Uralic languages
Encyclopedia
The Uralic languages (sometimes referred to as Uralian languages) constitute a language family of some three dozen language
s spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian
, Finnish
, Estonian
, Mari
and Udmurt
. Countries that are home to a significant number of speakers of Uralic languages include Estonia
, Finland
, Hungary
, Norway
, Romania
, Russia
, Serbia
, Slovakia
and Sweden
.
The name "Uralic" refers to the suggested Urheimat
(original homeland) of the Uralic family, which is often located in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains
, as the modern languages are spoken on both sides of this mountain range.
Finno-Ugric
is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though more typically Finno-Ugric is understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages
.
in the vicinity of the Volga River
, west of the Urals, close to the Urheimat of the Indo-European languages
, or to the east and southeast of the Urals. Gy. Laszlo places its origin in the forest zone between the Oka River
and central Poland
. E.N. Setälä and M. Zsirai place it between the Volga
and Kama River
s. According to E. Itkonen, the ancestral area extended to the Baltic Sea
. P. Hajdu has suggested a homeland in western and northwestern Siberia
.
's Germania
, mentioning the Fenni
(usually interpreted as referring to the Sami
) and two other possibly Uralic tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. 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.
scholar Georg Stiernhielm
commented on the similarities of Lapp, Estonian and Finnish, and also on a few similar words between Finnish and Hungarian, while the German
scholar Martin Vogel tried to establish a relationship between Finnish, Lapp and Hungarian. These two authors were thus 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 the Indo-European
family.
In 1717, Swedish professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish
and Hungarian
, of which about 40 are still considered valid (Collinder, 1965). In the same year, the German scholar Johann Georg von Eckhart
, in an essay published in Leibniz
's Collectanea Etymologica, proposed for the first time a relation to the Samoyedic languages
.
By 1770, all the languages belonging to the Finno-Ugric languages
had been identified, almost 20 years before the traditional starting-point of Indo-European studies
. 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 Ruhlen (1987) as due to "the wild unfettered Romanticism of the epoch". Still, in spite of this hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit
János Sajnovics
suggested a relationship between Hungarian and Lapp (Sami) in 1770, and in 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi
published the most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date.
At the beginning of the 19th century, research on Uralic was thus more advanced than Indo-European research. But the rise of Indo-European comparative linguistics absorbed so much attention and enthusiasm that Uralic linguistics was all but eclipsed in Europe; in Hungary, the only European country that would have had a vested interest in the family (Finland and Estonia being under Russian rule), the political climate was too hostile for the development of Uralic comparative linguistics. Some progress was made, however, culminating in the work of the German linguist Josef Budenz, who for 20 years was the leading Uralic specialist in Hungary.
Another late-19th-century contribution is that of Hungarian linguist Ignác Halász, who published extensive comparative material of Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic in the 1890s, and whose work is at the base of today's wide acceptance of the Samoyed-Finno-Ugric relationship (i.e. the Uralic family).
During the 1990s, linguists Kalevi Wiik
, Janos Pusztay, and Ago Künnap and historian Kyösti Julku announced a "breakthrough in Present-Day Uralistics", dating Proto-Finnic to 10,000 BC. The theory was almost entirely unsuccessful in the scientific community.
The Uralic family currently comprises nine undisputed language groups. These are not necessarily primary branches of Uralic, but there is no consensus classification. (Some of the proposals are listed in the next section.) Obsolete names are displayed in italics.
There is also historical evidence of a number of extinct languages of uncertain affiliation:
, 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 of the proposed higher-order branchings (grouping the nine undisputed families) are becoming more common.
The traditional classification is as follows:
Three distinct subfamilies are usually recognized: Finno-Permic, Ugric
and Samoyedic
. It had formerly been widely accepted to group Finno-Permic and Ugric as the Finno-Ugric
family, but especially in Finland there has been a growing tendency to cut the family tree lower by rejecting the Finno-Ugric intermediate protolanguage. In more marked opposition to the traditionally accepted branching, a recent proposal 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 the arrangement of its subgroups is a matter of some dispute. Mordvinic is commonly seen as particularly closely related to or part of Finno-Lappic. 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 a competing hypothesis to Ob-Ugric.
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 alternate proposal for a family tree, with emphasis on the development of numerals, is as follows:
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; *δ́ → δ between vowels) vs. Permic-Ugric. Viitso finds no evidence for 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 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.
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, 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 coincidence or language contact, and a few to possible relationship at a deeper genetic level.
(or Uralo-Indo-European) theory 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 is to any other language family. It is viewed as certain by a few linguists and as possible by a larger number.
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 theory is accepted by a few linguists and viewed as attractive by a somewhat larger number.
1959.
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.
associates Uralic, Indo-European, Altaic, and various other language families of Asia. The Nostratic theory was first propounded by Holger Pedersen
in 1903 and subsequently revived by Vladislav Illich-Svitych
and Aharon Dolgopolsky
in the 1960s.
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 Björn Collinder
(1965:30–34).
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 theory 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
.
All of these theories are minority views at the present time in Uralic studies.
and Hungaro-Sumerian
. These are considered spurious by specialists.
The sentence reads:
Although the common origin is easy to notice, University of Edinburgh
linguist Geoffrey Pullum
, who speaks some Finnish, is suspicious of claims of mutual intelligibility; in a post on his blog
, he reported that a Finnish friend of his living in Hungary claimed that neither Finns nor Hungarians could understand the other language's version of the sentence. Nevertheless, each word is traceable to Proto-Uralic, not a more recent loanword.
s 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. In general, Finnic languages, and of them Finnish is considered to be the most conservative of the Uralic languages, especially with regard to vocalism. (An example 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.)
