The Uralic languages ( ), sometimes called the Uralian languages ( ), are spoken predominantly in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and

North Asia North Asia or Northern Asia () is the northern region of Asia, which is defined in geography, geographical terms and consists of three federal districts of Russia: Ural Federal District, Ural, Siberian Federal District, Siberian, and the Far E ...

. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are 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

...

. Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya,

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 ...

, Mari, Udmurt and Komi spoken in the European parts of the Russian Federation. Still smaller minority languages are

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 ...

of the northern

Fennoscandia __NOTOC__ Fennoscandia (Finnish language, Finnish, Swedish language, Swedish and ; ), or the Fennoscandian Peninsula, is a peninsula in Europe which includes the Scandinavian Peninsula, Scandinavian and Kola Peninsula, Kola peninsulas, mainland ...

; other members of the

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, ...

, ranging from Livonian in northern

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; 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 ...

and the others of members of 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 ...

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) * ...

and

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 ...

spoken in

Western Siberia Western Siberia or West Siberia ( rus, Западная Сибирь, p=ˈzapədnəjə sʲɪˈbʲirʲ; , ) is a region in North Asia. It is part of the wider region of Siberia that is mostly located in the Russia, Russian Federation, with a Sout ...

. The name ''Uralic'' derives from the family's purported "original homeland" (''

Urheimat In historical linguistics, the homeland or ( , from German 'original' and 'home') of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the reconstructed or historicall ...

'') hypothesized to have been somewhere in the vicinity of 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.

, and was first proposed by

Julius Klaproth Heinrich Julius Klaproth (11 October 1783 – 28 August 1835) was a German linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, orientalist and explorer. As a scholar, he is credited along with Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat with being instrumental in turning ...

in ''Asia Polyglotta'' (1823).

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

is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic but more accurately refers to a disputed subdivision of the Uralic languages which excludes the Samoyedic languages. Scholars who do not accept the traditional notion that Samoyedic split first from the rest of the Uralic family may treat the terms as synonymous. Uralic languages are known for their often complex case systems and

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

Origin and evolution

Homeland

Proposed homelands of the

Proto-Uralic language Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The reconstructed language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE (estimates vary), and then exp ...

include: * The vicinity of the

Volga River The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

, west of the Urals, close to the

of the

Indo-European languages 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. ...

, or to the east and southeast of the Urals. Historian

Gyula László Gyula László ( Kőhalom, 14 March 1910 – Oradea, 17 June 1998) was a Hungarian historian, archaeologist and artist. His main work is the novel theory of "double conquest" of the Carpathian Basin by Hungarians in 5th and 9th century. The ...

places its origin in the forest zone between the

Oka River The 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, ...

and central

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. E.N. Setälä and M. Zsirai place it between the

Volga The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

and

Kama River The Kama ( , ; ; ), also known as the Chulman ( ; ), is a long«Река КАМА»
Russian St ...

s. According to E. Itkonen, the ancestral area extended to 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 ...

. : * has suggested a homeland in western and northwestern

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. : *

Juha Janhunen Juha Antero Janhunen (born 12 February 1952) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongolic languages. Since 1994, he has been Professor in East Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on Samo ...

suggests a homeland in between the Ob and

Yenisei The Yenisey or Yenisei ( ; , ) is the fifth-longest river system in the world, and the largest to drain into the Arctic Ocean. Rising in Mungaragiyn-gol in Mongolia, it follows a northerly course through Lake Baikal and the Krasnoyarsk Dam b ...

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

s in

Central Siberia The Central Siberian Plateau (; ) is a vast mountainous area in Siberia, one of the Great Russian Regions. Geography The plateau occupies a great part of central Siberia between the Yenisei and Lena rivers. It is located in the Siberian Plat ...

. : * By using linguistic, paleoclimatic and archaeological data, a group of scholars around , including

, traced back the Proto-Uralic homeland to a region East of the Urals, in

, specifically somewhere close to the

Minusinsk Basin Minusinsk Basin or Khakass-Minusinsk Basin (, ''Minusinskaya (Chakassko-Minusinskaya) kotlovina'') is in Khakassia and Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia located among mountains of South Siberia. Geography It is bounded on the west by Kuznetsk Alatau ...

, and reject a homeland in the Volga / Kama region. They further noted that a number of traits of Uralic are :: "''distinctive in western Eurasia. ... typological properties are eastern-looking overall, fitting comfortably into northeast Asia, Siberia, or the North Pacific Rim''". : Uralic-speakers may have spread westwards with the Seima-Turbino route.

History of Uralic linguistics

Early attestations

The first plausible mention of a people speaking a Uralic language is in

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

's ''

Germania Germania ( ; ), also more specifically called Magna Germania (English: ''Great Germania''), Germania Libera (English: ''Free Germania''), or Germanic Barbaricum to distinguish it from the Roman provinces of Germania Inferior and Germania Superio ...

'' (), mentioning the ''

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. Their location is uncer ...

'' (usually interpreted as referring to the

Sámi 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 ...

