̯m ; Nortrhen kädel “with one’s hand,” Middle kädou̯ , Eastern Middle käduu̯ , Southern kädoo .
5. Palatalized “ń” and “ď” consonants can occur in different positions in different dialects: cf. Northern tuĺin “I came,” Middle and Southern tuĺiń , Northern tulʹen “I will come,” Middle and Southern tulen .
6. In eastern subdialects of the Middle dialects, the -nke Comitative is not used, instead, a form with -(d)me formant is used that coincides with the Prolative. In the Southern dialect, the situation is the same, it has a -(d)mu variant. Thus, these subdialects may be said to have a single Comitative-Prolative case, cf. Viilaht subdialect ki̮irame “with a dog,” Southern koiramu , Northern and most of the Middle dialect koiranke .
7. Instead of the -(d)me (Middle Prolative), -(d)mu (Southern Prolative), the Northern dialect has a möto postposition: cf. vet möto “on water” instead of vetme in the Middle dialect and vetmu in the Southern dialect. The Middle dialect’s subdialects of the villages Chikozero and Karginichi have the möde postposition.
8. In the Northern dialect, e-stem verbs in third-person singular have “o” instead of “e” cf. Northern tegen “I am doing,” teggob “He/she is doing” while other dialects have tegen, tegeb .
9. The 1 ^st and 2 ^nd person pl. endings have several variants. The Northern dialect and Eastern subdialects have -m and -t: tegem “we are doing,” teget “you are doing.” The Southern dialect has - maa, -taa , other subdialects of the Middle dialect have - mei, -tei, -mai, -tai, -me, -te .
10. 3 ^rd person pl. endings also have several variants. Unlike Finnish and Estonian that have different forms for 3 ^rd person pl. (Finnish he sanovat “they say”) and impersonal forms (indefinite-impersonal, Finnish sanotaan, että ... “[they] say that”), Veps dialects have mixed these forms. The Middle dialect has the ending -tas/-das in the present tense (- dasei in the village of Nemzha) that comes from the impersonal form and - ba(d) in the imperfect tense: hii̯ anttas “they will give,” hii̯ andoiba “they gave.” The Southern dialect preserved the - ba(d) ending in both the present tense and in the imperfect tense: he andaba “they will give,” he andooba “they gave,” while the Northern dialect has competing -taze/-daze and – ba forms in the present tense, and the - tihe/-dihe form has won in the imperfect tense: hö anttaze “they will give,” hö anttihe “they gave.” Therefore, the Northern dialect predominantly has forms that come from the impersonal forms. In the literary Veps language, 3 ^rd personal pl. is opposed to impersonal forms, as in the literary Estonian and Finnish languages.
11. Plural personal pronouns have several phonetic variants. The Northern dialect and the subdialect of the Chaigino village of the Southern dialect has the mö “we,” tö “you,” hö ( höt in the Pyazhozero subdialect) “they” variants. Other subdialects of the Middle dialect have the mii̯, tii̯, hii̯ variants, and the Southern dialect has me, te, he .
12. Veps dialects also manifest lexical differences; for instance, the verb that means “to speak” has several variants. The Southern dialect uses basida~bast́a , the Northern and Middle dialects mostly use pagišta . Some western subdialects of the Middle dialect use lodeida , while the subdialect of the Radogoshch village has lobaata .

Brief history of the study of the language.

Research into Veps starts in the first half of the 19 ^th century, and it was first studied primarily by Finnish linguists and folklore scholars. The first scholar to travel to areas populated by the Veps was Andreas Johan Sjögren who arrived there in 1824. Twenty years later, Elias Lönnrot traveled to the Veps of Lake Onego area, and his field work produced his dissertation Om det Nord-Tschudiska språket ( On the Northern Veps Language ) in 1853. In 1855, August Ahlqvist traveled to the Veps living in the catchment area of the river Oyat, and in 1861, he published Anteckningar i Nord-Tschudiskan . In 1872, Arvid Genetz published his Wepsän pohjoiset etujoukot , however, despite its title, this work describes the Ludic dialect of the Karelian language. In 1887, Ja. Basilier visited the Veps of the Isaev volost (region) of the Arkhangelsk Province and in 1890, published Vepsäläiset Isajevan voolostissa . This work is of special interest since it describes a dialect extinct today.

Since 1889, Eemil Nestor Setälä, I.Kh. Kala, Armas Otto Väisänen, Lauri Kettunen, L. Posti, P. Siro had been doing field work among the Veps. Lauri Kettunen described the historical phonetics of the Southern dialect and Veps syntax. Eemil A. Tunkelo’s Vepsän kielen äännehistoria was published in 1946 describing historical phonetics of all the Veps dialects.

In the 1930s, a Veps writing system was created by, among others, M.M. Hämäläinen, G.Kh. Bogdanov, Nikolay I. Bogdanov, Alexey M. Mikhkiev, and I. Gurkin.

After the war, Veps was studied by linguists affiliated with the Institute for Languages, Literature, and History (ILLH) in Petrozavodsk and by some Estonian and Finnish linguists, for instance, Erkki Virtaranta, Nikolay I. Bogdanov, M.M. Hämäläinen, Tiit-Rein Viitso. Veps has been actively studied in the late 20 ^th -early 21 ^st century, and listing all scholars working with Veps is impossible. The ILLH at the Karelian Research Center of the RAS is the main center of Veps studies; additionally, Veps is studied by scholars in St. Petersburg, Estonia, and Finland. Without trying to exhaust the subject, we should note the key achievements in researching Veps: the fullest Veps dictionary authored by Maria I. Zaitseva and Maria I. Mullonen listing lexis from different Veps subdialects was published in 1972. In 1981, Maria I. Zaitseva published Veps Grammar that is the first sufficiently complete description of the Veps phonetics and morphology. This grammar primarily focuses on Shimorezo subdialects of the Middle dialect, but contains information on other dialects as well.

In 2019, The Linguistic Atlas of the Veps Language was published that had engaged the effort of all Veps specialists: Nina G. Zaitseva, Sergey A. Myznikov, Igor V. Brodsky, Irma I. Mullonen, Olga Yu. Zhukova. Mention should also be made of Zaitseva’s works on Veps nominative and verbal inflection, Igor V. Brodsky’s works on Veps plant names, Sergey A. Myznikov’s works on Finno-Ugric substratum lexis (including Veps lexis) in Russian subdialects of Lake Onego’s area. We should also mention Igor V. Brodsky’s, Sergey A. Myznikov’s and Olga Glebova’s field studies among the Irkutsk Region Veps in the mid- 2000s.