1Võro
dialect
(Orthographical notes: The hacek denotes postalveolar articulation ('ž' [ʒ], 'š' [ʃ], 'č' [t͡ʃ]), while the acute denotes a secondary palatal articulation ('ś' [sʲ]). The Finnish letter 'y' and the letter 'ü' in other languages represent a high close rounded vowel [y]. The letter 'đ' in the Sami languages
represents a voiced dental fricative
[ð]. The vowels 'ä' and 'ö' are the fronted [æ] and [ø], respectively.
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
, Mari
Mari language
The Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals...
and Udmurt
Udmurt language
Udmurt is an Uralic language, part of the Permic subgroup, spoken by the Udmurt natives of the Russian constituent republic of Udmurtia, where it is coofficial with Russian. It is written in the Cyrillic script with five additional characters. Together with Komi and Komi-Permyak languages, it...
. Countries that are home to a significant number of speakers of Uralic languages include Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
.
The name "Uralic" refers to the suggested Urheimat
Urheimat
Urheimat is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language...
(original homeland) of the Uralic family, which is often located in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan. Their eastern side is usually considered the natural boundary between Europe and Asia...
, as the modern languages are spoken on both sides of this mountain range.
Finno-Ugric
Finno-Ugric languages
Finno-Ugric , Finno-Ugrian or Fenno-Ugric is a traditional group of languages in the Uralic language family that comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families....
is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though more typically Finno-Ugric is understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages
Samoyedic languages
The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 30,000 speakers altogether....
.
Homeland
In recent times, linguists often place the Urheimat, meaning the 'original homeland', of the Proto-Uralic languageProto-Uralic language
Proto-Uralic is the hypothetical language ancestral to the Uralic language family. The language was originally spoken in a small area in about 7000-2000 BC , and expanded to give differentiated protolanguages. The exact location of the area or Urheimat is not known, but the vicinity of the Ural...
in the vicinity of the Volga River
Volga River
The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...
, west of the Urals, close to the Urheimat of the Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, or to the east and southeast of the Urals. Gy. Laszlo places its origin in the forest zone between the Oka River
Oka River
Oka is a river in central Russia, the largest right tributary of the Volga. It flows through the regions of Oryol, Tula, Kaluga, Moscow, Ryazan, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod and is navigable over a large part of its total length, as far upstream as to the town of Kaluga. Its length exceeds...
and central Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. E.N. Setälä and M. Zsirai place it between the Volga
Volga River
The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...
and Kama River
Kama River
Kama is a major river in Russia, the longest left tributary of the Volga and the largest one in discharge; in fact, it is larger than the Volga before junction....
s. According to E. Itkonen, the ancestral area extended to the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
. P. Hajdu has suggested a homeland in western and northwestern Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
.
Early attestations
The first mention of a Uralic people is in TacitusTacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
's Germania
Germania (book)
The Germania , written by Gaius Cornelius Tacitus around 98, is an ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire.-Contents:...
, mentioning the Fenni
Fenni
The Fenni were an ancient people of northeastern Europe first described by Cornelius Tacitus in Germania in AD 98.- Ancient accounts :The Fenni are first mentioned by Cornelius Tacitus in Germania in 98 A.D...
(usually interpreted as referring to the Sami
Sami people
The Sami people, also spelled Sámi, or Saami, are the arctic indigenous people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses parts of far northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Kola Peninsula of Russia, and the border area between south and middle Sweden and Norway. The Sámi are Europe’s northernmost...
) and two other possibly Uralic tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. 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.
Uralic studies
In 1671, SwedishSweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
scholar Georg Stiernhielm
Georg Stiernhielm
Georg Stiernhielm was a Swedish civil servant, linguist and poet. Stiernhielm was born in a middle-class family in the village Svartskär in Vika parish in Dalarna...
commented on the similarities of Lapp, Estonian and Finnish, and also on a few similar words between Finnish and Hungarian, while the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
scholar Martin Vogel tried to establish a relationship between Finnish, Lapp and Hungarian. These two authors were thus 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 the Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
family.
In 1717, Swedish professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
and Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, of which about 40 are still considered valid (Collinder, 1965). In the same year, the German scholar Johann Georg von Eckhart
Johann Georg von Eckhart
Johann Georg von Eckhart was a German historian and linguist.Eckhart was born at Duingen in the principality of Kalenberg. After preparatory training at Schulpforta, he went to Leipzig, where at first, at the desire of his mother, he studied theology, but soon turned his attention to philology and...
, in an essay published in Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
's Collectanea Etymologica, proposed for the first time a relation to the Samoyedic languages
Samoyedic languages
The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 30,000 speakers altogether....
.
By 1770, all the languages belonging to the Finno-Ugric languages
Finno-Ugric languages
Finno-Ugric , Finno-Ugrian or Fenno-Ugric is a traditional group of languages in the Uralic language family that comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families....
had been identified, almost 20 years before the traditional starting-point of Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...
. Nonetheless, these relationships were not widely accepted. Hungarian intellectuals especially were not interested in the theory and preferred to assume connections with Turkic
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are peoples residing in northern, central and western Asia, southern Siberia and northwestern China and parts of eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds...
tribes, an attitude characterized by Ruhlen (1987) as due to "the wild unfettered Romanticism of the epoch". Still, in spite of this hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...
