Udmurt (/ʊdˈmʊərt/; Cyrillic: Удмурт) is a Permic language spoken by the Udmurt people who are native to Udmurtia. As a Uralic language, it is distantly related to languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian. The Udmurt language is co-official with Russian within Udmurtia.

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Udmurt
Удмурт кыл Udmurt kyl
Native to	Russia
Region	Udmurtia
Ethnicity	Udmurts
Native speakers	270,000 (2020 census)[1]
Language family	Uralic Finno-Ugric Finno-Permic Permic Udmurt
Official status
Official language in	Russia  Udmurtia
Language codes
ISO 639-2	udm
ISO 639-3	udm
Glottolog	udmu1245
ELP	Udmurt
Distribution of Udmurt dialects at the beginning of 21st century[2][3]
Udmurt is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)
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It is written using the Cyrillic alphabet with the addition of five characters not used in the Russian alphabet: Ӝ/ӝ, Ӟ/ӟ, Ӥ/ӥ, Ӧ/ӧ, and Ӵ/ӵ. Together with the Komi and Permyak languages, it constitutes the Permic grouping of the Uralic family. Among outsiders, it has traditionally been referred to by its Russian exonym, Votyak. Udmurt has borrowed vocabulary from neighboring languages, mainly from Tatar and Russian.

In 2010, per the Russian census, there were around 324,000 speakers of the language in the country, out of the ethnic population of roughly 554,000.^[4] Ethnologue estimated that there were 550,000 native speakers (77%) out of an ethnic population of 750,000 in the former Russian SFSR (1989 census),^[5] a decline of roughly 41% in 21 years.

Udmurt varieties can be grouped into three broad dialect groups:

• Northern Udmurt, spoken along the Cheptsa River
• Southern Udmurt
• Besermyan, spoken by the strongly Turkified Besermyans

A continuum of intermediate dialects between Northern and Southern Udmurt is found, and literary Udmurt includes features from both areas. Besermyan is more sharply distinguished.^{[citation needed]}

The differences between the dialects are not major and mainly involve differences in vocabulary, largely attributable to the stronger influence of Tatar in the southern end of the Udmurt-speaking area. A few differences in morphology and phonology still exist as well; for example:

• Southern Udmurt has an accusative ending -ыз /-ɨz/, contrasting with northern -ты /-tɨ/.
• Southwestern Udmurt distinguishes an eighth vowel phoneme /ʉ/.
• Besermyan has /e/ in place of standard Udmurt /ə/ (thus distinguishing only six vowel phonemes), and /ɵ/ in place of standard Udmurt /ɨ/.

Udmurt is written using a modified version of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet:

Unlike other Uralic languages such as Finnish and Hungarian, Udmurt does not distinguish between long and short vowels and does not have vowel harmony.

Udmurt is an agglutinating language. It uses affixes to express possession, to specify mode, time, and so on.

No gender distinction is made in nouns or personal pronouns.

Depending on the style, about 10 to 30 percent of the Udmurt lexicon consists of loanwords. Many loanwords are from the Tatar language, which has also strongly influenced Udmurt phonology and syntax.

The Udmurt language, along with the Tatar language, influenced the language of the Udmurt Jews, in the dialects of which the words of Finno-Ugric and Turkic origin there were recorded.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Eurovision runners-up Buranovskiye Babushki, a pop group composed of Udmurt grandmothers, sing mostly in Udmurt.^[12]

The romantic comedy film Berry-Strawberry, a joint Polish-Udmurt production, is in the Udmurt language.

In 2013, the film company "Inwis kinopottonni" produced a film in the Udmurt language called Puzkar ("nest").^[13]

The Bible was first completely translated into Udmurt in 2013.^[14]

• Csúcs, Sándor (1998). Udmurt. In Daniel Abondolo (ed.), The Uralic Languages: London: Routledge. pp. 276–304.
• Kel'makov, Valentin; Sara Hännikäinen (2008). Udmurtin kielioppia ja harjoituksia (in Finnish) (2nd ed.). Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura. ISBN 978-952-5150-34-6.
• Moreau, Jean-Luc (2009). Parlons Oudmourte. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 978-2-296-07951-9.
• Svetlana Edygarova (18 October 2014). "The varieties of the modern Udmurt language". Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen (62): 376–398. doi:10.33339/FUF.86085. ISSN 0355-1253. Wikidata Q122984591.