Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the

Uralic language family The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers ab ...

except for the

Samoyedic languages The Samoyedic () or Samoyed languages () are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 25,000 people altogether, accordingly called the Samoyedic peoples. They derive from a common ancestral language called Pr ...

. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by contemporary linguists such as Tapani Salminen and Ante Aikio. The three most spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

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

Status

The validity of Finno-Ugric as a phylogenic grouping is currently disputed, with some linguists maintaining that the

Finno-Permic languages The Finno-Permic or Finno-Permian languages, sometimes just Finnic languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Uralic languages which comprise the Finnic languages, Balto-Finnic languages, Sámi languages, Mordvinic languages, Mari language, Per ...

are as distinct from the

Ugric languages The Ugric or Ugrian languages ( or ) are a branch of the Uralic language family. Ugric includes three subgroups: Hungarian, Khanty, and Mansi. The latter two are traditionally considered to be single languages, though they are sometimes c ...

as they are from the

spoken in Siberia, or even that none of the Finno-Ugric, Finno-Permic, or Ugric branches has been established. Received opinion is that the easternmost (and last discovered) Samoyed had separated first and the branching into Ugric and Finno-Permic took place later, but this reconstruction does not have strong support in the linguistic data.

Origins

Attempts at reconstructing a Proto-Finno-Ugric

proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...

, a common ancestor of all Uralic languages except for the Samoyedic languages, are largely indistinguishable from Proto-Uralic, suggesting that Finno-Ugric might not be a historical grouping but a geographical one, with Samoyedic being distinct by lexical borrowing rather than actually being historically divergent. It has been proposed that the area in which Proto-Finno-Ugric was spoken reached between the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

and the

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

. Traditionally, the main set of evidence for the genetic proposal of Proto-Finno-Ugric has come from vocabulary. A large amount of vocabulary (e.g. the numerals "one", "three", "four" and "six"; the body-part terms "hand", "head") is only reconstructed up to the Proto-Finno-Ugric level, and only words with a Samoyedic equivalent have been reconstructed for Proto-Uralic. That methodology has been criticised, as no coherent explanation other than inheritance has been presented for the origin of most of the Finno-Ugric vocabulary (though a small number has been explained as old loanwords from

Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages or collectively the Aryan languages) constitute the largest branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.7 billion speakers ...

or perhaps other Indo-European languages). The Samoyedic group has undergone a longer period of independent development, and its divergent vocabulary could be caused by mechanisms of replacement such as

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...

. (The Finno-Ugric group is usually dated to approximately 4,000 years ago, the Samoyedic a little over 2,000.) Proponents of the traditional binary division note, however, that the invocation of extensive contact influence on vocabulary is at odds with the grammatical conservatism of Samoyedic. The consonant ''*š'' (

voiceless postalveolar fricative A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech, spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound #Voiceless palato-alveolar frica ...

, ) has not been conclusively shown to occur in the traditional Proto-Uralic lexicon, but it is attested in some of the Proto-Finno-Ugric material. Another feature attested in the Finno-Ugric vocabulary is that ''*i'' now behaves as a neutral vowel with respect to front-back vowel harmony, and thus there are roots such as ''*niwa-'' "to remove the hair from hides". Regular

sound change In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...

s proposed for this stage are few and remain open to interpretation. Sammallahti (1988) proposes five, following Janhunen's (1981) reconstruction of Proto- Finno-Permic: *

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 ...

: development of long vowels from the cluster of vowel plus a particular syllable-final element, of unknown quality, symbolized by ''*x'' ** Long

open Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gerd Dudek, Buschi Niebergall, and Edward Vesala album), 1979 * ''Open'' (Go ...

''*aa'' and ''*ää'' are then raised to mid ''*oo'' and ''*ee'' respectively. *** E.g. ''*ńäxli-'' → ''*ńääli-'' → ''*ńeeli-'' "to swallow" (→ Finnish ''niele-'', Hungarian ''nyel'' etc.) * Raising of short ''*o'' to ''*u'' in open syllables before a subsequent ''*i'' * Shortening of long vowels in closed syllables and before a subsequent open vowel ''*a'', ''*ä'', predating the raising of ''*ää'' and ''*ee'' ** E.g. ''*ńäxl+mä'' → ''*ńäälmä'' → ''*ńälmä'' "tongue" (→

Northern Sámi Northern Sámi or North Sámi ( ; ; ; ; ; disapproved exonym Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sámi languages. The area where Northern Sámi is spoken covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Geographic distr ...

