The Ugric or Ugrian languages ( or ) are a proposed branch of the Uralic

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

. The name Ugric is derived from

Ugrians Historically, the Ugrians or Ugors were the ancestors of the Hungarians of Central Europe, and the Khanty and Mansi people of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug of Russia. The name is sometimes also used in a modern context as a cover term for th ...

, an archaic exonym for the Magyars (Hungarians) and

Yugra Yugra or Iuhra ( Old Russian Югра ''Jugra''; Byzantine Greek Οὔγγροι ''Oὔggroi''; la, OngariaeHungarian,

Khanty The Khanty ( Khanty: ханти, ''hanti''), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (russian: остяки) are a Ugric indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, togethe ...

, and

Mansi Mansi may refer to: People * Mansi people, an indigenous people living in Tyumen Oblast, Russia ** Mansi language * Giovanni Domenico Mansi Gian (Giovanni) Domenico Mansi (16 February 1692 – 27 September 1769) was an Italian prelate, theolog ...

. The last two have traditionally been considered single languages, though their main dialects are sufficiently distinct that they may also be considered small subfamilies of three to four languages each. A common Proto-Ugric language is posited to have been spoken from the end of the 3rd millennium BC until the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in Western

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

, east of the southern

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

. Of the three languages, Khanty and Mansi have traditionally been set apart from Hungarian as Ob-Ugric, though features uniting Mansi and Hungarian in particular are known as well. The Ugric language family was first noticed by

Pope Pius II Pope Pius II ( la, Pius PP. II, it, Pio II), born Enea Silvio Bartolomeo Piccolomini ( la, Aeneas Silvius Bartholomeus, links=no; 18 October 1405 – 14 August 1464), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 August ...

in his ''Cosmographia'' (1458), when he wrote that the

Ostyaks Ostyak (russian: Остя́к) is a name formerly used to refer to several indigenous peoples and languages in Siberia, Russia. Both the Khanty people and the Ket people were formerly called Ostyaks, whereas the Selkup people were referred to a ...

(Khanty) and

Voguls The Mansi (Mansi: Мāньси / Мāньси мāхум, ''Māńsi / Māńsi māhum'', ) are a Ugric indigenous people living in Khanty–Mansia, an autonomous okrug within Tyumen Oblast in Russia. In Khanty–Mansia, the Khanty and Mansi la ...

(Mansi) spoke a language like that of the

Hungarians Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Urali ...

Phonetic development

Consonants

Two common phonetic features of the Ugric languages are a rearrangement of the

Proto-Uralic Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give different ...

(PU) system of

sibilant consonant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...

s and a lenition of

velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive an ...

s: * PU *s and * š merged and developed into a non-sibilant sound (possibly or ), yielding Mansi , Khanty * ɬ → or (depending on dialect), and were lost in Hungarian. * PU * ś depalatalized to *s. * PU medial *x, *k, *w generally lenited to * ɣ. It has however been pointed out that these changes are applicable to the

Samoyedic languages The Samoyedic () or Samoyed languages () are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 25,000 people altogether. They derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Samoyedic, and form a branch of the Urali ...

as well. The consonant cluster *lm is in the Ugric languages mostly reduced to plain (e.g. PU *śilmä 'eye' → Hungarian ''szem'', Mansi сам , Khanty сем ). A peculiar exception is the numeral '3', in which Hungarian (''három'') and Mansi (хурэм ) point to an original cluster *rm, whereas the rest of the Uralic family suggests original *lm (Khanty холәм, Finnish ''kolme'', Estonian ''kolm'', Inari Sami ''kulma'', Erzya колмо, etc.) This has frequently been listed as an argument for considering Hungarian more closely related to Mansi than Khanty. The reverse has also been suggested—Hungarian and Mansi retaining the original form of the numeral, whereas Khanty and all 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 ...

would have innovated for some reason. Hungarian and the current literary standard of Mansi and Khanty all share a spirantization of Proto-Uralic *k to or before back vowels, e.g. 'fish': PU *kala → Hungarian ''hal'', Mansi хул , Khanty хул . This is itself not a common Ugric feature — remains in other Mansi and Khanty dialects (e.g. Eastern Khanty , Southern Mansi 'fish'), but it has been argued to result from a proto-Ugric split of *k to front and back allophones ~ , with the latter then independently spirantizing in each three cases. The three Ugric varieties also share the lateralization of Proto-Uralic * δ to *l (as do the

Permic languages The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550 ...

), but it is possible this postcedes the emergence of retroflex * ɭ from PU *l in Khanty. Another possible counterargument is the similar lateralization of the palatalized counterpart *δ́ → Mansi , likely to have been a simultaneous change with the lateralization of * ð. In Khanty the reflex is , whereas instances of also exist, which may suggest a separate development. An original * ĺ is no longer reconstructed for older stages of Uralic, however, which leaves the origin of Khanty an open question. An innovation clearly limited to the Ugric languages is the development of * ŋ to *ŋk, though there are numerous exceptions in each language to this.

