Uralic languages | Britannica.com Uralic languages Ob-Ugric languages Uralic languages, family of more than 20 related languages, all descended from a Proto-Uralic language that existed 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. At its earliest stages, Uralic most probably included the ancestors of the Yukaghir language . The Uralic languages are spoken by more than 25 million people scattered throughout northeastern Europe , northern Asia, and (through immigration) North America . The most demographically important Uralic language is Hungarian , the official language of Hungary . Two other Uralic languages, Estonian (the official language of Estonia ) and Finnish (one of two national languages of Finland —the other is Swedish, a Germanic language), are also spoken by millions. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Attempts to trace the genealogy of the Uralic languages to periods earlier than Proto-Uralic have been hampered by the great changes in the attested languages, which preserve relatively few features and therefore provide little evidence upon which scholars may base meaningful claims for a more distant relationship.

Most commonly mentioned in this respect is a putative connection with the Altaic language family (including Turkic and Mongolian ). This hypothetical language group, called Ural-Altaic , is not considered by most scholars to be soundly based. Although the Uralic and Indo-European languages are not generally thought to be related, more speculative studies have suggested a connection between them. Relationship with the Eskimo languages , Dravidian (e.g., Telugu ), Japanese , Korean , and various American Indian groups has also been proposed. The most radical of these claims is the massive Dené-Finnish grouping of Morris Swadesh, which encompasses , among others, Sino-Tibetan (e.g., Chinese ) and Athabaskan (e.g., Navajo ). The Uralic language family in its current status consists of two related groups of languages, the Finno-Ugric and the Samoyedic , both of which developed from a common ancestor, called Proto-Uralic, that was spoken 7,000 to 10,000 years ago in the general area of the north-central Ural Mountains .

At its very earliest stages Uralic most probably included the ancestors of the Yukaghir languages (formerly listed as a Paleo-Siberian stock with no known relatives). Similar Topics creole languages Over the millennia, both Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic branches of Uralic have given rise to more or less divergent subgroups of languages, which nonetheless have retained certain traits from their common source. For example, the degree of similarity between two of the least closely related members of the Finno-Ugric group, Hungarian and Finnish, is comparable to that between English and Russian (which belong to the Indo-European family of languages). The difference between any Finno-Ugric language and any Samoyedic tongue would be even greater. On the other hand, more closely related members of Finno-Ugric, such as Finnish and Estonian, differ in much the same manner as greatly diverse dialects of the same language. The distribution of Uralic languages Establishment of the family Determining the geographic location, material culture , and linguistic characteristics of the earliest stages of Uralic at a period thousands of years prior to any historical record is a problem beset with enormous difficulties; consensus among Uralic scholars is limited to a handful of general hypotheses .

The original homeland of Proto-Uralic is considered to have been in the vicinity of the north-central Urals , possibly centred west of the mountains. Following the dissolution of Uralic, the precursors of the Samoyeds gradually moved northward and eastward into Siberia . The Finno-Ugrians moved to the south and west, to an area close to the confluence of the Kama and Volga rivers. Shared cognates Several kinds of indirect evidence support the above supposition. One approach attempts to reconstruct the natural environment of these groups on the basis of shared cognates (related words) for plants, animals, and minerals and on the distribution of these words in the modern languages . For example, cognates designating certain types of spruce are found in all the Uralic languages except Hungarian ( Finnish kuusi, Sami [Lapp] guossâ, Mordvin kuz, Komi koz, Khanty kol, Nenets xādy, Selkup kūt).

Because the range of this type of fir tree is restricted to more northern climates , it is generally assumed that the widespread consistent association of the name and the tree suggests a period in which Proto-Uralic was spoken within that zone. Several other terms for plants (e.g., Finnish muurain ‘ cloudberry ’ [Rubus arcticus]), a term for metal ( Estonian vask ‘copper,’ Hungarian vas ‘iron,’ Nganasan basa ‘iron’), and a word for ‘ reindeer ’ (Sami boaƷo) are also consistent with a northern Ural location. Great caution is necessary in such matters, because the association of words and objects also can result from borrowing, perhaps long after the period of Uralic unity; especially such culturally mobile items as “metal” and “reindeer” cannot be traced with certainty to a Proto-Uralic community . The central Volga location of Proto-Finno-Ugric is strongly supported by an abundance of shared terminology dealing with beekeeping , which constitutes a significant part of the culture of this region.

Contacts with unrelated languages Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies The political history of the various Uralic groups largely has been one of resisting encroachment from adjacent European (especially Germanic and Slavic) and Turkic groups and from other Uralic neighbours. Only the three largest and westernmost groups— Hungary , Finland , and Estonia —have succeeded in achieving political independence. The political status of the Uralic groups within Russia generally reflects their demographic significance. The five largest minority groups, with populations ranging from 100,000 to almost 1,000,000 speakers, are centred in the largely autonomous republics of Mordoviya , Mari El , Udmurtiya , Komi , and Karelia . Four other groups possess autonomy to a lesser degree: the Khanty and the Mansi (in Khanty-Mansi autonomous okrug [district]), the speakers of Permyak (in Komi-Permyak autonomous okrug), and the Nenets (in Taymyr , Nenets , and Yamalo-Nenets okrugs).

The Sami , who are widely distributed across four countries ( Norway , Sweden , Finland , and Russia ), have achieved only local political recognition. A number of the smaller Uralic language communities, such as Votic, face extinction through cultural assimilation. Because the names designating many of the Uralic peoples have never been standardized, a wide range of appellations is encountered in references to these groups. Earlier designations , especially in the case of the groups in Russia, tended to be taken from derogatory names used by neighbouring peoples—e.g., Cheremis, now Mari. Several names are identical to the word for ‘man’ in these languages. (Finnish mies ‘man’ also has been etymologically related to the names Magyar and Mansi.) It is important that Khanty (Ostyak) be differentiated from Selkup (Ostyak Samoyed) and from Ket (Yenisey Ostyak, a non-Uralic tongue), which should not be confused with Enets (Yenisey). Languages of the family The two major branches of Uralic are themselves composed of numerous subgroupings of member languages on the basis of closeness of linguistic relationship.

