Uralic languages

Not to be confused with the Urali language.
"Uralic" redirects here. For other uses, see Uralic (disambiguation).
Uralic
Uralian
Geographic
distribution		Central Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Northern Asia
Linguistic classificationOne of the world's primary language families
Proto-languageProto-Uralic
Subdivisions
Language codes
ISO 639-5urj
Glottologural1272
Distribution of the undisputed branches of the Uralic family at the early 20th century[1][2]

The Uralic languages (/jʊəˈrælɪk/ yoor-AL-ik), sometimes called the Uralian languages (/jʊəˈreɪliən/ yoor-AY-lee-ən),[3] are 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), 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. Still smaller minority languages are Sámi languages of the northern Fennoscandia; other members of the Finnic languages, ranging from Livonian in northern Latvia to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; and the Samoyedic languages, Mansi and Khanty spoken in Western Siberia.

The name Uralic derives from the family's purported "original homeland" (Urheimat) hypothesized to have been somewhere in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains, and was first proposed by Julius Klaproth in Asia Polyglotta (1823).[4][5]

Finno-Ugric is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic,[6] though Finno-Ugric is widely understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages.[7] Scholars who do not accept the traditional notion that Samoyedic split first from the rest of the Uralic family may treat the terms as synonymous.[8]

Uralic languages are known for their often complex case systems and vowel harmony.

  1. ^ Rantanen, Timo; Tolvanen, Harri; Roose, Meeli; Ylikoski, Jussi; Vesakoski, Outi (2022-06-08). "Best practices for spatial language data harmonization, sharing and map creation—A case study of Uralic". PLOS ONE. 17 (6): e0269648. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1769648R. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0269648. PMC 9176854. PMID 35675367.
  2. ^ Rantanen, Timo; Vesakoski, Outi; Ylikoski, Jussi; Tolvanen, Harri (2021-05-25), Geographical database of the Uralic languages, doi:10.5281/ZENODO.4784188
  3. ^ "Uralic". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2024-01-22.
  4. ^ Klaproth, Julius (1823). Asia Polyglotta (in German). Paris: A. Schubart. p. 182. hdl:2027/ia.ark:/13960/t2m66bs0q.
  5. ^ Stipa, Günter Johannes (1990). Finnisch-ugrische Sprachforschung von der Renaissance bis zum Neupositivismus (PDF). Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia (in German). Vol. 206. Helsinki: Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura. p. 294.
  6. ^ Bakró-Nagy, Marianne (2012). "The Uralic Languages". Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire. 90 (3): 1001–1027. doi:10.3406/rbph.2012.8272.
  7. ^ Tommola, Hannu (2010). "Finnish among the Finno-Ugrian languages". Mood in the Languages of Europe. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 155. ISBN 978-90-272-0587-2.
  8. ^ Aikio 2022, pp. 1–4.