Proto-Finno-Ugric language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Proto-Finno-Ugric is the reconstructed protolanguage for the Finno-Ugric languages, that is the ancestor of the Finnic languages, such as Finnish and Estonian, and the Ugric languages, whose best known example is Hungarian. The parent language is Proto-Uralic, from which Proto-Finno-Ugric and Proto-Samoyedic had split. However, this classification is not without problems; Proto-Finno-Ugric may also be interpreted as a geographical grouping of Proto-Uralic dialects, because the differences are few. It has been suggested that the area where Proto-Finno-Ugric was spoken reached between the Baltic Sea and the Ural mountains.

The Saami languages belong to the Finno-Ugric family of languages. They can be traced back to a Finnic-Saami protolanguage, which is called Early-Proto-Finnic. Ref.: Kulonen, Ulla-Maija (2005). in Ulla-Maija Kulonen, Irja Seurujärvi-Kari & Risto Pulkkinen: The Saami;A Cultural Encyclopaedia, Suomalaisen Kirjalisuuden Seuran toimituksia 925 (in en). SKS, 287-288,333. ISBN 951-746-506-8.

According to Robert Austerlitz, Proto-Finno-Ugric had about seven cases; nominative, accusative, genitive, locative, allative, ablative, and adverbial.