János Sajnovics
János Sajnovics
János Sajnovics de Tordas et Káloz was a Hungarian linguist and Jesuit. He is best known for his pioneering work in comparative linguistics, particularly his systematic demonstratation of the relationship between Sami and Hungarian....
suggested a relationship between Hungarian and Lapp (Sami) in 1770, and in 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi
Samuel Gyarmathi
Sámuel Gyarmathi was a Hungarian linguist, born in Cluj . He is best known for his systematic demonstration of the comparative history of the Finno-Ugric languages in the book Affinitas linguae hungaricae cum linguis fennicae originis grammatice demonstrata which built on the earlier work of...
published the most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date.
At the beginning of the 19th century, research on Uralic was thus more advanced than Indo-European research. But the rise of Indo-European comparative linguistics absorbed so much attention and enthusiasm that Uralic linguistics was all but eclipsed in Europe; in Hungary, the only European country that would have had a vested interest in the family (Finland and Estonia being under Russian rule), the political climate was too hostile for the development of Uralic comparative linguistics. Some progress was made, however, culminating in the work of the German linguist Josef Budenz, who for 20 years was the leading Uralic specialist in Hungary.
Another late-19th-century contribution is that of Hungarian linguist Ignác Halász, who published extensive comparative material of Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic in the 1890s, and whose work is at the base of today's wide acceptance of the Samoyed-Finno-Ugric relationship (i.e. the Uralic family).
During the 1990s, linguists Kalevi Wiik
Kalevi Wiik
Kalevi Wiik is a professor emeritus of phonetics at the University of Turku, Finland. He is best known for his controversial hypotheses about the effect of the Uralic languages on creation of various Indo-European languages in northern Europe, such as Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic languages...
, Janos Pusztay, and Ago Künnap and historian Kyösti Julku announced a "breakthrough in Present-Day Uralistics", dating Proto-Finnic to 10,000 BC. The theory was almost entirely unsuccessful in the scientific community.
Classification of languages
- FinnicFinnic languagesThe term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
(Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic) - HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
(Magyar) - KhantyKhanty languageKhanty or Xanty language, also known previously as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous okrugs, as well as in Aleksandrovsky and Kargosoksky districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia...
(Ostyak, Handi, Hantõ) - MansiMansi languageThe Mansi language is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast...
(Vogul) - MariMari languageThe Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals...
(Cheremis) - MordvinicMordvinic languagesThe Mordvinic languages, alternatively Mordvin languages, or Mordvinian languages, are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Moksha language.Previously considered a single "Mordvin language",...
(Mordvin, Mordvinian) - PermicPermic languagesPermic languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in the foothills of the Ural Mountains of Russia.* Komi** Komi-Permyak** Komi-Yodzyak ** Komi-Zyryan...
(Permian) - SamiSami languagesSami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently and erroneously believed to be a single language. Several names are used for the Sami...
(Samic, Saamic, Lappic, Lappish) - SamoyedicSamoyedic languagesThe Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 30,000 speakers altogether....
(Samoyed)
There is also historical evidence of a number of extinct languages of uncertain affiliation:
- Merya
- Muromian
- Meshcherian (until 16th century?)
Family tree
All Uralic languages are thought to have descended, through independent processes of language changeLanguage change
Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
, from Proto-Uralic
Proto-Uralic language
Proto-Uralic is the hypothetical language ancestral to the Uralic language family. The language was originally spoken in a small area in about 7000-2000 BC , and expanded to give differentiated protolanguages. The exact location of the area or Urheimat is not known, but the vicinity of the Ural...
. The internal structure of the Uralic family has been debated since the family was first proposed. Doubts about the validity of most of the proposed higher-order branchings (grouping the nine undisputed families) are becoming more common.
The traditional classification is as follows:
- SamoyedicSamoyedic languagesThe Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 30,000 speakers altogether....
- Finno-UgricFinno-Ugric languagesFinno-Ugric , Finno-Ugrian or Fenno-Ugric is a traditional group of languages in the Uralic language family that comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families....
- UgricUgric languagesUgric or Ugrian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. The term derives from Yugra, a region in north-central Asia.They include three languages: Hungarian , Khanty , and Mansi language...
(Ugrian)- HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
- Ob-UgricOb-Ugric languagesThe Ob-Ugric languages are a hypothetical branch of the Uralic languages, specifically referring to the Khanty and Mansi languages. Both are split in numerous and highly divergent dialects...
(Ob Ugrian)- KhantyKhanty languageKhanty or Xanty language, also known previously as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous okrugs, as well as in Aleksandrovsky and Kargosoksky districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia...
- MansiMansi languageThe Mansi language is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast...
- Khanty
- Hungarian
- Finno-PermicFinno-Permic languagesThe Finno-Permic languages are a traditional but disputed ,group of the Uralic languages that comprises the Baltic-Finnic languages, Sami languages, Mordvinic languages, Mari language, Permic languages, and likely a number of extinct languages...
(Permian-Finnic)- PermicPermic languagesPermic languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in the foothills of the Ural Mountains of Russia.* Komi** Komi-Permyak** Komi-Yodzyak ** Komi-Zyryan...
- Finno-VolgaicFinno-Volgaic languagesFinno-Volgaic or Fenno-Volgaic is a defunct hypothesis of a subgrouping of the Uralic languages that tried to group the Finnic languages, Sami languages, Mordvinic languages and the Mari language...
(Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mari)- MariMari languageThe Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals...
- Merya
- Meshcherian
- MordvinicMordvinic languagesThe Mordvinic languages, alternatively Mordvin languages, or Mordvinian languages, are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Moksha language.Previously considered a single "Mordvin language",...