) and two other possibly Uralic tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. There are many possible earlier mentions, including the

Iyrcae The Iyrcae () or Turcae were an ancient nation on the north-east trade route described by Herodotus beyond the Thyssagetae. They were distinguished by their mode of hunting, climbing a tree to survey their game, and then pursuing it with trained h ...

(perhaps related to Yugra) described by

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

living in what is now European Russia, and the

Budini The Budini () were an ancient Scythian tribe whose existence was recorded by ancient Graeco-Roman authors. The Budini were closely related to the Androphagi and the Melanchlaeni. Location The Budini lived alongside the Gelonians in the valley ...

, described by Herodotus as notably red-haired (a characteristic feature of the

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 ...

) and living in northeast Ukraine and/or adjacent parts of Russia. 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

The affinity of Hungarian and Finnish was first proposed in the late 17th century. Three candidates can be credited for the discovery: the German scholar , the Swedish scholar

Georg Stiernhielm Georg Stiernhielm (August 7, 1598 – April 22, 1672) was a Swedish civil servant, mathematician, linguist and poet. He has been called "the father of the Swedish skald art". Stiernhielm's most famous poetic work is the first poem in the Musæ ...

, and the Swedish courtier

Bengt Skytte Bengt Skytte af Duderhof (1614–1683) was a Swedish courtier and diplomat. He was a follower of Comenius and proposed a Pansophism, pansophic city, "Sophopolis". Early life He was the son of Johan Skytte and Maria Näf (Neaf) and brother of Vend ...

. Fogel's unpublished study of the relationship, commissioned by

Cosimo III Cosimo III de' Medici (14 August 1642 – 31 October 1723) was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1670 until his death in 1723, the sixth and penultimate from the House of Medici. He reigned from 1670 to 1723, and was the elder son of Grand Duke Ferdina ...

of Tuscany, was clearly the most modern of these: he established several

grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the goal of which is to formu ...

and

lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lexical ...

parallels between Finnish and Hungarian as well as Sámi. Stiernhielm commented on the similarities of Sámi, Estonian, and Finnish, and also on a few similar words between Finnish and Hungarian. These authors were 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 what is now known as the

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. ...

family. In 1717, the Swedish professor

Olof Rudbeck Olaus Rudbeck (also known as Olof Rudbeck the Elder, to distinguish him from his son, and occasionally with the surname Latinized as ''Olaus Rudbeckius'') (13 September 1630 – 12 December 1702) was a Swedish scientist and writer, professor ...

proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish and Hungarian, of which about 40 are still considered valid. Several early reports comparing Finnish or Hungarian with Mordvin, Mari or Khanty were additionally collected by

Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in ad ...

and edited by his assistant

Johann Georg von Eckhart Johann Georg von Eckhart (7 September 1664 – 9 February 1730) was a German historian and linguist. Biography Eckhart was born at Duingen in the Principality of Calenberg. After preparatory training at Schulpforta, he went to Leipzig, where a ...

. In 1730,

Philip Johan von Strahlenberg Philip Johan von Strahlenberg (1676–1747) was a Swedish Officer (armed forces), officer and geographer of German origin who made important contributions to the cartography of Russia. Life Strahlenberg was born in Stralsund, which then belonged ...

published his book (''The Northern and Eastern Parts of Europe and Asia''), surveying the geography, peoples and languages of Russia. All the main groups of the Uralic languages were already identified here. 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

Merritt Ruhlen Merritt Ruhlen (May 10, 1944 – January 29, 2021) was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized ...

as due to "the wild unfettered

Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...

of the epoch". Still, in spite of this hostile climate, the Hungarian

Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...

János Sajnovics János Sajnovics de Tordas et Káloz ( Tordas, 12 May 1733 – Pest, 4 May 1785) was a Hungarian linguist and member of the Jesuit order. He is best known for his pioneering work in comparative linguistics, particularly his systematic demonstr ...

traveled with

Maximilian Hell Maximilian Hell () (born Rudolf Maximilian Höll; May 15, 1720 – April 14, 1792) was an astronomer and an ordained Jesuit priest from the Kingdom of Hungary. The lunar crater Hell is named after him. Biography Born as Rudolf Maximilian Höl ...

to survey the alleged relationship between Hungarian and Sámi, while they were also on a mission to observe the 1769 Venus transit. Sajnovics published his results in 1770, arguing for a relationship based on several grammatical features. In 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi published the most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, knowledge of the Uralic languages spoken in Russia had remained restricted to scanty observations by travelers. Already the Finnish historian Henrik Gabriel Porthan had stressed that further progress would require dedicated field missions. One of the first of these was undertaken by

Anders Johan Sjögren Anders Johan Sjögren (also spelled Andreas Johan Sjögren, in Russian also known as Andrei Mikhailovich Shëgren, Андре́й Миха́йлович Шёгрен; May 8, 1794 in Iitti, Finland – January 18, 1855 in St. Petersburg, Russia) ...

