Uralic languages

The Uralic languages form a language family of about 30 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. The name of the language family refers to the location of the family’s suggested Urheimat (homeland), which is often placed close to the Ural mountains. Countries that are home to a significant number of speakers of Uralic languages include: Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Romania, Russia, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, and Sweden. The healthiest Uralic languages, in terms of the number of native speakers and national ...

Including:

• Uralic languages - Family Tree
• Uralic languages - Classification of Languages
• Uralic languages - Typology
• Uralic languages - Selected cognates
• Uralic languages - Bibliography

Read more here: » Uralic languages: Encyclopedia - Uralic languages

The traditional classification of the Uralic languages is as follows. Obsolete names are displayed in italics. Samoyedic Northern Samoyedic Enets (Yenets, Yenisei-Samoyed) — Nearly extinct Nenets (Yurak) Nganasan (Tavgy, Tavgi, Tawgi, Tawgi-Samoyed) Yurats Southern Samoyedic Kamassian (Kamas) — Extinct (20th century) Mator (Motor) — Extinct (19th cen ...

See also:

Uralic languages, Uralic languages - Family Tree, Uralic languages - Classification of Languages, Uralic languages - Typology, Uralic languages - Selected cognates, Uralic languages - Bibliography

Read more here: » Uralic languages: Encyclopedia II - Uralic languages - Classification of Languages

Vowel harmony (also metaphony) is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels. Vowel harmony - Explanation. Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, harmony refers to the assimilation of sounds that are not adjacent to each other. For example, a vowel at the beginning of word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at ...

Including:

• Vowel harmony - Explanation
• Vowel harmony - Features of vowel harmony
• Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony & umlaut terminology
• Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony archiphonemes and underspecification
• Vowel harmony - Examples in selected languages
• Vowel harmony - Uralic languages
• Vowel harmony - Altaic languages
• Vowel harmony - Yokuts
• Vowel harmony - Korean
• Vowel harmony - Japanese
• Vowel harmony - Other languages
• Vowel harmony - Other types of harmony
• Vowel harmony - Vowel-consonant harmony
• Vowel harmony - Links
• Vowel harmony - Bibliography

Read more here: » Vowel harmony: Encyclopedia - Vowel harmony

Examples from Mansi ēl(a) - 'forwards, onwards, away' χot - 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity' Examples from Hungarian el - 'away, off' ki - 'out (of)' (In Hungarian, the citation form of verbs is the 3rd person singular form, which is given here, which doesn't have any suffixes.) ...

See also:

Ugric languages, Ugric languages - Structural features

Read more here: » Ugric languages: Encyclopedia II - Ugric languages - Structural features

The "Urheimat" of Proto-Finno-Ugric, the hypothetical proto-language of the modern Finno-Ugric languages, cannot be located with any certainty. The area which lies in what is now central and northern European Russia (i.e., west of the Ural mountains) is generally assumed as a likely candidate, at a time of maybe the 3rd millennium BC. This is based on the linguistic migration theory, which appears to suggest a "centre of gravity" somewhere around the middle Volga River, and on reconstructed plant and animal names (notably including spruce, S ...

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Finno-Ugric languages, Finno-Ugric languages - Origins, Finno-Ugric languages - History, Finno-Ugric languages - Structural features, Finno-Ugric languages - Classification, Finno-Ugric languages - Disputes, Finno-Ugric languages - Common vocabulary, Finno-Ugric languages - Numbers, Finno-Ugric languages - Finno-Ugric Swadesh lists

Read more here: » Finno-Ugric languages: Encyclopedia II - Finno-Ugric languages - Origins

Vowel harmony appears in almost all Uralic and Altaic languages. Some have speculated that the vowel harmony of the northwestern Finno-Ugric languages influenced the phonological phenomenon of umlaut that most of the living Germanic languages display. Vowel harmony - Uralic languages. In the Finnish language, there are three classes of vowels -- front, back, and neutral, where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings � ...

See also:

Vowel harmony, Vowel harmony - Explanation, Vowel harmony - Features of vowel harmony, Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony & umlaut terminology, Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony archiphonemes and underspecification, Vowel harmony - Examples in selected languages, Vowel harmony - Uralic languages, Vowel harmony - Altaic languages, Vowel harmony - Yokuts, Vowel harmony - Korean, Vowel harmony - Japanese, Vowel harmony - Other languages, Vowel harmony - Other types of harmony, Vowel harmony - Vowel-consonant harmony, Vowel harmony - Links, Vowel harmony - Bibliography

Read more here: » Vowel harmony: Encyclopedia II - Vowel harmony - Examples in selected languages

The Ural-Altaic language family was a grouping of languages which was once widely accepted by linguists, but has since been generally rejected[citation needed]. It comprises of the Altaic languages (Turkish, Mongolian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tatar, Manchu, and its derivatives, plus perhaps Korean and Japanese), and the Uralic languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and its derivatives. The theory of a Uralo-Altaic group has now been widely disapproved by historical linguists as a misnomer. Even the existence of the A ...

