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86-733: Finno-Ugric ( / ˌ f ɪ n oʊ ˈ juː ɡ r ɪ k , - ˈ uː -/ ) is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages . Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by some contemporary linguists such as Tapani Salminen and Ante Aikio . The three most spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian , Finnish , and Estonian , are all included in Finno-Ugric. The term Finno-Ugric , which originally referred to

172-557: A close-mid back unrounded /ɤ/ (but a close central unrounded /ɨ/ in Livonian), as well as loss of *n before *s with compensatory lengthening . (North) Estonian-Votic has been suggested to possibly constitute an actual genetic subgroup (called varyingly Maa by Viitso (1998, 2000) or Central Finnic by Kallio (2014) ), though the evidence is weak: almost all innovations shared by Estonian and Votic have also spread to South Estonian and/or Livonian. A possible defining innovation

258-670: A Finno-Permic grouping. Extending this approach to cover the Samoyedic languages suggests affinity with Ugric, resulting in the aforementioned East Uralic grouping, as it also shares the same sibilant developments. A further non-trivial Ugric-Samoyedic isogloss is the reduction *k, *x, *w > ɣ when before *i, and after a vowel (cf. *k > ɣ above), or adjacent to *t, *s, *š, or *ś. Finno-Ugric consonant developments after Viitso (2000); Samoyedic changes after Sammallahti (1988) The inverse relationship between consonant gradation and medial lenition of stops (the pattern also continuing within

344-592: A branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples . There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia . Traditionally, eight Finnic languages have been recognized. The major modern representatives of the family are Finnish and Estonian , the official languages of their respective nation states. The other Finnic languages in

430-502: A century's worth of editing work for later generations of Finnish Uralicists. The Uralic family comprises nine undisputed groups with no consensus classification between them. (Some of the proposals are listed in the next section.) An agnostic approach treats them as separate branches. Obsolete or native names are displayed in italics. There is also historical evidence of a number of extinct languages of uncertain affiliation: Traces of Finno-Ugric substrata, especially in toponymy, in

516-458: A competing hypothesis to Ob-Ugric. Lexicostatistics has been used in defense of the traditional family tree. A recent re-evaluation of the evidence however fails to find support for Finno-Ugric and Ugric, suggesting four lexically distinct branches (Finno-Permic, Hungarian, Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic). One alternative proposal for a family tree, with emphasis on the development of numerals, is as follows: Another proposed tree, more divergent from

602-528: A connection between Uralic and other Paleo-Siberian languages. Theories proposing a close relationship with the Altaic languages were formerly popular, based on similarities in vocabulary as well as in grammatical and phonological features, in particular the similarities in the Uralic and Altaic pronouns and the presence of agglutination in both sets of languages, as well as vowel harmony in some. For example,

688-1080: A few similar words between Finnish and Hungarian. These authors were the first to outline what was to become the classification of the Finno-Ugric, and later Uralic family. This proposal received some of its initial impetus from the fact that these languages, unlike most of the other languages spoken in Europe, are not part of what is now known as the Indo-European family. In 1717, the Swedish professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish and Hungarian, of which about 40 are still considered valid. Several early reports comparing Finnish or Hungarian with Mordvin, Mari or Khanty were additionally collected by Gottfried Leibniz and edited by his assistant Johann Georg von Eckhart . In 1730, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published his book Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia ( The Northern and Eastern Parts of Europe and Asia ), surveying

774-465: A geographical one, with Samoyedic being distinct by lexical borrowing rather than actually being historically divergent. It has been proposed that the area in which Proto-Finno-Ugric was spoken reached between the Baltic Sea and the Ural Mountains . Traditionally, the main set of evidence for the genetic proposal of Proto-Finno-Ugric has come from vocabulary. A large amount of vocabulary (e.g.

