Finno-Ugric languages

Infobox Language family
name=Finno-Ugric
region=Eastern and Northern Europe, North Asia
familycolor=Uralic
fam1=Uralic
child1=Ugric (Ugrian)
child2=Finno-Permic (Permian-Finnic)
iso2=fiu

Finno-Ugric (IPA2|ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk) is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and related languages. It comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families.

tatus

The term Finno-Ugric is somewhat controversial today, 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. Thus it is felt that the early Finno-Permic and Ugric groups may have diffused from proto-Uralic at the same time as proto-Samoyedic. It was earlier thought that the Finno-Ugric 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. However, some proponents of the Finno-Ugric grouping have provided extra-linguistic arguments by marshalling archaeological evidence of separate
Finno-Ugric peoples originally living across a large swath of Northern Europe.

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

The birthplace of the Finno-Ugric languages cannot be located with certainty. Central and northern Russia west of the Ural mountains is generally assumed to be the most likely spot, perhaps around the 3rd millennium BCE. This is suggested by the high intralinguistic family diversity around the middle Volga River where three highly distinct branches of the Uralic family, Mordvinic, Mari, and Permic are located. Also reconstructed plant and animal names (including spruce, Siberian pine, Siberian Fir, Siberian larch, brittle willow, elm, and hedgehog) are consistent with this localization. Reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugric contains Iranic loanwords, notably the words for "honeybee", "honey" and "hatchet" (tappara in Finnish, tabar in Iranic), probably from the time when Iranic tribes (such as Scythians and Sarmatians) inhabited the Eurasian steppes.Fact|date=July 2008

There is evidence that before the arrival of the Slavic speaking tribes to the area of modern-day Russia, speakers of Finno-Ugric languages may have been scattered across the whole area between the Urals and the Baltic Sea. This was the distribution of the Comb Ceramic Culture, a stone age culture which appears to have corresponded to the Finno-Ugric speaking populations, c. 4200 BC–c. 2000 BC.Fact|date=July 2008

There have been attempts to relate the Finno-Ugric languages to the Indo-European languages, in the so called Indo-Uralic theories, but there are not enough similarities to link them with any certainty. Similar inflectional endings exist, but whether or not they are genetically related is not resolvable. A common lexicon not attestable to borrowing is thin, and no sound laws are established.Fact|date=July 2008

A portion of the Baltic-Finnic lexicon is not shared with the remaining Finno-Ugric languages and may be due to a pre-Finnic substrate, which may coincide in part with the substrate of the Indo-European Baltic languages. As far as the Sami ("Lappic") languages are concerned, a hypothesis has been advanced that the ancestors of the Sami originally spoke a different language, but adopted their current tongue under the pressure of their Finnic-speaking neighboursFact|date=February 2007.

The theory that the Finno-Ugric birthplace originally covered a very large area in Northern Europe has been supported more by archaeological and genetic data than by linguistic evidence. Notably, the controversial Finnish academic Kalevi Wiik has argued that Proto-Finno-Ugric was the original language in most of Northern and Central Europe, and that the earliest Finno-Ugric speakers and their languages originated in the territory of modern Ukraine (the so-called "Ukrainian refuge") during the last glacial period, when the whole of northern Europe was covered with ice. This hypothesis, however, has been rejected by nearly all experts in Finno-Ugric comparative linguistics; Wiik's model has been criticized for confusing genetic, archaeological and linguistic concepts, and many see the theory as unscientific.

The controversy over the Finno-Ugric grouping is politically sensitive because the foreign rulers of Finland in the 18th and 19th centuries attempted to link the Finnish to the Sami people (supposed to be culturally inferior) through the similarity of their languages. Subsequently, with the independence of Finland, the Finno-Ugric theory grew in strength there. On the other hand, the Hungarian groups have sometimes claimed relations to the Altaic languages, particularly the Turkish language family.

History

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 Jozsef Budenz, who for 20 years was the leading Finno-Ugric specialist in Hungary. Another late-19th-century contribution is that of Hungarian linguist Ignac Halasz, 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"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.

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

It is generally agreed that 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)
** Finno-Lappic (Finno-Saamic, Finno-Samic)
*** 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, is accepted by practically all scholars. Dispute is at present largely confined to 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.

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).

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.

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.

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). Note that 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" (even though it isn't really mutually intelligible [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002729.html] ).

(Orthographical notes: The hacek (š) denotes postalveolar articulation, while the accent (ś) denotes a secondary palatal articulation. The Finnish letter 'y' [y] represents the same phoneme (a rounded or centralized [i] ) as the letter 'ü' in other languages. The voiced dental spirant [ð] is the origin of the standard Finnish 'd', which is realized differently in each dialect today. The same sound is marked with the letter đ in the Sami languages. The Sami 'č' is a voiceless postalveolar affricate [IPA|ʧ] .)

Numbers

The numbers from 1 to 10 in Finnish, Estonian, Võro, Livonian, North Sami, Erzya, Meadow Mari, Moksha, Mansi, Hungarian, and Proto-Finno-Ugric.

One reconstruction for numbers 8 and 9 is *"kak+teksa" '10–2' and *"yk+teksa" '10–1', where *"teksa" cf. "deka" is an Indo-European loan; notice that the difference between /t/ and /d/ is not phonemic, unlike in Indo-European.

Finno-Ugric Swadesh lists

100-word Swadesh lists for certain Finno-Ugric languages can be compared and contrasted at the Rosetta Project website: [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=FIN Finnish] , [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=EST Estonian] , [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=HNG Hungarian] , [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=MYV 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.

See also

* Finno-Ugric peoples
* Uralic languages
* Uralo-Siberian languages
* Old Hungarian script
* Old Permic script

External links

* [http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fgrlinks.html Some Finno-Ugrian links] A more comprehensive link collection
* [http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fufaq.html FAQ about Finno-Ugrian Languages]
* [http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/am_rev.html Linguistic Shadow-Boxing] Johanna Laakso's book review of Angela Marcantonio's "The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics"
* [http://www.geocities.com/isolintu/voodoo.html Uralic Linguistics Vs. Voodoo Science!] A collection of links about the "new paradigm" debate by Merlijn de Smit
* [http://www.zompist.com/asia.htm Numbers in Asian languages] Counting to ten in a variety of languages
* [http://ugri.info/ 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/
* [http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5323735 The Finno-Ugrics:The dying fish swims in water] The Economist, December 20, 2005
* [http://www.suri.ee/papers/zamjatine.html "Ethnic origins of Finno-Ugric nations and modern Finno-Ugric nationalism in the Russian Federation" by Konstantin Zamyatin]

References

* 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: [http://www.nytud.hu/nyk/100/bakro.pdf] )
* Bakró-Nagy Marianne 2005. The responsibility of literati. Angela Marcantonio, The Uralic Language Family. Facts, myths and statistics. In: "Lingua" 115: 1053–1062. (Downloadable: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6V6H-4C0V91X-1-1&_cdi=5815&_user=10&_orig=browse&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2005&_sk=998849992&view=c&wchp=dGLbVlb-zSkWz&md5=32201679a57f31c39c5cdda138d60dc1&ie=/sdarticle.pdf] )
* 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. [http://www.kirj.ee/esi-l-lu/l37-2-1.pdf 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.
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