Finno-Volgaic or Fenno-Volgaic is a hypothetical branch of the

Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...

that tried to group the

Finnic languages The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 mi ...

, Sami languages,

Mordvinic languages The Mordvinic languages, also known as the Mordvin, Mordovian or Mordvinian languages (russian: мордовские языки, ''mordovskiye yazyki''), are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Mok ...

and the

Mari language The Mari language (Mari: , ''marij jylme''; russian: марийский язык, ''mariyskiy yazyk''), formerly known as the Cheremiss language, spoken by approximately 400,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primar ...

. It was hypothesized to have branched from the

Finno-Permic languages The Finno-Permic (''Fenno-Permic'') or Finno-Permian (''Fenno-Permian'') languages, or sometimes just Finnic (''Fennic'') languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Uralic languages which comprise the Balto-Finnic languages, Sami languages, Mor ...

about 2000 BC. The Finnic and Sami languages are sometimes grouped together as

Finno-Samic languages The Finno-Samic languages (also known as ''Finno-Saamic'', ''Finno-Lappic'', ''Fenno-Saamic'', or ''Saamic–Fennic'') are a hypothetical subgroup of the Uralic family, and are made up of 22 languages classified into either the Sami languages, wh ...

, while Mordvinic and Mari were formerly grouped together as the obsolete group of the

Volga-Finnic languages The Volga Finns (sometimes referred to as Eastern Finns) are a historical group of indigenous peoples of Russia living in the vicinity of the Volga, who speak Uralic languages. Their modern representatives are the Mari people, the Erzya and the ...

. The current stage of research rejects Volga-Finnic, while the validity of Finno-Lappic and Finno-Permic remains disputed.Salminen, Tapani 2002: Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies. http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/kuzn.html In particular the position of Mari within the alleged grouping appears to be marginal, while more evidence can be found uniting specifically Finnic, Samic and Mordvinic. Only a single uniting phonological feature of the Finno-Volgaic languages has been proposed: the loss of the consonant *w before rounded vowels. Lexical evidence for a Finno-Volgaic group is weak as well. Less than ten word roots are known that would be shared by all four member groups, while being absent from the other Uralic languages.

References

{{Uralic languages Uralic languages

See also

References