860-518: A lesser extent, Baltic languages . Innovations are also shared between Finnic and the Mordvinic languages , and in recent times Finnic, Sámi and Moksha are sometimes grouped together. There is no grammatical gender in any of the Finnic languages, nor are there articles or definite or indefinite forms. The morphophonology (the way the grammatical function of a morpheme affects its production)

946-549: A longer period of independent development, and its divergent vocabulary could be caused by mechanisms of replacement such as language contact . (The Finno-Ugric group is usually dated to approximately 4,000 years ago, the Samoyedic a little over 2,000.) Proponents of the traditional binary division note, however, that the invocation of extensive contact influence on vocabulary is at odds with the grammatical conservatism of Samoyedic. The consonant *š ( voiceless postalveolar fricative , [ʃ] ) has not been conclusively shown to occur in

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1032-406: A lowering *u → *o in Samoyedic (PU * lumi → *lomə → Proto-Samoyedic *jom ). Janhunen (2007, 2009) notes a number of derivational innovations in Finno-Ugric, including *ńoma "hare" → *ńoma-la , (vs. Samoyedic *ńomå ), *pexli "side" → *peel-ka → *pelka "thumb", though involving Proto-Uralic derivational elements. The Finno-Ugric group is not typologically distinct from Uralic as

1118-565: A phylogenic grouping is under challenge, with some linguists maintaining that the Finno-Permic languages are as distinct from the Ugric languages as they are from the Samoyedic languages spoken in Siberia, or even that none of the Finno-Ugric, Finno-Permic, or Ugric branches has been established. Received opinion is that the easternmost (and last discovered) Samoyed had separated first and

1204-483: A single founder effect. North Eurasian Finno-Ugric-speaking populations were found to be genetically a heterogeneous group showing lower haplotype diversities compared to more southern populations. North Eurasian Finno-Ugric-speaking populations possess unique genetic features due to complex genetic changes shaped by molecular and population genetics and adaptation to the areas of Boreal and Arctic North Eurasia. Uralic languages The name Uralic derives from

1290-631: A whole: the most widespread structural features among the group all extend to the Samoyedic languages as well. Modern linguistic research has shown that Volgaic languages is a geographical classification rather than a linguistic one, because the Mordvinic languages are more closely related to the Finno-Samic languages than the Mari languages . The relation of the Finno-Permic and the Ugric groups

1376-473: Is porsas ("pig"), loaned from Proto-Indo-European *porḱos or pre- Proto-Indo-Iranian *porśos , unchanged since loaning save for loss of palatalization , *ś > s.) The Estonian philologist Mall Hellam proposed cognate sentences that she asserted to be mutually intelligible among the three most widely spoken Uralic languages: Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian: However, linguist Geoffrey Pullum reports that neither Finns nor Hungarians could understand

1462-633: Is * yk+teksa and * kak+teksa , respectively, where * teksa cf. deka is an Indo-European loan; the difference between /t/ and /d/ is not phonemic, unlike in Indo-European. Another analysis is * ykt-e-ksa , * kakt-e-ksa , with * e being the negative verb. 100-word Swadesh lists for certain Finno-Ugric languages can be compared and contrasted at the Rosetta Project website: Finnish , Estonian , Hungarian , and Erzya . The four largest ethnic groups that speak Finno-Ugric languages are

1548-582: Is a major obstacle. As for the Finno-Ugric Urheimat , most of what has been said about it is speculation. Some linguists criticizing the Finno-Ugric genetic proposal, especially Angela Marcantonio, also question the validity of the entire Uralic family, instead proposing a Ural–Altaic hypothesis , within which they believe Finno-Permic may be as distant from Ugric as from Turkic. However, this approach has been rejected by nearly all other specialists in Uralic linguistics. One argument in favor of

1634-628: Is a part of the Estonian literary language and is an essential feature in Võro , as well as Veps , Karelian , and other eastern Finnic languages. It is also found in East Finnish dialects, and is only missing from West Finnish dialects and Standard Finnish. A special characteristic of the languages is the large number of diphthongs . There are 16 diphthongs in Finnish and 25 in Estonian; at

1720-482: Is adjudged remote by some scholars. On the other hand, with a projected time depth of only 3,000 to 4,000 years, the traditionally accepted Finno-Ugric grouping would be far younger than many major families such as Indo-European or Semitic , and would be about the same age as, for instance, the Eastern subfamily of Nilotic . But the grouping is far from transparent or securely established. The absence of early records

1806-441: Is apparent from the list, Finnish is the most conservative of the Uralic languages presented here, with nearly half the words on the list above identical to their Proto-Uralic reconstructions and most of the remainder only having minor changes, such as the conflation of *ś into /s/, or widespread changes such as the loss of *x and alteration of *ï. Finnish has also preserved old Indo-European borrowings relatively unchanged. (An example

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1892-620: Is at the base of today's wide acceptance of the inclusion of Samoyedic as a part of the Uralic family. Meanwhile, in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland , a chair for Finnish language and linguistics at the University of Helsinki was created in 1850, first held by Castrén. In 1883, the Finno-Ugrian Society was founded in Helsinki on the proposal of Otto Donner , which would lead to Helsinki overtaking St. Petersburg as