- Muromian
- Finno-LappicFinno-Lappic languagesThe Finno-Lappic languages are a hypothetical subgroup of the Uralic family, and are made up of 22 languages classified into either the Sami languages , which are spoken by the Sami people who inhabit the Sápmi region of northern Fennoscandia, or Finnic languages, which include the major languages...
(Finno-Saamic, Finno-Samic)- SamiSami languagesSami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently and erroneously believed to be a single language. Several names are used for the Sami...
- FinnicFinnic languagesThe term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
- Sami
- Mari
- Permic
- Ugric
Three distinct subfamilies are usually recognized: Finno-Permic, Ugric
Ugric languages
Ugric or Ugrian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. The term derives from Yugra, a region in north-central Asia.They include three languages: Hungarian , Khanty , and Mansi language...
and Samoyedic
Samoyedic languages
The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 30,000 speakers altogether....
. It had formerly been widely accepted to group Finno-Permic and Ugric as the Finno-Ugric
Finno-Ugric languages
Finno-Ugric , Finno-Ugrian or Fenno-Ugric is a traditional group of languages in the Uralic language family that comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families....
family, but especially in Finland there has been a growing tendency to cut the family tree lower by rejecting the Finno-Ugric intermediate protolanguage. In more marked opposition to the traditionally accepted branching, a recent proposal 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 the arrangement of its subgroups is a matter of some dispute. Mordvinic is commonly seen as particularly closely related to or part of Finno-Lappic. 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 a competing hypothesis to Ob-Ugric.
Lexical isoglosses
LexicostatisticsLexicostatistics
Lexicostatistics is an approach to comparative linguistics that involves quantitative comparison of lexical cognates. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a proto-language...
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 alternate proposal for a family tree, with emphasis on the development of numerals, is as follows:
- Uralic (*käktä "2", *wixti "5" / "10")
- Samoyedic (*op "1", *ketä "2", *näkur "3", *tettə "4", *səmpəleŋkə "5", *məktut "6", *sejtwə "7", *wiət "10")
- Finno-Ugric (*üki/*ükti "1", *kormi "3", *ńeljä "4", *wiiti "5", *kuuti "6", *luki "10")
- Mansic
- Mansi
- Hungarian (hét "7"; replacement egy "1")
- Finno-Khantic (reshaping *kolmi "3" on the analogy of "4")
- Khanty
- Finno-Permic (reshaping *käktä > *kakta)
- Permic
- Finno-Volgaic (*śećem "7")
- Mari
- Finno-Saamic (*kakteksa, *ükteksa "8, 9")
- Saamic
- Finno-Mordvinic (replacement *kümmen "10" (*luki- "to count", "to read out"))
- Mordvinic
- Finnic
- Mansic
Phonological isoglosses
Another, more divergent from 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):- Finno-Ugric
- Western Finno-Ugric (Finno-Saamic) (consonant gradationConsonant gradationConsonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation, in which consonants alternate between various "grades". It is found in some Uralic languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Northern Sámi, and the Samoyed language Nganasan. In addition, it has been reconstructed for Proto-Germanic, the parent...
)- Saamic
- Finnic
- Mari
- Mordvinic
- Permic-Ugric (*δ → *l)
- Permic
- Ugric (*s *š *ś → *ɬ *ɬ *s)
- Hungarian
- Khanty
- Mansi
- Western Finno-Ugric (Finno-Saamic) (consonant gradation
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; *δ́ → δ between vowels) vs. Permic-Ugric. Viitso finds no evidence for 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)
| Saamic | Finnic | Mordvinic | Mari | Permic | Hungarian | Mansi | Khanty | Samoyedic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medial lenition of *k | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Medial lenition of *p, *t | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no | no |
| Degemination | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no |
| Consonant gradation | yes | yes | no | no | no | no | no | no | yes |
| *δ | → *δ | → *t | → *t | → ∅ | → *l | → l | → *l | → *l | → *r |
| *δ́ | *δ | → *ĺ | → ď |
→ *ĺ | → *j | → *j | |||
| *s | *s | *s | *s | → *š | *s | → ∅ | → *t | → *ɬ | → *t |
| *š | → *h | *š | *š | ||||||
| *ś | → *ć | → *s | *ś | *ś | → s |
→ *š | → *s | → *s | |
| *ć | *ć | → *s | → *ś | *ć | → č |
*ć ~ *š | *ć | → *s |
- Note: Proto-Khanty *ɬ in many of the dialects yields *t; it is assumed this also happened in Mansi and Samoyedic.
The inverse relationship between consonant gradation and medial lenition of stops (the pattern also continuing within the three families where gradation is found) is noted by Helimski
Eugene Helimski
Eugene Arnoľdovič Helimski — a Russian linguist , Doctor of Philosophy , Professor...
(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.
Possible relations with other families
Many relationships between Uralic and other language families have been suggested, but none of these are generally accepted by linguists at the present time.Ural–Altaic
Theories proposing a close relationship with the Altaic languagesAltaic languages
Altaic is a proposed language family that includes the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Japonic language families and the Korean language isolate. These languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from northeast Asia through Central Asia to Anatolia and eastern Europe...
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
Agglutination
In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...
in both sets of languages, as well as vowel harmony
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
in some. For example, the word for "language" is similar in Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
(keel) and Mongolian
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
(хэл (hel)). These theories are now generally rejected and most such similarities are attributed to coincidence or language contact, and a few to possible relationship at a deeper genetic level.
Indo-Uralic
The Indo-UralicIndo-Uralic languages
Indo-Uralic is a proposed language family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic.A genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic was first proposed by the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1869 but was received with little enthusiasm...
(or Uralo-Indo-European) theory 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 is to any other language family. It is viewed as certain by a few linguists and as possible by a larger number.
