Finno-Ugric languages

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Pie chart showing the percentage rates of specific nations speaking languages of the Finno-Ugric family

Finno-Ugric (pronounced /ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːɡrɪk/) is a group of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian and related languages. It comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families.

Status

The term Finno-Ugric is currently somewhat controversial^[1], with many historical linguists feeling that the Finno-Permic languages are as distinct from the Ugric languages as they are from the Samoyedic languages spoken in Siberia. It was earlier thought that the geographically distant Samoyed had separated first, and the branching into Ugric and Finno-Permic took place later, but this does not have strong support in the linguistic data.

The fact that the Finno-Ugric languages, unlike most of the other languages spoken in Europe, are not part of the Indo-European family, gave some initial impetus to the Finno-Ugric grouping. Indeed, in the past, and occasionally today as well, the term Finno-Ugric was used for the entire Uralic language family.

Origins

Proto-Finno-Ugric is the reconstructed protolanguage for the Finno-Ugric languages, that is the ancestor of the Finnic languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Karelian, and the Ugric languages, whose best known example is Hungarian, and all other Uralic languages excluding the Samoyedic languages. The parent language is Proto-Uralic, from which Proto-Finno-Ugric and Proto-Samoyedic had split. However, this classification is not without problems; Proto-Finno-Ugric may also be interpreted as a geographical grouping of Proto-Uralic dialects, because the differences are few. It has been suggested that the area where Proto-Finno-Ugric was spoken reached between the Baltic Sea and the Ural mountains.^[2]

The Saami languages belong to the Finno-Ugric family of languages. They can be traced back to a Finnic-Saami protolanguage, which is called Early-Proto-Finnic.^[3]

History

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The first mention of a Uralic people is in Tacitus' Germania, mentioning the Fenni (usually interpreted as referring to the Sami) and two other possibly Finno-Ugric tribes living in the farthest reaches of Scandinavia. 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 look into linguistic evidence. In 1671, Swedish scholar Georg Stiernhielm commented on the similarities of Lapp, Estonian and Finnish, and also on a few similar words in Finnish and Hungarian, while the German scholar Martin Vogel tried to establish a relationship between Finnish, Lapp and Hungarian. These two authors were thus the first to outline what was to become the classification of a Finno-Ugric family. In 1717, Swedish professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish and Hungarian, of which about 40 are still considered valid (Collinder, 1965). In the same year, the German scholar Johann Georg von Eckhart (published in Leibniz' Collectanea Etymologica) for the first time proposed a relation to the Samoyedic languages.

By 1770, all constituents of Finno-Ugric were known, almost 20 years before the traditional starting-point of Indo-European studies. Nonetheless, these relationships were not widely accepted. Especially Hungarian intellectuals were not interested in the theory and preferred to assume connections with Turkic tribes, an attitude characterized by Ruhlen (1987) as due to "the wild unfettered Romanticism of the epoch". Still, in spite of the hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit János Sajnovics suggested a relationship of Hungarian and Lapp (Sami) in 1770, and in 1799, the Hungarian Sámuel Gyarmathi published the most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date.

At the beginning of the 19th century, research on Finno-Ugric was thus more advanced than Indo-European research. But the rise of Indo-European comparative linguistics absorbed so much attention and enthusiasm that Finno-Ugric linguistics was all but eclipsed in Europe; in Hungary, the only European country that would have had a vested interest in the family (Finland and Estonia being under Russian rule), the political climate was too hostile for the development of Uralic comparative linguistics. Some progress was made, however, culminating in the work of the German linguist Josef Budenz, who for 20 years was the leading Finno-Ugric specialist in Hungary. Another late-19th-century contribution is that of Hungarian linguist Ignác Halász, who published extensive comparative material of Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic in the 1890s, and whose work is at the base of the wide acceptance of the Samoyed-Finno-Ugric relationship today.

During the 1990s, linguists Kalevi Wiik, Janos Pusztay and Ago Künnap and historian Kyösti Julku announced a "breakthrough in Present-Day Uralistics", dating Proto-Finnic to 10,000 BC. The theory was almost entirely unsuccessful in the scientific community (cf. Merlijn de Smit, see external links).

