Finno-Ugric languages - Finno-Ugric languages The Finno-Ugric languages are a subfamily of the Uralic languages. It consists of several languages, notably Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian. Contrary to most of the languages spoken in Europe, the Finno-Ugric languages are not part of the Indo-European family of languages. The ancestor of the modern Finno-Ugric languages, the so-called Proto Finno-Ugric was spoken about 5000 years ago on the western side of the Ural mountains. There is evidence that before the arrival of Slavonic tribes to their present territory in Russia, a sprinkling of Finno-Ugrians inhabited the whole territory from the Urals to the Baltic Sea. The Finno-Ugric subfamily of the Uralic languages has the following members: Finno-permic Finno-cheremisic Finno-mordvinic Finno-Lappic Baltic Finnic: Finnish Estonian Karelian Meänkieli Veps - In danger of extinction.
Indo-European languages - Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages include 150 languages spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. The hypothesis that this was so was first proposed by Sir William Jones, who noticed similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit and Persian. Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by Franz Bopp supported this theory. In the 19th century, scholars used to call the group "Indo-Germanic languages". However when it became apparent that the connection is relevant to most of Europe's languages, the name was expanded to Indo-European. An example of this was the strong similarity discovered between Sanskrit and olden spoken dialects of.
Uralic languages - Uralic languages The Uralic languages are a family of about 20 related languages spoken by circa 20 million people in eastern and northern Europe and in northwestern Asia. The best known members belong to the Finno-Ugric subfamily; the other subfamily is called Samoyedic. Merritt Ruhlen (A Guide to the World's Languages, Stanford UP, 1991) adds the Palaeosiberian language, Yukaghir as coordinate with Samoyedic and Finno-Ugric. There is some debate about a possible relationship between the family as a whole and the Altaic languages; a few scholars also consider the Uralic languages to be related to the Indo-European languages, see also Nostratic language. The most spoken members of the family are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Some characteristic features of these languages are: Extensive use of independent suffixes Large.
European languages - European languages Most of the many indigenous languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. The scope of this article also includes languages spoken outside of continental Europe that belong to European language families (such as Afrikaans). Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Basque 2 Caucasian languages 3 Constructed languages 4 Finno-Ugric languages 5 Indo-European languages 5.1 Albanian 5.2 Armenian 5.3 Baltic languages 5.4 Celtic languages 5.4.1 Brythonic 5.4.2 Goidelic (Gaelic) 5.5 Germanic languages 5.5.3 North Germanic languages 5.5.4 West Germanic languages 5.5.5 East Germanic languages 5.6 Indo-Aryan languages 5.7 Italic languages 5.7.6 Romance languages 5.8 Slavic languages 5.8.7 West Slavic languages 5.8.8 East Slavic languages 5.8.9 South Slavic languages 6 Others of note Basque The Basque language of the northern Iberian Peninsula is a language isolate,.
Common phrases in different languages - Common phrases in different languages Here is a list of common phrases in different languages. It is possible for tourists in a country whose language they do not understand to get along with a surprisingly short list of phrases, combined with pointing, miming, and writing down numbers on paper. You are invited to add more languages to the list. Please use the minimum number of words that would be understandable and put the pronunciation in slashes according to SAMPA transcription if possible. If desired, also add a pseudo-English pronunciation guide for those not familiar with SAMPA or IPA. However, actual pronunciations of the pseudo-English spellings will vary wildly from speaker to speaker. Enclose the "spelling guide" in parentheses, separate syllables with dashes, use English words that sound like the.
Samoyedic languages - Samoyedic languages The Samoyedic languages are spoken on both sides of the Ural mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by perhaps 30,000 speakers altogether. There are four extant languages, viz. Nenets, Enets and Qanasan, all mutually intelligible, and the more divergent Selkup, formerly known as 'Ostyak Samoyed'. Together with the Finno-Ugric languages and Yukaghir, they form the Uralic branch of the Ural-Altaic linguistic phylum. Nowadays the unity of Ural-Altaic is much doubted. Samoyed territory extends from the White Sea to the Laptev Sea, along the Arctic shores of European Russia, including southern Novaya Zemlya, the Yamal peninsula, the mouths of the Ob and the Yenisei and into the Taimyr peninsula in northernmost Siberia. Their economy is based on reindeer herding. They are contiguous with the trans-Ural Ugric speakers and.
