Languages
The Mordvinic languages comprise of the Erzya and Moksha languages, with about 500,000 native speakers each. Both are official languages of Mordovia alongside Russian. Mordvinic is closely related to the now extinct Meshcherian and Muromian languages.
Erzya is spoken in the northern and eastern and north-western parts of Mordovia and adjacent regions of Nizhniy Novgorod, Chuvashia, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Moksha is the majority language in the western part of Mordovia.
Due to differences in phonology, lexicon, and grammar, Erzya and Moksha are not mutually intelligible, to the extent that Russian language is often used for intergroup communications.
The two Mordvinic languages also have separate literary forms. The Erzya literary language was created in 1922 and the Mokshan in 1923.
Both are currently written using the standard Russian alphabet.
Read more about this topic: Mordvins
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