Structural features

See also: Typology of Uralic languages

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All Finno-Ugric languages share structural features and basic vocabulary which find their origins in the hypothetical proto-Finno-Ugric language. Around 200 basic words in this language have been suggested, including word stems for concepts related to humans such as names for relatives and body parts. This common vocabulary includes, according to Lyle Campbell, at least 55 words related to fishing, 33 related to hunting and eating animals, 12 related to reindeer, 17 related to plant foods, 31 related to technology, 26 related to building, 11 related to clothing, 18 related to climate, 4 related to society, 11 related to religion, and 3 related to commerce.

Most Finno-Ugric languages typologically belong to the agglutinative languages, which share common features like inflection by adding suffixes (instead of prepositions as in English) and syntactic coordination of suffixes. Furthermore, Finno-Ugric languages lack grammatical gender and thus use one pronoun for both he and she; for example, hän in Finnish, tämä in Votic, tema in Estonian, ő in Hungarian.

According to Robert Austerlitz, Proto-Finno-Ugric had about seven cases; nominative, accusative, genitive, locative, allative, ablative, and adverbial.

In many Finno-Ugric languages possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns, such as my and your, are rarely used. Speakers suggest possession via declension. In those that have developed further towards fusional languages, the genitive of the personal pronoun is used to express possession. Examples: Estonian mu koer 'my dog' , colloquial Finnish mun koira, Northern Sami mu beana 'my dog' (literally 'dog of me') or beatnagan 'my dog' (literally 'dog-my').

In others, a pronominal suffix is used, optionally together with the genitive case of a pronoun: thus book Finnish (minun) koirani, 'my dog' (literally 'I-gen. dog-my'), from koira "dog". Similarly, Hungarian, lacking possessive pronouns in their own right, uses possessive noun suffixes, optionally together with pronouns; cf. 'the dog' = a kutya vs. 'my dog' = az én kutyám (literally, 'the I dog-my') or simply a kutyám (literally, 'the dog-my'). Hungarian, however, does have independent possessive pronouns; for example, enyém 'mine', tiéd 'yours', etc. These are also declined; for example, nom. enyém, acc. enyémet, dat. enyémnek, etc.

Classification

Geographical span of Uralic languages. Nenets, Enets, Selkup and Nganasan are Samoyedic, the rest are Finno-Ugric.

The Finno-Ugric subfamily of the Uralic languages has the following members:

Ugric (Ugrian)

• Hungarian
  • Hungarian
• Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian)
  • Khanty (Ostyak)
  • Mansi (Vogul)

Finno-Permic (Permian-Finnic)

• Permic (Permian)
  • Komi (Komi-Zyrian, Zyrian)
  • Komi-Permyak
  • Udmurt (Votyak)
• Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mari, Volga-Finnic)
  • Mari (Cheremisic)
    • Mari (Cheremis)
  • Mordvinic (Mordvin, Mordvinian, Mordva)
    • Erzya
    • Moksha
  • Extinct Finno-Volgaic languages of uncertain position
    • Merya (position uncertain, extinct)
    • Meshcherian (position uncertain, extinct)
    • Muromian (position uncertain, extinct)
  • Sami (Samic, Saamic, Lappic, Lappish)
    • Western Sami (Western Samic)
      • Southern Sami
      • Ume Sami — Nearly extinct
      • Lule Sami
      • Pite Sami — Nearly extinct
      • Northern Sami
    • Eastern Sami (Eastern Samic)
      • Kemi Sami — Extinct
      • Inari Sami
      • Akkala Sami — Extinct
      • Kildin Sami
      • Skolt Sami
      • Ter Sami — Nearly extinct
  • Baltic-Finnic (Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic, Finnic, Fennic)
    • Estonian
      • South Estonian (including Mulgi and Tartu)
        • Võro (Voro, Võru, Voru; including Seto or Setu)
    • Finnish - including Meänkieli (also known as Tornedalen or Tornedalian Finnish), Kven and Ingrian Finnish
    • Ingrian (Izhorian) - Nearly extinct
    • Karelian
      • Karelian proper
      • Lude (Ludic, Ludian)
      • Olonets Karelian (Livvi, Aunus, Aunus Karelian, Olonetsian)
    • Livonian (Liv) — Nearly extinct
    • Veps (Vepsian)
    • Votic (Votian, Vod) — Nearly extinct

Disputes

The classification of Finno-Ugric within Uralic, and of Finno-Permic and Ugric within Finno-Ugric, has formerly been widely accepted, but especially in Finland there has been a growing tendency to cut the family tree lower by rejecting the Finno-Ugric intermediate protolanguage.^[4][5] Nevertheless, Finno-Permic still holds some support. Dispute is at present largely confined inside the Finno-Permic family, surrounding different proposals for the arrangement of its subgroups and regarding the validity of the Volgaic group.

