Talk:Finno-Ugric languages

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Archived old entries to Talk:Finno-Ugric languages/archive1 on November 27, per the instructions at Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. The page was HUMONGOUS (more than 86 KB), and I think the discussions I moved had all petered off anyway. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes. Dbenbenn 02:42, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I had to archive the present talkpage to Talk:Finno-Ugric languages/archive2 on December 25, as it after AFU's last addition has reached 88 KB.--Wiglaf 21:01, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 The new map 2 Including more critics 3 another case? 4 About László Marácz 5 history 6 disputes 7 Map 7.1 Map from Encyclopædia Britannica 8 User:Antifinnugor's RFAr 9 Possible origins 10 Odd gloss 11 Linguist migration theory to recycle bin? 12 Suoczil 13 Disputes/Marcantonio 14 Title of article 15 Origins 16 Celtic substratum? 17 Vepses not in use in English 18 Magyars, Khanty, and Mansi 19 Pronunciation? 20 The Kalevala and Finno-Ugric people

[edit] The new map

I've seen that map, it's error-compatible to one map I've seen. Encyclopedia Britannica? Well, anyway, here are some obvious problems. Finnish is the majority language in Northern Finnish Lapland. Here, it's shown as a purely Sami-speaking territory. It is not in majority in any country. --Vuo 22:46, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

In a linguistic map, indigenous languages take priority over other languages if their distribution overlap. Therefore the map is correct, even if Finnish is spoken as far as on the coast of the Arctic Ocean in Norway. --Hippophaë 15:47, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Right. I was going to ask, but then I realized this is going to be about the contemporary distribution of major languages. If not, where are the Ingrians? The areas around St. Petersburg should be interconnected with Estonia. Setu is also missing. --Vuo 21:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

The distribution of the Ingrian language is marked with "1" in the map, because the area is too small to be colored. --Hippophaë 17:37, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

The map is full of errors. As already pointed out, where have the Ingrians disappeared and how did the Sápmi territory get that big? Many parts that are marked as Sápmi in Finland is 100% Finnish speaking. On the other hand, some Swedish areas in Finland with a Swedish percentage exceeding 90% are still marked as Finnish. All in all a very random map.

[edit] Including more critics

Seeing that the 'Critique' page is now a redirect, I think we should find some way to include reference to Dr. László Marácz and his stuff. Of course saying that it is a piece of non-peer-reviewed crankery. dab (ᛏ) 18:47, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

added external link to Merlijn de Smit's link collection. I don't know if 'entirely unsuccessful' is too strong a term, but the claims do seem rather hopeless. while, technically, we can now say that Maracz has been peer-reviewed. That is, if the following counts as a peer-review:

"Dutch-Hungarian linguist László Marácz here presents the usual tin-foil hatted conspiracy theories about Finno-Ugric language relationships being the result a conspiracuy between Austrians, communists and intelligent snails from the star system of Epsilon Eridani (OK, not the latter one, but you get the picture) to oppress the Magyar nationality and obscure their true origins and linguistic relationships (with, of course, the Sumerians, which as the builders of the first civilization happen to be a bit more prestigious). It contains a wonderful rant against László Honti - someone who, as opposed to Marácz, knows about historical linguistics. Anyway, the piece is morbidly fascinating in its pathology, in the same manner a train wreck is fascinating."

dab (ᛏ) 19:04, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sweet. I believe this is the linguistic equivalent of what bloggers call a fisking. - Mustafaa 22:18, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] another case?

people watching this page may be interested in checking out Balto-Slavic languages, edited by somebody claiming "deepest research" proves Baltic and Slavic are unrelated... (diff)There are references, this time, and the edits do not seem completely unreasonable, but the article has certainly been unbalanced, as such claims are at best obscure. dab (ᛏ) 16:59, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Apparently, the Burushaski language is no longer a language isolate, as well. Linguistic hypotheses presented as facts.--Wiglaf 17:37, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] About László Marácz

Dbenbenn, in your last edit comment you write: "This section should be about linguists who criticize. We don't need to debunk László Marácz here, since he isn't a linguist anyway"

Actually this is not correct. Marácz is a linguist, although I'm not aware him publishing any journal papers on this subject.