, who brought the

Vepsians Veps, or Vepsians (), are a Baltic Finns, Baltic Finnic people who speak the Veps language, which belongs to the Finnic languages, Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. According to the 2002 Russian census, there were 8,240 Veps in Russia. Of t ...

to general knowledge and elucidated in detail the relatedness of Finnish and Komi. Still more extensive were the field research expeditions made in the 1840s by

Matthias Castrén Matthias Alexander Castrén (2 December 1813 – 7 May 1852) was a Finnish Swedish ethnologist and philologist who was a pioneer in the study of the Uralic languages. He was an educator, author and linguist at the University of Helsinki. Castrén ...

(1813–1852) and

Antal Reguly Antal (Anton) Reguly (, 1819–1858) was a Hungarian linguist and ethnographer notable for his contribution to the study of Uralic languages. In 1843-4 he became the first ethnographer to visit the Mansi (Vogul) people to collect data on their ...

(1819–1858), who focused especially on the Samoyedic and the

Ob-Ugric languages The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the Uralic languages, grouping together the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) languages. Both languages are split into numerous and highly divergent dialects, more accurately referred to a ...

, respectively. Reguly's materials were worked on by the Hungarian linguist (1810–1891) and German

Josef Budenz Josef Budenz () (13 June 1836 – 15 April 1892) was a German comparative linguist specializing in Finno-Ugric who researched the origins of the Hungarian language. Early life and education Josef Budenz graduated from high school in Fulda i ...

(1836–1892), who both supported the Uralic affinity of Hungarian. Budenz was the first scholar to bring this result to popular consciousness in Hungary and to attempt a reconstruction of the Proto-Finno-Ugric grammar and lexicon. Another late-19th-century Hungarian contribution is that of (1855–1901), 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 inclusion of Samoyedic as a part of the Uralic family. Meanwhile, in the autonomous

Grand Duchy of Finland The Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed from 1809 to 1917 as an Autonomous region, autonomous state within the Russian Empire. Originating in the 16th century as a titular grand duchy held by the Monarc ...

, a chair for Finnish language and linguistics at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

was created in 1850, first held by Castrén. In 1883, the

Finno-Ugrian Society Finno-Ugrian Society (, ) is a Finnish learned society, dedicated to the study of Uralic and Altaic languages. It was founded in Helsinki in 1883 by the proposal of professor Otto Donner. The society publishes several academic journal An ...

was founded in Helsinki on the proposal of

Otto Donner Otto Donner (15 December 1835, Kokkola – 17 September 1909, Helsinki) was a Finnish linguist and politician. Biography He was professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Indo-European linguistics at the University of Helsinki, but also studied ...

, which would lead to Helsinki overtaking St. Petersburg as the chief northern center of research of the Uralic languages. During the late 19th and early 20th century (until the separation of Finland from Russia following the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

), the Society hired many scholars to survey the still less-known Uralic languages. Major researchers of this period included

Heikki Paasonen Heikki Paasonen may refer to: * Heikki Paasonen (linguist) (1865–1919), Finnish linguist * Heikki Paasonen (presenter) Heikki Valtteri Paasonen (born ) is a Finnish television presenter. Paasonen is one of Finland's most famous and decorat ...

(studying especially the

Mordvinic languages The Mordvinic languages, also known as the Mordvin, Mordovian or Mordvinian languages (, ''mordovskiye yazyki''), are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Moksha language, both spoken in Mordovia ...

Yrjö Wichmann Yrjö Jooseppi Wichmann (8 September 1868 – 3 May 1932) was a Finnish linguist. He was a professor of Finno-Ugric language studies at the University of Helsinki in 1920–1932. Wichmann's parents were Vicar Emil August Wichmann (1831–1886) a ...

(studying

Permic 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 550,00 ...

), (

), Kustaa Fredrik Karjalainen (

), Toivo Lehtisalo (

Nenets The Nenets (; ), in the past also called 'Samoyeds' or 'Yuraks', are a Samoyedic ethnic group native to Arctic Russia, Russian Far North. According to the latest census in 2021, there were 49,646 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them l ...

), and

Kai Donner Karl (Kai) Reinhold Donner (1 April 1888 – 12 February 1935) was a Finland, Finnish linguist, ethnography, ethnographer and politician. He carried out expeditions to the Ob-Ugrians, Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic peoples in Siberia 1911–1914 ...

( Kamass). The vast amounts of data collected on these expeditions would provide over a century's worth of editing work for later generations of Finnish Uralicists.

Classification

The Uralic family comprises nine undisputed groups with no consensus classification between them. (Some of the proposals are listed in the next section.) An agnostic approach treats them as separate branches. Obsolete or native names are displayed in italics. *

(Sami, Saami, Samic, Saamic, ''Lappic, Lappish'') * Finnic (Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic) *

Mordvinic The Mordvinic languages, also known as the Mordvin, Mordovian or Mordvinian languages (, ''mordovskiye yazyki''), are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Moksha language, both spoken in Mordovia. ...

