Baltic-Finnic languages

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Approximate geographical distribution of areas where indigenous Finno-Ugric languages, including Baltic-Finnic languages, are spoken. Diagonal patterns indicate sparsely populated areas. Dotted lines mark boundaries of corresponding subnational administrative units.

Baltic-Finnic languages, also known as Finnic languages, are a subgroup of the Finno-Ugric languages, and are spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people.

Finnish and Estonian are the official languages of their respective nation states. The other Finnic languages are Ingrian, Karelian, Ludic, Veps, Votic, South Estonian (including Võro) and Livonian.

Meänkieli in northern Sweden and Kven are Finnish dialects that the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway consider as independent languages. They have a legal status of independent languages. They are mutually intelligible with Finnish.

Some Finnic regional or minority languages, such as South Estonian, are still without national recognition but have rather serious revitalization movements and state institutions (in the case of South Estonian, the Võro Institute). On the other hand, several other Finnic languages are nearly extinct and in all probability beyond revitalization, especially Votic and Livonian.

The Finnic languages are relatively closely related, and their common origin is obvious even to non-linguists due to their striking similarity. However, despite the similarities there is little or no mutual intelligibility between the languages.

Sami languages do not belong to the Baltic-Finnic group; they form a branch of Finno-Ugric of their own and are only remotely related to Baltic-Finnic. There is a traditional idea that a separate "Finno-Lappic" i.e. "Finno-Saamic" language group exists within Uralic languages, but the evidence is not convincing (see Salminen). Also, traditionally, the proto-language is divided into two phases: Early Proto-Finnic (Finnish varhaiskantasuomi), ancestor of Finno-Saamic, and Late Proto-Finnic, ancestor of Baltic-Finnic. However, there has been extensive contact between the Sami and Baltic-Finnic languages, so there are, for instance, many Finnish loanwords in Sami and vice versa.

The Finno-Ugric group is itself part of the Uralic language group. Thus the Baltic-Finnic languages are, unlike most languages spoken in Europe, not part of the Indo-European language family. Major languages in the part of Europe surrounding the area of the Baltic-Finnic languages, are from the Baltic, Slavic or Germanic subgroups of the Indo-European family, and very importantly in terms of historical linguistics, the Sami languages.

Baltic-Finnic languages are most closely related to the Sami languages, and rather distinct from the rest of Finno-Ugric languages, but form a tighter group together. The putative proto-language with Sami is dated to 1500-1000 BC. Baltic-Finnic is developed from three dialects of Late Proto-Finnic, namely Western (West Finnish), Southern (Estonian) and Eastern (East Finnish, Karelian). The Estonian-Finnish split was approximately 2000 years ago at the turn of the first millennium.

Baltic-Finnic languages share some obviously noticeable features. The consonant sets are rather simple, featuring no voicing contrast, and almost all are alveolar consonants. However, there are two chronemes, which are phonemic: short, half-long geminate and over-long geminate consonants distinguish meanings and thus are different phonemes. The same goes with vowels; short, half-long and over-long vowels distinguish meanings. The meaning-distinguishing effect is the strongest in Estonian, where all three lengths are fully phonemic; other languages distinguish only two lengths, where half-long is an allophone of short. There is a large number of vocalic phonemes with strong contrasts between them and complex diphthong systems. For example, Estonian has nine monophthongs [aeiouyæøɤ] in three different lengths, and 26 diphthongs, each a distinct phoneme. The modern Baltic-Finnic diphthongs are an exclusively Baltic-Finnic innovation.

The morphophonology (how the grammatical function of a morpheme affects its production) is complex. One important morphophonological process is vowel harmony, another consonant gradation. This is a lenition process, where a word-final stop is changed into a "weaker" form with some (but not all) oblique cases. For geminates, the process is simple to describe: geminates become simple stops, e.g. kuppia → kupin. For simple consonants, the process complicates immensely, since the stops would become voiced fricatives, but there are no such fricatives, and some other consonant is selected instead, according to the phonetic environment. For example, haka → haan, kyky → kyvyn, järki → järjen (Finnish). Another important process, strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian, is the "erosion" of word-final sounds. This may leave a phonemic status to the morphophonological variations caused by the agglutination of the lost suffixes, which is the source of the third length level in these languages.

In grammar, Baltic-Finnic languages follow the pattern of Uralic languages. There are a large number of grammatical cases, which are generally speaking denoted by adding a suffix. In some languages and contexts, the suffix may be deleted, but leave its mark on the parent word. For example, in Estonian, the genitive case may be distinguished from the nominative only by preventing the elision of the word-final vowel, as in linn ← *linna "city", vs. linna ← *linnan "of the city". The dual number is lost, in contrast to Sami. A Baltic-Finnic innovation in grammar is the agreement between the main noun and its attributes, e.g. suure·ssa talo·ssa "in a big house" has the suffix -ssa "in" on both the attribute suuri and the main noun talo.

With the Sami languages Baltic-Finnic languages share consonant gradation and the three-way consonant length contrast. Relative to Proto-Uralic, both have developed noninitial labial vowels and lost the labial glide preceding initial labial vowels. These features can be caused by a common ancestry, areal influence, or coincidence.

Palatalization was lost be proto-Finnic, but dialects reacquired it, probably from Slavic. Standard or Western Finnish, however, did not. Therefore, it is found in East Finnish and Estonian, and their descendants, but not in originally West Finnish dialects. For more features, see Finno-Ugric languages.

The Urheimat of Baltic-Finnic speaking peoples is believed to be somewhere in the region of what is now Estonia, and consequently, the most central, integrated and oldest loans are from the Baltic languages, (proto-)Lithuanian and (proto-)Latvian. German and Russian are also the origin of some loans, added with other Germanic, such as Gothic or later Swedish, loans. There is little overt Russian influence in most languages, except in smaller languages, such as Karelian, which have come under the influence of the Soviet Union and violent, even genocidal Russification. In fact, the Karelian culture was known as the "purest source of Finnishness", and was the source for the Finnish national epic Kalevala during the period of rising nationalism in Finland, because the remote parts of Karelia hadn't been influenced by Swedish and Russian cultures.

[edit] See also

• Birch bark letter no. 292

[edit] External link

• Tapani Salminen. Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies.

[1] Swadesh list for Baltic-Finnic languages