Wiktionary:About Votic

This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. This is a draft proposal. It is unofficial, and it is unknown whether it is widely accepted by Wiktionary editors. Policies – Entries: CFI - EL - NORM - NPOV - QUOTE - REDIR - DELETE. Languages: LT - AXX. Others: BLOCK - BOTS - VOTES.

The aim of this page is to explain the norms used in Votic language entries. It is intended to complement, not supersede, WT:CFI and WT:ELE.

About

Votic belongs to the Finnic languages group, which belongs to the Uralic languages group. It is nearly extinct, having only a few speakers remaining.

Orthography

As Votic is almost extinct, it is not often written down. Different conventions exist, and a semi-standard form has arisen, although even then there is no universal spelling. Wiktionary's spelling conventions for Votic are largely based on Vadʹdʹa sõnakopittõja (the 2015 edition for the characters used and the 2017 edition for the word forms), with some minor differences.

• The main reference dialect is that of Luutsa (Luuditsa), with Liivtšülä and Jõgõperä as secondary variants (lemmas are normalized under the Luutsa form).
• The back-vowel counterpart of ⟨e⟩ is indicated as ⟨õ⟩ as in Estonian and Võro.
• The front-vowel counterpart of ⟨u⟩ is indicated as ⟨ü⟩ as in Estonian (not ⟨y⟩ as in Finnish).
• Secondary gemination (of a consonant between a stressed light syllable and a syllable containing a long vowel or a diphthong) is indicated in the spelling.
• Reduced short ⟨a⟩ is written as ⟨õ⟩ and a reduced short ⟨ä⟩ as ⟨e⟩. Reduced long vowels are written as short vowels. Note that Vadja keele sõnaraamat does not reduce vowels in their lemmas for the most part, while Wiktionary does. See the "Orthographical differences from VKS" section.
• Palatalisation is indicated with ⟨ʹ⟩ (U+02B9 MODIFIER LETTER PRIME) after the letter. In case of geminated consonants, it is written after both consonants: vadʹdʹa. Palatalized ⟨z⟩ /zʲ/ is written ⟨zʹ⟩ instead of ⟨ź⟩ as in Vadʹdʹa sõnakopittõja.
• The letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨č⟩ are not used; the postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ is indicated as ⟨tš⟩. Its geminated form is ⟨ttš⟩ (likewise, the geminated form of ⟨ts⟩ is ⟨tts⟩).
• Semivoiced consonants are written as voiced; /d̥/ is ⟨d⟩.
• ⟨š⟩ and ⟨ž⟩ is used for /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ respectively.
• ⟨oo⟩ and ⟨uu⟩ are distinguished when possible, based on data from Luutsa, Liivtšülä or Jõgöperä (as above).
• The main spelling for nominals in which the final ⟨i⟩ may be dropped includes it. The form without ⟨i⟩ is considered an alternative form. The only exceptions to this rule are cardinal numerals (such as ühs, kahs, viis and kuus).

Orthographical differences from VKS

Some of the notable differences between VKS and Wiktionary's orthography include:

• Vowel reduction: VKS lemmas do not include vowel reduction at all, while Wiktionary lemmas do. The general rule (not always correct, so one must use discretion) to apply vowel reductions to nominal, verb and adverb lemmas is as follows (applies only to lemmas and concerns spelling rather than exact pronunciation):
  • Only non-stressed vowels (on even syllables and the final syllable) get reduced. In monosyllabic words, reduction never occurs (as the final vowel is stressed).
  • A vowel is not reduced if the preceding syllable is both stressed and light (ends in a single short vowel, as opposed to a diphthong, long vowel or a consonant).
  • The following reductions apply:
    • Short ⟨a⟩ gets reduced to ⟨õ⟩ and short ⟨ä⟩ to ⟨e⟩.
    • Long vowels are shortened.
    • Reduction of other vowels is not indicated in the orthography.
  • Examples of reductions: ⟨kana⟩ → kana, ⟨jalka⟩ → jalkõ, ⟨matala⟩ → matalõ, ⟨mennä⟩ → menne.
• Semivoiced consonants use small caps on VKS, but the corresponding lowercase voiced plosive character on Wiktionary.
• VKS prefers "conservative" Western Votic lemmas, while Wiktionary uses Luutsa, or alternatively Liivtšülä or Jõgõperä (the former if both) as appropriate.

Note that some of these normalizations may not apply to every word or dialect. For example, the Kattila dialect (marked in VKS as K) has no vowel reduction. It is currently unclear whether words only found in such dialects (and not in the aforementioned reference dialects) should be normalized at all.

Examples of standardizations

These lemma standardizations, unless otherwise noted, follow the specified literary standard.

• *-ëda adjectives are standardized under ⟨-aa⟩ (reduced to ⟨-a⟩) with back vowel harmony (or in some cases under ⟨-ia⟩ if no other form is found in the reference dialects) and under ⟨-iä⟩ with front vowel harmony.
• *-inën nominals are standardized under ⟨-in⟩.

Alternative forms

Wiktionary also allows spellings that do not follow these rules. Any spelling variants should be included with {{alternative spelling of|vot|...}}, and link back to Wiktionary's standard spelling. If different forms also represent a different pronunciation, then use {{alternative form of|vot|...}} instead. Votic uses these letters:

(Latin-script letters) bukvõ; A a, B b, D d, E e, F f, G g, H h, I i, J j, K k, L l, M m, N n, O o, P p, R r, S s, Š š, Z z, Ž ž, T t, U u, V v, Õ õ, Ä ä, Ö ö, Ü ü

The standard inflection templates can only handle standard spellings. Separate inflection templates may exist for variants.

Etymology

Most words in Votic have either known relatives in the other Finnic languages, or are derived from Russian. Care must be taken, however: there is an abundance of words in Votic which have been borrowed from either Ingrian or from Ingrian Finnish. A notable example is nevvo (“advice”), contrasting with native nõvvo (“tool, means”). In particular, this includes almost all words beginning with h- (lost in native vocabulary) or containing the combinations ke, ki, kü, kä, kö (evolving to tše, tši, tšü, tšä, tšö in native vocabulary). Major reference works on the etymology of Estonian and Finnish usually indicate cases like these.

Resources

• Olga I. Konkova, Nikita A. Dyachkov (2014) Vaďďa Ceeli: Учебное пособие по водскому языку‎^[1], →ISBN
• Elena B. Markus, Fedor I. Rozhansky (2017) Современный водский язык [Contemporary Votic language]‎^[2], 2nd edition, Нестор-История, →ISBN
• Hallap, V., Adler, E., Grünberg, S., Leppik, M. (2012) Vadja keele sõnaraamat [A dictionary of the Votic language], 2nd edition, Tallinn (note the Orthographical differences from VKS section)

V. Chernyavskij's Votic-Russian dictionary (and a Votic-Hungarian dictionary based on it) are not considered reliable sources on their own, since they contain protologisms.