The Ingrian language should be distinguished from theIngrian dialect of theFinnish language, which became the majority language of Ingria in the 17th century with the influx of Lutheran Finnish immigrants; their descendants, theIngrian Finns, are often referred to as Ingrians. The immigration of Lutheran Finns was promoted by Swedish authorities, who gained the area in 1617 from Russia, as the local population was (and remained) Orthodox.
A fifth dialect may have once been spoken on theKarelian Isthmus in northernmost Ingria, and may have been asubstrate of local dialects of southeastern Finnish.[7]
The exact origin ofIzhorians, and by extension the Ingrian language, is not fully clear.[8] Most scholars agree that Ingrian is most closely related to the Karelian language and theEastern dialects of Finnish, although the exact nature of this relationship is unclear:
A popular opinion holds that the split of the Karelian and Ingrian languages can be traced back to around the 8th-12th centuries A.D., with the Ingrian language originating from a Pre-Karelian group travelling westward along theNeva river.[9][10]
The first Ingrian records can be traced back to theLinguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa byPeter Simon Pallas, which contains a vocabulary of the so-calledChukhna language, which contains terms in Finnish,Votic and Ingrian.[10][11]
Not much later, Fedor Tumansky, in a description of theSaint Petersburg Governorate adds vocabularies of various local languages, among which one he dubbedямский ("the language ofYamburg"), corresponding to the modern Ala-Laukaa dialect of Ingrian.[10][12]
During theFinnish national awakening in the end of the 19th century, as the collection ofFinnic folk poetry became widespread, a large number of poems and songs were recorded in lands inhabited by Izhorians, as well, and ultimately published in various volumes ofSuomen kansan vanhat runot. The songs, although originally sung in the Ingrian language, have been noted using Finnish grammar and Finnish phonology in many cases, as the collectors were not interested in the exact form of the original text.[10]
In 1925,Julius Mägiste wrote a second grammatical description of Ingrian, this time of the Finnic varieties spoken in a handful of villages along theRosona river [ru], which showed both Ingrian and Finnish features.[10][14] This variety was closely related to the modernSiberian Ingrian Finnish.[15] Simultaneously, in the late 1920s, Ingrian-speakingselsovets started to form across the Ingrian-speaking territory.[8]
In 1932, a total of 19 schools were opened where education was performed in Ingrian.[8] A firstprimer in the Ingrian language was published, based on a subdialect of Soikkola Ingrian.[16] The primer was the first of a series of schoolbooks written in this dialect. A number of features characteristic of the language in which these books were written included thevowel raising of mid vowels, and a lack of distinction between voiced, semivoiced and voiceless consonants.
By 1935, the number of Ingrian schools increased to 23 (18 primary schools and 5 secondary schools).[8] At the same time, a systematic process of assimilation had begun.[8]
In 1936,Väinö Junus [fi], one of the authors of the above mentioned books, wrote a grammar of the Ingrian language, in Ingrian.[17] In the grammar, Junus introduced a literary language for Ingrian, which he based on the then most populous dialects: the Soikkola and Ala-Laukaa dialects. Junus' grammar included rules for spelling and inflection, as well as a general description of the spoken Ingrian language. The grammar introduced a new age of written Ingrian, and was soon followed by another wave of schoolbooks, written in the new literary variety of Ingrian.The Ingrian schools stayed open until the mass repressions in 1937, during which Väinö Junus and many other teachers were executed, the schoolbooks were confiscated, and by 1938, the Ingrianselsovets were closed. Many Izhorians were sent toconcentration camps or executed.[18][8]
During the world war, many Izhorians fell in battle, and starved due to the famine the war brought. A large number of Izhorians was deported, among withIngrian Finns andVotians to Finland in 1943-1944, as part of an agreement between Finland and Germany during theContinuation War. Almost all Izhorian families decided to return to the Soviet Union after the war ended.[8] Upon return to the Soviet Union after the war, Izhorians were banned from settling their native lands, and were instead scattered across the nation.[8]
Due to the many repressions, deportations and war, the number of Izhorians, as well as Ingrian speakers, decreased dramatically.[8][4] The 1926 census counted over 16.000 Izhorians. In 1939 this number decreased to just over 7.000, and by 1959 just 369 people claimed to be native Ingrian speakers.[8]
Like other Uralic languages, Ingrian is a highlyagglutinative language. Ingrian inflection is exclusively performed using inflectionalsuffixes, withprefixes being only used in derivation.
Ingrian nouns and adjectives are inflected fornumber (singular and plural) andcase. Ingrian nominals distinguish between twelve cases, with a thirteenth (thecomitative) only being present in nouns. Like Finnish, Ingrian has two cases used for thedirect object: thenominative-genitive (used intelic constructions) and thepartitive (used in atelic constructions). Ingrian adjectives often have a separatecomparative form, but lack a morphologically distinctsuperlative.