He wrote a book: Hungarian Revival, 1998, ISBN 9075323115

Although I haven't read it myself, it is Károly Rédei criticises it in his book:

• Rédei Károly: Őstörténetünk kérdései, A nyelvészeti dilettantizmus kritikája, Balassi Kiadó, Bp., 2003. ISBN 963-506-515-9 (Questions of Our Ancient History, Critique of Linguistic Dilettantism)

Much of Marácz's arguments are reflected in Antifinnugor's edits and other "alternative" theories in Hungary:

• the original proponents of Finno-Ugric theory were not Hungarians
  • First not entirely true, Sajnovics was Hungarian. Second the nationality of the scholars doesn't matter, especially after 150 years. This reminds me of the urban legend that Darwin revoked his theories about evolution on his death bed.
• the theory was pushed under Habsburg rule to supress the national pride of Hungarians
  • The real reason was that it the time of Habsburg opression coincided with progress in linguisics in general at the end of the 19th century.
• The theory is pushed for political reasons. They claim that the (former) communists don't want the Hungarians to learn about their "true" origins. (For the same reasons as the Habsburgs.)
  • This is a cheap excuse for all the "alternative" theorists (most of whom don't have any linguistic background) who run out of linguistic arguments. Every one of them repeats this claim. People who think Hungarian is related to Celtic, Sumerian, Japanese, etc. Every single last one of them keeps repeating that the "true" reason that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences refuses to answer them or dismisses them as crackpots is because they want to "supress" the truth for political reasons.

Marácz also point out that neighboring countries created their own nationalistic myths like the daco-romanian theory and a lot of legend around Great Moravia which helps strengthening their national identities. This is actually true and helps us remember that when you see people arguing this strongly about such "boring" (sorry) a topic as linguistics, it is because they see it not as a scholarly debate but one attacking their "true" national identity.

One of the reasons for this is that many of the "alternative theorists" and 90% of the laypeople do not distinguish between ethnic and linguistic relatedness.

In his book Marácz doesn't claim that Hungarian is not related to Finno-Ugric languages, but he says that the relation between Hungarian and other language families like Turkic or Sumerian should not be discarded. He also used to publish in a Hungarian magazine called "Turán" (his "untenability" article was published there, too). This makes me wonder whether these his theories should be discussed under Turanian.

László Honti debunked most of Marácz's theories in Magyar Tudomány (sorry couldn't find it online) . Rédei calls a lot of Marácz's linguistic claims "pseudoscience".

I think it is telling, that when you google for Marácz's articles most often you find them on the website http://www.kitalaltkozepkor.hu which is dedicated to Heribert Illig. It is also telling that in his "Untenability" article, Marácz references Bobula Ida and Francisco Jos Badiny (Badiny Jós Ferenc). They both think that Hungarian is related to Sumerian. Badiny also claims that Jesus was a Parthian prince. You can google for their works in English.

To sum up: most of what Marácz writes about is political and those parts which are about linguistics have been harshly criticized by people in the field.

Nyenyec 22:16, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

from what I gather, he wrote a reasonable book on politics, containing "layman's" linguistic conclusions. Just the fact that he speculates about linguistics does not make him a linguist, imho (otherwise, afu is a linguist, too). But we can include his stuff anyway, I don't care. We just have to say that real linguists laugh their asses off when they read his stuff (we don't have to quote Merlijn's "pathological interest" though, it's enough to say that he has no support in the linguistic community whatsoever) dab (ᛏ) 22:36, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for correcting me, Nyenyec. Actually, the main reason I removed the sentence:

