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Wiktionary:Votic entry guidelines

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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

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

Orthography

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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 Heinike Heinsoo's standardized forms used in Vadʹdʹa sõnakopittõja (2015, 2017), Suuri päive (2018) and academic works like Ekstraktmorfoloogia meetodiga tuletatud keeletehnoloogia vadja noomeni vormisõnastiku näitel (2019), with some minor differences.

  • The main reference dialects are the so-called Vaipooli dialects: Luutsa (Luuditsa), Liivčülä and Jõgõperä. Lemmas are generally normalized under the Luutsa form if there are differences.
  • 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 postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ is spelled as ⟨č⟩ and its geminated form as ⟨čč⟩. The letter ⟨c⟩ is not used. The alveolar affricate /t͡s/ is spelled as ⟨ts⟩ and its geminated form as ⟨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, Liivčülä 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).
  • Proto-Finnic *-d- resulting in a glide is spelled as (where ⟨U⟩ marks ⟨u⟩ or ⟨ü⟩, and ⟨V⟩ marks any [other] vowel):
    • *-iidV- → ⟨-iijjV-⟩ (instead of ⟨-ijjV-⟩ or ⟨-iijV-⟩)
    • *-VidV- → ⟨-VjjV-⟩ (instead of ⟨-VijjV-⟩), with some individual exceptions as attested
    • *-UUdV- → ⟨-UUvvV-⟩ (instead of ⟨-UvvV-⟩ or ⟨-UUvV-⟩)
    • *-VUdV- → ⟨-VvvV-⟩ (instead of ⟨-VUvvV-⟩), with some individual exceptions as attested, e.g. čäüvve
    • Any other vowel combination in which the result is ⟨v⟩/⟨vv⟩: *-VVdV- → ⟨-VVvvV-⟩
  • The following standardization of case forms, based on the endings in Heinsoo's standardized forms (dialectal forms are somewhat different depending on the exact variety) is used:
    • The genitive plural ends in ⟨-jõ⟩/⟨-je⟩.
    • The partitive plural ends in ⟨-t⟩.
    • The elative, adessive and ablative endings have no final vowels (⟨-ss⟩, ⟨-ll⟩, ⟨-lt⟩ respectively), while the allative ending does (⟨-llõ⟩/⟨-lle⟩).

The spellings for place names might not follow reduction rules due to unclear/limited attestation.

Orthographical differences from VKS

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

  • The postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ is indicated as ⟨tš⟩ and its geminated form as ⟨ttš⟩ in VKS, while Wiktionary lemmas use ⟨č⟩ and ⟨čč⟩, respectively.
  • 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):
    • Vowels in syllables explicitly stressed never 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 (including rhythmic stress) 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 Liivčülä or Jõgõperä (the former if both) as appropriate.
  • Suffixes are categorized under the unreduced form if they regularly occur unreduced, or the reduced form if they are always reduced. The unreduced form should still be mentioned in the reduced form entry. Suffixes are, in any case, lemmatized under the back-vocalic form, as long as one exists, and front-vocalic forms are only soft redirects.

Note that some of these normalizations may not apply to every word or dialect. For example, the Kattila or Mati dialects (marked in VKS as K and M, respectively) has no vowel reduction. While it is not fully clear whether words only found in such dialects (and not in the aforementioned reference dialects) should be normalized at all, the current practice is to:

  • categorize many of them under the closest normalized form
    • if there is only one normalized variant, the variants in other dialects are treated as different pronunciations;
    • if there are multiple variants, the one closest is picked
  • or, if none exist or the variant is noteworthy and should be given a full alternative form, under a semi-normalized spelling that mostly follows the aforementioned requirements, except:
    • Vowel reduction and secondary geminations are not indicated at all; vowels are spelled as unreduced, secondary geminates as ungeminated
    • Proto-Finnic *-d- is not normalized as described above

This means that semivoiced consonants are still spelled using the lowercase voiced letters, the affricates as ⟨ts⟩/⟨tts⟩ and ⟨č⟩/⟨čč⟩, and so on.

Normalizations of the orthography can and should be indicated with {{normalized}}.

Examples of standardizations

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

  • *-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⟩.
  • Verbs like laskõa, lukkõa, tuntõa are lemmatized under first infinitive forms ending in ⟨-õa⟩.

Alternative forms

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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:

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

Etymology

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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 (especially in the Vaipooli varieties, which are used as the reference dialect) which have been borrowed from either Ingrian or from Ingrian Finnish.

In Votic words inherited from Proto-Finnic, the following features are generally found:

Words which break these rules are generally borrowed from either Ingrian or Finnish (examples: keittä for 'native' **čeittä, heittä for 'native' dialectal eittää, nevvo for 'native' nõvvo). The native equivalent of the word might also exist, but it might only be used in the other Votic dialects; such words should be tagged with the locations it has been attested in.

In some cases, words may mix native and non-native features, e.g. jõki (for 'native' dialectal jõči). This must also be considered Ingrian or Finnish influence, with so-called 'etymological nativization'. There may even be cases where a word has been fully nativized and is indistinguishable from a native word, in which case recognizing the word as a borrowing is usually difficult and may rely on e.g. the distribution of the word (for instance, words found only in Vaipooli are more likely to be borrowings).

Major reference works on the etymology of Estonian and Finnish usually indicate cases where the Votic word is borrowed from some other Finnic language.

Resources

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  • 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]‎[3], 2nd edition, Tallinn (note the Orthographical differences from VKS section)
  • Rozhanskiy, Fedor, Markus, Elena, editors (2026), VoticDict 1.0 - Morphological dictionary of Votic‎[4] (computer program) (uses phonetic spelling, note spelling above)

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.

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