Re: Obscure languages

On Sat, 29 Sep 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Frank Valoczy wrote:
> >If you want, I can help you with learning Votian
> >(Uralic/Finno-Ugric/Balto-Finnic; spoken by approx. 25 people in 5
> >villages [incl. Krakolye and Luzhitsy] in Leningrad Oblast, north of
> >Ivangorod in Russia), youngest speaker is in his early 60s).
>
> Which means it's alot better of than Ingrian (Balto-Finnic, spoken in St
> Petersburg) - the last I heard it had three native speakers, all over 60,
> and that was three or four years ago. (Ingria is an old name pf the area
> that St Petersburg lies in - once upon a time it was the Swdish province of
> Ingermanland).
According to info I have, every speaker of Votian also speaks Ingrian. But
Ingrian is a confusing term, as it is often used to refer to Ingrian
Finnish [inkerin kieli] and to Izhorian [isurin kieli]. Izhorian is native
to there, and have less speakers than Ingrian Finnish, which is a dialect
of F. spoken by descendants of refugees.

>
> BTW, is it still officially called Leningrad Oblast? That'd be pretty
> remarkable ...
>
AFAIK, yes.

> >Obviously I'm
> >not a native speaker, but my knowledge of it is thorough enough that I
> >could carry on a conversation with a Vote in the unlikely event that I
> >were to meet one. However, I do use it occasionally in speaking with
> >Estonians, sometimes with amusing results.
>
> How come you know Votian?
I ordered a book about Udmurt (Votyak), but received Ariste's "A Grammar
of the Votic Language". I kept the book, put it aside for a while, then I
picked it up and discovered that it is very interesting. I learned the
contents of the book to the point where I know most of it by head. Then I
acquired the available Jogopera-dialect dictionary and some other
documents, and I am still in the process of assimilating it. My Votian is
a bit mixed, using mostly Kattila dialect grammar and Jogopera dialect
vocabulary...so in short, I know Votian because over the past four years,
it is the only language which I have seriously studied.