Erzya language

Erzya
eŕźań keĺ
эрзянь кель
Native to	Russia
Region	Mordovia, Nizhny Novgorod, Chuvashia, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Penza, Saratov, Orenburg, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan
Ethnicity	610,000 (553,000 in Russia, 2010 census)
Native speakers	300,000 claimed to speak "Mordovin" while 50,000 claimed to speak "Erzya-Mordvin" (2020 census)[1]
Language family	Uralic Mordvinic Erzya
Writing system	Cyrillic
Official status
Official language in	Mordovia (Russia)
Language codes
ISO 639-2	myv
ISO 639-3	myv
Glottolog	erzy1239
ELP	Erzya
Mordvin languages at the beginning of the 20th century[2][3]
Erzya is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)
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The Erzya language (эрзянь кель, eŕźań keĺ, pronounced [ˈerʲzʲanʲ ˈkelʲ]), 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.