Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate refers to

substratum Substrata, plural of substratum, may refer to: *Earth's substrata, the geologic layering of the Earth *''Hypokeimenon'', sometimes translated as ''substratum'', a concept in metaphysics *Substrata (album), a 1997 ambient music album by Biosphere * ...

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 from unidentified non-

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

and non-

Uralic languages 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 ...

that are found in various

Finno-Ugric languages 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 centur ...

, most notably

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ne ...

. The presence of Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami languages was demonstrated by Ante Aikio. points out that similar substrate words are present in

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, ...

as well, but in much smaller numbers. The proposed substrate influence in Finnic may have been related either by borrowing or a direct genetic relationship to the languages that influenced Saami. Borrowing to Saami from Paleo-Laplandic probably still took place after the completion of the Great Saami Vowel Shift. Paleo-Laplandic likely became extinct about 1500 years ago. The

Nganasan language The Nganasan language (formerly called , ''tavgiysky'', or , ''tavgiysko-samoyedsky'' in Russian; from the ethnonym , ''tavgi'') is a Endangered language, moribund Samoyedic languages, Samoyedic language spoken by about 30 of the Nganasan people. ...

also has many substrate words from unknown extinct languages in the Taimyr peninsula.

Theories

According to Aikio, the speakers of the Proto-Samic language arrived in Lapland around 650 BC and fully assimilated the local Paleo-European populations by the middle of 1st millennium AD. In his opinion, the detailed reconstruction of these languages is impossible. The languages of more eastern post- Swiderian cultures might have influenced Finno-Ugric languages as well. According to Peter Schrijver, some of these substrate languages probably had many

geminated In phonetics and phonology, gemination (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

consonants. A lexical comparison with the hypothetical Pre-Germanic substratum yields no results.

Paleo-Laplandic

Paleo-Laplandic is a hypothetical group of extinct but related languages spoken in

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 ...

(northern Scandinavia, traditionally known as Lapland). The speakers of Paleo-Laplandic languages switched to

Sámi languages The Sámi languages ( ), also rendered in English language, English as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Indigenous Sámi peoples in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwest ...

, and the languages became extinct around AD 500. A considerable amount of words in Sámi languages originate from Paleo-Laplandic; more than 1,000 loanwords from Paleo-Laplandic likely exist. Many toponyms in

originate from Paleo-Laplandic. Because Sámi language etymologies for

reindeer The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...

s have preserved a large number of words from Paleo-Laplandic, this suggests that Paleo-Laplandic groups influenced Sámi culture. Paleo-Lakelandic was likely distinguished into an Eastern and a Western language group, as Eastern Saami substrate words differ phonetically from those of Western Saami. Some examples of

Kildin Sami Kildin may refer to: * Kildin Island Kildin (also Kilduin; , North Sami: Gieldasuolu) is a small Russian island in the Barents Sea, off the Russian shore and about 120 km from Norway. Administratively, Kildin belongs to the Murmansk Obla ...

words and corresponding Northern Sami cognates without convincing

Uralic 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 abo ...

/Finno-Ugric (or any other) etymologies: Most of these words have

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

s in all Sami languages. A more extensive list of such words can be found in G. M. Kert's 2009 work on Sami toponymics. Semantically, pre-Sami substrate consists mostly of basic vocabulary terms (i.e. human body parts) and nature/animal names, and lacks terms of kinship and societal organization, which suggests a rather low level of socioeconomic development in pre-Sami cultures.

Paleo-Lakelandic

Another group, the Paleo-Lakelandic languages are a hypotethical group of languages similar to the Paleo-Laplandic languages which influenced the Saami languages more South, that were later assimilated by Finnic people. Nevertheless, the Saami substrate vocabulary in Finnish reveals many words of unknown origin which derive from the Paleo-European languages spoken in the region. Words such as *kāvë 'bend' and *šāpšë have been identified as originating in Paleo-Lakelandic.