''njalbmi'', Hungarian ''nyelv'', etc.) Sammallahti (1988) further reconstructs sound changes ''*oo'', ''*ee'' → ''*a'', ''*ä'' (merging with original ''*a'', ''*ä'') for the development from Proto-Finno-Ugric to Proto-Ugric. Similar sound laws are required for other languages as well. Thus, the origin and raising of long vowels may actually belong at a later stage,Häkkinen, Jaakko 2009: Kantauralin ajoitus ja paikannus: perustelut puntarissa. – Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskirja 92. http://www.sgr.fi/susa/92/hakkinen.pdf and the development of these words from Proto-Uralic to Proto-Ugric can be summarized as simple loss of ''*x'' (if it existed in the first place at all; vowel length only surfaces consistently in the

Baltic-Finnic languages The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia. Traditionally, ...

. ) The proposed raising of ''*o'' has been alternatively interpreted instead as a lowering ''*u'' → ''*o'' in Samoyedic (PU *''lumi'' → ''*lomə'' →

Proto-Samoyedic Proto-Samoyedic, or Proto-Samoyed, is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Samoyedic languages: Nenets (Tundra and Forest), Enets, Nganasan, Selkup, as well as extinct Kamas and Mator. Samoyedic is one of the principal branches of ...

''*jom''). Janhunen (2007, 2009) notes a number of derivational innovations in Finno-Ugric, including ''*ńoma'' "hare" → ''*ńoma-la'', (vs. Samoyedic ''*ńomå''), ''*pexli'' "side" → ''*peel-ka'' → ''*pelka'' "thumb", though involving Proto-Uralic derivational elements.

Structural features

The Finno-Ugric group is not typologically distinct from Uralic as a whole: the most widespread structural features among the group all extend to the Samoyedic languages as well.

Common vocabulary

Loanwords

One argument in favor of the Finno-Ugric grouping has come from

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s. Several loans from the

are present in most or all of the Finno-Ugric branches, while being absent from Samoyedic. However, the majority of them have irregular sound correspondences and have a limited distrubution, suggesting that they were borrowed after Uralic had already diversified into its nine branches.

Numbers

The

number system A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

s among the Finno-Ugric languages are particularly distinct from the Samoyedic languages: only the numerals "2", "5", and "7" have cognates in Samoyedic, while also the numerals, "1", "3", "4", "6", "10" are shared by all or most Finno-Ugric languages. Below are the numbers 1 to 10 in several Finno-Ugric languages. Forms in ''italic'' do not descend from the reconstructed forms. The number '2' descends in Ugric from a front-vocalic variant *kektä. The numbers '9' and '8' in Finnic through Mari are considered to be derived from the numbers '1' and '2' as '10–1' and '10–2'. One reconstruction is *''yk+teksa'' and *''kak+teksa'', respectively, where *''teksa'' cf. ''deka'' is an Indo-European loan; the difference between /t/ and /d/ is not phonemic, unlike in Indo-European. Another analysis is *''ykt-e-ksa'', *''kakt-e-ksa'', with *''e'' being the negative verb.

Finno-Ugric Swadesh lists

100-word

Swadesh list A Swadesh list () is a compilation of cultural universal, tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. That is, a Swadesh list is a list of forms and concepts which all languages, without exception, have terms for, such as ...

s for certain Finno-Ugric languages can be compared and contrasted at the Rosetta Project website
FinnishEstonianHungarian
an
Erzya

Speakers

The four largest

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

s that speak Finno-Ugric languages are the

Hungarians Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are an Ethnicity, ethnic group native to Hungary (), who share a common Culture of Hungary, culture, Hungarian language, language and History of Hungary, history. They also have a notable presence in former pa ...