1978-420: Is complex. Morphological elements found in the Finnic languages include grammatical case suffixes, verb tempus, mood and person markers (singular and plural, the Finnic languages do not have dual ) as well as participles and several infinitive forms, possessive suffixes, clitics and more. The number of grammatical cases tends to be high while the number of verb infinitive forms varies more by language. One of

2064-514: Is now wide agreement that Proto-Finnic was probably spoken at the coasts of the Gulf of Finland. The Finnic languages are located at the western end of the Uralic language family. A close affinity to their northern neighbors, the Sámi languages , has long been assumed, though many of the similarities (particularly lexical ones) can be shown to result from common influence from Germanic languages and, to

2150-551: Is organised annually by students of Finno-Ugric languages to bring together people from all over the world who are interested in the languages and cultures. The first conference was held in 1984 in Göttingen in Germany. IFUSCO features presentations and workshops on topics such as linguistics, ethnography, history and more. The International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies is the largest scientific meeting of scientists studying

2236-417: Is possible that such words have been acquired by the languages only after the initial dissolution of the Uralic family into individual dialects, and that the scarcity of loanwords in Samoyedic results from its peripheric location. The number systems among the Finno-Ugric languages are particularly distinct from the Samoyedic languages: only the numerals "2", "5", and "7" have cognates in Samoyedic, while also

2322-703: Is the loss of *h after sonorants ( *n, *l, *r ). The Northern Finnic group has more evidence for being an actual historical/genetic subgroup. Phonetical innovations would include two changes in unstressed syllables: *ej > *ij , and *o > ö after front-harmonic vowels. The lack of õ in these languages as an innovation rather than a retention has been proposed, and recently resurrected. Germanic loanwords found throughout Northern Finnic but absent in Southern are also abundant, and even several Baltic examples of this are known. Northern Finnic in turn divides into two main groups. The most Eastern Finnic group consists of

2408-644: Is to any other language family. The hypothesis that the Dravidian languages display similarities with the Uralic language group, suggesting a prolonged period of contact in the past, is popular amongst Dravidian linguists and has been supported by a number of scholars, including Robert Caldwell , Thomas Burrow , Kamil Zvelebil , and Mikhail Andronov. This hypothesis has, however, been rejected by some specialists in Uralic languages, and has in recent times also been criticised by other Dravidian linguists, such as Bhadriraju Krishnamurti . Stefan Georg describes

2494-706: The East Finnish dialects as well as Ingrian, Karelian and Veps; the proto-language of these was likely spoken in the vicinity of Lake Ladoga . The Western Finnic group consists of the West Finnish dialects, originally spoken on the western coast of Finland, and within which the oldest division is that into Southwestern, Tavastian and Southern Ostrobothnian dialects. Among these, at least the Southwestern dialects have later come under Estonian influence. Numerous new dialects have also arisen through contacts of

2580-533: The Eskimo–Aleut languages . This is an old thesis whose antecedents go back to the 18th century. An important restatement of it was made by Bergsland (1959). Uralo-Siberian is an expanded form of the Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis. It associates Uralic with Yukaghir, Chukotko-Kamchatkan , and Eskimo–Aleut. It was propounded by Michael Fortescue in 1998. Michael Fortescue (2017) presented new evidence in favor for

2666-573: The Hungarians (14.5 million), Finns (6.5 million), Estonians (1.1 million), and Mordvins (0.85 million). Majorities of three (the Hungarians, Finns, and Estonians) inhabit their respective nation states in Europe, i.e. Hungary , Finland , and Estonia , while a large minority of Mordvins inhabit the federal Mordovian Republic within Russia (Russian Federation). The indigenous area of

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2752-584: The Sámi ) and two other possibly Uralic tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. There are many possible earlier mentions, including the Iyrcae (perhaps related to Yugra) described by Herodotus living in what is now European Russia, and the Budini , described by Herodotus as notably red-haired (a characteristic feature of the Udmurts ) and living in northeast Ukraine and/or adjacent parts of Russia. In

2838-531: The Sámi people is known as Sápmi and it consists of the northern parts of the Fennoscandian Peninsula . Some other peoples that speak Finno-Ugric languages have been assigned formerly autonomous republics within Russia. These are the Karelians ( Republic of Karelia ), Komi ( Komi Republic ), Udmurts ( Udmurt Republic ) and Mari ( Mari El Republic ). The Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug

2924-657: The Vepsians to general knowledge and elucidated in detail the relatedness of Finnish and Komi. Still more extensive were the field research expeditions made in the 1840s by Matthias Castrén (1813–1852) and Antal Reguly (1819–1858), who focused especially on the Samoyedic and the Ob-Ugric languages , respectively. Reguly's materials were worked on by the Hungarian linguist Pál Hunfalvy  [ hu ] (1810–1891) and German Josef Budenz (1836–1892), who both supported

3010-536: The 1960s. Eurasiatic resembles Nostratic in including Uralic, Indo-European, and Altaic, but differs from it in excluding the South Caucasian languages, Dravidian, and Afroasiatic and including Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nivkh , Ainu , and Eskimo–Aleut. It was propounded by Joseph Greenberg in 2000–2002. Similar ideas had earlier been expressed by Heinrich Koppelmann in 1933 and by Björn Collinder in 1965. The linguist Angela Marcantonio has argued against

3096-1041: The 1st World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples was organized in Syktyvkar in the Komi Republic in Russia, the 2nd World Congress in 1996 in Budapest in Hungary, the 3rd Congress in 2000 in Helsinki in Finland, the 4th Congress in 2004 in Tallinn in Estonia, the 5th Congress in 2008 in Khanty-Mansiysk in Russia, the 6th Congress in 2012 in Siófok in Hungary, the 7th Congress in 2016 in Lahti in Finland, and

3182-782: The 8th Congress in 2021 in Tartu in Estonia. The members of the Finno-Ugric Peoples' Consultative Committee include: the Erzyas, Estonians, Finns, Hungarians, Ingrian Finns, Ingrians, Karelians, Khants, Komis, Mansis, Maris, Mokshas, Nenetses, Permian Komis, Saamis, Tver Karelians, Udmurts, Vepsians; Observers: Livonians, Setos. In 2007, the 1st Festival of the Finno-Ugric Peoples was hosted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and visited by Finnish President, Tarja Halonen , and Hungarian Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány . The International Finno-Ugric Students' Conference (IFUSCO)

3268-608: The Baltic Sea region are Ingrian and Votic , spoken in Ingria by the Gulf of Finland , and Livonian , once spoken around the Gulf of Riga . Spoken farther northeast are Karelian , Ludic , and Veps , in the region of Lakes Onega and Ladoga . In addition, since the 1990s, several Finnic-speaking minority groups have emerged to seek recognition for their languages as distinct from the ones they have been considered dialects of in

3354-467: The Central Finnic group that must be attributed to later contact, due to the influence of literary North Estonian. Thus, contemporary "Southern Finnic" is a sprachbund that includes these languages, while diachronically they are not closely related. The genetic classification of the Finnic dialects that can be extracted from Viitso (1998) is: Viitso (2000) surveys 59 isoglosses separating

3440-531: The Coastal Estonian dialect group), Livonian and Votic (except the highly Ingrian-influenced Kukkuzi Votic). These languages are not closely related genetically, as noted above; it is a paraphyletic grouping, consisting of all Finnic languages except the Northern Finnic languages. The languages nevertheless share a number of features, such as the presence of a ninth vowel phoneme õ , usually

3526-587: The Finnic varieties recognizes the Southern Finnic and Northern Finnic groups (though the position of some varieties within this division is uncertain): † = extinct variety; ( † ) = moribund variety. A more-or-less genetic subdivision can be also determined, based on the relative chronology of sound changes within varieties, which provides a rather different view. The following grouping follows among others Sammallahti (1977), Viitso (1998), and Kallio (2014): The division between South Estonian and

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3612-527: The Finno-Ugric grouping has come from loanwords . Several loans from the Indo-European languages are present in most or all of the Finno-Ugric languages, while being absent from Samoyedic. According to Häkkinen (1983) the alleged Proto-Finno-Ugric loanwords are disproportionally well-represented in Hungarian and the Permic languages, and disproportionally poorly represented in the Ob-Ugric languages; hence it

3698-492: The Karelian language was not officially recognised as its own language in Finland until 2009, despite there being no linguistic confusion about its status. The smaller languages are endangered . The last native speaker of Livonian died in 2013, and only about a dozen native speakers of Votic remain. Regardless, even for these languages, the shaping of a standard language and education in it continues. The geographic centre of

