Endangered Language
Ingrian, one of the languages of Russia, is an endangered language.When a language is classified as "endangered" it means that the language isin danger of extinction. Languages become extinct for a variety ofreasons, but the most typical one is that it is no longer spoken by amajority of people in a culture or nation. Because of this its value isundermined, it is seldom taught to subsequent generations, and iteventually dies out with the few remaining individuals who can speak it.Ingrian is such a language. Ingrian is one of the smaller Finnic languages Ingria is located at the westernmost part of Russia, on the southbeach of Finnish Gold of Baltic Sear, near Saint Petersburg (Agranat 2002). While a culture known as the Votes inhabited the region that is Ingriabefore Ingrians, with the arrival of the Ingrians in the sixteenth century. After the peace treaties of Stolbovo and Karde, Finnish peasants moved tonorth and central Ingria. Because of this there are Ingrians and IngrianFinns, but both call their common language suomen kieli (inkerin)" orIngrian, (The Ingrians 2004, 1). There are statistics on
) differences among those speakingIngrian. One of the biggest reasons for the decline of Ingrians and theirlanguage is their persecution and dispersion by the Russians. UNESCO classifies Ingrian as a "seriously endangered" language forthe following list of reasons: * No children speak Ingrian. Of this small number of Ingriansremaining in Ingria, only 51. (UNESCO 1999, 1) PHONOLOGY, LEXICOLOGY & MORPHOSYNTAX The Ingrian Finnish language is a beautifully unified system withrespect to phonology. Because ofthe location of Ingria on the Russian-Swedish border, by the early 1900sIngria was claimed to be historically a part of Russia. This is particularly true because religious worship orteaching in Ingrian was prohibited by the Soviet regime. htm) Anthropologically, the Ingrians are of the East Baltic race, havingdominant European characteristics such as fair hair and blue eyes. LANGUAGE CHARACTERISTICS A language map illustrates the areas in which a particular languagelike Ingrian is spoken. As Laakso (2001)maintains, "There are lexical and morpholexical phenomena that cannot besufficiently illuminated because of the lack of materials andinvestigations in the smaller Finnic languages," (5). 1944: 55,773 Ingrians/Finns who were evacuated and returned home with dispersed in different provinces in Russia. Thus, it makes it impossible to know if there are lexical(stylistic, social, regional, etc. 1932: Religious practices were forbidden among Ingrians. There are also a variety ofclassifications of the Ingrian language that include the following: Uralic,Finno-Ugric, Finno-Permic, Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mordvinic, Finno-Lappic,and Baltic-Finnic, (Ingrian 2003, 1).
Common topics in this essay:
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Ingrian Finnish,
Russia Ingrians,
Russia Finns,
IDENTIFICATION Ingrian,
Estonian Laakso,
Baltic-Finnic Ingrian,
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East Baltic,
LANGUAGE CHARACTERISTICS,
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laakso 2001,
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