Finno-Ugric can first be divided into the most distantly related Ugric and Finnic (sometimes called Volga-Finnic) groups, which may have separated as long ago as five millennia. Within these, three relatively closely related groups of languages are found: the Baltic-Finnic , the Permic , and the Ob-Ugric . The largest of these, the Baltic-Finnic group, is composed of Finnish , Estonian , Livonian, Votic , Ingrian, Karelian , and Veps. The Permic group consists of Komi, Permyak, and Udmurt. The Ob-Ugric group includes Mansi and Khanty. Trending Topics Open Door policy The Ugric group comprises the geographically most distant members of the family—the Hungarian and Ob-Ugric languages. Finnic contains the remaining languages: the Baltic-Finnic languages, the Sami (or Lapp) languages , Mordvin , Mari , and the Permic tongues.

There is little accord on the further subclassification of the Finnic languages, although the fairly close relationship between Baltic-Finnic and Sami is generally recognized (and is called North Finnic); the degree of separation between the two may be compared to that between English and German . Mordvin has most frequently been linked with Mari (a putative Volga language group), but comparative evidence also suggests a bond with Baltic-Finnic and Sami (that is, West Finnic). The extinct Merya, Murom, and Meshcher tongues, known only from Old Russian chronicles, are assumed to have been spoken by Finnic peoples and, from their geographic location northwest of Mordvin, must have belonged to West Finnic. One hypothesis for the internal relationships of the Uralic family as a whole is given in the figure . The precursor of the modern Samoyedic languages is thought to have divided near the beginning of the 1st century ce into a northern and a southern group. North Samoyedic consists of Nenets, Enets, and Nganasan.

South Samoyedic contains a single living language, Selkup, and numerous other dialects now extinct: Kamas, Motor, Koibal, Karagas, Soyot, and Taigi. Ugric Hungarian Hungarian , the official language of Hungary , remains the primary language of the fertile Carpathian Basin. Bounded by the Carpathian Mountains to the north, east, and southwest, the Hungarian language area is represented by several million speakers outside the boundaries of Hungary—mostly in Romanian Transylvania and in Slovakia . To the south a substantial Hungarian population extends into Croatia and Serbia , and other large Hungarian populations exist in Austria and Ukraine . Hungarian emigrant communities are found in many parts of the world, especially in North America, Israel , and Australia . The ancestors of the Hungarians, following their separation from the other Ugric tribes, moved south into the steppe region below the Urals . As mounted nomads, in contact with and often in alliance with Turkic tribes, they moved westward, reaching and conquering the sparsely settled Carpathian Basin in the period 895–896.

The Hungarians came under the influence of Rome through their first Christian king, Stephen (István) I , in 1001, and the use of Latin for official purposes continued into the 19th century. Following a Hungarian defeat at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Hungary was occupied by Turkish forces, who were replaced by German Habsburg domination in the late 17th century. Concern for a common literary medium, closely tied with Hungarian nationalism , began in the late 18th century. More recent foreign influences on the language were suppressed and replaced by native words and constructions. The literary form received a broad dialect base, facilitating its use as a national language. Modern Hungarian has eight major dialects, which permit a high degree of mutual intelligibility. Budapest , the nation’s capital, is located near the junction of three dialect areas: the South, Trans-Danubian, and Palóc (Northwestern). As a result of unfavourable treaties following both world wars, especially the Treaty of Trianon , two dialects (Central Transylvanian and Székely) lie almost entirely within Romania , and the remaining six dialects radiate outward into neighbouring countries.

The Hungarians’ own name for themselves is magyar. Other Western appellations, such as the French hongrois, German Ungar, and Russian vengr, all stem from the name of an early Turkic tribal confederation, the on-ogur (meaning ‘10 tribes’), which the Hungarians joined in their wanderings toward the west, and does not indicate relationship with the ancient Huns , a Turkic tribe. One of the earliest recorded references to the Hungarians, a Byzantine geographic survey of Constantine VII (Porphyrogenitus; died 959) entitled De administrando imperio , lists the megyer as one of the Hungarian tribes, but, as was typical in early reports, the Hungarians were not distinguished from their Turkish allies. Ob-Ugric: Khanty and Mansi Widely dispersed along the Ob River and its tributaries, the so-called Ob-Ugric peoples, the Khanty and the Mansi , are among the least demographically significant of the Finno-Ugric groups.

Although the Khanty have decreased in number over the past few centuries, their language is still maintained by about 9,500 speakers (2010 census). The Mansi, by contrast, had only some 12,300 ethnic representatives by the early 21st century; of these, fewer than 1,000 claimed Mansi as their mother tongue. To a large extent both groups have been assimilated by their Russian and Tatar neighbours. It is likely that the precursors of the Ob-Ugric tribes were still centred west of the Urals well within historic times, long after the division of Proto-Ugric into distinct languages. The Russian Primary Chronicle of Nestor , which assigned to the Khanty and Mansi the common name jugra, places them in the vicinity of the Pechora River in 1092; they did not shift to the Ob waterways until several centuries later. Both groups live for the most part within the Khanty-Mansi autonomous okrug , which has its administrative centre in Khanty-Mansiysk at the confluence of the Ob and Irtysh rivers.

The Khanty are concentrated along the Ob and its eastern tributaries, while the Mansi are found along the western tributaries primarily north of the Irtysh and just east of the Urals; a few Mansi speakers are also found in the Arctic lands west of the Urals. Because of the great distances between the various groups, the dialects of both languages show considerable divergence. They are usually designated by the name of the river on which they are spoken. Mansi has four main dialect groups, of which one (Tavda) is practically extinct and another (Konda) is spoken only by individuals above a certain age. The largest dialect group (Northern) is centred on the Sosva and serves as the basis for the literary language. Khanty is divided into three main dialects: a northern dialect in the general area of the mouth of the Ob, an eastern dialect extending from east of the Irtysh to the Vakh and Vasyugan tributaries, and a southern dialect lying between the other two. Literary Khanty has been based primarily on the northern group, but standardization remains weak, and since 1950 other dialects have also been used.

Both of the Ob-Ugric languages first appeared in printed form in 1868 as a result of Gospel translations published in London , but it was not until after the formation of their autonomous okrug in 1930 that any sort of literary form of either language really existed. Until 1937 numerous books were published using a modified Latin (roman) alphabet ; since then Cyrillic has been used. Some elementary education is conducted in the native languages within the okrug. Finnic Finnish Finnish , together with Swedish (an unrelated North Germanic language), serves as a national language of Finland . It is now spoken by more than 5,000,000 people, including about 95 percent of the inhabitants of Finland plus some 265,000 Finns in North America, Sweden, and Russia. It is also recognized as an official language in Russia’s Karelian region, alongside Russian. Finnish as the common language of the Finns is not the direct descendant of one of the original Baltic-Finnic dialects; rather, it arose through the interaction of several separate groups in the territory of modern Finland.

