Finnic languages

This article is about the Baltic Finnic languages. For other uses, see Finnic languages (disambiguation).
Finnic
Fennic
Baltic Finnic
Ethnicity: Baltic Finns
Geographic
distribution:
Northern Fennoscandia, Baltic states, Northwestern Russia
Linguistic classification:

Uralic

  • Finnic
Proto-language: Proto-Finnic
Subdivisions:
Glottolog: finn1317[1]
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The Finnic (Fennic) or Baltic Finnic (Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic) languages[nb 1] are a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people.

Traditionally eight Finnic languages have been recognized.[7] The major modern representatives of the family are Finnish and Estonian, the official languages of their respective nation states.[8] The other Finnic languages in the Baltic Sea region are Ingrian and Votic, spoken in Ingria by the Gulf of Finland; and Livonian, once spoken around Gulf of Riga. Spoken farther northeast are Karelian, Ludian and Veps, in the region of Lakes Onega and Ladoga. In addition, since the 1990s, several Finnic-speaking minority groups have emerged to seek of recognition as distinct languages, and have established separate literary standard languages.[7] Northern Karelian, Tver Karelian and Livvi represent the three main dialect groups of Karelian, which earlier had been an unwritten language. Võro and Seto (modern descendants of historical South Estonian) are spoken in southeastern Estonia, and have been earlier considered dialects of Estonian. Meänkieli and Kven are spoken in northern Sweden and Norway, and have the legal status of independent languages. They have been earlier considered dialects of Finnish, and remain mutually intelligible with Finnish.

The smaller languages are endangered. The last native speaker of Livonian died in 2013, and only about a dozen native speakers of Votic remain. Regardless, even for these languages, the shaping of a standard language and education in it continues.[9]

The geographic centre of the maximum divergence between the languages is located south of the Gulf of Finland.

Classification

Main article: Finno-Samic languages

The Finnic languages are located at the western end of the Uralic language family. A close affinity to their northern neighbors, the Samic languages has for long been assumed, though many of the similarities (particularly lexical ones) can be shown to result from common influence from the Germanic and, to a lesser extent, the Baltic languages. Innovations are also found between Finnic and the Mordvinic languages, and in recent times these three groups are frequently considered together.

General characteristics

There is no grammatical gender in Finnic languages, nor are there articles nor definite or indefinite forms.[10]

The morphophonology (the way the grammatical function of a morpheme affects its production) is complex. One of the more important processes is the characteristic consonant gradation. Two kinds of gradation occur: the radical and suffix gradation, which affect the plosives /k/, /t/ and /p/.[10] This is a lenition process, where the consonant is changed into a "weaker" form with some (but not all) oblique cases. For geminates, the process is simple to describe: they become simple stops, e.g. kuppi + -nkupin (Finnish: "cup"). For simple consonants, the process complicates immensely and the results vary by the environment. For example, haka +-nhaan, kyky + -nkyvyn, järki + -njärjen (Finnish: "pasture", "ability", "intellect"). (See the separate article for more details.) Vowel harmony (lost in Livonian, generally also in Estonian and Veps) is also an important process. Historically, the "erosion" of word-final sounds (strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian) may leave a phonemic status to the morphophonological variations caused by the agglutination of the lost suffixes, which results in three phonemic lengths in these languages.

The original Uralic palatalization was lost in proto-Finnic,[11] but most of the diverging dialects reacquired it. Palatalization is a part of the Estonian literary language and is an essential feature in Võro, as well as Veps, Karelian, and other eastern Finnic languages. It is also found in East Finnish dialects, and is only missing from West Finnish dialects and Standard Finnish.[10]

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.[10]

There are 14 noun cases in Estonian and 15 in Finnish, which are denoted by adding a suffix.

Subgrouping

The Finnic languages form a complex dialect continuum with few clear-cut boundaries. Innovations have often spread through a variety of areas, even after variety-specific changes. Scholars differ to some extent on the classification of the different Finnic languages.

The following grouping of the living Finnic languages follows Sammallahti (1977),.[12]

Viitso (1998) gives the same languages, but builds on Itkonen (1980) to further group them into four groups based on northern-southern and western-eastern distinction.

