Finno-Ugric Languages
Finno-Ugric languages are a branch of the Uralic language family, spoken by nearly 25 million people primarily in Finland, Hungary, Estonia, and Northern Russia. This language group has ancient roots, tracing back to a Proto-Uralic language believed to have originated between 5000 and 8000 BCE in the Ural Mountains. The languages are divided into two main groups: Finnic and Ugric, with Finnish and Estonian being the largest languages in the Finnic subgroup, and Hungarian leading the Ugric languages. While some of these languages, such as Finnish and Hungarian, are national languages, others are considered endangered or extinct, facing a decline in native speakers.
The geographical distribution of these languages reflects a rich cultural tapestry, shaped by historical migrations and interactions with neighboring language families, including Slavic and Turkic languages. Many Finno-Ugric languages exhibit unique grammatical structures and features, such as vowel harmony, differing syllable structures, and varying numbers of grammatical cases. Although Finnish and Estonian share similarities, they are not mutually intelligible with many other Finno-Ugric languages, highlighting the diversity within this linguistic family. The preservation and revitalization of endangered Finno-Ugric languages remain important for cultural heritage and identity in the regions where they are spoken.
Finno-Ugric Languages
The Finno-Ugric languages are part of the Uralic language family. Nearly twenty-five million people in Norway, Finland, Estonia, Hungary, and Northern Russia speak these languages. The Finno-Ugric languages are ancient languages and have been used by about seventeen groups in the region for thousands of years. Some Finno-Ugric languages are the official languages of nations, while others are spoken by smaller groups in countries surrounded by Germanic, Slavic, Romanian, and Turkic speakers. As a result, the most spoken Finno-Ugric languages, such as Hungarian and Finnish, are the national languages of their respective nations. Others are endangered or extinct, meaning they have few or no native speakers.
Finno-Ugric languages are divided into two groups—Finnic and Ugric—with Finnic subdivided into three dialect groups and Ugric into two. Finnish and Estonians are the largest groups of Finnic speakers. Other languages in this subgroup include Livonian, Votic, Ingrian, Veps, Karelian, Ludian, Mari, Moksha, Erzya, Komi-Zyrian, Komi-Permyak, and Udmurt.
Hungarian is the most widely used Ugric language, followed by Khanty and Mansi. Some linguists include the Saami language of northern Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Russia as a Finno-Ugric language, while others place it in a separate category.
History and Classification
The Finno-Ugric languages are descended from a Proto-Uralic language that originated about 5000 BCE to 8000 BCE in the Ural Mountains of what became Russia and Kazakhstan. The Finno-Ugric are among the oldest permanently settled peoples in Europe. By 3000 BCE, groups began to migrate north to the Barents Sea, west to the Baltic Sea, and southwest to what became central Europe.
The oldest known reference to a Finno-Ugric language is found in the Cosmography of Aethicus Ister, an eighth-century CE geographical work that mentions the name of an Estonian island. Some of the earliest documents written in the Finno-Ugric languages are a Hungarian funeral speech from the twelfth century CE and fragments of Karelin and Estonian words dating to the thirteenth century CE. The oldest complete printed works are Finnish and Estonian texts from the early sixteenth century CE.
While the Finno-Ugric languages descended from a common ancestor, the ages of the languages, distances between groups of speakers, and varied foreign influences have created marked differences among them. Languages in close geographic proximity, such as Finnish and Estonian, have similarities that can help speakers of one understand the other. Many other Finno-Ugric languages are not mutually intelligible. For example, Finnish and Estonian share the words silm (eye), kala (fish), and jää (ice). In Hungarian, these words are szem (eye), hal (fish)and jég (ice). Many of the Finno-Ugric languages also use different writing systems. Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, and Karelian are among those that use a variation of the Latin alphabet, while some Russian-based languages, such as Mari, Khanty, and Komi-Zyrian, use the Cyrillic script. In Khanty, the words for eye, fish, and ice would be written as сэм, хул and енгк, respectively.
Grammar rules in the languages also are varied. Some use a consonant-vowel-consonant-consonant syllable structure, while languages such as Moksha and Erzya allow for consonant groupings at the beginning of syllables. Finnish and Estonian are vowel-heavy languages, often stringing together groups of vowels around a few consonants. Estonian is especially noted for this trait. For example, in Finnish, hyvää päivää means "good afternoon." In Estonian, jäääär means "edge of the ice," and kõueöö means "night thunderstorm."
Many of the Finno-Ugric languages use a system of vowel harmony, a rule requiring the vowels in a word to share a specific feature. Finnish, Hungarian, Moksha, Erzya, Khanty, and Mansi are among the languages that use this system, while Estonian does not. The languages do not use gender distinctions for nouns, and most use singular and plural numbers for grammatical agreement. The number of cases varies by language, with Khanty using two and Komi-Zyrian using twenty-four. Word order also differs by region. Eastern languages such as Udmurt, Khanty, and Mansi use a subject-object-verb order, while western languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Komi, and Hungarian use subject-verb-object.
The Slavic languages of eastern and central Europe had a significant influence on many Finno-Ugric languages, contributing many words to the different vocabularies. The Hungarian language borrowed heavily from the Turkic and Germanic languages, while Turkic also influenced Mari, Moksha, Erzya, Komi-Zyrian, Komi-Permyak, and Udmurt.
Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage
Nearly twenty-five million people speak Finno-Ugric languages. Hungarian, which is used in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, has the largest number of speakers at thirteen million. It is the national language of Hungary. Finnish is spoken by more than five million people in Finland and northern Sweden, while more than one million people in Estonia speak Estonian. Finnish and Estonian are the official languages of their countries.
The remaining Finno-Ugric languages are spoken in parts of Russia. Mari, the largest of the languages, is used by about 380,000 people in the Mari Republic of west-central Russia. From the same region, about 230,000 people speak Moksha, and about 200,000 speak Erzya. Komi-Zyrian, spoken by about 156,000 people in the Komi Republic of north-central Russia, is the only other Finno-Ugric language used by more than 100,000 people.
Several of the languages are classified as endangered, and one has been declared extinct. As of 2013, the western-Russian language of Votic was used by less than seventy native speakers. Ingrian, from the same region, was spoken by a little more than one hundred people. Less than one thousand people spoke the western-Siberian language of Mansi. The last native of speaker of Livonian, used in Latvia, died in 2013.
Bibliography
"Estonian." Omniglot.Simon Ager, n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2015. <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/estonian.htm>.
"Finnish." Omniglot.Simon Ager, n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2015. <http://www.omniglot.com/writing/finnish.htm>.
"Finno-Ugric Peoples." Estonia.eu. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2015. <http://estonia.eu/about-estonia/society/finno-ugric-peoples.html>.
"Language in Estonia." Visitestonia. Estonian Tourist Board, n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2015. <http://www.visitestonia.com/en/about-estonia/estonian-culture/estonian-language>.
"Meet Our Peoples." Elupuu. Elupuu, n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2015. <http://www.elupuu.org/index.php?id=52>.
"Uralic Languages." The Language Gulper. Alejandro Gutman and Beatriz Avanzati, n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2015. <http://www.languagesgulper.com/eng/Uralic.html>.