(14.5 million),

Finns Finns or Finnish people (, ) are a Baltic Finns, Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland. Finns are traditionally divided into smaller regional groups that span several countries adjacent to Finland, both those who are native to these cou ...

(6.5 million),

Estonians Estonians or Estonian people () are a Finnic ethnic group native to the Baltic Sea region in Northern Europe, primarily their nation state of Estonia. Estonians primarily speak the Estonian language, a language closely related to other Finni ...

(1.1 million), and

Mordvins Mordvins (also Mordvinians, Mordovians; ; no equivalents in Moksha language, Moksha and Erzya language, Erzya) is an official term used in Russia and the Soviet Union to refer both to Erzyas and Mokshas since 1928. Names While Robert Gordon ...

(0.85 million). Majorities of three (the Hungarians, Finns, and Estonians) inhabit their respective

nation state A nation state, or nation-state, is a political entity in which the State (polity), state (a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory) and the nation (a community based on a common identity) are (broadly ...

s in Europe, i.e.

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, and

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

, while a large minority of Mordvins inhabit the federal Mordovian Republic within Russia (Russian Federation). The indigenous area of the

Sámi people The Sámi ( ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are the traditionally Sámi languages, Sámi-speaking indigenous people inhabiting the region of Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula ...

is known as

Sápmi is the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people. Sápmi includes the northern parts of Fennoscandia, stretching over four countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Most of Sápmi lies north of the Arctic Circle, boun ...

and it consists of the northern parts of the Fennoscandian Peninsula. Some other peoples that speak Finno-Ugric languages have been assigned formerly autonomous republics within Russia. These are the

Karelians Karelians (; ; ; ) are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group who are indigenous to the historical region of Karelia, which is today split between Finland and Russia. Karelians living in Russian Karelia are considered a distinct ethnic group closely ...

(

Republic of Karelia The Republic of Karelia, or simply Karelia or Karjala (; ) is a Republics of Russia, republic of Russia situated in the Northwest Russia, northwest of the country. The republic is a part of the Northwestern Federal District, and covers an area of ...

), Komi (

Komi Republic The Komi Republic (; ), sometimes simply referred to as Komi, is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia situated in the northeast of European Russia. Its capital city, capital is the types of inhabited localities in Russia, city of Syktyvka ...

Udmurts The Udmurts (, ) are a Permian (Finno-Ugric) ethnic group in Eastern Europe, who speak the Udmurt language. They mainly live in the republic of Udmurtia in Russia. Etymology The name ''Udmurt'' comes from * 'meadow people,' where the first part ...

(

Udmurt Republic Udmurtia, officially the Udmurt Republic, is a republic of Russia located in Eastern Europe. It is administratively part of the Volga Federal District. Its capital is the city of Izhevsk. It was established as the Udmurt (until 1931 — Vots ...

) and Mari (

Mari El Republic Mari El,; ; officially the Mari El Republic, is a republic of Russia. It is in the European region of the country, along the northern bank of the Volga River, and administratively part of the Volga Federal District. The republic has a populat ...

). The

Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra, also known as Khanty-Mansia (Khantia-Mansia), is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous okrug of Tyumen Oblast). It has a population of 1,532,243 as of the 2010 Census. Its administrative center is lo ...

was set up for the

Khanty The Khanty (), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (), are a Ugric Indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as " Yugra" in Russia, together with the Mansi. In the autonomous okrug, the K ...

and

Mansi Mansi may refer to: * Mansi people, an Indigenous people of Russia ** Mansi language *Mansi (name), given name and surname *Mansi Junction railway station * Mansi Township, Myanmar ** Mansi, Myanmar, a town in the Kachin State of Myanmar (Burma) * ...

of Russia. A once-autonomous Komi-Permyak Okrug was set up for a region of high Komi habitation outside the Komi Republic. Some of the ethnicities speaking Finno-Ugric languages are:

International Finno-Ugric societies

In the Finno-Ugric countries of Finland, Estonia and Hungary that find themselves surrounded by speakers of unrelated tongues, language origins and language history have long been relevant to

national identity National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity ...