Viitso (2000)[13] surveys 59 isoglosses separating the family into 58 dialect areas (finer division is possible), finding that an unambiguous perimeter can be set up only for South Estonian, Livonian, Votic, and Veps. In particular, no isogloss exactly coincides with the geographical division into 'Estonian' south of the Bay of Finland and 'Finnish' north of it. Despite this, standard Finnish and Estonian are not mutually intelligible.

Salminen (2003) present the following list of Finnic languages and their respective number of speakers.

Language Number of speakers Geographical area
Livonian Extinct as first language Latvia
Võro-Seto 50.000 Estonia, Russia
Estonian 1.000.000 Mainly Estonia
Votic 20 Russia
Finnish 5.000.000 Mainly Finland
Ingrian 200 Russia
Karelian 30.000 Finland, Russia
Livvi 25.000 Finland, Russia
Veps 5.000 Russia

List of Finnic innovations

These features distinguish Finnic languages from other Uralic families:

Sound changes[11][14]

Superstrate influence of the neighboring Indo-European language groups (Baltic and Germanic) has been proposed as an explanation for a majority of these changes, though for most of the phonetical details the case is not particularly strong.[15]

Grammatical changes

See also

Notes

  1. Outside Finland, the term Finnic languages has traditionally been used as a synonym of the extensive group of Finno-Permic languages, including the Baltic Finnic, Volga Finnic, Permic and Saami languages.[2][3] At the same time, Finnish scholars have restricted it to the Baltic Finnic languages;[4] the survey volume The Uralic Languages uses the Latinate spelling Fennic to distinguish this Baltic Finnic (Balto-Fennic) use from the broader Western sense of the word.[5] In 2009, the 16th edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the World abandoned the Finno-Permic clade altogether and adopted the nomenclature of Finnish scholars.[6]

References

  1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Finnic". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. "The languages of Europe". Encyclopedia of European peoples, Volume 1. Infobase Publishing. 2006. p. 888.
  3. Ruhlen, Merritt (1991). "Uralic-Yukaghir". A Guide to the World's Languages: Classification. Stanford University Press. p. 69. ISBN 0-8047-1894-6.
  4. The Finnic languages by Johanna Laakso in The Circum-Baltic languages: typology and contact, p. 180
  5. Daniel Abondolo, ed. (1998). The Uralic Languages. Routledge Language Family Descriptions. Taylor & Francis.
  6. "Language Family Trees, Uralic, Finnic". Ethnologue. Retrieved 28 May 2011.
  7. 1 2 Junttila, Santeri (2010). "Itämerensuomen seuraava etymologinen sanakirja" (PDF). In Saarinen, Sirkka; Siitonen, Kirsti; Vaittinen, Tanja. Sanoista kirjakieliin. Juhlakirja Kaisa Häkkiselle 17. marraskuuta 2010. Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran Toimituksia 259. ISSN 0355-0230.
  8. Finnic Peoples at Encyclopædia Britannica
  9. Pajusalu, Karl (2009). "The reforming of the Southern Finnic language area" (pdf). Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 258: 95–107. ISSN 0355-0230. Retrieved 2015-03-03.
  10. 1 2 3 4 The Uralic Languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences By Denis Sinor ISBN 90-04-07741-3
  11. 1 2 Kallio, Petri (2007). "Kantasuomen konsonanttihistoriaa" (PDF). Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne (in Finnish) 253: 229–250. ISSN 0355-0230. Retrieved 2009-05-28.
  12. Sammallahti, Pekka (1977), "Suomalaisten esihistorian kysymyksiä" (PDF), Virittäjä: 119–136, retrieved 2015-03-25
  13. Viitso, Tiit-Rein: Finnic Affinity. Congressus Nonus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum I: Orationes plenariae & Orationes publicae. (Tartu 2000)
  14. Posti, Lauri (1953): From Pre-Finnic to Late Proto-Finnic. In: Finnische-Ugrische Forschungen vol. 31
  15. Kallio, Petri (2000): Posti's Superstrate Theory at the Threshold of a New Millennium. In: J. Laakso (ed.), Facing Finnic: Some Challenges to Historical and Contact Lin- guistics. Castrenianumin toimitteita 59.

Further reading

External links

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