(Mordvin, Mordvinian) * Mari (''Cheremis'') *

(Permian) * Hungarian (''Magyar'') *

(''Vogul, Ма̄ньси, Маньсь'') *

(''Ostyak, Handi, Hantõ, Хӑнты, Ӄӑнтәӽ'') * Samoyedic (Samoyed) There is also historical evidence of a number of extinct languages of uncertain affiliation: * Merya *

Muromian The Volga Finns are a historical group of peoples living in the vicinity of the Volga, who speak Uralic languages. Their modern representatives are the Mari people, the Erzya and the Moksha (commonly grouped together as Mordvins) as well as spea ...

* Meshcherian (until 16th century?) Traces of Finno-Ugric substrata, especially in toponymy, in the northern part of European Russia have been proposed as evidence for even more extinct Uralic languages. UralicTree

Traditional classification

All Uralic languages are thought to have descended, through independent processes of

language change Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistic ...

, from

Proto-Uralic Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The reconstructed language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE (estimates vary), and then exp ...

. The internal structure of the Uralic family has been debated since the family was first proposed. Doubts about the validity of most or all of the proposed higher-order branchings (grouping the nine undisputed families) are becoming more common. A traditional classification of the Uralic languages has existed since the late 19th century. It has enjoyed frequent adaptation in whole or in part in encyclopedias, handbooks, and overviews of the Uralic family. Otto Donner's model from 1879 is as follows: * Uralic ** Ugric (Ugrian) *** Hungarian *** Ob-Ugric (Ob-Ugrian) ****

****

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

(Permian-Finnic) ***

*** Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mari) **** Volgaic ***** Mari *****

**** Finno-Samic (Finno-Saamic, ''Finno-Lappic'') *****

***** Finnic At Donner's time, the

were still poorly known, and he was not able to address their position. As they became better known in the early 20th century, they were found to be quite divergent, and they were assumed to have separated already early on. The terminology adopted for this was "Uralic" for the entire family, "

" for the non-Samoyedic languages (though "Finno-Ugric" has, to this day, remained in use also as a synonym for the whole family). Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic are listed in

ISO 639-5 ISO 639-5:2008 "Codes for the representation of names of languages—Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families and groups" is an international standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It was developed by ISO ...

as primary branches of Uralic. The following table lists nodes of the traditional family tree that are recognized in some overview sources. : : : : Little explicit evidence has however been presented in favour of Donner's model since his original proposal, and numerous alternate schemes have been proposed. Especially in Finland, there has been a growing tendency to reject the Finno-Ugric intermediate protolanguage. A recent competing proposal instead unites Ugric and Samoyedic in an "East Uralic" group for which shared innovations can be noted.Häkkinen, Jaakko 2009
''Kantauralin ajoitus ja paikannus: perustelut puntarissa''
– ''Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Aikakauskirja 92''. 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-Samic. 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

Lexicostatistics Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a ...

has been used in defense of the traditional family tree. A recent re-evaluation of the evidenceMichalove, Peter A. (2002) The Classification of the Uralic Languages: Lexical Evidence from Finno-Ugric. In: Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, vol. 57 however fails to find support for Finno-Ugric and Ugric, suggesting four lexically distinct branches (Finno-Permic, Hungarian, Ob-Ugric and Samoyedic). One alternative proposal for a family tree, with emphasis on the development of numerals, is as follows: * Uralic ( "2", "5" / "10") ** Samoyedic (*op "1", *ketä "2", *näkur "3", *tettə "4", *səmpəleŋkə "5", *məktut "6", *sejtwə "7", *wiət "10") ** Finno-Ugric ( "1", "3", "4", "5", "6", "10") *** Mansic **** Mansi **** Hungarian (''hét'' "7"; replacement ''egy'' "1") *** Finno-Khantic (reshaping *kolmi "3" on the analogy of "4") **** Khanty **** Finno-Permic (reshaping *kektä > *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

Phonological isoglosses

Another proposed tree, more divergent from the standard, focusing on consonant isoglosses (which does not consider the position of the Samoyedic languages) is presented by Viitso (1997),Viitso, Tiit-Rein. Keelesugulus ja soome-ugri keelepuu. Akadeemia 9/5 (1997) and refined in Viitso (2000):Viitso, Tiit-Rein. Finnic Affinity. Congressus Nonus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum I: Orationes plenariae & Orationes publicae. (2000) * Finno-Ugric ** Saamic–Fennic (

consonant gradation Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation ...

) *** Saamic *** Fennic ** Eastern Finno-Ugric ***Mordva ***(node) **** Mari **** Permian–Ugric (*δ > *l) ***** Permian ***** Ugric (*s *š *ś > *ɬ *ɬ *s) ****** Hungarian ****** Khanty ****** Mansi 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; *δʲ > *ð 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) * *Only present in Nganasan. * Note: Proto-Uralic *ś becomes Proto-Sámi *č unless before a consonant, where it becomes *š, which, in the western Sámi languages, is vocalized to *j before a stop. * Note: Proto-Mari *s and *š in only reliably stay distinct in the Malmyž dialect of Eastern Mari. Elsewhere, *s usually becomes *š. *Note: Proto-Khanty *ɬ in many of the dialects yields *t; Häkkinen assumes 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 (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.

