Permic languages
| Permic | |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity: | Permians |
| Geographic distribution: |
foothills of the Ural Mountains in Russia |
| Linguistic classification: |
Uralic
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| Subdivisions: | |
| Glottolog: | perm1256 |
The Permic languages
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The Permic languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550,000 speak the most widely spoken language, Udmurt. Like other Uralic languages, the Permic languages are primarily agglutinative and have a rich system of grammatical cases. Unlike many others, they do not have vowel harmony.
The earliest Permic language to be preserved in writing was Old Permic or Old Zyrian, in the 14th century.
The extant Permic languages are Udmurt and several closely related Komi varieties:
The Permic languages have traditionally been classified as Finno-Permic languages, along with the Finnic, Saami, Mordvin, and Mari languages. The Finno-Permic and Ugric languages together made up the Finno-Ugric family. However, this taxonomy has more recently been called into question, and the relationship of the Permic languages to other Uralic languages remains uncertain.
Proto-Uralic word roots have been subject to particularly heavy reduction in the Permic languages.
A peculiarity of Permic is the occurrence of the voiced consonants such as *b, *g word-initially even in inherited vocabulary, apparently a development from original PU voiceless consonants.
The Proto-Permic consonant inventory is reconstructed as:
This inventory is retained nearly unchanged in the modern-day Permic languages. Komi has merged original *w into /v/ and undergone a change *l → /v/ or /w/ in many dialects, while Udmurt has changed word-initially *r → /d͡ʒ/ or /d͡ʑ/. *ŋ is retained only in some Udmurt dialects; in other Permic varieties it has become /m/ next to back vowels, /n/ next to central vowels, /nʲ/ next to front vowels.
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