Uralic–Yukaghir
The Uralic–Yukaghir theory identifies Uralic and YukaghirYukaghir languages
The Yukaghir languages are a small family of two closely related languages – Tundra and Kolyma Yukaghir – spoken by the Yukaghir in the Russian Far East living in the basin of the Kolyma River. According to the 2002 Russian census, both Yukaghir languages taken together have 604 speakers...
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 theory is accepted by a few linguists and viewed as attractive by a somewhat larger number.
Eskimo–Uralic
The Eskimo–Uralic theory associates Uralic with the Eskimo–Aleut languages. This is an old thesis whose antecedents go back to the 18th century. An important restatement of it is BergslandKnut Bergsland
Knut Bergsland was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor at the University of Oslo from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic and Eskimo–Aleut languages.-Career:...
1959.
Uralo-Siberian
Uralo-SiberianUralo-Siberian languages
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Chukotko-Kamchatkan and Eskimo–Aleut. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskimo–Aleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait...
is an expanded form of the Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis. It associates Uralic with Yukaghir, Chukotko-Kamchatkan
Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages
The Chukotko-Kamchatkan or Chukchi–Kamchatkan languages are a language family of extreme northeastern Siberia. Its speakers are indigenous hunter-gatherers and reindeer-herders....
, and Eskimo–Aleut. It was propounded by Michael Fortescue
Michael Fortescue
Michael David Fortescue is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. He is professor of General Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen and chairman of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen...
in 1998.
Nostratic
NostraticNostratic languages
Nostratic is a proposed language family that includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, including the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic as well as Kartvelian languages...
associates Uralic, Indo-European, Altaic, and various other language families of Asia. The Nostratic theory was first propounded by Holger Pedersen
Holger Pedersen
Holger Pedersen may refer to:* Holger Pedersen - Danish linguist * Holger Pedersen - Danish astronomer , at the European Southern Observatory* Holger Petersen - Canadian radio personality....
in 1903 and subsequently revived by Vladislav Illich-Svitych
Vladislav Illich-Svitych
Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych was a Russian linguist and accentologist, also a founding father of comparative Nostratic linguistics.Of Ukrainian descent, he was born in Kiev but later moved to work in Moscow. He resuscitated the long-forgotten Nostratic hypothesis, originally expounded by...
and Aharon Dolgopolsky
Aharon Dolgopolsky
Aharon Dolgopolsky is a Russian-born Israeli comparative linguist and one of the modern founders of comparative Nostratic linguistics.Born in Moscow, he arrived at the long-forgotten Nostratic hypothesis in the 1960s, at around the same time but independently of Vladislav Illich-Svitych...
in the 1960s.
Eurasiatic
EurasiaticEurasiatic languages
Eurasiatic is a language macrofamily proposed by Joseph Greenberg that includes many language families historically spoken in northern Eurasia. The eight branches of Eurasiatic are Etruscan, Indo-European, Uralic–Yukaghir, Altaic, Korean-Japanese-Ainu, Gilyak, Chukotian, and Eskimo–Aleut, spoken in...
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
Nivkh language
Nivkh or Gilyak is a language spoken in Outer Manchuria, in the basin of the Amgun , along the lower reaches of the Amur itself, and on the northern half of Sakhalin. 'Gilyak' is the Manchu appellation...
, Ainu
Ainu languages
The Ainu languages were a small language family spoken on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaidō, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, an island chain that stretches from Hokkaidō to the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula. They are alternately considered a...
, and Eskimo–Aleut. It was propounded by Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
in 2000–2002. Similar ideas had earlier been expressed by Björn Collinder
Björn Collinder
Björn Collinder was a Swedish linguist. His name is sometimes spelled "Bjorn Collinder" in English-language contexts.Collinder was born in Sundsvall, Sweden....
(1965:30–34).
Uralo-Dravidian
The theory that the Dravidian languagesDravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
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
Robert Caldwell
Bishop Robert Caldwell was an Evangelist missionary and linguist, who academically established the Dravidian family of languages. He served as Assistant Bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. He was described in The Hindu as a 'pioneering champion of the downtrodden' and an 'avant-garde social reformer'...
, Thomas Burrow
Thomas Burrow
Thomas Burrow was an Indologist and the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1976. His work includes Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, The Problem of Shwa in Sanskrit and The Sanskrit Language....
, Kamil Zvelebil, and Mikhail Andronov. This theory 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
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti ; IAST: ) is an eminent Dravidianist and the most respected Indian linguist of his generation. He was born in Ongole on June 19, 1928...
.
All of these theories are minority views at the present time in Uralic studies.
Other theories
Various unorthodox comparisons have been advanced such as Finno-BasqueBasque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
and Hungaro-Sumerian
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
. These are considered spurious by specialists.
Typology
Structural characteristics generally said to be typical of Uralic languages include:Grammar
- extensive use of independent suffixSuffixIn linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es, agglutinationAgglutinationIn contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...
. - a large set of grammatical caseGrammatical caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
s marked with agglutinative suffixes (13–14 cases on average; mainly later developments: Proto-Uralic is reconstructed with 6 cases), e.g.:- Erzya: 12 cases
- Estonian: 14 cases
- Finnish: 15 cases
- Hungarian: 18 cases (Together 34 grammatical cases and case-like suffixes)
- Inari Sami: 9 cases
- Komi: in certain dialects as many as 27 cases
- Moksha: 13 cases
- Nenets: 7 cases
- North Sami: 6 cases
- Udmurt: 16 cases
- Veps: 24 cases
- unique Uralic case system, from which all modern Uralic languages derive their case systems.