These included the Häme; the southwestern Finns (originally called Suomi), who appear to be close relatives to the Estonians because they arrived directly from across the Gulf of Finland ; and the Karelians, perhaps themselves a blend of Veps and more western Finnic groups. Early Russian chronicles refer to these as jemj, sumj, and korela. The intermixture of the three groups is still reflected in the distribution of the five main modern dialects, which form a western and an eastern area. The western area contains the southwestern dialect (near Turku ), Häme (south-central), and a northern dialect subgroup (largely a mixture of the other two plus eastern traits). The eastern area consists of the Savo dialect (perhaps a blend of the original Karelian and Häme dialects) and a southeastern dialect, which strongly resembles Karelian . The Finnish word for their land and their language is suomi, the original meaning of which is uncertain.

The first use of the term Finn (fenni) is found in the 1st century ce in Tacitus ’s Germania, but this usage is generally considered to refer to the ancestors of the Sami , who have also been labeled Finns at various times. (The province of Norwegian Lappland is called Finnmark.) The first book in Finnish was an alphabet book from 1543 by Mikael Agricola , founder of the Finnish literary language; Agricola’s translation of the New Testament appeared five years later. Finnish was accorded official status in 1809, when Finland entered the Russian Empire after six centuries of Swedish domination. The publication of the national folk epic, the Kalevala , created from folk songs collected among the eastern dialects by the folklorist and philologist Elias Lönnrot (first edition in 1835; substantially expanded in 1849), gave increased impetus to the movement to develop a common national language encompassing all dialect areas. Estonian Estonian serves as the official language of Estonia, located immediately south of Finland across the Gulf of Finland .

Most of the more than 1,000,000 speakers of Estonian live within Estonia , but others can be found in Russia , North America , and Sweden . Modern Estonian is the descendant of one or possibly two of the original Baltic-Finnic dialects. The modern language has two major dialects, a northern one, which is spoken in most of the country, and a southern one, which extends from Tartu to the south. The northernmost dialects share many features with the southwestern Finnish dialect. The Estonians’ own name eesti came into general use only in the 19th century. The name aestii is first encountered in Tacitus , but it is likely that it referred to neighbouring Baltic-Finnic peoples. The first connected texts in Estonian are religious translations from 1524; the Wanradt-Koell Catechism, the first book, was printed in Wittenberg in 1535. Two centres of culture developed— Tallinn (formerly Revel) in the north and Tartu (Dorpat) in the south; in the 17th century each gave rise to a distinct literary language.

Influenced by the Finnish Kalevala , the Estonian author F. Reinhold Kreutzwald fashioned a national epic, Kalevipoeg (“The Son of Kalevi”), which appeared in 20 songs between 1857 and 1861. As with the Kalevala, this was instrumental in kindling renewed interest in a common national literary language in the late 19th century. Smaller Baltic-Finnic groups The five less-numerous Baltic-Finnic groups— Karelian , Veps , Ingrian , Votic , and Livonian —lie within Russia and the Baltic nations, largely in the general vicinity of the Gulf of Finland . The Karelians, Veps, and Livonians were among the original Baltic-Finnic tribes; Votic is considered to be an offshoot of Estonian, and Ingrian a remote branch of Karelian. None of these languages currently has a literary form, although unsuccessful initial attempts to establish one have been made for all but Votic (for Livonian as early as the 19th century, for the others during the 1930s).

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the numbers of these Baltic-Finnic speakers have been drastically reduced. The last known speaker of Livonian died in 2013, and, with the exception of Karelian and Veps, the extinction of the others within several generations seems certain. Ingrian and Votic each have fewer than 200 speakers. Karelian, the largest of these groups, with some 25,000 speakers—not counting those Karelians who emigrated into Finland following World War II —lies along a broad zone just east of the Finnish border from just north of St. Petersburg to the White Sea . A separate group of Karelians is found far to the south near Tver (formerly Kalinin) on the upper Volga . Karelian has two major dialects, Karelian proper and Olonets (aunus in Finnish), which is spoken northeast of Lake Ladoga .

One of the first historical mentions of the Karelians is found in a report of the Viking Ohthere to King Alfred of Wessex at the end of the 9th century; this indicates that they were already on the southern Kola Peninsula as neighbours of the Sami and gives their name as beorma. The language of one of the original Baltic-Finnic tribes, Veps, is spoken southeast on a line connecting lower Lake Ladoga with central Lake Onega . In the early 21st century, only slightly more than one-fourth of the ethnic population of some 6,000 Veps still consider the language their native tongue—a sharp decline from the 26,172 speakers reported in the mid-1800s. A small Baltic-Finnic group, composed of the Ludic dialects, is found between Veps and Karelian and is generally considered a blend of the two major groups rather than a separate language; the dialects are more closely akin to Karelian.

The Ingrians and the Votes live on the southern Gulf of Finland in the border area between Estonia and Russia , where they survived because the border area was for many years closed to outsiders, even to visitors from other parts of the Soviet Union . Livonian persisted in a few villages on the northernmost tip of Latvia , on the Courland Peninsula, but the language is now considered extinct. Sami and other Finnic groups The Sami (Lapp) languages The Sami are widely distributed, inhabiting territory from central Norway northward and eastward across northern Sweden and Finland to the Kola Peninsula . Their numbers have increased over the past century to more than 30,000, but the number of Sami speakers has declined rapidly since 1950 as the language has given way to the various official national languages. Sami is generally divided into three main dialect groups, each comprising various subtypes. These dialects are virtually mutually unintelligible, so that when speakers of different Sami groups meet they generally converse in Finnish , Swedish , or Norwegian . To speak of a single Sami (or Lapp) language is therefore misleading.

Sami represents a group of at least four or five languages at least as diverse as the separate Baltic-Finnic languages. The largest group, North Sami (with approximately two-thirds of all speakers), is centred in northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland. East Sami consists of two small groups in eastern Finland—Inari and Skolt—in addition to Kola Sami in Russia. South Sami is still represented by a few speakers scattered from central Norway to north-central Sweden. North Sami has had a literary tradition that began with the 17th-century Swedish Sami Bible and other religious translations; in the mid-20th century elementary schools that used Sami as the language of instruction were found in many larger North Sami communities. Two basic variants of the literary language are in use. One, in Norway and Sweden, employs a special Sami orthographic system devised to accommodate a wide range of dialectal variation; a second, in Finland, is based on a narrower adaptation of Finnish orthography. Each of the two types has numerous local variants, and progress toward a common Sami orthography has been slow.