Honkola, et al. (2013)

computational phylogenetic Computational phylogenetics, phylogeny inference, or phylogenetic inference focuses on computational and optimization algorithms, heuristics, and approaches involved in phylogenetic analyses. The goal is to find a phylogenetic tree representing op ...

study by Honkola, et al. (2013) classifies the Uralic languages as follows. Estimated divergence dates from Honkola, et al. (2013) are also given. *Uralic (5300

YBP Before Present (BP) or "years before present (YBP)" is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology, and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Because ...

) ** Samoyedic **

(3900

) *** Ugric (3300 YBP) **** Hungarian **** Ob-Ugric (1900 YBP) *****

*****

***

(3700 YBP) ****

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years, from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.902 Mya. It is the s ...

***** Udmurt ***** Komi **** Finno-Volgaic ***** Mari (3200 YBP) *****(core branch) ****** Erzya (2900 YBP) (

) ****** Finno-Samic *******

(800 YBP) ******* Finnic (1200 YBP)

Typology

Structural characteristics generally said to be typical of Uralic languages include:

Grammar

* extensive use of independent

suffix In 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 and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

es (

agglutination In linguistics, agglutination is a morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single Syntax, syntactic feature. Languages that use agglu ...

) * a large set of

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

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 (15 cases with instructive) ** Finnish: 15 cases ** Hungarian: 18 cases (together 34 grammatical cases and case-like suffixes) ** Inari Sámi: 9 cases ** Komi: in certain dialects as many as 27 cases ** Moksha: 13 cases ** Nenets: 7 cases ** Northern Sámi: 6 cases ** Udmurt: 16 cases ** Veps: 24 cases ** Northern Mansi: 6 cases ** Eastern Mansi: 8 cases * unique Uralic case system, from which all modern Uralic languages derive their case systems. ** nominative singular has no case suffix. ** accusative (Proto-Uralic ''*-m'') and genitive (''*-n'') suffixes are

nasal consonant In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majo ...

s. Many languages have merged the two. ** 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 ''*-nA'' exists in all Uralic languages in various cases, e.g. Hungarian

superessive In grammar, the superessive case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case indicating location on top of, or on the surface of something. Its name comes from Latin : to be over and above. While most languages communicate this concept through the use of ...

, Finnish

essive In grammar, the essive case, or similaris case, ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case.O'Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, and Janie Rees-Miller. "Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure." Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. 6 ...

(''-na''), Northern Sámi

, Erzyan

inessive In grammar, the inessive case (abbreviated ; from "to be in or at") is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is in Finnish, in Estonian, () in Moksha, in Basque, in Lithuan ...

, and Nenets

locative In grammar, the locative case ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. In languages using it, the locative case may perform a function which in English would be expressed with such prepositions as "in", "on", "at", and " ...

. ** the Uralic

lative In grammar, the lative ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical 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 locat ...

suffix exists in various cases in many Uralic languages, e.g. Hungarian

illative In grammar, the illative case (; abbreviated ; from "brought in") is a grammatical case used in the Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Hungarian languages. It is one of the locative cases, and has the basic meaning of "into (the inside ...

, Finnish

(''-s'' as in ''ulos'' 'out' and ''rannemmas'' 'more towards the shore'), Erzyan

, Komi approximative, and Northern Sámi

. * a lack of

grammatical gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...

, including one pronoun for both ''he'' and ''she''; for example, ''hän'' in Finnish, ''tämä'' in Votic, ''tämā'' or ''ta'' (short form for tämā) in Livonian, ''tema'' or ''ta'' (short form for tema) in Estonian, ''сійӧ'' () in Komi, ''ő'' in Hungarian. *

negative verb Dryer defined three different types of negative markers in language. Beside negative particles and negative affixes, negative verbs play a role in various languages. The negative verb is used to implement a clausal negation. The negative predic ...

, which exists in many Uralic languages (notably absent in Hungarian) * use of postpositions as opposed to prepositions (prepositions are uncommon). *

possessive suffix In linguistics, a possessive affix (from ) 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 of the world. The '' Wor ...

es ** the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

is also used to express possession in some languages, e.g.

...

''mu koer'',

colloquial Finnish Colloquial or spoken Finnish () is the unstandardized spoken variety of the Finnish language, in contrast with the standardized form of the language (). It is used primarily in personal communication and varies somewhat between the different diale ...

''mun koira'',

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 ...

''mu beana'' 'my dog' (literally 'dog of me'). Separate

possessive adjective Possessive determiners are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they do not have the same syntactic distribution as ''bona fide'' adjectives. Examples in Engli ...

s and

possessive pronoun A possessive or ktetic form ( abbreviated or ; from ; ) is a word or grammatical construction indicating a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a number of other types of relation to a greater or le ...

s, such as ''my'' and ''your'', are rare. *

dual Dual or Duals may refer to: Paired/two things * Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another ** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality *** see more cases in :Duality theories * Dual number, a nu ...

