Talk:Uralic languages

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/archive1, 13:25, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC). If you wish to continue an archived conversation, feel free to copy it back here. Dbenbenn

Contents

[edit] Classification of Finnish "languages"

The classification of the Finnish "languages" is not correct, because it is rather political than linguistical. Meänkieli and Kven Finnish are North Finnish dialects that are spoken in Sweden and Norway, whereas Ingrian Finnish is a southeastern dialect spoken in Ingria (Ingermanland).

I would better say

--Hippophaë 14:11, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Shifted cells in cognates table

I think the cells in the cognates table have shifted:

  • láb means leg in Hungarian
  • gyalog means on foot (as in 'go on foot') in Hungarian

I don't know where the 'laamp(a) (Selkup)' cell should be shifted, though. Could someone please correct this? Nyenyec 06:15, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This anonymous edit added a new Võro column, and forgot to shift the cells in the second "leg" row. Fixed. Dbenbenn 08:44, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Looks like someone got happy with the cells again. I got rid of the random Selkup language box someone stuck under the Hungarian column and put "láb" and "gyalog" into the same box as both are Hungarian and pertain to the "leg" row. Deleted the extra empty "leg" row. JFHJr (㊟) 18:55, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Palatalization

Why palatalization was removed from the list of common features? --Hippophaë 22:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

it was my belief that palatalisation was not a common feature of these languages! Mk270 00:36, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
According to "The Uralic Languages" (edited by Daniel Abandolo), palatalization is a feature of every language discussed in the book. They include Erzya, Meadow Mari, Hill Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Khanty, Mansi, Hungarian, Nenets, Selkup, Nganasan, Kamassian, Livonian, Estonian, Finnish (eastern dialects), Votic, Veps, and Northern Sami. There was no information on some minor languages in the book, but it can be easily seen that palatalization is common in every branch of the Uralic language family. --Hippophaë 06:07, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I shall check that out. I'm only familiar with Finnish and Hungarian, and wasn't aware of palatalisation (as I understand it) in either of them. Mk270 10:23, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Needless to say, I was wrong. I've checked out the book and it turns out that the only Uralic languages I know about are the only ones lacking the feature I was asserting was not common to the group. A bit of an embarrassment :) Sorry. Mk270 17:24, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Temporary injunction on Antifinnugor

1) Pending a final decision on this manner, Antifinnugor is prohibited from editing Finno-Ugric languages and Uralic languages or on these subjects.

Passed 6-0 at 19:07, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

-- See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Antifinnugor mav 19:07, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Cases in Hungarian (again)

There was a long discussion regarding cases in Hungarian on this talk page (see archive). I think I got closer to the root of the problem (misunderstanding). Please see: Talk:Hungarian language#Cases in Hungarian. I also tried to include a paragraph on this in Hungarian_language#Nouns. I'd like to ask linguists to review and correct it. Thanks. nyenyec ☎ 17:34, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

A case is an inflectional form of a noun, adjective, pronoun, numeral, infinitive, participle, and adverb. This definition does not take a stance on the way, how the case is formed. There are many methods, e.g. using suffixes or prefixes, changing the stem, and inflecting the article. --Hippophaë 22:53, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tooth

Someone replaced "pii" with "hammas" as the Finnish cognate for "tooth". This is obviously not cognate to the rest, but does "pii" have some special semantics we should know about? - Mustafaa 02:51, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Pii" has various meanings in Finnish and the other Baltic-Finnic langauges, and it is used both in the anatomy and agriculture. It may be a tooth of many tools, e.g. comb, rake, harrow, and saw. It also means the vertebrae of a spine (selkäpii). "Pii" lost its meaning as a "tooth" with which one can bite, after the word "hammas" was borrowed from the Indo-European languages (Latvian zobs, Lithuanian žam̃bas, žam̃bis, Church Slavonic zǫbŭ). --Hippophaë 17:54, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Note: Proto-Uralic

I've written an article about Proto-Uralic, but as I am not a linguist, it'd be nice to have an expert to check the facts, as I noticed that the texts were from different years and disagreed on many points. --Vuo 16:58, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Russian palatalization

"It [the palatalization in the Uralic languages] is different from Russian "palatalization" or "iotation", which means prefixing [ɪ]."

What does this mean? I notice no difference in the palatalization between Russian and the Baltic-Finnic languages for example. --Hippophaë 15:11, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Iotation is prefixing [I]. --Vuo 13:21, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
But what is the difference in pronunciation of palatalized consonants in those languages? --Hippophaë 19:09, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
In Russian, 'sh' and 'tsh' are called "palatal" or even "palatalized"(!). This is seen as a diachronic process. In Uralic languages, palatalization (liudentuminen) means only the standard synchronic phonetic palatalization. Affrication or postalveolar frication is seen as a completely different phonemic feature. This is like /æ/ is sometimes called "short A" and /script-a/ is called a "long A" in English, while these are different phonemes in Finnish. Applying the term "short A" on Finnish 'Ä' is just like applying the ambiguous meaning of "palatalization" on Uralic languages. --Vuo 20:40, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Just for the record, the sound you describe as script-a is usually called 'broad a' amongst those who consider it a species of A-sound (Americans, I believe, consider it a species of O-sound). The 'long A' in English is the vowel of name, day, and is usually a diphthong, something like /ei/ (ranging from [e(ː)] in parts of Scotland, Canada to [æi] in Australia). Short A is considered a different phoneme from both broad and long A, but for phonological and orthographical reasons, it is handy to have such words. —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 03:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