List of languages - List of languages This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. For a more structured list, see Language families and languages, ISO 639 or List of languages by total speakers. Ethnologue lists about 6,800 main languages in its language name index (see the external link) and distinguishs about 41,000 alternate language names and dialects. This is a list of natural and constructed languages spoken by humans. See also a list of programming languages. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A Afrikaans Ainu Albanian Aleut Algonquin Amhara Amharic Anglo-Saxon Apache A-Pucikwar Arabic / عربية (Semitic) Aragonese Aramaic Arawak Armenian Assamese Assyrian Asturian Avestan Azerbaijani B Balochi Bambara.
Karelian language - is a variety closely related to Finnish. It belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, and is chiefly distinguished from standard Finnish by the lack of influence from modern 19th and 20th century Finnish. The Karelian language does not have a standard written form. Karelian has three main dialects: Karelian Proper, Olonets and Ludic. The latter is sometimes classified as a dialect of Veps. The Karelian language is by Finns usually considered a dialect of Finnish, as it is perceived to differ only slightly from standard-Finnish. Others, for instance many foreign linguists and some people in Estonia and Russia, consider the Karelian variety a language of its own (although almost extinct), similarly to how the dialects of Ingria by Finns often are considered dialects of Finnish-proper, but in Estonia often are considered languages.
Veps language - Veps belongs to the Baltic-Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric languages. According to Soviet statistics 8,000 people were self-designated Veps at the end of the 1970s. The statistics is however considered extremely unreliable by most non-Soviet linguists, not changing the situation that the language must be understood as in stern threat of extinction. According to the location of the people, the language is divided into three main dialects: Northern Veps (at Lake Onega to the south of Petrozavodsk, to the north of river Syväri), Central Veps (in the Petersburg region), and Southern Veps (in the Vologda province). The Northern dialect is somewhat more distinct than the others, but it is nevertheless possible for the members of the different dialect groups to understand each other. The speakers of the Northern dialect call themselves.
History of Finland - the so called "Suomusjärvi culture", a hunter-gatherer society, spread over most of the country. Around 4200 BC the "Comb ceramic culture", known for their pottery, took over. This marks the beginning of the neolithic for Finland. It is believed that the proto-Finnish language spread to Finland at this time. Finnish and Sámi (Saami) — the language of Lapland's small indigenous minority — are both Finno-Ugric languages and are in the Uralic rather than the Indo-European family. The closest related language still widely in use is Estonian. After 2500 BC immigrants from south of the gulf of Finland settled in southern Finland. Their culture differed from the older as they used agriculture and animal husbandry. The neolithic cultures survived for some time. Further inland the societies were less advanced. The Finnish language.
Hungarian language - Hungarian language Hungarian (Magyar) is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in certain areas of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Slovenia, all territories acquired after World War I. (As Hungarians say: "Hungary is perhaps the only country which is surrounded by itself." - because on the other side of every border is a land which used to be part of Hungary.) There are about 14.5 million speakers, of which 10 million live in Hungary. Hungarian vocabulary contains many words borrowed from various Turkic languages, as well as a few words borrowed from the Turkish language, and several hundred loans from German and Slavic languages but has retained its Ugric originality. The basic vocabulary shares many words with Finnish (e.g. the numbers egy ~ yksi, kettő ~ kaksi, három.
Finnish - (often in contrast to Finns speaking Swedish as their mother tongue, see Finland-Swedish and Finland's language strife) It can indicate the Finnish language itself, and often the closely related varieties spoken in Finland's neighbourhood, see Finno-Ugric languages: Veps, Izhorian, Ingrian, Karelian, Meänkieli [1] Finally, it can be a false translation from Scandinavian languages, where the concepts of Finns and Saamis haven't always been distinguished: Today Finn in the Norwegian language means a Saami..
Finnic - Finnic may refer to Finnish-similar languages spoken close to the Gulf of Finland, see: Finno-Ugric languages. Finnic may also refer to the peoples speaking these languages, and their farmer-hunter culture, traditionally living in Karelia, Ingria, Estonia, Finland, Northernmost Norway and Northern Sweden. Finnic used in this way establish the contrast to the nomadic Saamis, but also to the Slavonics, the Balts and the Scandinavians (or the Germanic peoples)..
Estonian language - of which the great majority live in the Republic of Estonia. Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric languages. Estonian is not, as is sometimes thought, in any way related to its nearest geographic neighbors, Latvian and Lithuanian, which are Baltic languages, but is related to Finnish, spoken on the other side of the Gulf of Finland, and Hungarian. In fact, the northern dialects of Estonian are sufficiently similar to Finnish for the two to be mutually intelligible. One of the distinctive features of Estonian is that it has three degrees of phoneme length: short, long, and "overlong", such that SAMPA /toto/, /to:to/ and /to::to/ are distinct, as are /toto/, /tot:o/, and /tot::o/. The distinction between long and overlong is, in practice, as much a matter of syllable stress.
