Uralic Language Family
IntroductionThe Uralic languages share a number of common features in their phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. It is believed that they inherited these features from a common ancestor, Proto-Uralic, spoken by Proto-Uralic peoples who lived in the area of the Ural
 Mountains, the Russian range that separates Europe from Asia, some 7,000 years ago. The predecessors of the 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 AD. The Uralic language family consists of more than 30 living languages spoken by about 25 million people. It is generally subdivided into two branches: Finno- Most languages in this family are minority languages in different stages of endangerment. The only exceptions are Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian.
* Unesco Red Book lev Even though some of the languages above 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. |
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Ugric and Samoyedic. The Finno-Ugric branch has more than 99% of the speakers, whereas the Samoyedic languages are spoken by less than 30,000. These branches are further subdivided into sub-branches, as in the table below. Most languages of the Uralic family are found in northern Eurasia. An exception is Hungarian which is spoken in central Europe.
els of endangerment
Structure
Sound System |
A number of Uralic languages have vowel harmony. Vowel harmony in the Uralic languages is mostly sensitive to the feature [+/-back]. This means that if the vowel in the root is a back vowel, e.g., [o] or [u], then all the other vowels in that word must also be back vowels. If the vowel in the root is not a back vowel, then all the other vowels in the word must be adjusted to match them. Vowel harmony occurs in Finnish, Hungarian, Mordvin, Mari, Mansi, and Khanty. 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. |
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Noun phrase Uralic languages have a complex case system. Komi-Permyak nouns top the list with a reported 24 cases! Hungarian is a runner-up with some 16-21 cases, followed by Finnish with 14 cases. Verb phrase Word order |
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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.
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Writing |
Finnish, Karelian, Saami, 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.
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