. In 1992, the 1st '' World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples'' was organized in

Syktyvkar Syktyvkar (, , ; , ) is the capital city of the Komi Republic in Russia, as well as its largest city. It is also the administrative center of the Syktyvkar Urban Okrug. Until 1930, it was known as Ust-Sysolsk after the Sysola, Sysola River. Ety ...

in the Komi Republic in Russia, the 2nd World Congress in 1996 in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

in Hungary, the 3rd Congress in 2000 in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

in Finland, the 4th Congress in 2004 in

Tallinn Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...

in Estonia, the 5th Congress in 2008 in

Khanty-Mansiysk Khanty-Mansiysk (, lit. ''Khanty-Mansi Town''; Khanty: , ''Jomvoćś''; Mansi: , ''Abga'') is a city in west-central Russia. Technically, it is situated on the eastern bank of the Irtysh River, from its confluence with the Ob, in the oil-ri ...

in Russia, the 6th Congress in 2012 in

Siófok Siófok (; ; ) is a town in Somogy County, Hungary on the southern bank of Lake Balaton. It is the Somogy County#Municipalities, second largest municipality in Somogy County and the seat of Siófok District. It covers an area of about between Lak ...

in Hungary, the 7th Congress in 2016 in

Lahti Lahti (; ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Päijät-Häme. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Lahti is approximately , while the Lahti sub-region, sub-region has a population of approximately . It is the mo ...

in Finland, and the 8th Congress in 2021 in

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 97,759 (as of 2024). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of Riga, Latvia. Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river, which connects the ...

in Estonia. The members of the Finno-Ugric Peoples' Consultative Committee include: the Erzyas, Estonians, Finns, Hungarians, Ingrian Finns, Ingrians, Karelians, Khants, Komis, Mansis, Maris, Mokshas, Nenetses, Permian Komis, Saamis, Tver Karelians, Udmurts, Vepsians; Observers: Livonians, Setos. In 2007, the 1st ''Festival of the Finno-Ugric Peoples'' was hosted by President

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

of Russia, and visited by Finnish President,

Tarja Halonen Tarja Kaarina Halonen (, born 24 December 1943) is a Finns, Finnish politician who served as the 11th president of Finland, and the first and to date only woman to hold the position, from 2000 to 2012. She first rose to prominence as a lawyer wit ...

, and Hungarian Prime Minister,

Ferenc Gyurcsány Ferenc Gyurcsány (; born 4 June 1961) is a Hungarian entrepreneur and retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from 2004 to 2009. Prior to that, he held the position of Government of Hungary, Minister of Youth Affairs and Sp ...

. The

International Finno-Ugric Students' Conference IFUSCO (International Finno-Ugric Students' Conference) is an annual international conference for and by the students of Finno-Ugric languages and peoples. IFUSCO conference contains presentations and workshops on linguistics, ethnography, folklori ...

(IFUSCO) is organised annually by students of Finno-Ugric languages to bring together people from all over the world who are interested in the languages and cultures. The first conference was held in 1984 in

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

in Germany. IFUSCO features presentations and workshops on topics such as linguistics, ethnography, history and more. The International Congress for Finno-Ugric Studies is the largest scientific meeting of scientists studying the culture and languages of

Finno-Ugric peoples Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century ...

, held every five years. The first congress was organized in 1960 in

, the last congress took place in 2022 in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, the next congress is planned to be held in

in 2025.

Notes

References

External links

*
Swadesh lists for the Finno-Ugric languages
(from Wiktionary'
Swadesh-list appendix

Finno-Ugric Electronic Library
by the Finno-Ugric Information Center in

Interface in Russian and English, texts in Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya and

Moksha ''Moksha'' (; , '), also called ''vimoksha'', ''vimukti'', and ''mukti'', is a term in Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, liberation, '' nirvana'', or release. In its soteriological and eschatologic ...

languages.
The Finno-Ugrics: The dying fish swims in water

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

, 20 December 2005
"Ethnic origins of Finno-Ugric nations and modern Finno-Ugric nationalism in the Russian Federation" by Konstantin Zamyatin

Online unified platform of the Libraries of the Finno-Ugric Republics of Russia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Finno-Ugric Languages Uralic languages History of Ural