Erzya from scratch: a new self-study textbook is coming out in Kazan
Linguists Alexey Arzamazov and Maxim Kuznetsov of Kazan are preparing for print a manual titled "Erzya from Scratch: A Self-Study Textbook for Beginners", the Saransk newspaper Izvestia Mordovii reported on 5 July 2026. The book will complete the series "Languages and Cultures of the Peoples of the Republic of Tatarstan", which already includes self-study textbooks of Tatar, Udmurt, Mari and Chuvash.
Neither author is a native speaker of Erzya, a Finno-Ugric language spoken mainly in the Republic of Mordovia and in scattered communities across the Volga region of Russia. Alexey Arzamazov, a doctor of philology, heads the laboratory of multifactor humanities analysis and cognitive philology at the Kazan Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Maxim Kuznetsov is a researcher at the same laboratory. Both are polyglot linguists whose experience of mastering many languages helps them structure new material the way a beginner actually needs it. For the new manual, Arzamazov wrote the teaching dialogues and Kuznetsov the grammar section — completed, according to the newspaper, in just four months. Specialists from Mordovia advised the authors on the finer points of Erzya grammar.
Kuznetsov is candid about the niche the book fills: teaching materials for Erzya exist, but there are few of them, and they often cover only the very basics — not enough for serious study. Some grammar topics are presented in an untraditional but, the authors believe, more accessible way. Arzamazov states the motivation more starkly: the number of speakers of Erzya and Moksha is falling very fast — it nearly halved between the 2002 and 2010 censuses — few young people know the languages well, and he calls the publication of this book one of the most important measures for their preservation.
The figures for Tatarstan itself are telling. According to the 2020–2021 census, 12,065 people in the republic were recorded as "Mordvins", yet only 357 of them identified as Erzya and 49 as Moksha. Once again, the umbrella category "Mordvin" obscures how many Erzya actually live in the Chistopol, Leninogorsk, Almetyevsk and Alekseyevskoye districts and in the city of Naberezhnye Chelny, where most of the community is settled.
The place of publication is worth noting too. The Erzya self-study textbook is appearing not in Saransk, the capital of Mordovia, but in Kazan — within a book series backed by the leadership of Tatarstan and the republic's standing commission for the preservation and development of Tatar and of the native languages of the peoples living there. Where a permanent institution of language policy exists, room is found for Erzya as well — and precisely in the practical genre of a self-study manual, something independent learners of the language have long been waiting for.
For learners of Erzya this is a welcome addition to a modest shelf of teaching literature. A textbook and a dictionary are complementary tools: the first provides the system, the second the lexical depth. Valks will follow the book's release and let readers know when and where it can be obtained — and we invite everyone who starts studying with the new manual to check words and meanings in our dictionary.