English Finnish Electronic Translator
芬兰语
Finno-Ugric (IPA: [ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːgɹɪk]) is a grouping of languages in the Uralic language family, comprising Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and related languages. It comprises the Finno-Permic and Ugric language families.
The term Finno-Ugric is somewhat controversial today, with many historical linguists feeling that the Finno-Permic languages are as distinct from the Ugric languages as they are from the Samoyedic languages spoken in Siberia. Thus it is felt that the early Finno-Permic and Ugric groups may have diffused from proto-Uralic at the same time as proto-Samoyedic. It was earlier thought that the Finno-Ugric had separated first, and the branching into Ugric and Finno-Permic took place later, but this does not have strong support in the linguistic data. However, some proponents of the Finno-Ugric grouping have provided extra-linguistic arguments by marshalling archaeological evidence of separate Finno-Ugric peoples originally living across a large swath of Northern Europe.
The fact that the Finno-Ugric languages, unlike most of the other languages spoken in Europe, are not part of the Indo-European family, gave some initial impetus to the Finno-Ugric grouping. Indeed, in the past, and occasionally today as well, the term Finno-Ugric was used for the entire Uralic language family.