- nominative singular has no case suffix.
- accusative and genitive suffixes are nasal sounds (-n, -m, etc.)
- three-way distinction in the local case system, with each set of local cases being divided into forms corresponding roughly to "from", "to", and "in/at"; especially evident, e.g., in Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, which have several sets of local cases, such as the "inner", "outer" and "on top" systems in Hungarian, while in Finnish the "on top" forms have merged to the "outer" forms.
- the Uralic locative suffix exists in all Uralic languages in various cases, e.g., Hungarian superessiveSuperessive caseThe Superessive case is a grammatical declension indicating location on top of, or on the surface of something. Its name comes from Latin supersum, superesse: to be over and above....
, Finnish essiveEssive caseThe essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary location or state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a ".In the Finnish language, this case is marked by adding "-na/-nä" to the stem of the noun....
(-na), North Sami essiveEssive caseThe essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary location or state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a ".In the Finnish language, this case is marked by adding "-na/-nä" to the stem of the noun....
, Erzyan inessiveInessive caseInessive case is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is "talo·ssa" in Finnish, "maja·s" in Estonian, "etxea·n" in Basque, "nam·e" in Lithuanian and "ház·ban" in Hungarian.In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding...
, and Nenets locativeLocative caseLocative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
. - the Uralic lativeLative caseLative is a case which indicates motion to a location. It corresponds to the English prepositions "to" and "into". The lative case belongs to the group of the general local cases together with the locative and separative case...
suffix exists in various cases in many Uralic languages, e.g., Hungarian illativeIllative caseIllative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...
, Finnish lativeLative caseLative is a case which indicates motion to a location. It corresponds to the English prepositions "to" and "into". The lative case belongs to the group of the general local cases together with the locative and separative case...
(-s as in rannemmas), Erzyan illativeIllative caseIllative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...
, Komi approximative, and Northern Sami locativeLocative caseLocative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
.
- a lack of grammatical genderGrammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
. - negative verbNegative verbA negative verb is a type of auxiliary that is used to form the negative of a main verb. The main verb itself has no personal endings, while the negative verb takes the inflection...
, which exists in almost all Uralic languages, e.g., Nganasan, Enets, Nenets, Kamassian, Komi, Meadow Mari, Erzya (in the first preterite, the conjunctional, optative and imperative moods, sometimes there are alterations in choice of negative verb stems), North Sami (and other Samic languages), Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc. (Some innovative languages have lost this feature, e.g., Hungarian.) - use of postpositions as opposed to prepositions (prepositions are uncommon).
- possessive suffixPossessive suffixIn linguistics, a possessive affix is a suffix or prefix attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive suffixes are found in some Uralic, Altaic, Semitic, and Indo-European languages...
es. - dualDual (grammatical number)Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...
, which exists, e.g., in the Samoyedic, Ob Ugrian and Samic languages. - pluralPluralIn linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
markers -j (i) and -t (-d) have a common origin (e.g., in Finnish, Estonian, Erzya, Samic languages, Samoyedic languages). Hungarian, however, has -i- before the possessive suffixes and -k elsewhere. In the old orthographies, the plural marker -k was also used in the Samic languages. - Possession indicated with locative or dative constructionDative constructionThe dative construction is a grammatical way of constructing a sentence, with the subject in the dative case and the direct object in the nominative case...
s. For example, Finnish uses existential clauseExistential clauseExistential clauses are clauses that indicate only an existence. In English, they are formed with the dummy subject construction with "there", e.g. "There are boys in the yard". Many languages do not require a dummy subject, e.g. Finnish, where the sentence Pihalla on poikia is literally "On the...
s; the subject is the possession, the verb is "to be" (the copula), and the possessor is grammatically a location and in the adessive caseAdessive caseIn Uralic languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, the adessive case is the fourth of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "on". For example, Estonian laud and laual , Hungarian asztal and asztalnál...
: "Minulla on kala", literally "At me is fish", or "I have a fish (some fish)". In Hungarian: "Van egy halam", literally "Is a fish_my", or "I have a fish", or "Nekem van..." ("To me is..."). - expressions that include a numeralNumber namesIn linguistics, number names are specific words in a natural language that represent numbers.In writing, numerals are symbols also representing numbers...
are singular if they refer to things which form a single group, e.g., "négy csomó" in Hungarian, "njeallje čuolmma" in Northern Sami, "neli sõlme" in Estonian, and "neljä solmua" in Finnish, each of which means "four knots", but the literal approximation is "four knot". (This approximation is inaccurate for Finnish and Estonian, where the singular is in the partitivePartitiveIn linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that divides something into parts. For example, in the English sentence I'll have some coffee, some is a partitive determiner because it makes the noun phrase some coffee refer to a subset of all coffee...
case, such that the number points to a part of a larger mass, like "four of knot(s)".)
Phonology
- vowel harmonyVowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
: this is present in many but by no means all Uralic languages. It exists in Hungarian and various Finnic languages and is present to some degree elsewhere (Mordvinic, Mari, Khanty, and Samoyedic). It is lacking in Sami and Permic. - large vowel inventories. For example, some SelkupSelkup languageSelkup language is a language of the Selkups, belonging to the Samoyedic group of the Uralic language family. It is spoken by some 1,570 people in the region between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers . The language name Selkup comes from the Russian "" , based on the native name used in the Taz dialect, ...
varieties have over twenty different monophthongMonophthongA monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
s, and EstonianEstonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
has over twenty different diphthongDiphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s. - palatalizationPalatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
of consonants; in this context, palatalization means a secondary articulation, where the middle of the tongue is tense. For example, pairs like [ɲ] – [n], or [c] – [t] are contrasted in Hungarian, as in hattyú [hɒccuː] "swan". Some Sami languages, for example Skolt SamiSkolt SamiSkolt Sami is a Uralic, Sami language spoken by approximately 400 speakers in Finland, mainly in Sevettijärvi, and approximately 20–30 speakers of the Njuõˊttjäuˊrr dialect in an area surrounding Lake Lovozero in Russia. Skolt Sami used to also be spoken on the Neiden area of Norway,...