It is clear that the Sami were already present north of the Gulf of Finland prior to the arrival of the first Baltic-Finnic tribes, and from there they may have extended over much of the Scandinavian Peninsula. They have been mentioned as the northern neighbours of the north Germanic tribes in numerous historical sources of the 1st millennium of the Common Era. The Sami were taxed by the Norwegians in the 9th century and by the Karelians in the 13th century and since that time have continually retreated northward under pressure from their southern neighbours. The Sami’s own name for themselves, sabme, is etymologically related to the Finnish dialect name, häme. Other Finnic languages Mordvin , Mari , and two of the Permic languages —Udmurt and Komi—are recognized by separate republics within Russia (respectively Mordoviya , Mari El , Udmurtiya , and Komi ). They also share official status with the Russian language . Mordvin, Mari, and Udmurt are centred on the middle Volga River , in roughly the area considered to have been the original home of Proto-Finno-Ugric.

Because of their location, the history of these groups over the past millennium has been closely tied to that of the Turkic Bulgars , the Tatars (until 1552), and then the Russians. The Komi , having moved far to the north, eventually reaching into the Arctic tundra , did not come under Bulgar or Tatar influence. Old Permic, a written form of early Komi, was used in religious manuscripts in the 14th century, and a native Komi literary tradition stems from the 19th century. Grammars of Mari and Udmurt prepared by Russian linguists appeared in 1775, but native literary development in these languages, as well as in Mordvin, is of relatively recent origin. Although those groups enjoyed the status of large minorities during the Soviet era, their numbers have increased over the past century, and they have maintained ethnic consciousness . Mordvin Mordvin , with some 393,000 speakers (of the 843,000 Mordvins reported in 2010), is the fourth largest Uralic group.

The Mordvins are widely scattered over an area between the Oka and Volga rivers, some 200 miles southwest of Moscow . Less than half of their number live within the republic of Mordoviya . Mordvin has two main dialects, Moksha and Erzya, which are sometimes considered separate languages. Both have literary status. Although the Mordvins do not have a common designation for themselves beyond the two dialect names, the name Mordens appears in the 6th-century Getica of Jordanes and is no doubt related to the Permic word for ‘man,’ murt/mort. Mari Mari (formerly known as Cheremis) is currently maintained by more than 500,000 speakers (approximately three-fourths of the ethnic Mari). They live primarily in an area north of the Volga between Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod , northeast of the Mordvin area, especially within Mari El republic.

Mari El’s three main dialects are the Meadow dialect, used by the largest group north of the Volga and the basic dialect of the republic; Eastern Mari, used by a small group near Ufa , originally speakers of the Meadow dialect who emigrated in the late 18th century; and the Mountain dialect, to the west and on the south bank of the Volga. The Mountain and Meadow dialects both serve as literary languages and differ from each other only in minor details. The Permic languages Speakers of the three closely related Permic languages , Udmurt , Komi, and Permyak, number some 600,000. Udmurt is concentrated largely in the vicinity of the lower Kama River just east of Mari El republic, in Udmurtiya . Only very minor dialectal differences are found within Udmurt. The Komi language area extends into the Nenets and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrugs far to the north. Lesser groups of Komi are found as far west as the Kola Peninsula and east of the Urals .

Two major dialects are recognized, although the differences are not great: Komi (Zyryan), the largest group, which serves as the literary basis within Komi republic; and Komi-Yazva, spoken by a small, isolated group of Komi to the east of Komi-Permyak autonomous okrug and south of Komi republic. Permyak (also called Komi-Permyak) is spoken in Komi-Permyak, where it has literary status. Samoyedic Nenets , with the largest number of speakers of all the Samoyed languages, has grown substantially in size over the past century, from some 9,200 speakers in 1897 to about 22,000 in 2010. Two distinct groups of Nenets differ in dialect as well as in cultural traditions: the Forest Nenets, a smaller, more-concentrated group in the wooded area north of the central Ob River ; and the Tundra Nenets, a group whose territory stretches roughly 1,000 miles eastward from the White Sea .

These are the “Samoyadj” of Nestor ’s chronicles, but little is known of the history of any of the Samoyed peoples until recent centuries. Nenets alone among the Samoyedic languages can claim a native literature, although both it and Selkup have been in written form since the 1930s. Evidence of the cultural prestige of certain Nenets tribes is seen in the adoption of a Samoyed language by Khanty speakers on the Yamal Peninsula . Enets is spoken by a dwindling group of fewer than a hundred Samoyeds near the mouth of the Yenisey River , just east of the Nenets. Nganasan , spoken by the northernmost Eurasian people, is found north and east of the Enets-speaking group, centring on the Taymyr Peninsula . The number of Nganasans has remained fairly constant, and they seem to have a high degree of ethnic identity, though less than 20 percent of some 900 Nganasans still claimed Nganasan as their mother tongue in the 2010 census.

Selkup , the last of the southern Samoyed languages, is represented by scattered groups of speakers who live on the central West Siberian Plain between the Ob and the Yenisey. Less than half of the 4,200 Selkup recorded in the 2010 census spoke Selkup. Yukaghir: a probable relative The Yukaghir , in two small areas of Sakha republic and Magadan oblast (province) of northeastern Siberia , had reached 1,600 by the 2010 census. But at the same time the number of Yukaghir speakers had dwindled to 370. Page 1 of 2 Uralic Language Family | About World Languages Uralic Language Family By Irene Thompson | Updated September 29, 2014 by Jon Phillips The Uralic language family stretches from Northern to Central Europe to Siberia. It consists of 39 languages spoken by some 25 million people.

It is believed that they originated from a common ancestor, *Proto-Uralic, spoken by early-Uralic people who lived some 7,000 years ago in the area of the Ural Mountains, the Russian range that separates Europe from Asia. The predecessors of the Finnic and Finno-Ugric peoples moved west and south, whereas the predecessors of the Samoyedic peoples moved north and east into Siberia. The oldest written documents in the Uralic languages date back to the 13th century. Uralic languages with the largest number of speakers are Hungarian , Finnish , and Estonian . The rest are minority languages of Russia in different stages of endangerment, with some on the brink of extinction. Uralic languages spoken by more than 1,000 speakers are listed below. Finnic (Baltic and Scandinavia) Three Uralic languages have official status in their respective countries. Hungarian is the official language of Hungary. Estonian is the official language of Estonia. Finnish is the official language of Finland, along with Swedish .

