| Veps | |
| Nativename: | vepsän kelʹ |
| States: | Russia |
| Region: | Karelia (Veps National Volost) Leningrad Oblast Vologda Oblast |
| Ethnicity: | Veps (2010 census) |
| Date: | 2020 census [1] |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Script: | Latin (Vepsian alphabet) |
| Familycolor: | Uralic |
| Fam2: | Finnic |
| Fam3: | Northern Finnic |
| Iso3: | vep |
| Glotto: | veps1250 |
| Glottorefname: | Veps |
| Minority: | Russia |
| Map: | 2.3-Veps.png |
| Mapcaption: | Distribution of Veps at the beginning of the 20th and 21st centuries[3] [4] |
| Map2: | Lang Status 40-SE.svg |
Veps, also known as Vepsian (Veps: vepsän kelʹ, vepsän keli, or vepsä), is a Finnic language from the Uralic language family, that is spoken by Vepsians. The language is written in the Latin script, and is closely related to Finnish and Karelian.
According to Soviet statistics, 12,500 people were self-designated ethnic Veps at the end of 1989. There were 5,900 self-designated ethnic Veps in 2010, and around 3,600 native speakers.
According to the location of the people, the language is divided into three main dialects: Northern Veps (at Lake Onega to the south of Petrozavodsk, to the north of the river Svir, including the former Veps National Volost), Central Veps (in the east of the Leningrad Oblast and northwest of the Vologda Oblast), and Southern Veps (in the Leningrad Oblast). The Northern dialect seems the most distinct of the three; however, it is still mutually intelligible for speakers of the other two dialects. Speakers of the Northern dialect call themselves "Ludi" (lüdikad), or lüdilaižed.
In Russia, more than 350 children learn the Veps language in a total of five national schools.[5]
Veps is the easternmost surviving member of the Finnic languages. Having developed in relative isolation, the language lacks several features found in its relatives, such as consonant gradation and the length contrast in consonants. Original vowel length has mostly been lost as well (with the exception of Northern Veps, which retains ii and uu). At the same time, it retains a number of archaic features.
The closest relative of Veps is Ludic, connecting Veps to the wider Finnic dialect continuum.
Veps also shows some characteristic innovations such as the vocalization of original syllable-final*l, and the expansion of the local case system.
Birch bark letter no. 292 is the first known document in any Finnic language; it is considered to be closest to modern Karelian or Veps. The document was discovered near Novgorod in Russia and is dated to the early 13th century.
According to Ethnologue there were 3,160 speakers of Veps in 2010, located in the Republic of Karelia and in the Leningrad and Vologda Oblasts.[6]
Veps shows substantial dialectal variation, affecting both phonetics and grammatical features. Three main dialect areas can be distinguished, the northern, central and southern dialects.
Northern Veps is spoken in the Republic of Karelia along the coast of Lake Onega south of Petrozavodsk. It is also spoken in a few small villages in Leningrad Oblast. Villages speaking Northern Veps include Shyoltozero,, and, as well as the city of Petrozavodsk itself.
Characteristics of Northern Veps are:
Central Veps dialects are rather distinct from each other compared to Northern and Southern Veps, which are relatively homogeneous. They are spoken around a long line stretching from Tervenichey in the Lodeinopolsky District of Leningrad Oblast to near Lake Beloye. The largest locality speaking Central Veps dialects is Vinnitsy.
Characteristics of Central Veps are:
Southern Veps is spoken in the Boksitogorsky District of Leningrad Oblast, including the villages of Radogoshcha and .
Characteristics of Southern Veps are:
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar | Post- alveolar/ Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | palat. | plain | palat. | plain | palat. | plain | palat. | ||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /mʲ/ | pronounced as /n/ | pronounced as /nʲ/ | |||||||
| Plosive | pronounced as /p/ | pronounced as /pʲ/ | pronounced as /t/ | pronounced as /tʲ/ | pronounced as /k/ | pronounced as /kʲ/ | |||||
| pronounced as /b/ | pronounced as /d/ | pronounced as /dʲ/ | pronounced as /ɡ/ | pronounced as /ɡʲ/ | |||||||
| Affricate | pronounced as /ts/ | pronounced as /tʃ/ | |||||||||
| pronounced as /dʒ/ | |||||||||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /f/ | pronounced as /s/ | pronounced as /sʲ/ | pronounced as /ʃ/ | |||||||
| pronounced as /v/ | pronounced as /vʲ/ | pronounced as /z/ | pronounced as /zʲ/ | pronounced as /ʒ/ | pronounced as /h/ | pronounced as /hʲ/ | |||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /l/ | pronounced as /lʲ/ | pronounced as /j/ | ||||||||
| Trill | pronounced as /r/ | pronounced as /rʲ/ | |||||||||
In general, palatalizable consonants are palatalized allophonically before a front vowel. However, palatalized consonants also occur in other environments, especially in word-final position or in word-final clusters.
There are some cases where the front vowel pronounced as //i// is preceded by a non-palatalized consonant. In native Finnic vocabulary, this occurs where inflectional endings beginning with pronounced as //i// are attached to words with a stem ending in a non-palatalized consonant. The consonant is not palatalized by pronounced as //i// in this case, but remains non-palatalized by analogy with the other inflected forms. The vowel pronounced as //i// is backed to pronounced as /[ɨ]/ in this case, as in Russian, making it unclear whether the palatalization is a consequence of the front vowel, or the backing is the result of the lack of palatalization. Either analysis is possible.
Compare:
Russian loanwords have also introduced instances of non-palatalized consonants followed by pronounced as //i//, which are much more frequent in that language.
The phoneme pronounced as //e// can also in some cases be preceded by non-palatalized consonants, for example in the allative ending -le.
| + Vowel phonemes of Veps | Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unr. | Rnd. | ||||
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
The status of pronounced as //ɨ// is marginal; it occurs as an allophone of pronounced as //i// after a non-palatalized consonant. See above under "Palatalization" for more information. It does not occur in the first syllable of a word.
Like many other Finnic languages, Veps has vowel harmony but in a much more limited form. Words are split into back-vowel and front-vowel words based on which vowels they contain:
However, the front vowels can only occur in the first two syllables of a word. In a third or later syllable, and also sometimes in the second syllable, they are converted to the corresponding back vowel. Thus, vowel harmony only applies (inconsistently) in the second syllable, and has been lost elsewhere. It is not applied for inflectional endings except in a few exceptional cases, but is retained more frequently in derivational endings.
For example: