Approximate ethno-linguistic map of European Russia in the 9th century: the five Volga Finnic groups of the Merya, Mari, Muromians, Meshchera and Mordvins are shown as being surrounded by the Slavs to the west, the (Finnic) Veps to the northwest, the Permians to the northeast, and the (Turkic) Bulgars and Khazars to the southeast and south.
The modern representatives of Volga Finns live in the basins of the Sura and Moksha rivers, as well as (in smaller numbers) in the interfluve between the Volga and the Belaya rivers. The Mari language has two dialects, the Meadow Mari and the Hill Mari.
Traditionally the Mari and the Mordvinic languages (Erzya and Moksha) were considered to form a Volga-Finnic or Volgaic group within the Uralic language family,[7][8][9] accepted by linguists like Robert Austerlitz (1968), Aurélien Sauvageot & Karl Heinrich Menges (1973) and Harald Haarmann (1974), but rejected by others like Björn Collinder (1965) and Robert Thomas Harms (1974).[10]
This grouping has also been criticized by Salminen (2002), who suggests it may be simply a geographic, not a phylogenetic, group.[11]
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).