Mordvinic languages in the context of "Mordovia"

The Erzya language (эрзянь кель, eŕźań keĺ, pronounced [ˈerʲzʲanʲ ˈkʲelʲ]), also Erzian or historically Arisa, is spoken by approximately 300,000 people in the northern, eastern and north-western parts of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent regions of Nizhny Novgorod, Chuvashia, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia. A diaspora can also be found in Armenia and Estonia, as well as in Kazakhstan and other states of Central Asia. Erzya is currently written using Cyrillic with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language. In Mordovia, Erzya is co-official with Moksha and Russian.

The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of the Uralic languages. Erzya is a language that is closely related to Moksha but has distinct phonetics, morphology and vocabulary.

Moksha (мокшень кяль, mokšəń käĺ, pronounced ['mɔkʃənʲ kælʲ]) is a Mordvinic language of the Uralic family, spoken by Mokshas, with around 130,000 native speakers in 2010.Moksha is the majority language in the western part of Mordovia.Its closest relative is the Erzya language, with which it is not mutually intelligible. Moksha is also possibly closely related to the extinct Meshcherian and Muromian languages.

The Mokshas (also Mokshans, Moksha people; Moksha: Мокшет/Mokšet) comprise a Mordvinian ethnic group belonging to the Volgaic branch of the Finno-Ugric peoples. They live in Russia, mostly near the Volga and Moksha rivers, a tributary of the Oka River.

Their native language is Mokshan, one of the two surviving members of the Mordvinic branch of the Uralic language family. According to a 1994 Russian census, 49% of the autochthonal Finnic population in Mordovia identified themselves as Mokshas, totaling more than 180,000 people. Most Mokshas belong to the Russian Orthodox Church; other religions practised by Mokshas include Lutheranism and paganism.

Meshchera is an extinct Uralic language. It was spoken around the left bank of the Middle Oka. Meshchera was either a Mordvinic or a Permic language. Pauli Rahkonen has suggested on the basis of toponymic evidence that it was a Permic or closely related language. Rahkonen's speculation has been criticized by Vladimir Napolskikh. Some Meshchera speaking people possibly assimilated into Mishar Tatars (Meshcheryaki). However this theory is disputed.

The first Russian written source which mentions them is the Tolkovaya Paleya, from the 13th century. They are also mentioned in several later Russian chronicles from the period before the 16th century, and even later, in one of the letters by Andrey Kurbsky written in the second half of the 16th century, where he claimed the language spoken in the Meshchera region to be Mordvinic.

Muromian is an extinct Uralic language formerly spoken by the Muromian tribe, in what is today the Murom region in Russia. They are mentioned by Jordanes as Mordens and in the Primary Chronicle. Very little is known about the language, but it was probably either closely related to the Mordvinic languages, or a language closely related to Meryan. Muromian probably became extinct in the Middle Ages around the 10th century, as the Muromians were assimilated by the Slavs. The Muromian language is unattested, but is assumed to have been Uralic, and has frequently been placed in the Volga-Finnic category.

The Finno-Permic or Finno-Permian languages, sometimes just Finnic languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Uralic languages which comprise the Balto-Finnic languages, Sámi languages, Mordvinic languages, Mari language, Permic languages and likely a number of extinct languages. In the traditional taxonomy of the Uralic languages, Finno-Permic is estimated to have split from Finno-Ugric around 3000–2500 BC, and branched into Permic languages and Finno-Volgaic languages around 2000 BC.Nowadays the validity of the group as a taxonomical entity is being questioned, and the interrelationships of its five branches are debated with little consensus.

The term Finnic languages has often been used to designate all the Finno-Permic languages, with the term Balto-Finnic used to disambiguate the Finnic languages proper. However, in many works, Finnic refers to the Baltic-Finnic languages alone.