Entirely outside the sphere of linguistics is the claim of "untenability" of the Finno-Ugric family by László Marácz, referenced by de Smit for its "morbid fascination"

is that it seemed non-neutral to me. If Marácz's criticisms are notable enough to go in, they should be stated first, with the linguistic response second. It isn't fair to demolish him from the get-go. Dbenbenn 23:36, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually Marácz does have a degree in linguisitcs from the University of Gröningen from 1984 and he got his PhD in 1989 at least that's what he writes in one of the articles AFU copied to the Hungarian Wikipedia. I don't know what's the best way or phrasing to mention him though. Nyenyec 00:29, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This should not be about this Marácz too much anyway. I agree with Dbenbenn about the removal of my sentence. This was an attempt of how we could include him at all. He is either non-notable, or notable as a curiosity, it appears. I am sure however, that there are respectable critics of FU. Everything is criticized in linguistics, so it must be possible to find something. Angela Marcantonio is a beginning: At least she seems to be recognized as a good-faith linguist, even though her reviews are devastating. Once we have Marcantonio, there is really no need for Marácz, linguist od no linguist, because his inclusion will only add to the ridicule of the critics. I am sure there are others, but, well, we are not obliged to hunt for them. We are obliged to allow fair mention if somebody brings them up, but this is as far as it goes. dab (ᛏ) 11:45, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

btw, the "breakthrough" bit I added to the "Criticism" section does not properly belong there. It belongs to the Conversely, there have been suggestions that the Germanic languages evolved from an Indo-European language such as Celtic imposed on a Finnic substrate passage in "History". It ended up where it is now purely to give some background to the Marácz mention, and could now be moved. dab (ᛏ) 11:59, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

— *lol* I had overlooked the reference to Heribert Illig. I know that theory, and it is a fine example of crackpottery if there ever was one. (I realize that Maracz does not himself cite Illig, but it seems very fitting to find them sharing the same webspace). It seems also strange that most literature critical of FU seems to be written in Hungarian, in spite if Soviet censorship (i.e. countries that were never censored by the Soviets never developed such FU criticism). If people insist on linking to Maracz (Gubbubu apparently is), how about mentioning Maracz together with Karoly's 'recension', Critique of Linguistic Dilettantism? Somebody would need to access that book, of course. dab (ᛏ) 15:57, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] history

well, I have been whipped into doing my own literature search now, and I came up with

Merritt Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's langages

it is a very good, scientific book, that does not just state its 'facts' but gives background of the history of classification, and presents different theories alongside each other. The section on 'Uralic-Yukaghir' is very enlightening (p.65ff.), and I will add some of it (with references!) to the history section. (note that the book does not claim genetic relationship of Uralic and Yukaghir. Ruhlen talks about apparent 'taxonomical coordination', and mentions various suggestions. dab (ᛏ) 12:37, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Awesome! Great work, dab! That sounds like exactly what's needed. Dbenbenn 13:26, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

see the new 'history' section. I think the 'criticism' section looks quite out of place now. Ruhlen does not gloss over controversies, and he gives quite some detail on the various arrangements of Finnic that are suggested. As to uralic, he gives the arrangement:

• Uralic
  • Samoyed
    • North
    • South
  • Finno-Ugric
    • Ugric
      • Hungarian
      • Ob-Ugric
    • Finnic

and says this is accepted by 'practically all scholars' (p.68f.). The disputes surround the classification inside the Finnic group, and the status of Yukaghir. A. Marcantonio seems to be the exception to 'practically all', and she could be included as a dissenting voice in the 'history' section. Ruhlen hints more strongly, and more assertively than I have done, to the nationalist situation in Hungary, and I think you should really write an article about that, so that it can be linked from here: I hope this will manage to take some heat from this linguistic article. dab (ᛏ) 13:56, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have now even drawn a map, after Ruhlen, p.64, showing the distribution of Finnic, Uralic, Samoyed and Yukaghir. The areas were copied manually, though, and I hope I don not step on anyone's Ugric, Finnic, Samoyed or Yukaghir toes if they are not exactly accurate. dab (ᛏ) 14:33, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Great work Dab! I haven't been around Wikipedia much lately, and it's great to see articles I haven't looked at in a couple of weeks substantially improved. - Mustafaa 02:31, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] disputes

I reviewed the disputes, and merged them with 'criticism'. I am not sure about Volgaic: We are saying that the term is obsolete, but there seem to be real disputes about it. At least, as of 1987, Ruhlen gives a series of different suggestions. Maybe the 'obsolete' should be toned down. Anyway, 'disputes' is now a subsection of 'classification', intended to contain ongoing disputes (as opposed to historical ones, which go to the 'History' section. Marcantonio is also disputing FU classification, by contesting the family even exists, and appears also under 'disputes'. I am still open towards an inclusion of Maracz, somewhere. Maybe we should link him from the 'other superfamilies' sentence? Although I am not sure he positively suggests 'Ugro-Sumerian'. dab (ᛏ) 18:02, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Map

