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The Uralic languages (/ j ʊəˈr æ l ɪ k / yoor-AL-ik; by some called Uralian languages / j ʊəˈr eɪ l i ə n / yoor-AY-lee-ən) form a language family of 42 languages spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (which alone accounts for approximately 60% of speakers ...
- One of the world's primary language families
- Overview
- Establishment of the family
- Current distribution
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.
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).
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.
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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.
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The Finno-Ugric languages are represented today by some 20 languages scattered over an immense Eurasian territory. In the west they include the European national languages Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian as well as the Sami (or Lapp) languages, the westernmost members of the group, spoken by numerous distinct communities across the northern Scandinavian Peninsula from central Norway to the White Sea. The remaining Finno-Ugric languages are located in the Baltic countries and in Russia, all formerly republics of the Soviet Union, with one major concentration—which includes Estonian, Livonian, Votic, Karelian, and Veps—extending from the Gulf of Riga to the Kola Peninsula. The Mordvin and Mari languages are found in the central Volga region; from there extending northward along river courses west of the Urals are the Permic languages—Udmurt, Komi (Zyryan), and Permyak (or Komi-Permyak). East of the Urals, along the Ob River and its tributaries, are the easternmost representatives of the Finno-Ugric group—Mansi and Khanty.
The largely nomadic Samoyeds are sparsely distributed over an enormous area extending inward from the Arctic shores of Russia from the White Sea in the west to Khatanga Bay in central Siberia in the east. Nenets, the westernmost of these languages, reaches eastward to the mouth of the Yenisey River and includes a small insular group on Novaya Zemlya. Speakers of Enets are located in the region of the upper Yenisey. The lower half of the Taymyr Peninsula is the habitat of the Nganasan, the easternmost of the Uralic groups. The fourth language, Selkup, lies to the south in a region between the central Ob and central Yenisey; its major representation is located between Turukhansk and the Taz River. A fifth Samoyedic language, Kamas (Sayan), spoken in the vicinity of the Sayan Mountains, survived into the 20th century but is now extinct. Yukaghir is represented by two small language groups (designated Tundra and Kolyma) in far northeastern Siberia, between the tundra east of the Alazeya River and the upper tributaries of the Kolyma.
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. See Click Here to see full-size tabletable for the names in use. Standard usage is in the left column, and earlier, Russian-based forms are in parentheses. The name that the group uses for itself and certain other information, such as Russian and Old Russian forms, are in the right column. 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).
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Uralic languages are spoken by about 25 million people. The main Uralic languages in number of speakers are Hungarian (12-13 million), Finnish (5.4 million) and Estonian (1.1 million), that are also national and official languages of sovereign states. Geographical distribution of the Uralic languages.
The Uralic languages form a language family of 42 languages spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt and Komi spoken in the European parts of the Russian Federation.
How to use UraTyp. The database can be explored in several ways. One option is to browse the interactive database at https://uralic.clld.org according to languages. Clicking on “Languages” on the navigation bar and then selecting a language enables one to see all the answers provided for the respective language.
The Ob-Ugric group includes Mansi and Khanty. family tree diagram of the Uralic languages. Family tree diagram of the Uralic languages, including their probable relationship to Yukaghir. (more) The Ugric group comprises the geographically most distant members of the family—the Hungarian and Ob-Ugric languages.
New language maps are divided into three categories: 1) individual language maps, 2) maps for the main branches of Uralic, and 3) overall maps of the whole language family. You can also find the datasets and maps via interactive spatial data platform Uralic Historical Atlas (URHIA).