, distinguish three degrees: plain[l], palatalized <'l> [lʲ], and palatal [ʎ], where <'l> has a primary alveolar articulation, while has a primary palatal articulation. Original Uralic palatalization is phonemic, independent of the following vowel and traceable to the millennia-old Proto-Uralic. It is different from Russian palatalization, which is of more recent origin. The Finnic languages Finnic languagesThe term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....
have lost palatalization, but the eastern varieties have reacquired it, so Finnic palatalization (where extant) was originally dependent on the following vowel and does not correlate to palatalization elsewhere in Uralic. - lack of phonologically contrastive toneTone (linguistics)Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
. - the stress is always on the first syllable, except for the Mari, Udmurt and Komi-Permyak languages. The Erzya language can vary its stress in words to give specific nuances to sentential meaning.
Lexicography
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 the number of common words.Example sentence
Estonian philologist Mall Hellam provided an example of an entire sentence that is mutually intelligible among the three most widely-spoken Uralic languages of Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian, and traceable to the common ancestor of the three languages.The sentence reads:
- EstonianEstonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
: Elav kala ujub vee all. - FinnishFinnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
: Elävä kala ui veden alla. - HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
: Eleven hal úszik a víz alatt. - English: The living fish swims underwater
Although the common origin is easy to notice, University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
linguist Geoffrey Pullum
Geoffrey Pullum
Geoffrey Keith "Geoff" Pullum is a British-American linguist specialising in the study of English. , he is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh....
, who speaks some Finnish, is suspicious of claims of mutual intelligibility; in a post on his blog
Language Log
Language Log is a collaborative language blog maintained by University of Pennsylvania phonetician Mark Liberman.The site is updated daily at the whims of the contributors, and most of the posts are on language use in the media and popular culture. Google search results are frequently used as a...
, he reported that a Finnish friend of his living in Hungary claimed that neither Finns nor Hungarians could understand the other language's version of the sentence. Nevertheless, each word is traceable to Proto-Uralic, not a more recent loanword.
Selected cognates
The following is a very brief selection of cognateCognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
s 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. In general, Finnic languages, and of them Finnish is considered to be the most conservative of the Uralic languages, especially with regard to vocalism. (An example is porsas ("pig"), loaned from Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
*porḱos or pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian
Proto-Indo-Iranian language
Proto-Indo-Iranian is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are usually connected with the early Andronovo archaeological...
*porśos, unchanged since loaning save for loss of palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
, *ś → s.)
| English English language English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria... |
Proto-Uralic | Finnish Finnish language Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a... |
Estonian Estonian language Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities... |
North Sami Northern Sami Northern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland... |
Inari Sami Inari Sami Inari Sámi is a Uralic, Sami language spoken by the Inari Sami of Finland. It has approximately 300 speakers, the majority of whom are middle-aged or older and live in the municipality of Inari. According to the Sami Parliament of Finland 269 persons used Inari Sami as their first language. It is... |
Erzya Erzya language The Erzya language is spoken by about 500,000 people in the northern and eastern and north-western parts of the Republic of Mordovia and adjacent regions of Nizhniy Novgorod, Chuvashia, Penza, Samara, Saratov, Orenburg, Ulyanovsk, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan in Russia... |
Mari Mari language The Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals... |
Komi Komi language The Komi language is a Finno-Permic language spoken by the Komi peoples in the northeastern European part of Russia. Komi is one of the two members of the Permic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric branch... |
Khanty Khanty language Khanty or Xanty language, also known previously as the Ostyak language, is a language of the Khant peoples. It is spoken in Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous okrugs, as well as in Aleksandrovsky and Kargosoksky districts of Tomsk Oblast in Russia... |
Mansi Mansi language The Mansi language is a language of the Mansi people. It is spoken in territories of Russia along the Ob River and its tributaries, including the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and the Sverdlovsk Oblast... |
Hungarian Hungarian language Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe.... |
Tundra Nenets Tundra Nenets language Tundra Nenets is a Samoyedic language spoken in northern Russia, from the Kanin Peninsula to the Yenisei River, by the Nenets people. It is closely related to Nganasan and Enets, more distantly related to Selkup and even more distantly to the other Uralic languages... |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'fire' | *tuli | tuli (tule-) | tuli | dolla | tulla | tol | tul | tyl- | – | – | – | tu |
| 'fish' | *kala | kala | kala | guolli | kyeli | kal | kol | – | kul | kul | hal | xalʲa |
| 'nest' | *pesä | pesä | pesa | beassi | peesi | pize | pəžaš | poz | pel | pitʲii | fészek | pʲidʲa |
| 'hand, arm' | *käti | käsi (käte-) | käsi | giehta | kieta | ked´ | kit | ki | köt | kaat | kéz | – |
| 'eye' | *śilmä | silmä | silm | čalbmi | čalme | śel´me | šinča | śin | sem | sam | szem | sæw° |
| 'fathom' | *süli | syli | süli | salla | solla | sel´ | šülö | syl | ɬöl | täl | öl | tʲíbʲa |
| 'vein / sinew' | *sïxni | suoni (suone-) | soon | suotna | suona | san | šün | sën | ɬan | taan | ín | te' |
| 'bone' | *luwi | luu | luu | – | – | lovaža | lu | ly | loγ | luw | – | le |
| 'liver' | *mïksa | maksa | maks | – | – | makso | mokš | mus | muγəl | maat | máj | mud° |
| 'urine' | *kunśi | kusi (kuse-) | kusi | gožža | kužža | – | kəž | kudź | kos- | końć- | húgy | – |
| 'to go' | *meni- | mennä (men-) | minema | mannat | moonnađ | – | mija- | mun- | mən- | men- | megy-/men- | mʲin- |
| 'to live' | *elä- | elää (elä-) | elama | eallit | eelliđ | – | ila- | ol- | – | – | él- | jilʲe- |
| 'to die' | *kaxli- | kuolla (kuol-) | koolema | – | – | kulo- | kola- | kul- | kol- | kool- | hal- | xa- |
| 'to wash' | *mośki- | – | mõskma1 | – | – | muśke- | muška- | myśky- | – | – | mos- | masø- |
1Võro
Võro language
The Võro language is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Traditionally it has been considered a dialect of the South Estonian dialect group of the Estonian language, but nowadays it has its own literary language and is in search of official recognition as an...