Thanks for making the map, Dbachmann. It's always nice to have an illustration. The problem is, I can't make heads or tails of it. Is it supposed to be southeast Asia? Is that Japan off the right side? I'm deeply confused. Dbenbenn 20:10, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Euroasia, with Western Europe quite marginalized — a perspective Russians often are quite used to, but that sometimes confuse people from the West who are used to putting Germany, Britain or USA in the center. :-) This projection is the best possible in this case. /Tuomas 16:05, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Or possibly the light is land, and that's northern Russia? Dbenbenn 20:13, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

um, yes, the brown bit is land, and the blue bit is ocean. and the coloured areas are the distribution of the languages, as by the legend.

I had been happy with "Finno-Permic" in the legend. Finnic is to my knowledge (mostly?) used in much more restricted meanings. /Tuomas 16:05, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It is true by the way that the Samoyedic disputes belong on Uralic languages. That should probably be sorted out. I just couldn't be bothered to draw more than one map, one for FU, one for Uralic, one for Uralo-Yukaghir etc., so I have to say somehow that more languages are marked on the map than are actually discussed in this article. Also, the 'History' section should of course explain how the different theories tie together. dab (ᛏ) 21:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I just got home, and now the blue bit indeed looks like water. At work, though, the water looked dark-brown, not blue, and the land looked light-brown. I wasn't just hallucinating, I swear! Did you consider modifying Image:Rs-map.png, which has labels and includes the modern context? Would you mind if I tweaked the colors of your map? Dbenbenn 00:55, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

well, I am afraid Rs-map.png does not extend to Hungary. Before you tweak the colours, let me make another update (I have the layered orignal here, it will by much more difficult to make edits to the png. What colours would you like? I went as far as to pick the dark green of the Hungarian flag for Ugric, and light blue from the Finnish flag for Finnic, to be sure not to offend anyone by the choice of colours!) dab (ᛏ) 10:45, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have added some labels (Finland, Hungary, Ural, Siberia) to make it easier to read. dab (ᛏ) 11:04, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Alright, the labels help a lot. Thanks! Dbenbenn 23:24, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Can you redo the map without Yukaghir? It's not a Finno-Ugric (or even Uralic) language group. Mk270 21:33, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I know, nobody said it was. It's just a map I copied from Ruhlen, showing the distribution of FInnic, Ugric, Samoyedic and Yukaghir, and it is used on all these articles. If you can be bothered, you could create a Finnic, an Ugric, a Samoyedic, a Yukaghir, a Finno-Ugric, an Uralic and an Uralo-Yukahgir version of it (you'd still have to say that they are derived from Ruhlen's book, though), but I thought making one map was tedious enough. Or maybe the caption could be amended, drawing attention to Finnic and Ugric in poarticular, for this article? dab (ᛏ) 22:40, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah Ok I understand. What's the best software for fixing the map? I'd like to have a go myself.

(I think including Yukaghir along with the others is liable to confuse people). Mk270 01:25, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