, in the Samoyedic, Ob-Ugric and Sámi languages and reconstructed for Proto-Uralic *

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

markers -j (i) and -t (-d, -q) have a common origin (e.g. in Finnish, Estonian, Võro, Erzya, Sámi languages, Samoyedic languages). Hungarian, however, has -i- before the possessive suffixes and -k elsewhere. The plural marker -k is also used in the Sámi languages, but there is a regular merging of final -k and -t in Sámi, so it can come from either ending. * Possessions are expressed by a possessor in the adessive or dative case, the verb "be" (the copula, instead of the verb "have") and the possessed with or without a possessive suffix. The grammatical subject of the sentence is thus the possessed. In Finnish, for example, the possessor is in the

adessive case An adessive case ( abbreviated ; from Latin '' adesse'' "to be present (at)": ''ad'' "at" + ''esse'' "to be") is a grammatical case generally denoting location at, upon, or adjacent to the referent of the noun; the term is used most frequently for ...

: "Minulla on kala", literally "At me is fish", i.e. "I have a fish", whereas in Hungarian, the possessor is in the

dative case In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this examp ...

, but appears overtly only if it is contrastive, while the possessed has a possessive ending indicating the number and person of the possessor: "(Nekem) van egy halam", literally "(To me ative is a fish-my" ("(For me) there is a fish of mine"), i.e. "(As for me,) I have a fish". * expressions that include a numeral are singular if they refer to things which form a single group, e.g. "négy csomó" in Hungarian, "njeallje čuolmma" in Northern Sámi, "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 accurate only for Hungarian among these examples, as in Northern Sámi the noun is in the singular

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

case and in Finnish and Estonian the singular noun is in the

partitive In linguistics, a partitive is a word, phrase, or Grammatical case, case that indicates partialness. Nominal (linguistics), Nominal partitives are syntactic constructions, such as "some of the children", and may be classified semantically as either ...

case, such that the number points to a part of a larger mass, like "four of knot(s)".)

Phonology

Vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

: this is present in many but by no means all Uralic languages. It exists in Hungarian and various

Baltic-Finnic 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, ...

languages, and is present to some degree elsewhere, such as in Mordvinic, Mari, Eastern Khanty, and Samoyedic. It is lacking in Sámi,

, Selkup and

standard Estonian Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language and the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is sp ...

, while it does exist in

Võro Võro may refer to: * Võro people, an ethnic group of Estonia * Võro language, a language belonging to the Baltic-Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages of Estonia * Võro Institute, the governing organization of the Võro language * Õil ...

and elsewhere in

South Estonian South Estonian, or Võro-Seto, is a Finnic language spoken in south-eastern Estonia, encompassing the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto dialects. Diachronically speaking, Estonian and South Estonian are in separate branches of the Finnic langua ...

, as well as in Kihnu Island subdialect of North Estonian. (Although double dot diacritics are used in writing Uralic languages, the languages do not exhibit

Germanic umlaut The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut (linguistics), umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel (fronting (phonology), fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ...

, a different type of vowel assimilation.) * Large vowel inventories. For example, some Selkup varieties have over twenty different

monophthong A monophthong ( ) is a pure vowel sound, or one whose articulation at beginning and end is relatively fixed, with the tongue moving neither up nor down and neither forward nor backward towards a new position of articulation. A monophthong can be ...

s, and

...

has over twenty different

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s. *

Palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization ( ) is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulati ...

of consonants; in this context, palatalization means a secondary articulation, where the middle of the tongue is tense. For example, pairs like – or – are contrasted in Hungarian, as in ''hattyú'' "swan". Some Sámi languages, for example

Skolt Sámi Skolt Sámi (, , ; or , , ) is a Sámi languages, Sámi language that is spoken by the Skolts, with approximately 300 speakers in Finland, mainly in Sevettijärvi and approximately 20–30 speakers of the (Notozero) dialect in an area surround ...

, distinguish three degrees: plain palatalized , and palatal , where 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

. It is different from Slavic palatalization, which is of more recent origin. The

have lost palatalization, but several of them 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

tone Tone may refer to: Visual arts and color-related * Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory * Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color * Toning (coin), color change in coins * ...

. * In many Uralic languages, the stress is always on the first syllable, though Nganasan shows (essentially) penultimate stress, and a number of languages of the central region (Erzya, Mari, Udmurt and Komi-Permyak) synchronically exhibit a lexical accent. 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.

Selected cognates

The following is a very brief selection of cognates 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. Orthographical notes: The hacek denotes postalveolar articulation ( , , ) (In Northern Sámi, ( ), while the acute denotes a secondary palatal articulation ( , , ) or, in Hungarian, vowel length. The Finnish letter and the letter in other languages represent the high rounded vowel ; the letters and are the front vowels and . As is apparent from the list, Finnish is the most conservative of the Uralic languages presented here, with nearly half the words on the list above identical to their Proto-Uralic reconstructions and most of the remainder only having minor changes, such as the conflation of *ś into /s/, or widespread changes such as the loss of *x and alteration of *ï. Finnish has also preserved old Indo-European borrowings relatively unchanged. (An example is ''porsas'' ("pig"), loaned from

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

''*porḱos'' or pre-

Proto-Indo-Iranian Proto-Indo-Iranian, also called Proto-Indo-Iranic or Proto-Aryan, 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 ...

''*porśos'', unchanged since loaning save for loss of

palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization ( ) is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulati ...

, *ś > s.)

Mutual intelligibility

The Estonian philologist Mall Hellam proposed cognate sentences that she asserted to be mutually intelligible among the three most widely spoken Uralic languages: Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian: *. *. *. *. However, linguist

Geoffrey Pullum Geoffrey Keith Pullum (; born 8 March 1945) is a British and American linguist specialising in the study of English. Pullum has published over 300 articles and books on various topics in linguistics, including phonology, morphology, semantics ...

reports that neither Finns nor Hungarians could understand the other language's version of the sentence.

Comparison

No Uralic language has exactly the idealized typological profile of the family. Typological features with varying presence among the modern Uralic language groups include: Notes: # Clearly present only in Nganasan. # Vowel harmony is present in the Uralic languages of Siberia only in some marginal archaic varieties: Nganasan, Southern Mansi and Eastern Khanty. #Only recently lost in modern Estonian # A number of umlaut processes are found in Livonian. # In Komi, but not in Udmurt.

Proposed relations with other language 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: All of the following hypotheses are minority views at the present time in Uralic studies.

Uralic-Yukaghir

The Uralic–Yukaghir hypothesis identifies Uralic and

Yukaghir The Yukaghirs, or Yukagirs ( (), ), are a Siberian ethnic group in the Russian Far East, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. Geographic distribution The Tundra Yukaghirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in the Sakha Republic; the Taiga Y ...

as independent members of a single language family. Diverging views suggest that the similarities between Uralic and Yukaghir languages are due to ancient contact between the proto-languages.

Eskimo-Uralic

The Eskimo–Uralic hypothesis associates Uralic with the

Eskimo–Aleut languages The Eskaleut ( ), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent, and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of ...

. This is an old thesis whose antecedents go back to the 18th century. An important restatement of it was made by Bergsland (1959).

Uralo-Siberian

Uralo-Siberian Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, and Eskaleut. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut 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, and Eskimo–Aleut. It was propounded by

Michael Fortescue Michael David Fortescue (born 8 August 1946, Thornbury) is a British-born linguist specializing in Arctic and native North American languages, including Kalaallisut, Inuktun, Chukchi and Nitinaht. Fortescue is known for his reconstructions ...

in 1998. Michael Fortescue (2017) presented new evidence in favor for a connection between Uralic and other Paleo-Siberian languages.

Ural-Altaic

Theories proposing a close relationship with the

Altaic languages The Altaic () languages are a group of languages comprising the Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, Tungusic language families, with some linguists including the Koreanic languages, Koreanic and Japon ...

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

in both sets of languages, as well as

in some. For example, the word for "language" is similar in

...

(''keel'') and

Mongolian Mongolian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Mongolia, a country in Asia * Mongolian people, or Mongols * Bogd Khanate of Mongolia, the government of Mongolia, 1911–1919 and 1921–1924 * Mongolian language * Mongolian alphabet * ...

(''хэл'' (''hel'')). These theories are now generally rejected and most such similarities are attributed to

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 ...

or coincidence.

Indo-Uralic

The

Indo-Uralic Indo-Uralic is a controversial linguistic hypothesis proposing a genealogical family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic. The suggestion of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic is often credited to the Danish linguist Vi ...

(or "Indo-Euralic") hypothesis suggests that Uralic and

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.

Uralo-Dravidian

The hypothesis that the

Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages are a language family, family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. The most commonly spoken Dravidian l ...

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 (7 May 1814 – 28 August 1891) was a British missionary and linguist. A missionary for the London Missionary Society, he arrived in Company Raj, British India at age 24, and studied the local language to spread the word of the ...

Thomas Burrow Thomas Burrow (; 29 June 1909 – 8 June 1986) was an Indologist and the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1976; he was also a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford during this time. His work includes ''A Dravidi ...

Kamil Zvelebil Kamil Václav Zvelebil (November 17, 1927 – January 17, 2009) was a Czech scholar in Indian literature and linguistics, notably Tamil, Sanskrit, Dravidian linguistics and literature and philology. Life and career Zvelebil studied at the C ...

, and Mikhail Andronov. This hypothesis 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 (19 June 1928 – 11 August 2012) was an Indian linguist who specialised in Dravidian languages. He was born in Ongole in the Madras Presidency of British India (now in Andhra Pradesh, India). He was the vice-chancellor ...

Stefan Georg Ralf-Stefan Georg (November 7, 1962 in Bottrop) is a German linguist. He is currently Professor at the University of Bonn in Bonn, Germany, for Altaic Linguistics and Culture Studies. Education Georg earned an M.A. in Mongolian Linguistics, ...

describes the theory as "outlandish" and "not meriting a second look" even in contrast to hypotheses such as Uralo-Yukaghir or Indo-Uralic.