dialect
(Orthographical notes: The hacek denotes postalveolar articulation ('ž' [ʒ], 'š' [ʃ], 'č' [t͡ʃ]), while the acute denotes a secondary palatal articulation ('ś' [sʲ]). The Finnish letter 'y' and the letter 'ü' in other languages represent a high close rounded vowel [y]. The letter 'đ' in the Sami languages
Sami languages
Sami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently and erroneously believed to be a single language. Several names are used for the Sami...
represents a voiced dental fricative
Voiced dental fricative
The voiced dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound, eth, is . The symbol was taken from the Old English letter eth, which could stand for either a voiced or unvoiced...
[ð]. The vowels 'ä' and 'ö' are the fronted [æ] and [ø], respectively.
Notations
- Abondolo, Daniel M. (editor). 1998. The Uralic Languages. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08198-X.
- Austerlitz, Robert. 1990. "Uralic Languages" (pp. 567–576) in Comrie, Bernard, editor. The World's Major Languages. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Collinder, Björn. 1955. Fenno-Ugric Vocabulary: An Etymological Dictionary of the Uralic Languages. (Collective work.) Stockholm: Almqvist & Viksell. (Second, revised edition: Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 1977.)
- Collinder, Björn. 1957. Survey of the Uralic Languages. Stockholm.
- Collinder, Björn. 1960. Comparative Grammar of the Uralic Languages. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
- Collinder, Björn. 1965. An Introduction to the Uralic Languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Décsy, Gyula. 1990. The Uralic Protolanguage: A Comprehensive Reconstruction. Bloomington, Indiana.
- Hajdu, Péter. 1963. Finnugor népek és nyelvek. Budapest: Gondolat kiadó.
- Hajdu, Péter. 1975. Finni-Ugrian Languages and Peoples, translated by G. F. Cushing. London: André Deutsch. (English translation of the previous.)
- Georg, Stefan, Peter A. Michalove, Alexis Manaster Ramer, and Paul J. Sidwell. 1999. "Telling general linguists about Altaic." Journal of Linguistics 35:65–98.
- Laakso, Johanna. 1992. Uralilaiset kansat ('Uralic Peoples'). Porvoo – Helsinki – Juva. ISBN 951-0-16485-2.
- Rédei, Károly (editor). 1986–88. Uralisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Uralic Etymological Dictionary'). Budapest.
- Ruhlen, Merritt, A Guide to the World's languages, Stanford, California (1987), pp. 64–71.
- Sammallahti, Pekka. 1988. "Historical phonology of the Uralic Languages." In The Uralic Languages, edited by Denis Sinor, pp. 478–554. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
- Sinor, Denis (editor). 1988. The Uralic Languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences. Leiden: Brill.
External classification
- Fortescue, Michael. 1998. Language Relations across Bering Strait. London and New York: Cassell.
- Greenberg, Joseph. 2000–2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family, 2 volumes. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Sauvageot, Aurélien. 1930. Recherches sur le vocabulaire des langues ouralo-altaïques ('Research on the Vocabulary of the Uralo-Altaic Languages'). Paris.
Linguistic issues
- Künnap, A. 2000. Contact-induced Perspectives in Uralic Linguistics. LINCOM Studies in Asian Linguistics 39. München: LINCOM Europa. ISBN 3895869643.
- Wickman, Bo. 1955. The Form of the Object in the Uralic Languages. Uppsala: Lundequistska bokhandeln.
External links
- Uralic family tree at Ethnologue
- Uralic family Tree in the MultiTree Project at the LINGUIST List.
- Finnic and Finno-Ugric Swadesh vocabulary lists on Wiktionary
- "The Finno-Ugrics" The Economist, December 20, 2005
- News on the Uralic peoples
- Kulonen, Ulla-Maija: Origin of Finnish and related languages. thisisFINLAND, Finland Promotion Board. Cited 30.10.2009.
"Rebel" Uralists
- "The untenability of the Finno-Ugrian theory from a linguistic point of view" by Dr. László Marácz, a minority opinion on the language family
- "The 'Ugric-Turkic battle': a critical review" by Angela Marcantonio, Pirjo Nummenaho, and Michela Salvagni
- "Linguistic shadow-boxing" by Johanna Laakso – a book review of Angela Marcantonio’s The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics