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Cheremis-Chuvash Lexical Relationships (Uralic and Altaic Series)

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Martti Räsänen's 1920 work "Die Tschuwassische Lehnwörter im Tscheremissischen", published in Helsinki by the Finno-Ugrian Society, is one of the great early achievements of Finno-Ugrian and Altaic linguistics. However, Räsänen's tome has a peculiar organization and no index, making it difficult to search through. In 1968, John R. Krueger with the assistance of E. D. Francis realized this index, and it was published by Indiana University, Bloomington as Volume 94 of the Uralic and Altaic Series.

Besides the brief preface, describing the cumbersome process of making this index in the era before computers, the content of the book is five indexes. The largest are, of course, the Mari (Cheremis) index and the Chuvash index. The smaller indexes are Finno-Ugric Languages (except Cheremis), Altaic Languages (except Chuvash), and Indo-European Languages and Others. The latter three indexes are in turn divided into sections for each language concerned. The transcription is more or less that used by Räsänen.

The book is essential if you have a copy of Räsänen's book and plan on making heavy use of it. But try to get the book on the used market or from the author's old department, and avoid the reprint this listing describes. Shame on Routledge for charging a fortune on what amounts to not much more than a pamphlet. When reprinting the Ural and Altaic series (photocopies even, with no editing involved), Routledge priced each volume sky-high regardless of size or content.