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59-582: The area was originally populated by speakers of Uralic languages and then colonized by the Novgorod Republic . After the fall of Novgorod, the area became a part of the Grand Duchy of Moscow . Komi started moving to the Mezen in the 14th and 15th centuries. First Russian settlements on the Mezen were mentioned in the 16th century. The lower course of the Mezen, the current area of the district,

118-414: A municipal division , the district is divided into two urban settlements and twelve rural settlements (the administrative centers are given in parentheses): The northern part of the district is included into border security zone , intended to protect the borders of Russia from unwanted activity. In particular, the town of Mezen , the urban-type settlement of Kamenka , and the whole White Sea coast within

177-670: 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

236-502: 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

295-458: 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

354-528: 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,

413-473: 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

472-597: Is a town and the administrative center of Mezensky District in Arkhangelsk Oblast , Russia , located on the right bank of the Mezen River close to the point where it flows into the White Sea . Population: 3,575 ( 2010 Census ) ; 3,863 ( 2002 Census ) ; 4,968 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . The settlement at the location of the present-day Mezen was founded in the 16th century and

531-441: 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

590-620: 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

649-585: Is by air. The district contains two objects classified as cultural and historical heritage by Russian Federal law, and additionally a number of objects classified as cultural and historical heritage of local importance. The objects under federal protection are the wooden bell tower in the selo of Dolgoshchelye (burned down in 1994 and no longer exists) and the wooden Hodegetria Church in the village of Kimzha (1709, currently disassembled). The objects under local protection are wooden churches, chapels, windmills , peasant and merchant houses. The only state museum in

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708-536: Is included into the border security zone , intended to protect the borders of Russia from unwanted activity. In order to visit Mezen, a permit issued by the local Federal Security Service department is required. Economic activity in Mezen is currently limited to food industry and mechanical works. The Mezen sawmill and the Mezen sea harbor are both located in Kamenka across the Mezen River. The Mezen River

767-509: Is navigable; however, there is no passenger navigation in Mezen except for the ferry boat to Kamenka . There is an all-season road to Arkhangelsk (which crosses the Mezen near the village of Kimzha ), completed in 2008. During winter, temporary roads ( zimniks ) are built in snow. Mezen is served by the Mezen Airport , with several weekly flights to Arkhangelsk. Mezen is one of the few former uyezd towns which generally preserved

826-606: 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 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

885-644: 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

944-533: 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

1003-674: 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

1062-717: 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 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

1121-657: 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

1180-609: The village of Semzha , incorporated within Mezensky District as the town of district significance of Mezen . As a municipal division , the town of district significance of Mezen, together with the territory of Lampozhensky Selsoviet (which comprises four rural localities ) in Mezensky District, are incorporated within Mezensky Municipal District as Mezenskoye Urban Settlement . The northern part of Mezensky District, including Mezen itself,

1239-536: 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

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1298-767: The European parts of the Russian Federation. Still smaller minority languages are Sámi languages of the northern Fennoscandia ; other members of the Finnic languages , ranging from Livonian in northern Latvia to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; and the Samoyedic languages , Mansi and Khanty spoken in Western Siberia . The name Uralic derives from the family's purported "original homeland" ( Urheimat ) hypothesized to have been somewhere in

1357-540: 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

1416-409: 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

1475-525: 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

1534-819: 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

1593-774: The district is the Mezen Regional Museum, located in the town of Mezen. Uralic languages The Uralic languages ( / j ʊəˈr æ l ɪ k / yoor- AL -ik ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( / j ʊəˈr eɪ l i ə n / yoor- AY -lee-ən ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia . The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (which alone accounts for approximately 60% of speakers), Finnish , and Estonian . Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya , Moksha , Mari , Udmurt and Komi spoken in

1652-518: The district is transitional area between taiga and tundra ( lesotundra ). There are many glacial lakes across the district. The biggest lakes are east of the Mezen, Lake Varsh (shared with Nenets Autonomous Okrug), Lake Pocha , and Lake Vyzhletskoye . The district also includes Morzhovets Island which separates the Mezen Bay from the entrance of the White Sea. The island is the only part of

1711-478: The district was subordinated to the central administration of Northern Krai. In 1936, the krai itself was transformed into Northern Oblast . In 1937, Northern Oblast was split into Arkhangelsk Oblast and Vologda Oblast. Mezensky District remained in Arkhangelsk Oblast ever since. The district is elongated from west to east. A major part of the district belongs to the basins of the Mezen River (with

1770-594: The district which lies above the Arctic Circle . The part of the district located east of the Mezen is essentially unpopulated, with the exceptions of the right bank of the river and of several villages in the valley of the Pyoza. As an administrative division , the district is divided into fourteen selsoviets and one town of district significance ( Mezen ). The following selsoviets have been established (the administrative centers are given in parentheses): As

1829-501: The district, including such rural localities as Ruchyi , Koyda , and Dolgoshchelye , as well as Morzhovets Island, are included into this restricted area. In order to visit the zone, a permit issued by the local FSB department is required. Historically, fishery was the main source of income in the White Sea coast. The selo of Dolgoshchelye in the estuary of the Kuloy River was the main harbor of fishermen. In Soviet times,

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1888-502: 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

1947-588: 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

2006-421: The ferry boats across the rivers. Until 2008, there were no all-seasonal roads in the district. During winter, temporary roads ( zimniks ) are built in snow; in summer, air transport is the only means for passenger connections to Arkhangelsk and the rest of the world. Currently, there is one all-seasonal road which connects the village of Kimzha with Arkhangelsk via Pinega , and two branches from this road along

2065-606: The fishery in the Arctic Ocean was state-sponsored; after 1990 the funds were cut, and the fishery went into decline. A special breed of horses, Mezen horse , was bred in the Mezen River valley. The Mezen horses are rather small but suitable for difficult work and easily survive cold winters. Both the Mezen and the Kuloy Rivers are navigable within the district limits; however, there is no passenger navigation except for

2124-402: 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

2183-478: The historical center. There are many former merchant houses, mostly made of wood, in the town center. Mezen hosts the Mezen Regional Museum. A carved epitaph was found in 1957 on a nameless island in the White Sea , done by brothers Ivan and Ondriyan, fishermen from Mezen, who apparently got to the island after the shipwreck and lost any hope to be found again. The epitaph was featured in Laughter and Grief by

2242-837: The main tributaries the Pyoza and the Kimzha ) and the Kuloy River (with the Nemnyuga and the Soyana ), which both end up in the Mezen Bay of the White Sea . Areas on the White Sea coast drain directly into the sea, and some areas in the northeast of the district drain into the Pyosha River and other rivers of the Barents Sea basin. Almost the whole of the district is covered by coniferous forests ( taiga ). The northern part of

2301-525: 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

2360-469: 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

2419-444: 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

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2478-535: 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

2537-443: 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

2596-446: 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

2655-478: The right bank of the Mezen. One branch runs north to the town of Mezen, whereas the second one runs south to the selo of Leshukonskoye . There is an airport in Mezen , with several weekly flights to Arkhangelsk. There is also an airport in Kamenka . The majority of the villages of the district are not connected by all-season roads to the main road network, and the only means of getting to Mezen and Arkhangelsk

2714-480: The seat of Mezensky Uyezd of Vologda Viceroyalty . In 1796, the territory was transferred to Arkhangelsk Governorate . In 1929, several governorates were merged into Northern Krai . On July 15, 1929, the uyezds were abolished and Mezen became the administrative center of Mezensky District . Within the framework of administrative divisions , Mezen serves as the administrative center of Mezensky District . As an administrative division, it is, together with

2773-526: The similarities of Sámi, Estonian, and Finnish, and also on 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

2832-592: 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

2891-413: 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

2950-917: 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

3009-597: 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

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3068-550: 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: Mezen, Mezensky District, Arkhangelsk Oblast Mezen ( Russian : Мезе́нь )

3127-637: 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 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

3186-469: 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

3245-412: Was established; however, in 1925 it was merged back into Mezensky Uyezd. In 1929, several governorates were merged into Northern Krai . On July 15, 1929, the uyezds were abolished and Mezensky District was established. It became a part of Arkhangelsk Okrug of Northern Krai. In the following years, the first-level administrative division of Russia kept changing. In 1930, the okrug was abolished, and

3304-599: Was first proposed in the late 17th century. Three candidates can be credited for the discovery: the German scholar Martin Fogel  [ de ] , 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

3363-484: Was included into Archangelgorod Governorate . In 1780, the governorate was abolished and transformed into Vologda Viceroyalty , and Mezen got the town rights. In 1796, the area was transferred to Arkhangelsk Governorate . The current territory of the district was included into Mezensky Uyezd . On December 28, 1917, a new Ust-Vashsky Uyezd with the administrative center in Ust-Vashka (currently Leshukonskoye )

3422-414: Was known as Okladnikova Sloboda ( Окладникова Слобода ). It was subsequently developed into the trading center of the Mezen River valley where annual trade fairs were held. Besides the trade, the main occupations of the Mezen inhabitants were fishery and seal hunting . In 1780, Okladnikova Sloboda was merged with the nearby settlement of Kuznetsovskaya Sloboda into the town of Mezen. In 1784, Mezen became

3481-564: Was where Russian culture existed in its original state, not mixing with the Komi culture. The town of Mezen was founded in the 16th century as Okladnikova Sloboda. The area was at the time located on one of the main ways from central Russia to the Pechora River basin and to the Ural Mountains . In the course of the administrative reform carried out in 1708 by Peter the Great , the area

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