Baltic-Finnic languages
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The Baltic-Finnic languages, spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people, are a branch of Finnic languages belonging to the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family. The Finnic division of the language groups includes: Baltic-Finnic languages, Volga-Finnic languages, Permic and Sami together with the Ugric division of Hungarian and the Ob-Ugric languages Mansi (Vogul) and Khanty (Ostyak) make the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family.[1]
The major modern representatives of Baltic-Finnic languages are Finnish and Estonian, the official languages of their respective nation states. [2]The other Finnic languages in the Baltic Sea region are Ingrian, Karelian, Ludic, Veps, Votic, spoken around the Gulf of Finland and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. The Seto language and Võro are spoken in south-eastern Estonia and Livonian in parts of Latvia.
The smaller languages are disappearing. In the 20th century both Livonian and Votic had fewer than 100 speakers left. Other groups of which there are records have long since disappeared.[2]
Meänkieli (in northern Sweden) and Kven (in northern Norway) are Finnish dialects that the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway have given a legal status of independent languages. They are mutually intelligible with Finnish.
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[edit] General Characteristics
- See also: Estonian grammar and Finnish grammar
There is no grammatical gender or articles nor definite or indefinite forms in Baltic-Finnic languages, only some female forms are used in professional names derived with a suffix. [3]
One of the characteristic features in the Baltic-Finnic languages is consonant gradation. Two kinds of gradation occur: the radical and suffix gradation with the plosives K, T and P. [3]
Palatalization belongs to the Estonian literary language and is essential feature in Võro, Veps, Karelian and other eastern Baltic-Finnic languages. The Finnish literary language is the only Baltic-Finnic language that doesn't have palatalization.[3] However, Baltic-Finnic palatalization is not of Uralic origin; rather, it is apparently reacquired from Slavic.[citation needed] This can be seen in that it is not an independent feature as in original Uralic, but dependent on the following vowel as in Slavic.[citation needed]
A special characteristic of the languages is the large number of diphthongs. There are 16 diphthongs in Finnish and 25 in Estonian; at the same time the frequency is greater in Finnish than in Estonian. [3]
There are 14 noun cases in Estonian and 15 in Finnish, which are denoted by adding a suffix.
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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 and Võro, 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.
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 (i.e. a distinct protolanguage giving rise to Proto-Baltic-Finnic and Proto-Sami), areal influence (Finnic peoples and Sami have coexistenced in the same areas), or coincidence.
Palatalization was lost in proto-Finnic, but dialects reacquired it, probably from Slavic. Standard or Western Finnish, however, did not. Therefore, it is found in East Finnish dialects and Estonian, and their descendants, but not originally in West Finnish dialects. Palatalization is stronger and more widespread in Võro, Veps, Karelian and other eastern Baltic-Finnic languages. 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[citation needed], and consequently, the most central, integrated and oldest loans are from the Baltic languages, (proto-)Lithuanian and (proto-)Latvian[citation needed]. German and Russian are also the origin of some loans, added with other Germanic, such as Gothic[citation needed] or later Swedish, loans. There is little overt Russian influence in most languages, except in smaller languages, such as Karelian, which has a long history of close contact with Russian.
[edit] References
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Tapani Salminen. Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies.
- Lexicon of Early Indo-European Loanwords in Finnish
- Swadesh list for Baltic-Finnic languages
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