In the 2020–2021 census, 2229 people claimed to speak Mansi natively.[3] All current speakers use Northern Mansi, as the other variants have become extinct.[4]
Mansi is subdivided into four maindialect groups which are to a large degreemutually unintelligible, and therefore best considered four languages. A primary split can be set up between the Southern variety and the remainder. Several features are also shared between the Western and Eastern varieties, while certain later sound changes have diffused between Eastern and Northern (and are also found in some neighboring dialects ofNorthern Khanty to the east).
Individual dialects are known according to the rivers their speakers live(d) on:[5]
All of the sub-dialects given above are those which were still spoken in the late 19th and early 20th century and have been documented in linguistic sources on Mansi, except for certain varieties of Western and Southern Mansi, spoken further west; theTagil,Tura andChusovaya dialects of Southern[6] and theVishera dialect of Western,[7] found in pre-scientific records from the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The two dialects last mentioned were hence spoken on the western slopes of theUrals, where also several early Russian sources document Mansi settlements.Placename evidence has been used to suggest Mansi presence reaching still much further west in earlier times,[8] though this has been criticized as poorly substantiated.[9]
Northern Mansi has strongRussian,Komi,Nenets, andNorthern Khanty influence, and it forms the base of the literary Mansi language. There is no accusative case; that is, both the nominative and accusative roles are unmarked on the noun.*/æ/ and*/æː/ have been backed to[a] and[aː].
Western Mansi was described as "probablyextinct" already in 1988. Although the last speaker is not known, it is considered certain that none were left at the end of the 20th century.[4] It had strong Russian and Komi influences; dialect differences were also considerable.[10] Long vowels were diphthongized.
Eastern Mansi became extinct in 2018, when its last speaker Maksim Šivtorov (Максим Семенович Шивторов) died.[4] It has Khanty andSiberian Tatar influence. There isvowel harmony, and for*/æː/ it has[œː], frequently diphthongized.
Southern (Tavda) Mansi was recorded from area isolated from the other Mansi varieties. Around 1900 a couple hundred speakers existed; in the 1960s it was spoken only by a few elderly speakers,[11] and it has since then become extinct. It had strong Tatar influence and displayed several archaisms such asvowel harmony, retention of/y/ (elsewhere merged with*/æ/),/tsʲ/ (elsewhere deaffricated to/sʲ/),/æː/ (elsewhere fronted to/aː/ or diphthongized) and/ɑː/ (elsewhere raised to/oː/).
The voiceless velar fricatives /x/, /xʷ/ are only found in the Northern group and the Lower Konda dialect of the Eastern group, resulting from spirantization of *k, *kʷ adjacent to original back vowels.
According to Honti, a contrast between *w and *ɣʷ can be reconstructed, but this does not surface in any of the attested varieties.
The labialization contrast among the velars dates back to Proto-Mansi, but was in several varieties strengthened by labialization of velars adjacent to rounded vowels. In particular, Proto-Mansi *yK → Core Mansi *æKʷ (a form oftransphonologization).
The vowel systems across Mansi show great variety. As typical across the Uralic languages, many more vowel distinctions were possible in the initial, stressed syllable than in unstressed ones. Up to 18–19 stressed vowel contrasts may be found in the Western and Eastern dialects, while Northern Mansi has a much reduced, largely symmetric system of 8 vowels, though lacking short **/e/ and having a very rare long[iː]:
^abcSalminen, Tapani (2023). "Demography, endangerment, and revitalization". In Abondolo, Daniel Mario; Valijärvi, Riitta-Liisa (eds.).The Uralic languages. Routledge Language Family (2nd ed.). London New York: Routledge. p. 101-102.ISBN978-1-138-65084-8.
^Honti, László (1998). "ObUgrian". In Abondolo, Daniel (ed.).The Uralic Languages. Taylor & Francis. pp. 327–328.ISBN0-415-08198-X.
^Gulya, Janos (1958). "Egy 1736-ból származó manysi nyelvemlék".Nyelvtudományi Közlemények (60):41–45.
^Kannisto, Artturi (1918). "Ein Wörterverzeichnis eines ausgestorbenen wogulischen Dialektes in den Papieren M. A. Castréns".Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskira (30/8).
^Kannisto, Artturi (1927). "Über die früheren Wohngebiete der Wogulen".Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen (XVIII):57–89.
^Napolskikh, Vladimir V. (2002). ""Ugro-Samoyeds" in Eastern Europe?".Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen (24/25):127–148.
^Kálmán, Béla (1965).Vogul Chrestomathy. Indiana University Publications. Uralic and Altaic Series. Vol. 46. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 4–5.
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