Paleo-Baltic

The Paleo-Baltic are a group of languages that have been proposed to have existed in the Baltic region prior to the migrations of the Indo-Europeans and Finno-Ugrians, that have been hypothized to have influenced the

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

and

. Among the suggested loanwords from a pre-Baltic language include the Finnic words ''saari'' 'island', ''niemi'' 'cape' and ''jänis'' 'hare, alongside the shared words between Baltic and Finnic such as *''samanā'' "moss" and ''salo'' 'island'. A list of words suggested by Saarikivi as having Paleo-Baltic origin: Many words relating to fish in Finnic may have substrate etymologies suggesting influence from a culture centered around fishing. It is likely that this Paleo-European language also influenced some Indo-European languages. It has been suggested that the Paleo-European language of the Baltic was perhaps related to Paleo-Laplandic, either by influence or by genetic relationship, particularly the words for "moss" and "island" have been suggested as cognates between Paleo-Laplandic and Paleo-Baltic.

Pre-Finno-Volgaic substrate

There are also some examples of possible substrate words the hypothetical

Finno-Volgaic languages Finno-Volgaic or Fenno-Volgaic is a hypothetical branch of the Uralic languages that tries to group the Finnic languages, Sami languages, Mordvinic languages, and the Mari language. The hypothesis would have this language group branching from ...

group that differ from the Pre-Sami substrate, i.e. Proto-Finno-Volgaic *''täštä'' 'star', or *''kümmin'' 'ten'. Some words in Finno-Volgaic languages contain rare consonant clusters, which suggests loanwords from unknown languages. Finnish words such as ''jauho'' ('flour'), ''lehmä'' ('cow'), ''tähti'' ('star'), ''tammi'' ('oak') and ''ihminen'' ('human') could be substrate words. Aikio (2021) lists some other substrate vocabulary as: Irregular correspondences among Uralic languages are frequent among some words, such as 'to milk' and '

hazelnut The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus '' Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species ''Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according to ...

'. These are presumed to be non-native loanwords by Aikio (2021):

Toponyms

Some

toponyms Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage, and types. ''Toponym'' is the general term for a proper nam ...

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, ...

appear to be of non-Uralic origin; for example, a word ''koita'' regularly appears in

hydronym A hydronym (from , , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a subset of top ...

s for long and narrow bodies of water and is thus probably the continuation of the native word for 'long, narrow'. Many other toponyms in

seem to come from a substrate language or from multiple substrate languages: among these are

Saimaa Saimaa ( , ; ) is a lake located in the Finnish Lakeland area in southeastern Finland. With a surface area of approximately , it is the largest lake in Finland, and the fourth-largest natural freshwater lake in Europe. The name Saimaa likely co ...

Imatra Imatra is a city in Finland, located in the southeastern interior of the country. Imatra is located in the region of South Karelia, on Saima, Lake Saimaa and the River Vuoksi. The population of Imatra is approximately , while the Imatra sub-regi ...

, Päijänne, and Inari. There are also toponyms from a substrate language in

; for example, an ending -ir (< *-ērē) is commonly found in names of mountains and is probably the continuation of the substrate word for 'mountain'. Other such toponymic words are 'watershed', *''čār-'' 'uppermost (lake)', *- 'isolated mountain', - 'mountain top on the edge of a mountain area', *''sāl-'' 'large island in the sea', - 'seashore cliff', and *''inč-'' 'outermost island'.

Languages

There are irregularities in Sami substrate words which suggest they might have been borrowed from distinct, but related languages. In the west, the substrate languages probably had an s-type sibilant which corresponds to an š-type sibilant in the east. As we only have fragments of Lakelandic Sami which were preserved in Finnish placenames and dialectal vocabulary, the features of the Paleo-Lakelandic substrate in Lakelandic Sami cannot be studied. Many placenames in Finland come from Sami words of unknown origin which are likely substrate words, such as ''jokuu'' from Proto-Sami ''*čuokōs'' ‘track, way’. The Sami substrate in Finnish dialects also reveals that Lakelandic Sami languages had a high number of words with an obscure origin, likely deriving from old languages of the region.

References

{{Eurasian languages Pre-Indo-European languages Languages extinct in the 1st millennium Unclassified languages of Europe Uralic languages Linguistic strata