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Komi (коми кыв, komi kyv[komikɨv]ⓘ), also known as Zyran, Zyrian or Komi-Zyryan (зыран коми кыв, zyran komi kyv),[5] is the native language of the Komi (Zyrians). It is one of the Permian languages; the other regional variety is Komi-Permyak.[6]
Komi is spoken in the Komi Republic and other parts of Russia such as Nenetsia and Yamalia. There were 285,000 speakers in 1994, which decreased to 160,000 in 2010.
It was formerly written in the Old Permic script created by Stephen of Perm for liturgical purposes in the 14th century, though very few texts exist in this script. The Cyrillic script was introduced by Russian missionaries in the 17th century, replacing it. A tradition of secular works of literature in the modern form of the language dates back to the 19th century.
Dialects
Komi has ten dialects: Syktyvkardin (Sysola), Lower Ežva (Vychegda), Central Ežva (Vychegda), Upper Ežva (Vychegda), Luz-let, Upper Sysola, Pećöra, Iźva, Vym, and Udora dialects. Syktyvkardin is spoken in the region of Syktyvkar and forms the model for the generic standard dialect of the language. Dialects are divided based primarily on their use of /v/ and /l/:[7]
Older */l/ remains unchanged in Upper Ežva and Pećöra dialects (also in most dialects of Komi-Permyak).
In Central dialects, /*l/ changed to /v/ syllable-finally; for instance, in literary Komi */kɨl/ → /kɨv/ "tongue".
In Northern dialects, changes of /l/ continued with complete vocalization of syllable-final /l/, resulting in long vowels.
The start of the change date to the 17th century. It is not seen in the oldest Komi texts from the 14th century, nor in loanwords from Komi to Khanty, dated to the 16th; though it fully occurred before Russian loanwords that entered the language in the 18th century as /l/ remains unchanged in these.
Some dialects are further distinguished based on the palatalized alveolars /dʲtʲ/, which have unpacked in syllable-final position as clusters /jdjt/.[7]
A sample of the Komi language words. Upper "Улица Коммунистическая" is in Russian, lower "Коммунистическӧй улича" is in Komi. Both mean "Communist street". This picture was taken in Syktyvkar, the capital of Komi RepublicTrilingual (Russian, Komi, and English) sign in a hotel in Ukhta, Komi Republic
The Old Permic script is the first writing system for Komi. It was invented in the 14th century by the missionary Stephen of Perm. The alphabet resembled medieval Greek and Cyrillic. The script was also known as Anbur (Komi: 𐍐𐍝𐍑𐍣𐍠, Анбур), named for the first 2 letters of the script, "an" & "bur" (𐍐 & 𐍑, respectively). It is no longer in use today, though it has received Unicode Support as "Old Permic" in recent times.[8] The script saw use in Komi-inhabited areas, primarily the Principality of Great Perm and parts of Bjarmaland.
In the 16th century, this alphabet was replaced by the Russian alphabet with certain modifications for affricates. In the 1920s, the language was written in the Molodtsov alphabet, which also derived from Cyrillic. In the 1930s, during the Latinisation in the Soviet Union, Komi was briefly written with a version of the Latin script. Since the 1940s it uses the Russian-based Cyrillic alphabet with the additional letters І, і and Ӧ, ӧ.
There are no diphthongs, although vowel sequences can occur at morpheme boundaries.
The phoneme /ɨ/ is phonetically [ɯ̈], and /a/ is phonetically [ä]. There is noticeable positional allophony, depending on the surrounding consonants, however no allophone overlaps with another vowel phoneme.[10]
Komi has 17 cases, with a rich inventory of locative cases. Like other Uralic languages, Komi has no gender. Verbs agree with subjects in person and number (sg/pl). Negation is expressed with an auxiliary verb, which is inflected for person, number and tense.
Komi is an agglutinative language and adheres to a subject–object–verb order.[11] Most modern texts, however, possess a subject-verb-object word order, due to heavy Russian language influence and the resulting calques.
Sample text
The following sample text displays the Anbur, Cyrillic (modern) and Latin lyrical text from the Komi-Zyryan folk song "Kačaśinjas" (Daisies).
The first verse of the song and the refrain, as written in the Anbur Script:
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