Ingrian distinguishes between threepersons. There is no distinction ingender, but there is ananimacy distinction in interrogative pronouns.
Ingrian verbs feature fourmoods:indicative,conditional,imperative and the now rarepotential. Verbs are inflected for threepersons, twonumbers and a specialimpersonal form for each of the moods, although the imperative lacks a first person form. The indicative has bothpresent andpast forms.Negation in Ingrian is expressed by means of a negative verb that inflects by person and has separate imperative forms.
The phonology of the two extant Ingrian varieties differs substantially. The Soikkola dialect features a threefold contrast in consonant length ([t] vs[tˑ] vs[tː]) as well as a threefold distinction in voicing ([t] vs[d̥] vs[d]). The Ala-Laukaa dialect, on the contrary only has a twofold contrast in both length and voicing ([tː] vs[t] vs[d]), but features highly prominent vowel reduction, resulting in phonetically both reduced and voiceless vowels ([o] vs[ŏ] vs[ŏ̥]).
Both dialects show various processes of consonant assimilation in voicing and, in the case of the nasal phoneme/n/, place of articulation. The consonant inventory of the Ala-Laukaa dialect is relatively larger, as it includes a number of loaned phonemes not or only partially distinguished in the Soikkola dialect.
To the right, the consonant inventory of Ingrian is shown. The consonants highlighted inred are only found in the Ala-Laukaa dialect or as loaned phonemes, while consonants ingreen are only found in the Soikkola dialect. Both phonemes (slashes) and allophones (brackets) are shown.
Stress in Ingrian generally falls on the first syllable, with a secondary stress on every uneven nonfinal syllabe (third, fifth, etc.). An exception is the wordparaikaa ("now"), which is stressed on the second syllable. Furthermore, some speakers might stress borrowed words according to the stress rules of the donor language.
Vowel harmony is the process that theaffixes attached to a lemma may change depending on the stressed vowel of the word. This means that if the word is stressed on aback vowel, the affix would contain a back vowel as well, while if the word's stress lies on afront vowel, the affix would naturally contain a front vowel. Thus, if the stress of a word lies on an "a", "o" or "u", the possible affix vowels would be "a", "o" or "u", while if the stress of a word lies on an "ä", "ö" or "y", the possible affix vowels to this word would then be "ä", "ö" or "y":
The words in the Ingrian language are mostly of nativeFinnic origin, and show great similarity with the surrounding Finnish and Estonian languages. Below is given aLeipzig-Jakarta list of the Ingrian language:
^abMarkus, Elena; Rozhanskiy, Fedor (24 March 2022). "Chapter 18: Ingrian". In Bakró-Nagy, Marianne; Laakso, Johanna; Skribnik, Elena (eds.).The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages.Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-876766-4.
^Muslimov, Mehmet."Ижорский язык".Малые языки россии. Retrieved19 October 2024.
^abRantanen, Timo, Vesakoski, Outi, Ylikoski, Jussi, & Tolvanen, Harri. (2021).Geographical database of the Uralic languages (v1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4784188
^abViitso, Tiit-Rein (1998). "Fennic". In Abondolo, Daniel (ed.).Uralic languages. Routledge. pp. 98–99.
^abcdefghijKonkova, Olga I. (2009).Ижора: Очерки истории и культуры. Коренные народы Ленинградской Области (in Russian). St. Petersburg.ISBN978-5-94348-049-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Bubrikh, Dmitry V. (1947).Происхождение карельского народа (in Russian). Petrozavodsk: Государственное издание Карело-Финской ССР. p. 32.
^abcdefLaanest, Arvo (1978).Isuri keele ajalooline foneetika ja morfoloogia. Tallinn. p. 3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^P. S. Pallas (1786).Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa (in Russian).
^F. O. Tumansky (1790).Опыт повествования о деяниях, положении, состоянии и разделении Санктпетербургской губернии, включая народы и селения от времен древних до ныне, расположенный на три отделения с прибавлениями (in Russian).
^V. Porkka (1885).Ueber den Ingrischen dialekt mit Berücksichtigung der übrigen finnisch-ingermanländischen Dialekte (in German).
^J. Mägiste (1925).Rosona (eesti Ingeri) murde pääjooned (in Estonian).
^Duubof, V. S.; Lensu, J. J.; Junus, V. I. (1932).Ensikirja ja lukukirja inkeroisia oppikoteja vart [Primer and reading book for Ingrian schools](PDF) (in Ingrian). Leningrad: Valtion kustannusliike kirja. pp. 89 (вкладка).
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