Vowels

The development of the vowel system remains subject to interpretation. All three Ugric branches contrast

vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...

; in Hungarian this is late, generally derived by

compensatory lengthening Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered b ...

after loss of unstressed vowels and *ɣ. The Ob-Ugric languages, however, derive their quantity contrasts mainly from PU quality contrasts: thus for example in Northern Mansi, PU *peljä 'ear' → *päĺ → , but PU *pälä 'half' → *pääl → . Contrasts between PU stem vowels (*a/*ä vs. *i) do not survive as such in modern Ugric languages, but they commonly leave their mark on vowel qualities in the first syllable, suggesting retention of the contrast at least to the Proto-Ugric stage. For example, PU *ńïxli 'arrow' → Hungarian ''nyíl'', but PU *mïksa 'liver' → Hungarian ''máj''. Remnants of original stem vowels are also found in the oldest Hungarian records, such as PU *konta 'group, hunting party' → Old Hungarian ''hodu'' 'army' (→ Modern Hungarian ''had'').

Lexical features

The Ugric languages share considerable amounts of common lexicon not found in the other Uralic languages. This includes both basic vocabulary, e.g. 'fire' (Hungarian ''tűz'', Mansi таўт /taːwt/, Khanty тут /tut/) as well as more specialized terminology, particularly the word for 'horse' (H ''ló, lov-'', M луў /luw/, Kh лав /law/) and related items such as 'saddle' (H ''nyerëg'', M нагэр /naɣər/). This latter fact together with an importance of horse motifs in Ob-Ugric folklore has been used to argue for locating Proto-Ugric in the southernmost parts of Siberia, in close contact with nomadic steppe peoples if not nomadic themselves. Some loanwords from such sources into Ugric are known as well, perhaps most prominently the numeral '7': *θäpt(V) → H ''hét'', M сат /sat/, Kh тапәт /tapət/ (from an Indo-Iranian source; cf.

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

''saptá'', Avestan ''hapta'', both from Proto-Indo-Iranian ''*saptá'' <

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

'). ''Names'' of two of the Ugric peoples are cognate as well: Hungarian ''magyar'' 'Hungarian' can be equated with ''Mansi'' (from an original root *mäńć-). A related word in Khanty denotes a specific

phratry In ancient Greece, a phratry ( grc, φρᾱτρῐ́ᾱ, phrātríā, brotherhood, kinfolk, derived from grc, φρᾱ́τηρ, phrā́tēr, brother, links=no) was a group containing citizens in some city-states. Their existence is known in most I ...

. A common derivational innovation is seen in the word for 'louse': Proto-Uralic *täji → *tä(j)-ktVmV → H ''tetű'', M такэм, Kh тевтәм.

Structural features

* An original

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...

case marked by ''-l'' * A series of original locative cases, formed from postpositions derived from a pronoun root ''*nä'' *

Possessive suffix In linguistics, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive affixes are found in many languages o ...

es are placed before

case suffix In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, ...

es, not after them as in the other Uralic languages * A class of "instable" verb stems, in which alternation between CV and CVC stem variants occurs, e.g. ‘to take’: Hungarian ''vë-'' ~ ''vëv-'' ~ '' vësz-'', Mansi ''*wi-'' ~ ''*wæj-'', Khanty ''*wĕ-'' ~ ''*wĕj-''. * Distinct attributive and nominal forms of the numeral '2': Hungarian '' két'' vs. '' kettő'', Mansi кит vs. китиг, Khanty (Northern) кат vs. катән, (Eastern) vs. * Found in Hungarian and Mansi, an extended form of the

caritive In linguistics, abessive (abbreviated or ), caritive and privative (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun. In English, the corresponding function is expressed by the preposition ''without'' or ...

suffix containing ''-l''. * Distinct verb conjugations according to the transitivity of the verb. It is sometimes termed as “definite” versus “indefinite” conjugation, because also the

definiteness In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...

of the object can play a role when selecting between the two. This feature is within the Uralic family also found in the

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 it is likely to not represent a common Ugric innovation; the particular details of the construction are different in all three Ugric languages. * Verbal prefixes, which modify the meaning of the verb in both concrete and abstract ways ;Examples from Mansi ēl(a) – 'forwards, onwards, away' xot – 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity' ;Examples from Hungarian el – 'away, off' ki – 'out (of)' In Hungarian, the citation form of verbs is the present tense indicative of the 3rd person singular form, which is given here, which does not have any suffixes.

Footnotes

References

Citations

* * * * {{Authority control Uralic languages