Erzya (Эрзянь Кель (Erzjanj Kelj)) is spoken in the northern and eastern parts of the republic of Mordovia and adjacent Nizhni Novgorod, Chuvassia, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Ulyanovsk, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia. It is spoken by about 500,000 people. It is currently written using the Cyrillic alphabet with no modifications to the variant used by the Russian language. In Mordovia, Erzya is co-official with Moksha and Russian.

The language belongs to the Mordvinic branch of Finno-Volgaic languages a sub-branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. Erzya is closely related to the Moksha language, but is distinct in both its phonetics and vocabulary.

SIL code: MYV

ISO 639-2: fiu

Alphabet: А/а, Б/б, В/в, Г/г, Д/д, Е/е, Ё/ё, Ж/ж, З/з, И/и, Й/й, К/к, Л/л, М/м, Н/н, О/о, П/п, Р/р, С/с, Т/т, У/у, Ф/ф, Х/х, Ц/ц, Ч/ч, Ш/ш, Щ/щ, Ъ/ъ, Ы/ы, Ь/ь, Э/э, Ю/ю, Я/я