SOME GRAPHIC AND LANGUAGE PECULIARITIES IN THE HELSINGFORS EDITION OF A TRANSLATION OF MATHEW’S GOSPEL (1882)

Abstract

The translation of the Gospel of Matthew differs from all earlier translations (1847, 1863, 1877, 1904, 1912) in that it has an eclectic combination of language peculiarities found both in southern and northern dialects of the Udmurt language. One gets the impression that the translator deliberately combined language means of different dialects to avoid particular features of the dialects. The translation must have been done by T.G. Aminoff. This fact is also pointed out by G.S. Lytkin, who included a translated extract of Matthew’s Gospel into his book “Zyrjanski region in the time of Perm bishops”. This is quite probable as the Finish linguist stayed with the Udmurts for a long time and could master Udmurt language and was able to write down Udmurt folklore texts without any help of literate Udmurts. Special attention is given to some graphic and language peculiarities of the written monument of the Udmurt literature relating to the end of the 19 century.