LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.03 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 03 March 2009 - Volume 04
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From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.03.03 (03) [E]

>From Heather Rendall  heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk



 Ron wrote: What many people do not realize is that Finnic languages used to
be spread over a much larger area than they are nowadays. For instance, what
is now Western Russia, including St. Petersburg, used to be Finnic-speaking,
and t pockets of Finnic language communities still remain in those areas.

 I picked up a booklet when in Helsinki Museum about surveys done in the
20th century on existing pockets of Finno-Ugric languages. The booklet was
published in 1990Z

 The Finno-Permyak Group

1.  The Baltic Finns

Finns        5 milllion speakers

Estonians  1,100,000

Karelians  140,000

Vepsians   8,000

Votes  30

Livonians  150

2. The Lapps or Samis   40,000

3. The Volgans

Mordvinians  1,200,000

Cheremis or Maris  620,000

4. The Permyaks

Zyrans or Komis    480,000

Votyaks or Udmurts 710,000



The Ugric Group

1. Ob-Ugrians

Ostyaks of Khants   21,000

Voguls or Mansis  7,600

2. The Hungarians   14,000,000

 Some of the pictures are very revealing: a picture dated 1905 of a teepee
is a summer camp of the Voguls on the lower reaches of the Sosva ( tributary
of the Ob?) and a 1900 photo of a village gathering of Ostyaks and samoyeds
could for all the worldhave been taken on a North American Indian
reservation, so similar do they look.

Just one question: Have the Votes survived?

 Heather

Worcestershire, UK


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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Thanks, Heather.

Speakers of Votic are currently being estimated as counting less than 20.
However, as an ethnic group, the Votes will probably continue to exist for a
few more generations, albeit Russian speaking, much as it is the case in
other parts of Siberia, and using English, French, Spanish and Portuguese,
among the aboriginal peoples of the Americas. In such cases, songs, dances,
folk craft, rituals and customs tend to be remembered in the ancestral
language, at least for a while.

In Livonia (within today's Latvia) a Livonian language revival effort of
sorts is currently underway, the language being used in some popular music
as well.

Absent from your list are the Ingrians (a.k.a. Izhorians), the indigenous
ethnicity of Ingermanland (Izhoria) along parts of Russia's Baltic coast.
Speakers of Ingrian are currently estimated at around 300.

We can safely assume that a pretty large percentage of Russians of the area
around Lake Ladoga and the Russian coast of the Baltic Sea are of more or
less Finnic stock. Some cultural institutions probably go straight back to
the Finnic past, such as the Russian steam bath (баня *banya*) which is
obviously connected with the Finnic sauna (Estonian *saun*, Livonian
*sōna*etc. < Proto-Finnic
**savńa* originally probably 'pit'; cf. Sami *suovdnji* 'pit dug into snow')
which has relatives in sweat lodges throughout Siberia and throughout North
America. We might even hypothesize that Russian phonology has been partly
influenced by Finnic. When you listen to some Finnic varieties, the
Volga-Finnic languages especially (Erzya, Mari, Merya, Meshcherian, Moksha,
Muromian), you are not sure if they are spoken with Russian accents or if
Russian has been influenced by them.

All of the Balto-Finnic peoples have been having more or less intensive
contacts with speakers of Slavic, Baltic and Germanic. Those that have lost
their ancestral languages and cultures have been gradually absorbed into the
ethnic majority populations, though Finnic substrata undoubtedly survive in
the local dialects of Slavic and Baltic. In addition, parts of these areas
used to be governed by Germany, Denmark and Sweden, apart from long-standing
Hanseatic contacts. So there were sustained contacts with Germanic languages
and cultures.

By the way, for some time during the Middle Ages Denmark administered not
only all of the Jutland Peninsula (the southern border being in what is now
within Hamburg) but also much of what is now the state of Mecklenburg –
Western Pomerania as well as some adjacent areas to the east of it. This was
a larger area than that later occupied by Sweden.

So, cultural and linguistic contacts and stratification abounded along the
southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, areas previously dominated by
speakers of Slavic, Baltic and Finnic. And we have not even mentioned the
massive waves of Germanic eastward expansion from all over the Western
Lowlands, from Britain, from Southern Scandinavia and from areas farther
south in Germany.

Regards,
Reinhard/Rin
Seattle, USA

•

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