Finno-Ugric Languages

Finno-Ugric Languages, subfamily of the Uralic languages comprising 32 languages spoken by about 25 million people in parts of northern Scandinavia, eastern Europe, and north-western Asia. It is one of two such subfamilies, the other being the Samoyedic languages spoken in north-western Siberia. The Finno-Ugric subfamily is usually divided into two large branches: Finnic (also called Finno-Permic) and Ugric. Finnic contains two major languages, Finnish, spoken in Finland, and Estonian, spoken in Estonia. Ugric contains three languages, primarily the Hungarian (also called Magyar) language, spoken in Hungary and by Hungarians living in neighbouring countries.

The Finnic branch also includes several comparatively minor languages of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Of these, Karelian, a close relative of Finnish, is spoken alongside Finnish in the Republic of Karelia and is also heard in Finland. Livonian is now virtually extinct (the Livonians were absorbed by the Latvians, and the term Livonian sometimes refers to one dialect of the non-Uralic Latvian language). Veps is spoken around Lake Onega; High and Low Mari (or Cheremis) are spoken in the middle Volga region; Moksha (or Mordvin-Moksha) in Mordovia; and Udmurt (or Votyak), Komi-Permyak, and Komi-Zyrian are spoken by small, widely scattered groups in a vast area extending over the north-eastern European part of Russia. (Udmurt and Komi are considered separately as the Permic or Permian subdivision of the Finno-Ugric languages.) Eleven languages make up the Lappic subgroup (within the Finno-Permic subdivision of the Finnic branch), one of which is extinct and the other ten are spoken by the Saami (Lapps), spread thinly over the northern European region known as Saamiland. Most of these languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers (some with fewer than 100) and so are endangered, with the exception of Northern Saami, which is a mother tongue for 15,000 people in Norway and is also spoken in Sweden and Finland. The Ugric branch contains (besides Hungarian) two minor languages, Khanty (or Ostyak) and Mansi (or Vogul); these are spoken in the Ob river valley of north-western Siberia.

Frequently mentioned characteristic features of Finno-Ugric are vocalic or vowel harmony and consonant gradation—that is, alternation between two kinds of stem consonants. The linguistic type is agglutinative. Attempts to connect the Finno-Ugric subfamily with other language families, notably the Turkic branch of Altaic and the Indo-European languages, have produced evidence of similarities, but not enough to prove any connection conclusively. Early Finno-Ugric, the reconstructed ancient parent language, was enriched through contact with Iranian. In later times, the Finnic languages added words from the German and Slavic (particularly Russian) languages. Hungarian was influenced by German, Italian, Latin, Slavic, and Turkish. There is a great deal of heterogeneity among the modern Finno-Ugric languages and virtually no feature is common to the whole group.