The term Volgaic denoted a branch believed to include the Mari and Mordvinic languages, but it has now become obsolete: research has shown that it was a geographic classification rather than a linguistic one. The Mordvinic languages are more closely related to the Finno-Lappic languages than they are to the Mari languages.^{[citation needed]}

Another dispute surrounds the affinity of the Yukaghir languages, which is traditionally regarded as a language isolate, with some scholars proposing a strong affinity to Uralic (Collinder, 1965). It is currently widely accepted that the similarities between Uralic and Yukaghir languages are due to ancient contacts.^[6]

The relation of the Finno-Permic and the Ugric groups is remote by some standards. With a time depth of only 3 or 4 thousand years, it is far younger than many major families such as Indo-European or Semitic, and about the same age as, for instance, the Eastern subfamily of Nilotic. But the grouping is still far from transparent — the absence of early records constitutes an obstacle to exact reconstruction not found in, for example, Indo-European or Semitic. While much has been speculatively deduced about the Finno-Ugric Urheimat, little is certain, and, of course, the relatedness of the languages does not necessarily imply any racial or cultural unity of the peoples speaking them.^{[citation needed]}

Linguists criticizing the Finno-Ugric group (especially Angela Marcantonio, see References) believe that Ugric and Finno-Permic are more distantly related than proponents advertise, and possibly no closer than, for example, the Turkic and Ugric groups. These linguists propose a Ural-Altaic supergroup and deny the validity of the Uralic node within this grouping. Such proposals do not contest the ultimate relatedness of Finno-Ugric, but rather try to include more languages (on even more tenuous grounds) into the family. However, this approach has been rejected by nearly all specialists in Uralic linguistics (for critical reviews, see e.g. Aikio 2003; Bakró-Nagy 2003, 2005; De Smit 2003; Georg 2003; Kallio 2004; Laakso 2004; Saarikivi 2004).

Other unorthodox comparisons have been advanced such as Uralo-Dravidian, Finno-Basque, Hungaro-Sumerian. These are considered spurious by specialists. For the most part these belong to the field of pseudoscientific language comparison rather than scientific comparative linguistics.^{[citation needed]}

Common vocabulary

This is a small sample of cognates in basic vocabulary across Uralic, illustrating the sound laws (based on the Encyclopædia Britannica and Hakkinen 1979). In general two cognates do not have the same meaning; they merely have the same origin. Thus, the English word in each row should be regarded as an approximation of the original meaning, not a translation of the other words. According to Estonian philologist Mall Hellam, the only entire sentence that is mutually intelligible is, "The living fish swims in water" (although it is not in fact mutually intelligible)^[7].

(Orthographical notes: The hacek denotes postalveolar articulation ('š' [ʃ]), while the accent denotes a secondary palatal articulation ('ś' [sʲ]). The Finnish letter 'y' and the letter 'ü' in other languages represent a high close rounded vowel [y]. The letter 'đ' in the Sami languages and 'δ' in reconstructions represent a voiced dental fricative [ð]. The Sami 'č' is a voiceless postalveolar affricate [t͡ʃ].)

Numbers

The numbers from 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 thru 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; notice that 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 lists for certain Finno-Ugric languages can be compared and contrasted at the Rosetta Project website: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Erzya. Notice that particularly the Finnish list is unreliable, because it contains several neologisms or formal words, for example, henkilö (from henki life + place suffix) instead of the more commonly used ihminen, which is a Baltic Finnic word. The Finnish list has also spelling errors suggesting it was compiled by a person who does not know Finnish.

Peoples

The relative numbers of Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples

The Finno-Ugric peoples is a presumed historic group of those peoples who currently speak Finno-Ugric languages. Like the speakers of Indo-European languages, Finno-Ugric peoples include multiple races and origins, although to a lesser degree.

The four largest ethnicities speaking Finno-Ugric languages are the Hungarians (15 million), Finns (6–7 million), Mordvins (0.85 million), and Estonians (1.1 million). Three (Hungarians, Finns, and Estonians) inhabit independent nation-states, Hungary, Finland, and Estonia, while the Mordvins have an autonomous Mordovian Republic within Russia. The traditional area of the indigenous Sámi people is in Northern Fenno-Scandinavia and the Kola Peninsula in Northwest Russia and is known as Sápmi. Some other Finno-Ugric peoples have autonomous republics in Russia: Karelians (Republic of Karelia), Komi (Komi Republic), Udmurts (Udmurt Republic), Mari (Mari El Republic), and Mordvins (Moksha and Erzya; Republic of Mordovia). Khanty and Mansi peoples live in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug of Russia, while Komi-Permyaks live in Komi-Permyak Okrug, which formerly was an autonomous okrug of Russia, but today is a territory with special status within Perm Krai.