Several Uralic languages spoken in Russia have co-official status in their respective areas along with Russian : Udmurt Udmurt Republic Even though some of the Uralic languages may have hundreds of thousands of speakers, most of the fluent speakers are elderly. Majority of urban and younger people tend to give up their language in favor of Russian . Although these peoples live in their own autonomous republics, these republics have Russian-speaking majorities and the Russian language is dominant in all areas. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a national awakening has brought about some positive developments but smaller languages are very seriously endangered as long as children and young people do not grow up to be fluent speakers. For detailed information on some of the Uralic languages spoken in Russia, consult the Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire : two major dialects—Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets—with low mutual intelligibility between the two. Structure Some of the salient features of the sound systems of Uralic languages will be described below.

Vowels Uralic vowel systems are characterized by the following: contrast between unrounded and rounded front vowels contrast between short and long vowels vowel harmony which requires that all the vowels in a word are either front or back , depending on the vowel in the first syllable. Vowel harmony does not usually apply to loanwords. Consonants palatalization of consonants which was probably acquired from the neighboring Slavic languages consonants can be short, long and, in some languages, overly long Stress In Finnish , Estonian , Hungarian , and Komi stress always falls on the first syllable of the word. In other Uralic languages, stress can fall on any syllable. Grammar The grammars of Uralic languages have certain salient features that are present in different combinations in some, but not all of them. Nouns lack of grammatical gender a large number of cases, ranging from 9 in Saami Inari to 27 in some varieties of Komi finely-differntiated system of locative cases possessive suffixes but no posessive pronouns; Verbs verbs are inflected for tense , aspect , mood , number, and person.

Some Uralic languages have a very elaborate mood system, for instance, Nenets has 16 moods. evidentiality : verbs in some Uralic languages have a witnessed and a non-witnessed past absence of the verb “to have” Word order Uralic languages have a Subject-Object-Verb or free word order, depending on the language. Vocabulary The Uralic languages share a basic vocabulary of about 200 words, including body parts, kinship terms, names of animals, natural objects (e.g., stone, water, tree), common verbs, basic pronouns, and numerals. The rest of the vocabulary consists of borrowings from other languages. The sources of borrowing vary from language to language. Languages spoken on the territory of Russia tend to have russified vocabularies. Below are some common words and phrases in three Uralic languages Below are the numerals 1-10 in 8 Uralic languages belonging to different branches. 1 Finnish , Karelian , Saami Western , Hungarian and Estonian use a modified version of the Latin alphabet. Uralic languages spoken on the territory of the former Soviet Union are written in modified versions of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Most of these languages were not written prior to the middle of the 19th century, e.g., Nenets . Komi was originally written in Old Permic (Abur) alphabet devised by the Russian missionary Stepan Khrap (better known as St. Steven of Perm) in the 14th century. This alphabet was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet in the 16th century. For a brief priod (1930-1940), Komi was written with the Latin alphabet which was, in turn, superceded by the Cyrillic alphabet used for writing the language today. Difficulty Language Difficulty How difficult is it to learn Uralic languages? Estonian , Finnish and Hungarian are considered to be somewhat more difficult that Category II languages for speakers of English. pakistani1414918 May 20, 2013 There is a mistake here. Hungarian belongs to the Ugric branch of Finno-Ugric, the other being Finnic which Finnish is correctly labelled under. Point is Hungarian should fall under the label of Ugric, not Finno-Ugric as that would include the Finnic languages. Thank you for pointing out the error.

We will make sure to correct it. Hendrik August 3, 2013 You also have some mistakes with the Estonian common words. Thank you in Estonian is “tänan” or “aitäh”, whereas “tänama” means to thank. You also seem to have mixed up the Estonian and Hungarian words for please. However, while “meeldima” is an Estonian word, it means “to like” and not “please”. “Please” in Estonian is “palun”. Otherwise, this site is really awesome. Thank you very much for your comment. We will make the changes in the Estonian page. June 24, 2014 Thank you for this article! Mistakes that was mentioned 10 months ago by Hendrik about some mistakes with Estonian words, are still not corrected 😉 July 11, 2014 “Kérem” is not an Estonian word; “please” in Estonian is “palun”. “Thank you” in Estonian is “Aitäh” (another way to say it is “tänan”).

Without the dots over the a, “tanama” has no meaning in Estonian, and with the dots “tänama” is not a way to say thank you but rather the infinitive form of the verb “to thank”. Thank you for the corrections. Karlsen September 25, 2014 Thank you for this site! My grandparents were reindeer herders in Lapland, Sweden. How can I learn to speak Sampi? October 10, 2014 I have no information about it. You may have to do some research to find an answer. There are some mistakes in the list of common Finnish words as well. -“Good bye” would be “näkemiin” (“hyvästi” is more final, meaning “farewell”) – “Mielyttää” is the infinitive form of the verb “to please” (but even then should be written with two l’s as “miellyttää”).

“Please” in sentences such as “please do …” this should be “ole hyvä …” (when speaking to one person informally) ) or “olkaa hyvä …” (when speaking to many people or when using a polite form) – “Yes” is “kyllä” (“joo” is very casual, “yeah”) – “Man” is “mies” (“herra” means “mister” or “master”) Thank you for the corrections. March 3, 2015 Greetings, I value the information found on this site and the idea behind it, but please let me submit some corrections regarding Hungarian, including some explanations. I would be glad if they would be incorporated into the article. There are inaccuracies in the common phrases table: Hello! – “szervusz” should be “szia, szervusz, helló”, “szia” is used way more often, though only in informal contexts, so older people tend to avoid it with fellow seniors. “Helló” is a loanword not so old, so you might even omit it. Goodbye!

– “ist enhozzád” should be “viszlát/viszontlátásra”, “viszontlátásra” literally means something like “for seeing in exchange”, but it’s a parting word subtly implying the speaker doesn’t mind or would like to meet again, as opposed to saying “szia” or other, more neutral parting words. “Viszlát” is simply the shorter, more informal form. Besides it’s “istenhozzád”, meaning “God to you”, but I never really heard or read it whatsoever. It does sound awfully archaic, something from the 18th century countryside. Thank you! – “köszönóm” should be “köszönöm”. Although Hungarians would understand “köszönóm” said by a foreigner, it’s simply not a word here. Please! – “kérem” should be “kérlek/kérem”. “Kérlek” is the form for an indefinite object, and “kérem” is the form for a definite subject.