3784-401: The Swedish scholar Georg Stiernhielm , and the Swedish courtier Bengt Skytte . Fogel's unpublished study of the relationship, commissioned by Cosimo III of Tuscany, was clearly the most modern of these: he established several grammatical and lexical parallels between Finnish and Hungarian as well as Sámi. Stiernhielm commented on the similarities of Sámi, Estonian, and Finnish, and also on

3870-485: The Uralic affinity of Hungarian. Budenz was the first scholar to bring this result to popular consciousness in Hungary and to attempt a reconstruction of the Proto-Finno-Ugric grammar and lexicon. Another late-19th-century Hungarian contribution is that of Ignácz Halász  [ hu ] (1855–1901), who published extensive comparative material of Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic in the 1890s, and whose work

3956-409: The acute denotes a secondary palatal articulation ( ⟨ś⟩ [sʲ ~ ɕ] , ⟨ć⟩ [tsʲ ~ tɕ] , ⟨l⟩ [lʲ] ) or, in Hungarian, vowel length. The Finnish letter ⟨y⟩ and the letter ⟨ü⟩ in other languages represent the high rounded vowel [y] ; the letters ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨ö⟩ are the front vowels [æ] and [ø] . As

4042-473: The arrangement of its subgroups is a matter of some dispute. Mordvinic is commonly seen as particularly closely related to or part of Finno-Samic. The term Volgaic (or Volga-Finnic ) was used to denote a branch previously believed to include Mari, Mordvinic and a number of the extinct languages, but it is now obsolete and considered a geographic classification rather than a linguistic one. Within Ugric, uniting Mansi with Hungarian rather than Khanty has been

4128-401: The branching into Ugric and Finno-Permic took place later, but this reconstruction does not have strong support in the linguistic data. Attempts at reconstructing a Proto-Finno-Ugric proto-language , a common ancestor of all Uralic languages except for the Samoyedic languages, are largely indistinguishable from Proto-Uralic , suggesting that Finno-Ugric might not be a historical grouping but

4214-763: The chief northern center of research of the Uralic languages. During the late 19th and early 20th century (until the separation of Finland from Russia following the Russian Revolution ), the Society hired many scholars to survey the still less-known Uralic languages. Major researchers of this period included Heikki Paasonen (studying especially the Mordvinic languages ), Yrjö Wichmann (studying Permic ), Artturi Kannisto  [ fi ] ( Mansi ), Kustaa Fredrik Karjalainen ( Khanty ), Toivo Lehtisalo ( Nenets ), and Kai Donner ( Kamass ). The vast amounts of data collected on these expeditions would provide over

4300-478: The culture and languages of Finno-Ugric peoples , held every five years. The first congress was organized in 1960 in Budapest , the last congress took place in 2022 in Vienna , the next congress is planned to be held in Tartu , Estonia in 2025. The linguistic reconstruction of the Finno-Ugric language family has led to the postulation that the ancient Proto-Finno-Ugric people were ethnically related, and that even

4386-560: The development from Proto-Finno-Ugric to Proto-Ugric. Similar sound laws are required for other languages as well. Thus, the origin and raising of long vowels may actually belong at a later stage, and the development of these words from Proto-Uralic to Proto-Ugric can be summarized as simple loss of *x (if it existed in the first place at all; vowel length only surfaces consistently in the Baltic-Finnic languages .) The proposed raising of *o has been alternatively interpreted instead as

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4472-502: The early 20th century, they were found to be quite divergent, and they were assumed to have separated already early on. The terminology adopted for this was "Uralic" for the entire family, " Finno-Ugric " for the non-Samoyedic languages (though "Finno-Ugric" has, to this day, remained in use also as a synonym for the whole family). Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic are listed in ISO 639-5 as primary branches of Uralic. The following table lists nodes of

4558-454: The entire family, is sometimes used as a synonym for the term Uralic , which includes the Samoyedic languages , as commonly happens when a language family is expanded with further discoveries. Before the 20th century, the language family might be referred to as Finnish , Ugric , Finno-Hungarian or with a variety of other names. The name Finno-Ugric came into general use in the late 19th or early 20th century. The validity of Finno-Ugric as

4644-588: The epoch". Still, in spite of this hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit János Sajnovics traveled with Maximilian Hell to survey the alleged relationship between Hungarian and Sámi, while they were also on a mission to observe the 1769 Venus transit . Sajnovics published his results in 1770, arguing for a relationship based on several grammatical features. In 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi published