try the GIMP. I can send you the layered original, if you like. Note, however, that if you drop Yukaghir, you'd want to choose a different area, and again different for Finno-Ugric (no need showing all of Siberia if you only want to map Finnic and Ugric). What you could do is just fiddle with the colours, so that related languages have similar colours (although I conciously avoided that, because I did not want the map to be accused of being suggestive of one 'theory'. although it still is, and maybe there is no way to win this). I don't know how widely accepted the Ural-Yukaghir theory is. Ruhlen presents it as disputed, but as majority opinion. If you remove Yukaghir, I fear you create a precedent, and since Uralic is also disputed, people will ask to remove Samoyedic too, which is strictly speaking inappropriate for this article. I honestly don't know which is the best presentation, but I do think it is helpful to see the distribution of these groups. dab (ᛏ) 09:05, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"Finnic" should be replaced by "Finno-Permic". The Yukaghir languages do not belong to the Uralic languages, but if it were possible to show that the Uralic languages are a part of a bigger language family, the Yukaghir languages might be another branch of it. The Samoyedic languages belong evidently to the Uralic language family, although the relation is quite distant to the Finno-Ugric languages. --Hippophaë 03:16, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ok, I want to make sure we are clear that we are in full factual agreement. This is a question of terminology, layout and presentation, and not of content. Yes, Uralo-Yukaghir is a shaky theory, nothing more. The book I took the map from just happened to treat them together, without making any claims beyond that. I would make another map, just for Finno-Ugric, but this map would have to be more detailed than just showing "Here is Finno-Permic. Here is Ugric", i.e. I need a source to do a decent FU map. As for Finnic vs. Finno-Permic, I know. Sometimes Finno-Permic and Finnic are used synonymously (cf. Finno-Ugric vs. *Ugro-Finno-Permic). I just copied the map's legend as it was, there is no claim in this that would conflict with the listing on this article. You may argue that since the map is not about FU specifically, we should remove it from this article. But I still think this map is better than no map, because it illustrates the geographical features discussed in the article. dab (ᛏ) 09:03, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As a non-linguist (although student of a language :-) I could maybe add that I find it informative to include neighboring non-IE languages. The only important thing would be to stress in the legend which languages are considered Finno-Ugric and not. /Tuomas 09:13, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I hope I have made the caption unambiguous now. I am afraid that people who want to know about FU will have no choice but to read the article, in spite of there being a map. dab (ᛏ) 09:51, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this point is worth arguing much further, though I'd be interested in trying my hand with the GIMP if you're still prepared to slip me layers. Mk270 11:42, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

try http://flaez.ch/scratch/uralic.xcf (released under GFDL). I will remove the file once you confirm you downloaded it. dab (ᛏ) 12:32, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've got it now - cheers! Mk270 01:01, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here's a new map, drawn using several sources, which depicts the approximate geographical distribution of Finno-Ugric languages only. Please note that the "old" map (depicting also the Samoyedic and Yukaghir languages) can still be found in the article about Uralic languages (where, as far as Samoyedic languages are concerned, it fits more appropriately anyway). Cheers, --3 Löwi 14:52, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Map from Encyclopædia Britannica

The new map seems to be copied from Encyclopædia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109786. --Hippophaë 14:59, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

the map is exceedingly cool -- and no, the Britannica one doesn't look identical at all; I suppose it just descends from a common source (what is IMIU?) dab (ᛏ) 22:07, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Antifinnugor's RFAr

See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Antifinnugor.

Article editing ban

1.1) For significant disruption relating to the articles Finno-Ugric languages and Uralic languages, Antifinnugor is banned from editing these or related articles for one year. Antifinnugor may edit the related talk pages and is encouraged to work with other editors regarding article content. Other editors may add content and make changes suggested by Antifinnugor at their discretion.

Passed 7-0.

Personal attack parole

4.1) Antifinnugor is placed on standard personal attack parole for one year: if Antifinnugor makes an edit which is judged by an administrator to be a personal attack, he may be temporarily banned for up to a week by that administrator and the parole timer shall be reset.

Passed 6-2.

Good behaviour

5) If Antifinnugor can demonstrate better editing habits free of personal attacks three months from now, he may apply to have the above restrictions reduced or removed.

Passed 8-0.

Enforcement

1) If Antifinnugor, under whatever username, attempts to edit Finno-Ugric languages or Uralic languages, he may be banned for up to twenty-four hours.

Passed 6-2.

dab (ᛏ) 12:54, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Possible origins

Those Hungarian enyém 'mine', tiéd 'yours' sound eerily familiar. Writing them in Finnish orthography, they become "änjääm", "tieed". In Finnish, "oma" means "my own", and "teidän" is "yours".

I would like to hear more on this subject. --Hippophaë 00:38, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Over (several) beers with Finnish friends we found over a dozen, e.g. water (Víz/Vissa), to go (menni/menni), hand (kéz/kessi) (pardon my mis-spellings) and other basic words, forgotten right before being drunk right under the table...:-) There are certainly many, perhaps others could add some more. Istvan 03:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Odd gloss

The part that says "Estonian mu koer 'my dog' (literally 'I-gen. dog')" looks really odd to a linguist, since it implies that 'my' isn't I-gen when it quite clearly is. "My" is a perfectly good translation of Estonian "mu" and both of them are the genetive first person singular pronoun.

"My" is a separate possessive pronoun, not a pronoun in the genitive. If it was, it'd be "I's". "My" is a good translation of "mu", but an insufficient representation. --Vuo 22:14, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pardon? Just because English has a rule for forming genitives from arbitrary nouns (adding 's) doesn't mean that something which is isn't formed with this rule isn't a genitive. The words "my" and "mine" can certainly be described as English genitives, just as "min" was the genitive form of the Old English first-person singular pronoun "ic", and "mein" is the genitive of the German first-person singular pronoun "ich". --Saforrest 23:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

The word my is a pronoun in the genitive case while mine is a possesive pronoun. Yes, confusing, but the functions are separate.

• That dog is mine.
• That is my dog.

--Stacey Doljack Borsody 21:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Linguist migration theory to recycle bin?

I added Kalevi Wiik's conclusions from his recent book. In my opinion with genetic studies data he bases on his assumptions, he devastates classical linguist theory. Unless he messed with the data or omited part of it in favour of his ideas I do not see how classical linguist theory can stand much longer. Still, the frasing of my addition is not certain. One could expect more data to come from the studies on the genetic material.--Bete 12:08, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the recent note, Rob117. Wiik's more radical hypotheses about language-shifts aside, a couple of quick observations. Firstly, and nothing to do with linguistics, during the last ice age, the area in and around the Ural mountains was covered with, guess what..., ice, and could not have been an Urheimat for anybody. People had to come to the Urals area and to the whole northern Europe from somewhere else. Secondly, the migration of early Finnic-speakers from Urals (and/or central Russia) westward is only suggested in linguistics-based hypotheses. There is no archaeological evidence to indicate that the peoples of the Comb Ceramic (or any earlier) culture migrated from east to west to the Balto-Scandian region. Cheers, --3 Löwi 13:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiik's theory is totally unscientific. Firstly, linguists are not claiming that people came from Volga - only the language came from there. The concept of language shift is present in the traditional view as well as in Wiik's view. Secondly, archaeological or genetic continuity cannot prove anything about the linguistic continuity. Thirdly, Wiik ignores all the best-argumented linguistic results: nowadays we know a lot about the languages in pre-Indo-European Europe, and those languages have no similarity to Uralic languages in any level. Here is my article, translated from Finnish: [1]. --Jaakko Häkkinen 23:34, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Really? What do we know about the languages of pre-Indo-European Europe? Apart from some placenames, Basque, and questionable proposals of linguistic substrates, I don't think much is really known on this subject. --Saforrest 23:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I second Jaakko's opinion. Wiik is an amateur in this particular field (although a great expert on phonemes) and almost all experts have debunked his theory. I attended one such session, and it was outright embarrassing. I have also spoken to Wiik in person once, and asked him about his theory. He explained that genetical evidence points towards a certain people arriving from Ukraine after the Ice Age and that he thought there was a possibility this people could have been Proto-Finns. I asked him if it weren't possible, taking that kind of reasoning, that they could have been any people at all. He agreed that it was. So as Jaakko points out, there is no scientific evidence to support Wiik's theories, no matter how interesting they might sound.

[edit] Suoczil

There appears to be a Finno-Ugric language or dialect that calls itself "Suoczil". What is its name in English? Is there a language code for it? —Stephen 15:55, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

False alarm, mystery solved. It’s just another conlang...number of speakers: 1. —Stephen 09:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disputes/Marcantonio

I amended the dispute section as I felt the original criticism of Angela Markantonio's work was more personal than academic. Questioning similar to Marcantonio's of the existence of a 'primordial', base language from which other languages in the language family stem from, have taken place in regards to many other language families. Thus while new in regards to Finno-Ugric languages, Dr Marcantonio's work is not quite as "new" as it seems. In general, Marcantonio's book is interesting, well-written and has caused quite a stir in a field that has been quite stagnant, and as such it should be given the respect it deserves and not categorised as just a crazy, fringe theory just because you (or I) may disagree with her. Zoe12345 21:43, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Sad but true: Marcantonio has no clue about historical linguistics. She has misunderstood just about everything - see my short text with further references (uralists reviewing her book): [2]. --Jaakko Häkkinen 23:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title of article