Since the English exclamation “please!” in itself has no definite object, it is certainly “kérlek” in Hungarian, if we use informal language, that is. Excuse me! – “pardon, bocsánat” should be “elnézést, bocsánat”. In the sense of the English “Excuse me!” exclamation, “elnézést”, short for “elnézést kérek” (literally “I ask for looking away”) is probably better. “Bocsánat” is fine too, but it translates into English more closely as “sorry”. “Pardon” is really not used that much in informal contexts, I don’t think you should include a French loanword which is not really used in informal contexts. Yes – “igen” should be “igen/de”, generally Hungarians use “igen”, but “de” is used to answer negative questions affirmatively. No – “jelentéktelen, nem” should be “nem/ne”, “nem” being the general “no”, and “ne” being the exclamative and directive “no”.

Man – “ember” should be “férfi”, since in the sense of a person of male gender, Hungarian uses “férfi”. For man in the sense of human or person, it does use “ember”. Woman – “asszony, nő” should be “nő, asszony”. In the most general sense, “nő” means any person who is female, but most often it refers to adult women. “Lány” refers to “girl” or “young woman”. While “asszony” is correct and valid, it tends to refer to more older women, and it is often used as a title similar in usage to the English “Mrs.” in more formal contexts. Anyway, for “woman”, “nő” is the most used term. As for the number word listing from 1 to 10, “kettö” should be “kettő”. As for Hungarian being Finno-Ugric, I think that’s actually a supergroup for Finnic and Ugric, thus Hungarian should be called Ugric, but I didn’t checked this in reliable sources.

And lastly, the Finnic word links to the Wikipedia article for the Ural Mountains, I find this odd, it should point at an article about the Finnic people, if there is any such article, that is. Keep up the good work though! Thank you very much for the corrections. We will take care of them promptly. Uralic Languages | Article about Uralic Languages by The Free Dictionary Uralic Languages | Article about Uralic Languages by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Dictionary , Thesaurus , Wikipedia . Uralic Languages a group of related languages spoken by the Finno-Ugric and Samoyed peoples. The Uralic languages are distributed over an area stretching from the Taimyr Peninsula and the northern part of Norway in the north to the middle course of the Ob’ River and the northern part of Yugoslavia in the south. Toponymic data attest to a formerly more extensive distribution of some Finno-Ugric and Samoyed peoples, such as the Karelians, Lapps, Komi, Veps, Mari, Mordovians, and Mansi (Voguls).

Some Uralic languages (Merja, Murom, and Meshcher) and the languages of some small Samoyed tribes of the Saian Highland (the Mator, Karagas [Tofalar], Koibal, and Kotovtsy) no longer exist. The Kamas language is nearly extinct. The Uralic languages are divided into two major branches: Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic. The Finno-Ugric languages are divided into five groups: (1) Balto-Finnic (Finnish, Ingrian, Karelian, Votic, Estonian, and Livonian), (2) Volga (Erzia Mordovian, Moksha Mordovian, Eastern and Meadow Mari, and Mountain Mari), (3) Permian (Komi-Zyrian, Komi-Permiak, and Udmurt), (4) Ugric (Khanty, Vogul, and Hungarian), and (5) Lapp. The Samoyed branch includes the Nenets, Enets, Nganasani and Selkup languages.

Some groups are divided into subgroups; for example, the Khanty and Vogul languages are classified within the Ob-Ugric subgroup. The Samoyed languages are divided into the North subgroup (Nenets, Enets, and Nganasani) and the South subgroup, represented by Selkup. The degree of closeness between languages within a group is not uniform; for example, Lapp gravitates toward Balto-Finnic, although it is not included within this group. The differences between the languages of the Volga group are quite marked. Some dialects of Khanty might be classified more accurately as related languages rather than as dialects. Deviations from the preceding classifications are found in the words of foreign Finno-Ugric scholars, who classify Komi-Permiak, Eastern and Meadow Mari, Mountain Mari, Erzia Mordovian, Moksha Mordovian, Karelian, and Ingrian as dialects rather than independent languages.

The Uralic languages exhibit features attesting to their common origin: common lexical strata, a fundamental relationship among formatives used for inflection and word formation, the presence of possessive suffixes, and the large number of suffixes expressing repeated or instantaneous action. At the same time, some modern Uralic languages are highly distinctive. Extremely agglutinative languages (Permian, Mari) coexist with languages having well-developed inflectional elements (Lapp and Balto-Finnic). Word stress may be free (movable) or fixed on the first, last, or penultimate syllable. Some languages exhibit an abundance of vowels and diphthongs (Finnish); others have many different types of consonants and few diphthongs (the Permian languages). The total number of cases ranges from three (Khanty) to 23 (Hungarian). Past tense systems are typologically distinctive. The system of past tenses in Finnish and Estonian is of the same type as that of Latvian; in Mari and the Permian languages it resembles the Tatar and Chuvash type.

A well-developed system of moods exists in the Nenets and Mordovian languages; the other languages generally possess a conditional mood. Verb negation is expressed by special negative verb forms in several Uralic languages; negative particles are used in others (Mordovian, the Ob-Ugric languages, Hungarian, and Estonian). There are significant differences in syntax. The Balto-Finnic languages, Lapp, Hungarian, Mordovian, and Komi-Zyrian have been strongly influenced by the Indo-European languages of Swedish, German, and Russian, especially in the methods of forming subordinate compound sentences. The Samoyed, the Ob-Ugric and, in part, the Udmurt and Mari languages preserve certain archaic features that typologically relate the syntax of these languages to that of the Turkic languages. The vocabularies of certain Uralic languages also preserve traces of various foreign influences. The Uralic languages, particularly the Finno-Ugric languages, have long been the subject of linguistic research. Major centers for such study are located in Hungary, Finland, the USSR, the German Democratic Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the USA, Sweden, Norway, France, and Japan.

REFERENCES Languages : Uralic Family Uralic Family SiteMeter Not all European languages are Indo-European. There are three European languages that are members of the Uralic Family. The family is named from the Ural mountains. The people speaking these languages originated from the Siberian side of the Urals. Over 1500 years ago they migrated to Europe and have become entirely Europeanised. Their languages tell the story of their migrations. In the Finnic Branch, Finnish and Estonian are closely related. There are also a group of closely related dialects called Karelian (spoken in the Karelia region of Finland and Russia). Languages in the Ugric Branch (like Hungarian) are very different having separated from the Finnic ones around 3000 years ago. Hungarian's closest relatives (Ostyak, Vogul) are found in central Siberia. The majority of the languages in this family are spoken in the Ural Mountains in Western Russia (Mordvin, Komi, Nenets) apart from Sámi which is spoken in Lapland (northern Scandinavia). The name Lapps is a derogatory term for the Sámi people which should not be used.