4730-475: The family into 58 dialect areas (finer division is possible), finding that an unambiguous perimeter can be set up only for South Estonian, Livonian, Votic, and Veps. In particular, no isogloss exactly coincides with the geographical division into 'Estonian' south of the Gulf of Finland and 'Finnish' north of it. Despite this, standard Finnish and Estonian are not mutually intelligible . The Southern Finnic languages consist of North and South Estonian (excluding

4816-492: The family's purported "original homeland" ( Urheimat ) hypothesized to have been somewhere in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains , and was first proposed by Julius Klaproth in Asia Polyglotta (1823). Finno-Ugric is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though Finno-Ugric is widely understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages. Scholars who do not accept the traditional notion that Samoyedic split first from

4902-402: The geography, peoples and languages of Russia. All the main groups of the Uralic languages were already identified here. Nonetheless, these relationships were not widely accepted. Hungarian intellectuals especially were not interested in the theory and preferred to assume connections with Turkic tribes, an attitude characterized by Merritt Ruhlen as due to "the wild unfettered Romanticism of

4988-560: The late 15th century, European scholars noted the resemblance of the names Hungaria and Yugria , the names of settlements east of the Ural. They assumed a connection but did not seek linguistic evidence. The affinity of Hungarian and Finnish was first proposed in the late 17th century. Three candidates can be credited for the discovery: the German scholar Martin Fogel  [ de ] ,

5074-505: The maximum divergence between the languages is located east of the Gulf of Finland around Saint Petersburg . A glottochronological study estimates the age of the common ancestor of existing languages to a little more than 1000 years. However, Mikko Heikkilä dates the beginning of the diversification (with South Estonian as the first split) rather precisely to about 150 AD, based on loanword evidence (and previous estimates tend to be even older, like Pekka Sammallahti's of 1000–600 BC). There

5160-478: The modern Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples are ethnically related. Such hypotheses are based on the assumption that heredity can be traced through linguistic relatedness, although it must be kept in mind that language shift and ethnic admixture, a relatively frequent and common occurrence both in recorded history and most likely also in prehistory, confuses the picture and there is no straightforward relationship, if at all, between linguistic and genetic affiliation. Still,

5246-517: The more important processes is the characteristic consonant gradation . Two kinds of gradation occur: radical gradation and suffix gradation. They both affect the plosives /k/ , /t/ and /p/ , and involve the process known as lenition , in which the consonant is changed into a "weaker" form. This occurs in some (but not all) of the oblique case forms. For geminates , the process is simple to describe: they become simple stops, e.g. ku pp i + -n → ku p in (Finnish: "cup"). For simple consonants,

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5332-879: The most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Southeast Asia). A study of the Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples of northern Eurasia (i.e., excluding the Hungarians), carried out between 2002 and 2008 in the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Helsinki , showed that the Finno-Ugric-speaking populations do not retain genetic evidence of a common founder. Most possess an amalgamation of West and East Eurasian gene pools that may have been present in central Asia, with subsequent genetic drift and recurrent founder effects among speakers of various branches of Finno-Ugric. Not all branches show evidence of

5418-417: The most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, knowledge of the Uralic languages spoken in Russia had remained restricted to scanty observations by travelers. Already the Finnish historian Henrik Gabriel Porthan had stressed that further progress would require dedicated field missions. One of the first of these was undertaken by Anders Johan Sjögren , who brought

5504-469: The nine undisputed families) are becoming more common. A traditional classification of the Uralic languages has existed since the late 19th century. It has enjoyed frequent adaptation in whole or in part in encyclopedias, handbooks, and overviews of the Uralic family. Otto Donner's model from 1879 is as follows: At Donner's time, the Samoyedic languages were still poorly known, and he was not able to address their position. As they became better known in

5590-444: The northern part of European Russia have been proposed as evidence for even more extinct Uralic languages. [REDACTED] All Uralic languages are thought to have descended, through independent processes of language change , from Proto-Uralic . The internal structure of the Uralic family has been debated since the family was first proposed. Doubts about the validity of most or all of the proposed higher-order branchings (grouping

5676-535: The number of common words. The following is a very brief selection of cognates in basic vocabulary across the Uralic family, which may serve to give an idea of the sound changes involved. This is not a list of translations: cognates have a common origin, but their meaning may be shifted and loanwords may have replaced them. Orthographical notes: The hacek denotes postalveolar articulation ( ⟨ž⟩ [ʒ] , ⟨š⟩ [ʃ] , ⟨č⟩ [t͡ʃ] ) (In Northern Sámi, ( ⟨ž⟩ [dʒ] ), while