Nostratic

Nostratic Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia first proposed in 1903. Though a historically important proposal, it is now generally considered a fringe theory. Its exact compositi ...

associates Uralic, Indo-European, Altaic, Dravidian, Afroasiatic, and various other language families of Asia. The Nostratic hypothesis was first propounded by Holger Pedersen in 1903 and subsequently revived by

Vladislav Illich-Svitych Vladislav Markovich Illich-Svitych (, also transliterated as Illič-Svityč; 12 September 1934 – 22 August 1966) was a Soviet linguist and accentologist. He was a founding father of comparative Nostratic linguistics and the Moscow School o ...

and

Aharon Dolgopolsky Aharon Dolgopolsky, also spelled Aron (, ; 18 November 1930 – 20 July 2012) was a Russian-Israeli linguist who is known as one of the modern founders of comparative Nostratic linguistics. Biography Born in Moscow, he arrived at the long-forgot ...

in the 1960s.

Eurasiatic

The proposed (though controversial) Eurasiatic language family 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 or Amuric or Gilyak may refer to: * Nivkh people (''Nivkhs'') or Gilyak people (''Gilyaks'') * Nivkh languages or Gilyak languages * Gilyak class gunboat, ''Gilyak'' class gunboat, such as the Russian gunboat Korietz#Second gunboat, second R ...

, Ainu, and Eskimo–Aleut. It was propounded by

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...

in 2000–2002. Similar ideas had earlier been expressed by Heinrich Koppelmann in 1933 and by

Björn Collinder Erik Alfred Torbjörn "Björn" Collinder (22 July 1894 – 20 May 1983) was a Swedish linguist who was Professor of Finno-Ugric languages at Uppsala University. Biography Collinder was born in Sundsvall, Sweden on 22 July 1894. After gaining a ...

in 1965.

Uralic skepticism

The linguist Angela Marcantonio has argued against the validity of several subgroups of the Uralic family, as well against the family itself, claiming that many of the languages are no more closely related to each other than they are to various other Eurasian languages (e.g. Yukaghir or Turkic), and that in particular Hungarian is a language isolate. Marcantonio's proposal has been strongly dismissed by most reviewers as unfounded and methodologically flawed. Problems identified by reviewers include: * Misrepresentation of the amount of comparative evidence behind the Uralic family, by arbitrarily ignoring data and mis-counting the number of examples known of various regular sound correspondences * After arguing against the proposal of a Ugric subgroup within Uralic, claiming that this would constitute evidence that Hungarian and the Ob-Ugric languages have no relationship at all * Excessive focus on criticizing the work of early pioneer studies on the Uralic family, while ignoring newer, more detailed work published in the 20th century * Criticizing the evidence for the Uralic family as unsystematic and statistically insignificant, yet freely proposing alternate relationships based on even scarcer and even less systematic evidence.

Other comparisons

Various unorthodox comparisons have been advanced. These are considered at best spurious fringe-theories by specialists: *Finno-Basque * Hungarian-Etruscan * Sino-Uralic languages * Cal-Ugrian theory *Dené-Finnish (

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

Na-Dené Na-Dene ( ; also Nadene, Na-Dené, Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit, Tlina–Dene) is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now general ...

and Uralic) *

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age culture which was centered on the island of Crete. Known for its monumental architecture and Minoan art, energetic art, it is often regarded as the first civilization in Europe. The ruins of the Minoan pa ...

-Uralic * Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins

Comparison

Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal D ...

(in English): ''All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.'' Comparison of the text in prominent Uralic languages: * * * * * * * * * * Comparison of the text in other Uralic languages: * Northern * Northern

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * * Helimski, Eugene. 2000. ''Comparative Linguistics, Uralic Studies. Lectures and Articles.'' Moscow. () * * * Napolskikh, Vladimir. 1991. The First Stages of Origin of People of Uralic Language Family: Material of mythological reconstruction. Moscow, RU () * * ; External classification * ; Linguistic issues * *

External links

* *Syrjänen, Kaj, Lehtinen, Jyri, Vesakoski, Outi, de Heer, Mervi, Suutari, Toni, Dunn, Michael, … Leino, Unni-Päivä. (2018). lexibank/uralex: UraLex basic vocabulary dataset (Version v1.0) ata set Zenodo. {{DEFAULTSORT:Uralic Languages Agglutinative languages Language families Languages of Russia Languages of Finland Languages of Hungary Languages of Estonia

Origin and evolution

Homeland

History of Uralic linguistics

Early attestations

Uralic studies

Classification

Traditional classification

Lexical isoglosses

Phonological isoglosses

Honkola, et al. (2013)

Typology

Grammar

Phonology

Lexicography

Selected cognates

Mutual intelligibility

Comparison

Proposed relations with other language families

Uralic-Yukaghir

Eskimo-Uralic

Uralo-Siberian

Ural-Altaic

Indo-Uralic

Uralo-Dravidian

Nostratic

Eurasiatic

Uralic skepticism

Other comparisons

Comparison

See also

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links