I'm not sure how to pronounce "Uralic;" can someone put an IPA transcription of the word in the summary? GoodSirJava 22:18, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that's a good idea. I added it for ya. --Glengordon01 10:17, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cognate details

My Finnish etymology dictionary (Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja, WSOY 2004, Kaisa Häkkinen) has slightly different original forms for most of the selected cognates. Mostly marked as Proto-Finno-Ugric, however. I'll put this up for comments before I change anything:

1) Longer and more specific roots

  • *śüδä-mɜ instead of *śüδɜm
  • *süle instead of sülɜ
  • *sōne instead of *suonɜ
  • *mene- instead of *min-
  • *käte instead of *kätɜ
  • *piŋe instead of *piŋ
  • *tule instead of *tulɜ

/ɜ/ marks "vowel of uncertain quality" in the UPA; so do I have newer information here or does the situation go fuzzy between PFU and PU? Also, original /uo/ in "vein" surely is wrong? /o:/ > /uo/ was a change that spread thru northern Finno-Samic during the first millenia AD.

2) Different harmony

  • *śilmä instead of *śilma
  • *iśä instead of *iśa

I suspect these are just typos in the article - the cognates presented are clearly front-harmonic. --Tropylium 21:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, the reconstructions were pretty messed up, so I made a quick fix. Now they're in line with the system in Pekka Sammallahti 1988, Historical Phonology of the Uralic Languages, which is the most up-to-date source. Häkkinen's dictionary merely mechanically copies its reconstructions from Uralisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, which is outdated anyway. Moreover, the selection of example words in the table could certainly be improved. E.g. the words for 'heart' and 'father' show major phonological irregularities and are hence not good examples of sound correspondences. Maybe I'll try to improve the table in this respect in the future. --AAikio 09:31, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I can only suspect that native Hungarian speakers are going to look at the cognate table and continue to add tűz without looking first at the history to see that it keeps getting removed. Perhaps some sort of note in the table itself would be in order? --Stacey Doljack Borsody 17:16, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] cognates: strange Erzya `to live'

Uralic languages#Selected cognates lists for Erzya Mordvin `to live':

il'e-

I don't know whether such stem really exists in Erzya (haven't checked a dictionary), but the common one is actually:

eŕa-, äŕa- (orthography: эрямс)

which is also listed in the etymology there.

So, I suspect there is an error in this cell. Could someone please check it and correct, if that's true.--Imz 01:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right, I removed the Mordvin form, as it doesn't exist. The verb meaning 'to live' in Mordvin is indeed (Erzya) eŕa-, (Moksha) äŕa-, but this can't be cognate because there is no change *l > r in Mordvin and the vowel does not match either. --AAikio 13:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and il'e- (according to that table) looks rather like a Mari stem, and ila-, which is listed as Mari, looks rather like a Selkup stem. (Heh, that's a pity that Selkup is missing in the table in the article.)--Imz 01:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Urheimat usage

This line could use some revision:

"The name "Uralic" refers to the location of the family’s suggested Urheimat (homeland), which is often placed in the vicinity of the Ural mountains."

It's the "... suggested Urheimat (homeland) ..." that bothers me - I find it incredibly ambiguous and clumsy. "Urheimat" in that sentence seems at first glance to be talking about the origin of the word "Uralic", and otherwise could refer to a word common to Uralic languages. The parenthetical doesn't help much with this. I'm puzzled as to how to fix the sentence, though, so I'm leaving it as is for now. Dextrose 07:46, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Urheimat is a widely-used term in linguistics and the addition of an English explanatory word ("homeland") between parentheses is already an excess of caution. Those not familiar with the term need only click on the link to find out all they need to know about its usage in the appropriate Wikipedia article. Despite the purely fortuitous coincidence of the initial Ur- in this word and in the Ural Mountains, there is absolutely no confusion here. Pasquale 16:33, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but you're wrong. I don't know how you can say "there is absolutely no confusion here" when I just told you it confused me. As basically an amateur in the field of linguistics, I was confused by it. Perhaps the article needs no deeper an explanation of the term Urheimat, but the syntax could, I'm sure, be better. Wikipedia is about clearly communicating ideas, not elitism. Dextrose 20:15, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm no linguist, and it actually took Pasquale's comment to see what you're confused about (that both begin with "ur-"). I think you could rearrange it like The name "Uralic" refers to the Ural mountains, into whose vicinity the family’s suggested Urheimat (homeland) is often placed but that wouldn't make it any clearer. --Vuo 09:42, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Very vague

The sound laws in the selected cognates are very vague. "s" appears and disappears. "l" appears and disappears. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.5.71 (talk) 10:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC) Finnish "k" is variously said to be equivalent to Hungarian "k", "h" and no consonant. No explanation is given. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.41.51.240 (talk) 10:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC) The type of vowel, back or front, is mentioned in another article. This does not explain "k" vanishing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.223.218 (talk) 13:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC) See Finnish Maksa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.223.218 (talk) 13:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)