Võro ( vro, võro kiilʼ, link=no , et, võru keel) is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian ...

. Traditionally, it has been considered a dialect of the South Estonian dialect group of the

Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language, written in the Latin script. It is the official language of Estonia and one of the official languages of the European Union, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people; 922,000 people in Estonia and 160, ...

, but nowadays it has its own literary standard and efforts have been undertaken to seek official recognition as an indigenous

regional language * A regional language is a language spoken in a region of a sovereign state, whether it be a small area, a federated state or province or some wider area. Internationally, for the purposes of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Lan ...

of Estonia. Võro has roughly 75,000 speakers ( Võros) mostly in southeastern Estonia, in the eight

parishes A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

of the historical

Võru County Võru County ( et, Võru maakond or ''Võrumaa''; vro, Võro maakund) is a county in southern Estonia. It is bordered by Valga County and Põlva County and is the only Estonian county bordering two countries - Latvia ( Alūksne Municipality an ...

: Karula, Harglõ, Urvastõ, Rõugõ,

Kanepi Kanepi is a small borough (') in Kanepi Parish, Põlva County in southeastern Estonia. Hugo Treffner (1845–1912), educator, founder of the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium was born in Kanepi as a son of a family of local parish clerk. Gallery ...

Põlva Põlva () is a town in southeastern Estonia, the capital of Põlva County, and the centre of Põlva Parish. Põlva is home for the Intsikurmu Song Festival Grounds, which regularly hosts concerts and summer activities, situated in a small f ...

, Räpinä and Vahtsõliina. These parishes are currently centred (due to redistricting) in Võru and

counties, with parts extending into Valga and

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...

counties. Speakers can also be found in the cities of

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju '' ...

and

and the rest of Estonia.

History

Võro is a descendant of the old South Estonian regional language and is the least influenced by Standard Estonian (which is based on Northern Estonian dialects). Võro was once spoken further south and east of historical Võromaa in South Estonian-speaking enclaves Lutsi, Leivu and Kraasna in what is now

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

. In addition to Võro, other contemporary variants of South Estonian include the Mulgi,

and Seto dialect. One of the earliest written evidences of South Estonian is a translation of the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...

(''Wastne Testament'') published in 1686. Although the status of South Estonian began to diminish after the 1880s, the language began to undergo a revival in the late 1980s.

Present situation

Today, Võro is used in the works of some of Estonia's best-known playwrights, poets, and authors ( Madis Kõiv, Ülle Kauksi, Jaan Kaplinski, Ain Kaalep, etc.). One newspaper is printed in Võro: the fortnightly '' Uma Leht'' (literally ''Our Own Newspaper''). Twenty six public schools offer weekly special classes (mostly extracurricular) in modern Võro. Estonia's contribution to the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 was the song " Tii", which was performed by Neiokõsõ in Võro. The language is endangered, and according to Kadri Koreinik this is due to the government's lack of legal commitment to protect the language.

Orthography

Võro employs the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

, like Estonian and Finnish. Most letters (including ''ä'', ''ö'', ''ü'', and ''õ'') denote the same sounds as in Estonian, with a few exceptions. The letter ''q'' stands for the

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

and ''y'' denotes , a vowel very close to Russian '' ы'' (from 2005 written ''õ''). Palatalization of consonants is marked with an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...

(´) or

apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...

('). In proper typography and in handwriting, the palatalisation mark does not extend above the

cap height In typography, cap height is the height of a capital letter above the baseline for a particular typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), wi ...

(except uppercase letters ''Ń'', ''Ŕ'', ''Ś'', ''V́'' etc.), and it is written above the letter if the letter has no ascender (''ǵ'', ''ḿ'', ''ń'', ''ṕ'', ''ŕ'', ''ś'', ''v́'' etc.) but written to the right of it otherwise (''b’'', ''d’'', ''f’'', ''h’'', ''k’'', ''l’'', ''t’''). In computing, it is not usually possible to enter these character combinations or to make them look esthetically pleasing with most common fonts, so the apostrophe is generally placed after the letter in all cases. This convention is followed in this article as well.

Phonology

Vowels

Vowel harmony

Võro has preserved the system of

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

that was present in Proto-Finnic. This distinguishes it from Estonian and some other Finnic languages, which have lost it. The vowel harmony system distinguishes front, back and neutral vowels, much like the system found in Finnish. A word cannot contain both front and back vowels; suffixes automatically adapt the backness of the vowels depending on the type of vowels found in the word it is attached to. Neutral vowels can be combined with either type of vowel, although a word that contains only neutral vowels has front vowel harmony. The only neutral vowel is ''i'', like in Votic but unlike Finnish and Karelian, where ''e'' is also neutral. *The vowel ''ɨ'' (in the Võro orthography written with ''õ'' or ''y'', see Orthography section) is considered a back vowel for harmony purposes, but does not participate in harmony itself, as it does not occur in suffixes and endings. Some examples, with Estonian and Finnish included for comparison:

Consonants

All Võro consonants (except and ) can be palatalized. The

(q,

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...

) is a very common sound in Võro.

Grammar

Nouns

Endings are shown only in the back vowel harmony variant. The ''e'' of the illative ending does not undergo vowel harmony, so it never changes to ''õ''. Only the more common endings are shown. There are some unusual/irregular endings that are only found in a few words or word types. Notes: * The accusative is not usually considered a separate case in Võro grammars, as it is always identical to either the nominative or the genitive. * When an ending beginning with ''d'' is attached to a stem ending in an obstruent, it is devoiced to ''t'' automatically.

Verbs

The 3rd person singular of the indicative mood can be either without an ending or, alternatively, with an ''s''-ending: Among the Finnic languages, such double verb conjugation can be found only in the South Estonian and Karelian languages.

Negation

Võro has a negative particle that is appended to the end of the verb, whereas standard Estonian and Finnish have a negative verb, which precedes the verb. In Estonian and Finnish, the negative verb ''ei'' (Finnish ''en/et/ei/emme/ette/eivät'') is used in both present and past negation, whereas in Võro the same is expressed by different particles ending with ''-i(q)'' or ''-s'':

Language examples

Written examples

Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt ...

in Võro: : As comparison the same sentence in Standard Estonian: : In Finnish: :

Recorded videos

File:WIKITONGUES-_Egle_speaking_Võro.webm, Egle speaking Võro File:WIKITONGUES-_Sulev_speaking_Võro.webm, Sulev speaking Võro (with English subtitles) File:WIKITONGUES- Pulga speaking Võro.webm, Jaan speaking Võro File:WIKITONGUES- Maarika speaking Võro.webm, Maarika speaking Võro File:WIKITONGUES- Toomas speaking Võro.webm, Toomas speaking Võro

References

External links

at Omniglot
Võro-Estonian dictionary (Võro Institute)

Võro Institute

Võro language newspaper "Uma Leht"

Võro synthetic voice

Oahpa – an internet program for learners of Võro

* ttp://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=vro Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: vro
Homepage of computer programs in Võro

Eurominority

Collection of cartoons in Võro
{{DEFAULTSORT:Voro Võro Definitely endangered languages Finnic languages Estonian dialects Languages of Estonia Põlva County South Estonian language Võru County Vowel-harmony languages