Yukaghir (spoken in eastern Siberia) uses a pre-literate form of pictograms similar to those of some native Americans. Some linguists consider this language to belong to another, older language family. The Uralic Languages have many suffixes. Finnish, for example, behaves as if it had 15 noun cases, Hungarian has 17. Country names in Finnish are difficult to recognise. Finland, for example, is Suomi. Mordvin has complex verbs varying for subject and object over four tenses and 7 moods. Finnic Branch Finnic - definition of Finnic by The Free Dictionary Finnic - definition of Finnic by The Free Dictionary Also found in: Thesaurus , Wikipedia . Fin·nic Of or relating to Finland or the Finns. n. A branch of Finno-Ugric that includes Finnish and Estonian. Finnic (ˈfɪnɪk) n (Languages) one of the two branches of the Finno-Ugric family of languages, including Finnish and several languages of NE Europe. Compare Ugric adj 1. (Languages) of or relating to this group of languages or to the Finns 2.

(Peoples) of or relating to this group of languages or to the Finns Finn•ic (ˈfɪn ɪk) n. 1. a branch of the Uralic language family that includes Finnish, Estonian, and a number of other languages of N and central European Russia. adj. 2. of or pertaining to Finnic or its speakers. [1660–70] Noun 1. Finnic - one of two branches of the Finno-Ugric languages; a family of languages including Finnish and Estonian (but not Hungarian) Finno-Ugrian , Finno-Ugric - a family of Uralic languages indigenous to Scandinavia and Hungary and Russia and western Siberia (prior to the Slavic expansion into those regions) Permic - a group of Finnic languages spoken in the northwest Urals Volgaic - a group of Finnic languages spoken around the Volga river Baltic-Finnic - a group of Finnic languages including Finnish and Estonian Translations Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us , add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content .

Link to this page: Lapp References in periodicals archive ? 53 dubious Uralic stems belong to some other inherited layer: 14 Finno-Ugric, 3 Finno-Permic, 2 Finno-Maric, 4 Finno-Mordvinic, 15 Finno-Saamic, and 15 Finnic stems. The origins of stems of standard Estonian--a statistical overview There are common features in the repertoire of ornamentation with other Finnic, as well as Baltic peoples.

Comitative and terminative in Votic and Lower Luga Ingrian e) 'pottery' in Sinitic; 'clay' in Finnic [~ Finno-Ugric]; (2) 8015 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (geng/canh/ET:kundA-/FI:kynta-) 'to plough' in Sinitic and Finnic [~ Cheremis kuncas 'to dig']; (3) 8CE3 [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (mai/mai/ET:muu-/FI:myy-) 'to sell' in Sinitic and Finnic [~ Uralic]. Official colours of Chinese regimes: a panchronic philological study with historical accounts of China During the Soviet era, she explains, Russian migrants remained almost completely monolingual, but since 1991 they have become more aware of and knowledgeable about the native Estonian, which not only is not Slavic, as is Russian, but in not even Indo-European, belonging instead to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family.

Estonian | About World Languages By Irene Thompson | Updated September 8, 2014 by Jon Phillips Tere tulemast – Welcome Estonian (Eesti keel) is a member of the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family . It is related to Võro , Vod and Finnish , the latter spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland . It is also distantly to Hungarian spoken in central Europe. Finnish and Estonian share a great deal of their vocabulary. Throughout its history, Estonia was under Danish, Swedish, Teutonic, and Russian rule. In 1721, Estonia became part of the Russian Empire when Russian was declared its official language. During World War II , Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and subsequently occupied by the Germans until 1944. Under the Soviet rule Estonia went through another period of russification until its independence in 1990, when Estonian became the national language. Status At present, Estonian is spoken by about 1 million people in the Republic of Estonia.

In addition it is spoken by another 100,000 people in Australia, Canada, Finland, Latvia, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and USA ( Ethnologue ). It is the official language of the Republic of Estonia and one of the official languages of the European Union. Standard Estonian is used and accepted at all levels of society. After the dissolution of the USSR, Estonia became an independent republic and although Russian is still widely used as a second language, Estonian is taught in schools, and competency in it is required for citizenship. Dialects Estonian has two major mutually intelligible dialects, Northern Estonian, based on the dialect of Tallinn , the capital of Estonia Southern Estonian, based on the dialect of Tartu , the second-largest city in Estonia. Structure Top Sound system In general, the sound system of Estonian is similar to that of Finnish . The language is rich in vowels and relatively poor in consonants. Vowels Estonian has 9 vowel phonemes all of which can appear in three different lengths: simple, long, and overly long. Simple and long vowels are distinguished by relative length, whereas the so-called overly long vowels are distinguished by a tonal contour.

In writing, long vowels are represented by doubling, but the overly-long vowels are not marked at all. There is a contrast between some rounded and unrounded front and back vowels. In addition, there are 19 diphthongs. Consonants in parentheses occur only in loanwords. All consonants can be short or long, e.g., lina ‘linen,’ and linna ‘city.’ Stress Stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word, but loanwords and foreign words usually retain their original stress. Vowel length makes most syllables appear evenly stressed. Grammar Like other Uralic languages, Estonian represents a combination of agglutinative and fusional elements. In an agglutinative language, grammatical suffixes are added to stems in a sequence, with each suffix representing one grammatical function. In a fusional (inflecting) language, several grammatical functions are represented by one suffix. Nouns Estonian nouns are marked for the following grammatical categories. Nouns are not marked for gender. There are no articles. There are two numbers: singular and plural. There are fourteen cases. The general use cases are Nominative , and Genitive .

The general locative cases are Essive , Partitive , and Translative . The interior locative cases are Inessive , Elative and Illative . The exterior locative cases are Adessive , Ablative and Allative . The restricted use cases are Instructive , Comitative and Abessive . Case and number are marked with a single suffix. The addition of a suffix often changes the length of the consonant in the stem. Despite the large number of cases, Estonian lacks the accusative case, common in Indo-European languages for denoting the direct object of a transitive verb. The direct object in Estonian is expressed by the Nominative , Genitive or Partitive cases in the singular, and by the Nominative or the Partitive cases in the plural. Using the Genitive case for the object in the singular and the Nominative case in the plural, indicates the completeness of the action. Use of the Partitive case expresses the unfinished nature of the action. Estonian consist of a stem + tense/mood suffix + person/number suffix. There are two tenses: present and past. There are three moods: indicative , conditional and subjunctive .