Population genetics

The linguistic reconstruction of the Finno-Ugric language family has led to the postulation not just of an ancient Proto–Finno-Ugric people, but that the modern Finno-Ugric–speaking peoples are ethnically related.^[9] Such hypotheses are based on the assumption that heredity can be traced though linguistic relatedness^[10], and this premise is rarely accepted by the modern scientific community: It has not been shown that any contemporary group originated from one single ancient people, barring the earliest humans. Like perhaps all populations, individual groups of Finno-Ugric speakers have a diverse array of cultural, environmental, and genetic influences. However, modern genetic studies have shown that the Y-chromosome haplogroup N3, and sometimes N2, having branched from haplogroup N, which, itself, probably spread north, then west and east from Northern China about 12,000–14,000 years before present from father haplogroup NO (haplogroup O being the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Southeast Asia), is almost specific, though certainly not restricted, to Uralic or Finno-Ugric speaking populations, especially as high frequency or primary paternal haplogroup.^[11][12]

Some of the ethnicities speaking Finno-Ugric languages are:

(Baltic Finnic)

• Chud
• Estonians
• Finns
• Izhorians
• Karelians
• Livonians
• Setos
• Veps
• Votes

("Volgaic")

• Burtas
• Mari
• Merya people
• Meshchera people
• Mordvins [2]
• Muromian people

• Sami (Lapps)

(Permic)

• Besermyan
• Komi
• Komi-Permyaks
• Udmurts

(Ugric)

• Hungarians
  • Székely
  • Csángó
  • Magyarab
  • Jász
  • Kun
  • Palóc
• Khanty
• Mansi

Gallery

Hungarians dressed in national costume in Serbia	Finnish artist, Akseli Gallen-Kallela	Ingrian Finnish oral poet, Larin Paraske	Karelian women in Sammatus
From left to right: Sven-Roald Nystø, Aili Keskitalo and Ole Henrik Magga, the second, third and first president of the Norwegian Sámi Parliament	Khanty women in Man uskve nomad camp, Berezovsky, Khanty-Mansia, Russia	Hungarian Prince Árpád is crossing the Carpathians	A Székely village in Romania
A Sami family around 1900	Sami woman	Erzya women	Komi people

See also

• Finnic peoples
• Ugric peoples
• Volga Finns
• Comb Ceramic culture
• Uralic languages
• Uralo-Siberian languages
• Old Hungarian script
• Old Permic script