Demographics of Estonia - 98 A.D. was the first to mention the "Aestii" people, and early Scandinavians called the land south of the Gulf of Finland "Eistland," and the people "eistr." Estonians belong to the Balto-Finnic group of the Finno-Ugric peoples, as do the Finns and Hungarians. Archaeological research supports the existence of human activity in the region as early as 8,000 BC, but by 3,500 BC the principal ancestors of the Estonians had arrived from the east. Estonians have strong ties to the Nordic countries today stemming from strong cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during Scandinavian colonization and settlement. This highly literate society places strong emphasis upon education, which is free and compulsory until age 16. The first book in Estonian was printed in 1525. Written with the Latin alphabet, Estonian is.
Demographics of Latvia - originated from a "Latve" river that presumably flowed through what is now eastern Latvia. A small Finno-Ugric tribe known as the Livs settled among the Latvians and modulated the name to "Latvis," meaning "forest-clearers," which is how medieval German settlers also referred to these peoples. The German colonizers changed this name to "Lette" and called their initially small colony "Livland." The Latin form, "Livonia," gradually referred to the whole of modern-day Latvia as well as southern Estonia, which had fallen under German dominion. Latvians and Lithuanians are the only directly surviving members of the Baltic peoples and languages of the Indo-European family. Latvians look like and consider themselves Nordics, evidenced through the strong cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during Germanic and Scandinavian colonization and settlement. Eastern Latvia (Latgale), however,.
Accusative case - case used to mark the direct object of a verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. The accusative case exists (or existed once) in all the Indo-European languages (including Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, German, Russian), and the Finno-Ugric languages. English, which lacks declension in its nouns, has an explicitly marked accusative case in a few pronouns (e.g. "whom" is the accusative case of "who", and "him" is the accusative case of "he"). (Contrast with dative case, the indirect object.) Note: who/whom and he/him are not only examples of nominative/accusative relationships in English, but also of nominative/dative. (Consider: I gave him the present, etc.) (In Old English, they were distinct - him was the dative, hine the accusative.) This duality is one of.
Bulgarians - which, in ancient times, was called Moesia. The acquired their name from a Turkic or Finno-Ugric tribe which invaded Moesia in the 10th century AD. They are the descendants of ancient Thracian tribes, such as Moesi, Agrianes etc., of ancient Celtic tribes who founded the Tulis Kingdom in 270 BC, of Germanic tribes such as Gepids, Heruli and Goths, of Slavic tribes and of those Bulgarian invaders who originally inhabited a region east of Volga river. In modern times, many Bulgarians speak a Southern Slavic language which has been deeply influenced by Medieval and Modern Greek, as well as - though in a lesser extent - by Osmanli Turkish. It has many traits in common with Slovenian and Croatoserbian, with which it can sometimes be mutually intelligible, although this is not.
Cyrillic alphabet - is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian), other languages of the former Soviet Union (Turkic languages Azeri (1939-91), Chuvash, Tatar, Turkmen (1940-94), Uzbek (1940-98), Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Gagauz; Ossetic and Tajik (Indo-Iranian tongues); Moldovan (a Romance language); Udmurt, Saami and Mordvin (Finno-Ugric language); and Abaza, Abkhaz, Adygei, Aisor, Altai, Avar, Balkar, Bashkir, Buryat, Chechen (1940-1991), Chuvash, Chukchi, Dargwa, Dungan, Evenks, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karachay, Karakalpak, Karelian, Khakas, Khanty, Komi, Koryak, Kumyk, Kurdish (living in former USSR), Lak, Lezghian, Mansi, Mari, Mongolian, Nanai, Nenets, Nogai, Oriat, Romany (in Serbia and Montenegro and former USSR), Selkup, Tabasaran, Tat, Tuva, Udekhe (Udege) and Yakut languages), as well as constructed languages Slovio and Lingua Franca Nova. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Cyrillic alphabet for Russian 2.
Saami - until the 19th century. Many books and official documents call these people Lapps, but they prefer to be called Sámi or Saami, the name they use for themselves. They consider Lapp to be a particularly offensive term. Reindeer have central importance in Saami culture, though nowadays reindeer herding is of dwindling economic relevance for the Saami people. The Saami language is divided into nine dialects, of which several have their own written languages. Southern Saami cannot understand Northern Saami. Most dialects are spoken in several countries, as linguistic borders do not correspond to national borders. The Saami language is part of the Finno-Ugric family, related to Finnish but not to Swedish and kin, however due to prolonged contact with the Scandinavians, there is a large number of Germanic words in Saami..