On Non-Existence of Polish Nasal Vowels

 Being suggested by orthography, many Polish laymen – and, unfortunately, some linguistists too – think that the Polish language phonological system includes some nasal vowels, namely ę (nazal e), ą (not nasal a, but nasal o, written so for historical reasons) like those of French language. It was true maybe a century ago, but it is no longer; so-called nasal vowels have clearly nonsynchronous pronunciation, which means they are diphthongs (a vowel + semivowel) or simply sets of a vowel and a consonant.

The first segment is an oral or slightly nasalized (but this nasalization is not phonemically relevant) /ɔ/ or /ɛ/ and the second one depends on phonetic context; we will describe rules of this variation. What is interesting, those rules apply also to other Polish vowels, so if we talk about diphtong /ɔɰ̃/ in są (“(they) are”), there is also /iɰ̃/ in instytut (“institute”).

Before /p/ and /b/ the second segment is /m/: trąba /trɔmba/.

Before /t/, /d/, /t͡s/, /d͡z/, /t͡ʂ/, /d͡ʐ/ consonants it is /n/: wątroba /wɔntroba/.

Before /k/ and /g/ it is [ŋ]: bąk [bɔŋk].

Before /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʂ/, /ʐ/, /x/ and at the end of a word it is [ɰ̃]: są /sɔɰ̃/.

Before /d͡ʑ/ and /t͡ɕ/ it is /ɲ/:

Before /ɕ/ and /ʑ/ it is [j̃] or [ɰ̃]: gęś [gɛj̃ɕ] or [gɛɰ̃ɕ].

Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari

A few weeks ago, I watched a Russian film by Aleksei Fedorchenko – “Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari” (Russian: Небесные жёны луговых мари, /nʲɪˈbʲesnɨje ʐɨˈnɨ lʊɡɐˈvɨx ˈmarʲɪ/; Meadow Mari: Олык марий пылвомыш вате-влак, /ˈolɤk ˈmarij pɤlˈβomɤʃ βaˈteβlak/; Polish: “Niebiańskie żony łąkowych Maryjczyków”).

The Maris are an ethnic minority of Russia and have an autonomous republic on their own: the Mari El Republic. They are Volga Finns, like the Mordvins; there are distinguished two subgroups of Maris: the Hill (Western) and the Meadow (Eastern) Mari; those are also names of two standardized dialects of the Mari language.

The Meadow Maris are an unique phonomenon for entire Europe: they are called the last Pagans of Europe, however, it is a small exaggeration, because there are also other Pagan groups with some degree of continuity of their religion, but they are usually much smaller. According to the national survey of 2012, 6% of the population of the Mari El Republic are adherents of politheistic Native Mari religion, based on worship of forces of nature, but some estimations say that the majority of ethnic Maris practice the old beliefs in some way, often alongside their nominal Orthodox Christianity.

The film, created in surrelistic convention and based on Mari legends, tells us story about mythical world of Pagan believes, which resembles to me the “Game of Thrones”. If someone wants the journey to the lost world of our ancestors, the films will give them what they want; I will reveal only that the first scene involves a redhead girl praying to a birch.