5762-536: The numerals "one", "three", "four" and "six"; the body-part terms "hand", "head") is only reconstructed up to the Proto-Finno-Ugric level, and only words with a Samoyedic equivalent have been reconstructed for Proto-Uralic. That methodology has been criticised, as no coherent explanation other than inheritance has been presented for the origin of most of the Finno-Ugric vocabulary (though a small number has been explained as old loanwords from Proto-Indo-European or its immediate successors). The Samoyedic group has undergone

5848-436: The numerals, "1", "3", "4", "6", "10" are shared by all or most Finno-Ugric languages. Below are the numbers 1 to 10 in several Finno-Ugric languages. Forms in italic do not descend from the reconstructed forms. The number '2' descends in Ugric from a front-vocalic variant *kektä. The numbers '9' and '8' in Finnic through Mari are considered to be derived from the numbers '1' and '2' as '10–1' and '10–2'. One reconstruction

5934-477: The old dialects: these include e.g. the more northern Finnish dialects (a mixture of West and East Finnish), and the Livvi and Ludic varieties (probably originally Veps dialects but heavily influenced by Karelian). Salminen (2003) present the following list of Finnic languages and their respective number of speakers. These features distinguish Finnic languages from other Uralic families: Sound changes shared by

6020-443: The other language's version of the sentence. No Uralic language has exactly the idealized typological profile of the family. Typological features with varying presence among the modern Uralic language groups include: Notes: Many relationships between Uralic and other language families have been suggested, but none of these is generally accepted by linguists at the present time: All of the following hypotheses are minority views at

6106-570: The past. Some of these groups have established their own orthographies and standardised languages. Võro and Seto , which are spoken in southeastern Estonia and in some parts of Russia, are considered dialects of Estonian by some linguists, while other linguists consider them separate languages. Meänkieli and Kven are spoken in northern Sweden and Norway respectively and have the legal status of independent minority languages separate from Finnish. They were earlier considered dialects of Finnish and are mutually intelligible with it. Additionally,

6192-475: The phonological variation in the stem (variation caused by the now historical morphological elements), which results in three phonemic lengths in these languages. Vowel harmony is also characteristic of the Finnic languages, despite having been lost in Livonian, Estonian and Veps. The original Uralic palatalization was lost in proto-Finnic, but most of the diverging dialects reacquired it. Palatalization

6278-629: The premise that the speakers of the ancient proto-language were ethnically homogeneous is generally accepted. Modern genetic studies have shown that the Y-chromosome haplogroup N3 , and sometimes N2, is almost specific though certainly not restricted to Uralic- or Finno-Ugric-speaking populations, especially as high frequency or primary paternal haplogroup. These haplogroups branched from haplogroup N , which probably spread north, then west and east from Northern China about 12,000–14,000 years before present from father haplogroup NO (haplogroup O being

6364-446: The present time in Uralic studies. The Uralic–Yukaghir hypothesis identifies Uralic and Yukaghir as independent members of a single language family. It is currently widely accepted that the similarities between Uralic and Yukaghir languages are due to ancient contacts. Regardless, the hypothesis is accepted by a few linguists and viewed as attractive by a somewhat larger number. The Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis associates Uralic with

6450-417: The process complicates immensely and the results vary by the environment. For example, ha k a + -n → haan , ky k y + -n → ky v yn , jär k i + -n → jär j en (Finnish: "pasture", "ability", "intellect"). The specifics of consonants gradation vary by language (see the separate article for more details). Apocope (strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian) has, in some cases, left a phonemic status to

6536-560: The remaining Finnic varieties has isoglosses that must be very old. For the most part, these features have been known for long. Their position as very early in the relative chronology of Finnic, in part representing archaisms in South Estonian, has been shown by Kallio (2007, 2014). However, due to the strong areal nature of many later innovations, this tree structure has been distorted and sprachbunds have formed. In particular, South Estonian and Livonian show many similarities with

6622-566: The rest of the Uralic family may treat the terms as synonymous. Uralic languages are known for their often complex case systems and vowel harmony . Proposed homelands of the Proto-Uralic language include: The first plausible mention of a people speaking a Uralic language is in Tacitus 's Germania ( c.  98 AD ), mentioning the Fenni (usually interpreted as referring to