Isn't Finno-Ugrian the proper term for this admittedly fascinating topic? 195.188.183.124 13:50, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Both Finno-Ugric and Finno-Ugrian are used, and the former seems to be more common. Finno-Ugrian languages redirects here, and I don't see any reason to change this.--AAikio 14:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origins

I shortened the discussion on genetics and Kalevi Wiik's theory in the Origins section. Much of it was irrelevant, and there were also misleading parts. Genetics is not a method for studying prehistoric languages any more than linguistics is a method for studying genetics. Hence, the following kind of statements are just misleading because they confuse genetic and linguistic origins:

• "Thus, the Finno-Ugric languages and their modern speakers do not originate in the area near the Ural mountains, but rather likely were one of the three indigenous European ethnic groups, which together provided about 80% of modern European genetic material."

Languages do not necessarily have the same origin as the genes of their speakers. Because this article is about Finno-Ugric languages and not about the genetics of the Finno-Ugric peoples, I think it should be primarily based on what linguistics has to say about the subject. One wouldn't want to insert linguistic speculations to articles about human genetics either. --AAikio 09:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Celtic substratum?

This article containts the text "Conversely, there have been suggestions that the Germanic languages evolved from an Indo-European language such as Celtic imposed on a Finnic substrate, but no satisfactory proof yet exists." Well, thanks for saying that no satisfactory proof exists, that is an understatement if there ever was one. I've never heard one single linguist propose this idea. Unless somebody objects, I'm removing that sentence.

See Germanic substrate hypothesis. -- Petri Krohn 00:31, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I already deleted this. There are hundreds of fringe and crank theories of language origins, and in general they should not be referred to in linguistic articles if there is no special reason for this - especially if no reference is provided. Note that the Germanic substrate hypothesis does not claim that the "Germanic languages evolved from an Indo-European language such as Celtic [!] imposed on a Finnic [!] substrate". --AAikio 07:00, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

yes, the "such as Celtic" part is nonsense, and the whole 'substrate hypothesis' is little more than hand-waving in the first place. dab (ᛏ) 07:26, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vepses not in use in English

If you're an expert, please look at Talk:Vepses. Thanks, Espoo 07:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Magyars, Khanty, and Mansi

What is the most commonly accepted date that of the Magyars breaking off from the Khanty and Mansi tribes? Obviously they were all one tribe at some point (the Ugric tribe). Before the Magyars arrived at the Carpathian Basin with Arpad in 896, it is believed they were wondering around for a few hundred years between the Volga River and Ural Mountains.

If I recall it is something like 3,000 years ago for Ugric and 5-6,000 for Uralic. Remember though we're talking about language descent, not people. There is not a good scientific method currently that can tie current-day speakers of a language to the same people who spoke a "proto" version of the language. So it would be a weak practice to say with absolutes that Arpad in 896 and the Proto-Ugric speakers 2,000 years earlier were all from one tribe. --Stacey Doljack Borsody 16:47, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Considering the Khanty and Mansi are located in the middle of Russia and the Magyars are all the way in Hungary and the 3 of them being the only members of the Ugric family, I think it's safe to say the Magyars, and just the Magyars broke off from the Khanty-Mansi tribe. Is there or was there any other languages in the Ugric family besides Khanty, Mansi, and Magyar that are now extinct?

[edit] Pronunciation?

A quick hint on pronunciation would be welcome in the intro. Is it Uh-gric? Oo-gric? Yoo-gric? --Reuben 04:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's pronounced "oog-reek".

According to m-w, it's Oo-gric (or alternatively Yoo-gric). If anybody knows how to write that up in IPA, it would be useful in the intro. --Reuben 00:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Kalevala and Finno-Ugric people

Does anybody think the characters in the Kalevala (if it in fact is historically accurate) could be the ancestors of all Finno-Ugric peoples? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 168.103.81.226 (talk) 15:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

I hope this was a joke... --AAikio 16:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)