References

Further reading

• Aikio, Ante (2003). Angela Marcantonio, The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics. (Book review.) In: Word - Journal of the International Linguistic Association 3/2003: 401–412.
• Bakró-Nagy Marianne 2003. Az írástudók felelőssége. Angela Marcantonio, The Uralic Language Family. Facts, myths and statistics. In: Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 100: 44–62. (Downloadable: [3])
• Bakró-Nagy Marianne 2005. The responsibility of literati. Angela Marcantonio, The Uralic Language Family. Facts, myths and statistics. In: Lingua 115: 1053–1062. (Downloadable: [4])
• Benkő, Loránd: Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Ungarischen (Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1992-1997., ISBN 963-05-6227-8.
• Collinder, Björn: Fenno-Ugric Vocabulary. Uppsala, 1955, ISBN 3-87118-187-0.
• Collinder, Björn: An introduction to the Uralic languages. Berkely, California.
• Campbell, Lyle: Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh University Press 1998.
• Csepregi Márta (ed.): Finnugor kalauz (Finno-Ugric Guide). Budapest: Panoráma, 1998., ISBN 963-243-862-0.
• De Smit, Merlijn 2003: A. Marcantonio: The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics (review). In: Linguistica Uralica 2003, 57-67.
• Encyclopædia Britannica 15th ed.: Languages of the World: Uralic languages. Chicago, 1990.
• Georg, Stefan 2003. Rezension: A. Marcantonio: The Uralic Language Family. Facts, Myths and Statistics. In: Finnisch-Ugrische Mitteilungen Band 26/27.
• Häkkinen, Kaisa: Suomalais-ugrilaisten kielten etymologisen tutkimuksen asemasta ja ongelmista (About the situation and problems of the etymological research of the Finno-Ugric languages) (1979), in Nykysuomen rakenne ja kehitys (Structure and development of modern Finnish) volume 2, (NRJK 2) Pieksämäki 1984, ISBN 951-717-360-1.
• Kallio, Petri 2004. (Review:) The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths, and Statistics (Angela Marcantonio). In: Anthropological Linguistics Vol. 46, no. 4: 486-489.
• Laakso, Johanna: Karhunkieli. Pyyhkäisyjä suomalais-ugrilaisten kielten tutkimukseen (A Bear Tongue. Views on the Research of the Finno-Ugric Languages). Helsinki: SKS, 1999.
• Laakso, Johanna (ed.): Uralilaiset kansat (Uralic Peoples). Porvoo - Helsinki - Juva: WSOY, 1992, ISBN 951-0-16485-2.
• Laakso, Johanna 2004. Sprachwissenschaftliche Spiegelfechterei (Angela Marcantonio: The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics). In: Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen 58: 296-307.
• Marcantonio, Angela: What Is the Linguistic Evidence to Support the Uralic Theory or Theories? - In Linguistica Uralica 40, 1, pp 40–45, 2004.
• Marcantonio, Angela: The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics. 2003.
• Marcantonio, Angela, Pirjo Nummenaho, and Michela Salvagni: The "Ugric-Turkic Battle": A Critical Review. In Linguistica Uralica 37, 2, pp 81–102, 2001. Online version.
• Ruhlen, Merritt, A Guide to the World's languages, Stanford, California (1987), pp. 64–71.
• Saarikivi, Janne 2004. Review of: Angela Marcantonio. Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics. In: Journal of Linguistics 1/2004. p. 187-191.
• Sammallahti, Pekka: Historical phonology of the Uralic languages. - In: Denis Sinor (ed.), The Uralic languages. Description, history and foreign influences. Leiden - New York - København - Köln: Brill, 1998.
• Sammallahti, Pekka, Matti Morottaja: Säämi - suoma - säämi škovlasänikirje (Inari Sami - Finnish - Inari Sami School Dictionary). Helsset/Helsinki: Ruovttueatnan gielaid dutkanguovddaš/Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus, 1983, ISBN 951-9475-36-2.
• Sammallahti, Pekka: Sámi - suoma - sámi sátnegirji (Northern Sami - Finnish - Northern Sami Dictionary). Ohcejohka/Utsjoki: Girjegiisá, 1993, ISBN 951-8939-28-4.
• Sinor, Denis (ed.): Studies in Finno-Ugric Linguistics: In Honor of Alo Raun (Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series: Volume 131). Indiana Univ Research, 1977, ISBN 0-933070-00-4.
• Vikør, Lars S. (ed.): Fenno-Ugric. In: The Nordic Languages. Their Status and Interrelations. Novus Press, pp. 62–74, 1993.
• Wiik, Kalevi: Eurooppalaisten juuret, Atena Kustannus Oy. Finland, 2002.

• Языки народов СССР III. Финно-угорские и самодийские языки (Languages of the Peoples in the USSR III. Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic Languages). Москва (Moscow): Наука (Nauka), 1966. (Russian)
• A magyar szókészlet finnugor elemei. Etimológiai szótár (The Hungarian Vocabulary of Finno-Ugric Origin. Etymological Dictionary). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1967-1978.

External links

• Some Finno-Ugrian links A more comprehensive link collection
• FAQ about Finno-Ugrian Languages
• Linguistic Shadow-Boxing Johanna Laakso's book review of Angela Marcantonio's "The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics"
• Uralic Linguistics Vs. Voodoo Science! A collection of links about the "new paradigm" debate by Merlijn de Smit
• Numbers in Asian languages Counting to ten in a variety of languages
• Ugri.info Finno-Ugric peoples infobase
• Finno-Ugric Electronic Library by the Finno-Ugric Information Center in Syktyvkar, Komi Republic (interface in Russian and English, texts in Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya and Moksha languages): http://library.finugor.ru/
• The Finno-Ugrics:The dying fish swims in water The Economist, December 20, 2005
• "Ethnic origins of Finno-Ugric nations and modern Finno-Ugric nationalism in the Russian Federation" by Konstantin Zamyatin