6708-475: The same time the frequency of diphthong use is greater in Finnish than in Estonian due to certain historical long vowels having diphthongised in Finnish but not in Estonian. On a global scale the Finnic languages have a high number of vowels. The Finnic languages form a complex dialect continuum with few clear-cut boundaries. Innovations have often spread through a variety of areas, even after variety-specific changes. A broad twofold conventional division of

6794-592: The standard, focusing on consonant isoglosses (which does not consider the position of the Samoyedic languages) is presented by Viitso (1997), and refined in Viitso (2000): The grouping of the four bottom-level branches remains to some degree open to interpretation, with competing models of Finno-Saamic vs. Eastern Finno-Ugric (Mari, Mordvinic, Permic-Ugric; *k > ɣ between vowels, degemination of stops) and Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Saamic, Mari, Mordvinic; *δʲ > *ð between vowels) vs. Permic-Ugric. Viitso finds no evidence for

6880-413: The theory as "outlandish" and "not meriting a second look" even in contrast to hypotheses such as Uralo-Yukaghir or Indo-Uralic. Nostratic associates Uralic, Indo-European, Altaic, Dravidian, Afroasiatic, and various other language families of Asia. The Nostratic hypothesis was first propounded by Holger Pedersen in 1903 and subsequently revived by Vladislav Illich-Svitych and Aharon Dolgopolsky in

6966-917: The three families where gradation is found) is noted by Helimski (1995): an original allophonic gradation system between voiceless and voiced stops would have been easily disrupted by a spreading of voicing to previously unvoiced stops as well. A computational phylogenetic study by Honkola, et al. (2013) classifies the Uralic languages as follows. Estimated divergence dates from Honkola, et al. (2013) are also given. Structural characteristics generally said to be typical of Uralic languages include: Basic vocabulary of about 200 words, including body parts (e.g. eye, heart, head, foot, mouth), family members (e.g. father, mother-in-law), animals (e.g. viper, partridge, fish), nature objects (e.g. tree, stone, nest, water), basic verbs (e.g. live, fall, run, make, see, suck, go, die, swim, know), basic pronouns (e.g. who, what, we, you, I), numerals (e.g. two, five); derivatives increase

7052-631: The traditional Proto-Uralic lexicon, but it is attested in some of the Proto-Finno-Ugric material. Another feature attested in the Finno-Ugric vocabulary is that *i now behaves as a neutral vowel with respect to front-back vowel harmony, and thus there are roots such as *niwa- "to remove the hair from hides". Regular sound changes proposed for this stage are few and remain open to interpretation. Sammallahti (1988) proposes five, following Janhunen's (1981) reconstruction of Proto- Finno-Permic : Sammallahti (1988) further reconstructs sound changes *oo , *ee → *a , *ä (merging with original *a , *ä ) for

7138-542: The traditional family tree that are recognized in some overview sources. Little explicit evidence has however been presented in favour of Donner's model since his original proposal, and numerous alternate schemes have been proposed. Especially in Finland, there has been a growing tendency to reject the Finno-Ugric intermediate protolanguage. A recent competing proposal instead unites Ugric and Samoyedic in an "East Uralic" group for which shared innovations can be noted. The Finno-Permic grouping still holds some support, though

7224-556: The validity of several subgroups of the Uralic family, as well against the family itself, claiming that many of the languages are no more closely related to each other than they are to various other Eurasian languages (e.g. Yukaghir or Turkic), and that in particular Hungarian is a language isolate. Marcantonio's proposal has been strongly dismissed by most reviewers as unfounded and methodologically flawed. Problems identified by reviewers include: Baltic-Finnic languages The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute

7310-469: The word for "language" is similar in Estonian ( keel ) and Mongolian ( хэл ( hel )). These theories are now generally rejected and most such similarities are attributed to language contact or coincidence. The Indo-Uralic (or "Indo-Euralic") hypothesis suggests that Uralic and Indo-European are related at a fairly close level or, in its stronger form, that they are more closely related than either

7396-502: Was set up for the Khanty and Mansi of Russia. A once-autonomous Komi-Permyak Okrug was set up for a region of high Komi habitation outside the Komi Republic. Some of the ethnicities speaking Finno-Ugric languages are: In the Finno-Ugric countries of Finland, Estonia and Hungary that find themselves surrounded by speakers of unrelated tongues, language origins and language history have long been relevant to national identity . In 1992,

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