Uralic languages

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The Uralic languages form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. The name of the language family references the location of the family's suggested Urheimat, which is often placed close to the Ural mountains. Countries that are home to a significant number of speakers of Uralic languages include: Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. The healthiest Uralic languages, in terms of the number of native speakers and national identity, are Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian.

Family Tree

While the internal structure of the Uralic family has been under debate since the family was originally proposed, two subfamilies, Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic, are consistently recognized as being distinct from one another.

Many efforts have been made to identify the relationship between the Uralic languages and languages generally thought to belong to the world's other major language families. Probably the least controversial - though all such proposals currently remain controversial - is the relationship between the Uralic languages and Yukaghir; theories proposing a special relationship with the Altaic languages were formerly very popular, but have fallen out of favor in more recent decades.

Theories that include the Uralic family as a node in a proposed superfamily include the following:

• Ural-Altaic
• Eurasiatic
• Uralo-Dravidian
• Uralo-Indo-European
• Uralo-Yukaghir
• Nostratic
• Proto-World

Classification of Languages

The traditional classification of the Uralic languages is as follows. Obsolete names are displayed in italics.

Samoyedic

• Northern Samoyedic
  • Enets (Yenets, Yenisei-Samoyed) - Nearly extinct
  • Nenets (Yurak)
  • Nganasan (Tavgy, Tavgi, Tawgi, Tawgi-Samoyed)
  • Yurats
• Southern Samoyedic
  • Kamassian (Kamas)
  • Mator (Motor)
  • Selkup (Ostyak-Samoyed)

Finno-Ugric

• 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-Cheremisic (Finno-Volgaic, Volga-Finnic)
    • Cheremisic
      • Mari (Cheremis)
        • Meadow Mari (Low Mari, Eastern Mari)
        • Hill Mari (High Mari, Western Mari)
    • Finno-Mordvinic
      • Mordvinic (Mordvin, Mordovian)
        • Erzya
        • Moksha
      • Finno-Lappic (Finno-Saamic, Finno-Samic)
        • Sami (Samic, Saamic, Lappic, Lappish)
          • Western Sami (Western Samic)
            • Southern Sami (Southern Samic)
              • Lule Sami
              • Pite Sami - Nearly extinct
              • Southern Sami
              • Ume Sami - Nearly extinct
            • Northern Sami (Northern Samic)
              • Northern Sami
          • Central-Eastern Sami (Central-Eastern Samic)
            • Central Sami (Central Samic)
              • Akkala Sami - Nearly extinct
              • Kainuu Sami - Extinct
              • Kemi Sami - Extinct
              • Kildin Sami
              • Skolt Sami
              • Ter Sami - Nearly extinct
            • Eastern Sami (Eastern Samic)
              • Inari Sami
        • Baltic-Finnic (Balto-Finnic, Finnic, Fennic)
          • Estonian
          • Finnish
            • Finnish proper
            • Meänkieli (Tornedalen Finnish)
            • Kven Finnish (in Norway)
            • Ingrian Finnish
          • Izhorian (Ingrian) - 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

The term Volgaic, used to denote a branch previously believed to include Mari and Mordvinic, has now become obsolete, since modern linguistic research has shown that it was a geographic classification rather than a linguistic one, because the Mordvinic languages are more closely related to the Finno-Lappic languages than they are to the Mari languages.

Typology

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

• extensive use of independent suffixes, a.k.a. agglutination
• a large set of grammatical cases (13 - 14 cases on average), e.g.
  • Erzya: 12 cases
  • Estonian: 14 cases
  • Finnish: 15 cases (or more)
  • Hungarian: 24 cases (or more)
  • Komi: 18 cases
  • Nenets: 7 cases
  • North Sami: 7 cases
  • Veps: 24 cases
• unique Uralic case system, from which all modern Uralic languages derive their case systems
  • nominative singular has no case suffix
  • three-way distinction in the local case system; especially evident e.g. in Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian which have several sets of local cases
  • Uralic locative suffix exists in all Uralic languages in various cases, e.g. Hungarian superessive, Finnish essive, North Sami essive, Erzyan inessive, Nenets locative etc.
• vowel harmony (recently lost in standard Estonian, but exists in dialects)
• a lack of grammatical gender
• negative verb, which exists in all Uralic languages, e.g. Nganasan, Enets, Nenets, Kamassian, Komi, Meadow Mari, North Sami (and other Samic languages), Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc. (Some innovative languages have lost personal suffixes, e.g. Hungarian.)
• palatalization
• 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, 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
• possessive suffixes
• no possessive pronouns
• dual, which exists e.g. in Samoyedic, Ob Ugrian and Samic languages
• plural markers -j (i) and -t have the same origin (e.g. in Finnish, Estonian, Erzya, Samic languages, Samoyedic languages). Hungarian, however, has -i- before the possessive suffixes and -k elsewhere. In the old orthographies, the plural marker -k was also used in the Samic languages.
• no verb "have"

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.

Bibliography

• Collinder, Bjorn (1960), An Etymological Dictionary of the Uralic Languages, Stockholm.
• Decsy, Jyula (1990), The Uralic Protolangage: A Comprehensive Reconstruction, Bloomington, Indiana.
• Laakso, Johanna (1992), Uralilaiset kansat, Porvoo - Helsinki - Juva.
• Redei, Karoly (ed.) (1986-88), Uralisches Etymologisches Worterbuch, Budapest.
• Sauvageot, Aurelien (1930), Recherches sur le vocabulaire des langues ouralo-altaiques, Paris.

External links

• Ethnologue's Uralic Family Tree
• The Untenability of the Finno-Ugrian Theory from a Linguistic Point of View by Dr. László Marácz
• "The Ugric-Turkic Battle": A Critical Review (PDF) by Angela Marcantonio (Rome), Pirjo Nummenaho (Naples) and Michela Salvagni (Rome)
• Linguistic Shadow-Boxing by Johanna Laakso - A book review of Angela Marcantonio's "The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics"

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