The person/number suffix represents the person/number of the subject and the person of the object. Word order The normal word order in Estonian is Subject-Verb-Object. At the same time, word order in Estonian sentences is determined by topic and comment. Topic is the part of the sentence that is known, while comment is the new information that is being added about the topic. In Estonian sentences, topic comes first. Vocabulary The basic vocabulary of Estonian reflects its Uralic origin. However, since throughout its modern history, Estonia has been ruled by foreign powers, most notably Germany, Sweden, and Russia, Estonian has a large number of loanwords from these languages. Other borrowings come from Finnish , French and English . Below are some common Estonian words and phrases. Yes Top The oldest records of Estonian date from the 8th century AD. The first complete texts in Estonian, the Kullamaa prayers, appeared in the 1520s, followed by other religious texts. The first grammars appeared in the early 17th century during Swedish rule. Folk songs and oral poetry were first recorded in the 18th century.

The modern written form of the language began to take shape in the first half of the 19th century. The first Estonian newspapers appeared in the second half of the 19th century. Throughout most of its history, Estonian has used the Roman alphabet. Since I t was first written by German scholars, its spelling was heavily influenced by German until the 1850s when the orthography underwent a reform aimed to bring it closer to the spoken language. The present-day alphabet has seventeen consonants and nine vowels. The Estonian orthography is quite regular, meaning that each phoneme is represented by one letter. There are a few exceptions. Four vowel letters representing sounds specific to Estonian are listed at the end of the alphabet. The alphabet lacks the letters f, c, q, w, x, y which are used only for writing foreign names and loanwords. Additional letters š and ž are used for writing borrowed words.

A a Finnish-Estonian intelligibility | Antimoon Forum Finnish-Estonian intelligibility Skippy Fri Jun 05, 2009 4:28 pm GMT I was told by a Finnish friend that they don't have significant amounts of vocabulary in common, but my Estonian friend said Finnish wasn't too tough to learn. So how much does knowing one help in learning the other? Are suffixes relatively similar or is the grammar as different as the vocab? Obviously, being related, I understand their grammar will be similar... Thanks! apple Fri Jun 05, 2009 8:36 pm GMT I've heard mixed reviews about their intelligibility. It also depends on the region that the speaker is from. But yes one will help with the other, but not as much, say, as Spanish and Portuguese. Skippy Sat Jun 06, 2009 5:53 am GMT That sounds right to me. But do their morphologies overlap significantly or is it just the general understanding of grammatical concepts that help one with the other?

apple Sat Jun 06, 2009 6:28 pm GMT Since there is some intelligibility, yes it is certainly more than just the grammatical concepts that overlap. Compare the numbers: yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljï¿½, viisi vs: ï¿½ks, kaks, kolm, neli, viis. to apple Sun Jun 07, 2009 3:50 pm GMT Compare: English:one,two,three,four,five,six,seven,eight,nine ten. Are English,German and Dutch intelligible languages? Maybe German and Dutch,but not English. apple Sun Jun 07, 2009 4:33 pm GMT Compare Finnish numbers without the final vowel to Estonian ones: yks - ï¿½ks nelj - neli viis - viis Absolutely identical, if you realize that ï¿½ is the same sound as y, and j = i. cool Sun Jun 07, 2009 4:45 pm GMT Estonian belongs to the Baltic Finnic branch of the Uralic languages.

Estonian is thus closely related to Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland, and is one of the few languages of Europe that is not Indo-European. Despite some overlaps in the vocabulary due to borrowings, in terms of its origin, Estonian is not related to its nearest neighbours, Swedish, Latvian and Russian, which are all Indo-European languages. Estonian is distantly related to Hungarian (there is no mutual intelligibility between the two). It has been influenced by Swedish, German (initially Middle Low German, later also standard German), Russian, and Latvian, though it is not related to them genetically. Like Finnish and Hungarian, Estonian is an agglutinative language, but unlike them, it has lost the vowel harmony of Proto-Uralic, although in older texts the vowel harmony is still to be recognized. Furthermore, the apocope of word-final sounds is extensive and has caused a shift from a purely agglutinative to an inflected language. The basic word order is Subject Verb Object.

pear Sun Jun 07, 2009 5:00 pm GMT Compare: Finnish: Jokaisella on tï¿½ysin tasa-arvoisesti oikeus siihen, ettï¿½ hï¿½ntï¿½ oikeudenmukaisesti ja julkisesti kuullaan riippumattomassa ja puolueettomassa tuomioistuimessa hï¿½nen oikeuksiaan ja velvollisuuksiaan mï¿½ï¿½rï¿½ttï¿½essï¿½ tai hï¿½ntï¿½ vastaan nostettua rikossyytettï¿½ selvitettï¿½essï¿½.

Estonian: Igal inimesel on tema ï¿½iguste ja kohustuste mï¿½ï¿½ratlemiseks ja temale esitatud kriminaalsï¿½ï¿½distuste pï¿½hjendatuse kindlakstegemiseks tï¿½ieliku vï¿½rdsuse alusel ï¿½igus sellele, et tema asi vaadataks avalikult ja kï¿½iki ï¿½igluse nï¿½udeid jï¿½rgides lï¿½bi sï¿½ltumatu ja erapooletu kohtu poolt. pi Sun Jun 07, 2009 6:04 pm GMT According to this (unreliable source): "Finnish and Estonian ARE mutually intelligible with each other. Estonians tend t understand Finnish better than Finns understand Estoinan though" Brennus Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:35 am GMT Intelligibility between Finnish and Estonian is not very good.

Just because two languages are closely related to each other does not mean that their speakers will be able to understand each other. For example, how many speakers of Modern English can understand Old English or Middle English? Even a strong Scots will give speakers of standard English a problem. Also, the split between Finnish and Estonian is not recent. There are studies by historical linguists who specialize in Uralic languages which indicate that Finnish and Estonian began separating from each other as far back as the first century A.D.. This would have been about a century before Anglo-Saxon began separating from German on the European continent. gram Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:44 pm GMT >> Obviously, being related, I understand their grammar will be similar... Thanks << Well yes the grammar of the two is similar, but it's not "obvious" just because they are related. English and Russian are also related, but their grammar is not very similar.

Question: The three principal Uralic languages are Finnish, Estonian, and which other?
Answer: Hungarian