Read more here: » Ural-Altaic languages: Encyclopedia - Ural-Altaic languages

An agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view. It was derived from the Latin verb agglutinare, which means "to glue together." An agglutinative language is a form of synthetic language where each affix typically represents one unit of meaning (such as "diminutive", "past tense", "plural", etc.), and bound morphemes are expressed by affixes (and not by int ...

Including:

• Agglutinative language - Examples of agglutinative languages

Read more here: » Agglutinative language: Encyclopedia - Agglutinative language

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel. In all languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languag ...

Including:

• Vowel - Articulation
• Vowel - Height
• Vowel - Backness
• Vowel - Roundedness
• Vowel - Nasalization
• Vowel - Phonation
• Vowel - Tongue root retraction
• Vowel - Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract
• Vowel - Tenseness/checked vowels vs. free vowels
• Vowel - Acoustics
• Vowel - Prosody and intonation
• Vowel - Monophthongs diphthongs triphthongs
• Vowel - Vowels in languages
• Vowel - Vowel systems
• Vowel - Written vowels
• Vowel - Written vowels in writing systems

Read more here: » Vowel: Encyclopedia - Vowel

The Yukaghir, or Yukagirs (Юкагиры in Russian; self-designation: одул (odul), деткиль (detkil')) are a people in East Siberia, living in the basin of the Kolyma River. According to the 2002 census, their total number was 1509 people. The Tundra Yukagirs live in the Lower Kolyma region in Sakha, the Taiga Yukagirs - in the Upper Kolyma region in Sakha and Srednekansky District of the Magadan Oblast. By the time of the Russian colonization in the 17th century, the Yukagir tribal group ...

Read more here: » Yukaghir: Encyclopedia - Yukaghir

After several waves of migrations from the Asian continent and nearby Pacific islands, followed by heavy importation of culture from China and Korea, the inhabitants of Japan experienced a long period of relative isolation from the outside world until the arrival of the "Black Ships" and the Meiji era. As a result, a culture distinctively different than other Asian cultures developed, and echoes of this persist even in the modern Japan of today. For example, as Ruth Benedict pointed out in her classic study "The Chrysanthemum and the ...

Including:

• Culture of Japan - Clothing
• Culture of Japan - Creative Arts
• Culture of Japan - Literature
• Culture of Japan - Music
• Culture of Japan - Food
• Culture of Japan - Language
• Culture of Japan - Media
• Culture of Japan - Popular culture
• Culture of Japan - Geinōkai
• Culture of Japan - Sports

Read more here: » Culture of Japan: Encyclopedia - Culture of Japan

Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. Historical linguistics aims to classify the world's languages by their genetic affiliations and to trace the historic development of languages. Modern historical linguistics grew out of t ...

Including:

• Historical linguistics - Language evolution and the comparative method
• Historical linguistics - Non-comparative method theories
• Historical linguistics - Bibliography

Read more here: » Historical linguistics: Encyclopedia - Historical linguistics

This is a small sample of cognates in basic vocabulary across Uralic, illustrating the sound laws (based on the Encyclopædia Britannica and Hakkinen 1979). Note that in general two cognates don't have the same meaning; they merely have the same origin. Thus, the English word in each row should be regarded as an approximation of the original meaning, not a translation of the other words. (Orthographical notes: The hacek (š) denotes postalveolar articulation, while the accent (ś) denotes a secondary palatal articulation. The F ...

See also:

Finno-Ugric languages, Finno-Ugric languages - Origins, Finno-Ugric languages - History, Finno-Ugric languages - Structural features, Finno-Ugric languages - Classification, Finno-Ugric languages - Disputes, Finno-Ugric languages - Common vocabulary, Finno-Ugric languages - Numbers, Finno-Ugric languages - Finno-Ugric Swadesh lists

Read more here: » Finno-Ugric languages: Encyclopedia II - Finno-Ugric languages - Common vocabulary

It is generally agreed that the Finno-Ugric subfamily of the Uralic languages has the following members: Ugric (Ugrian) Hungarian Hungarian Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian) Khanty (Ostyak) Mansi (Vogul) Finno-Permic (Permian-Finnic) Permic (Permian) Komi (Komi-Zyrian, Zyrian) Komi-Permyak Udmurt (Votyak) Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mar ...

See also:

Finno-Ugric languages, Finno-Ugric languages - Origins, Finno-Ugric languages - History, Finno-Ugric languages - Structural features, Finno-Ugric languages - Classification, Finno-Ugric languages - Disputes, Finno-Ugric languages - Common vocabulary, Finno-Ugric languages - Numbers, Finno-Ugric languages - Finno-Ugric Swadesh lists

Read more here: » Finno-Ugric languages: Encyclopedia II - Finno-Ugric languages - Classification

Although vowel harmony is the most well-known harmony, not all types of harmony that occur in the world's languages involve only vowels. Other types of harmony involve consonants (and is known as consonant harmony). Rarer types of harmony are those that involve or tone or both vowels and consonants (e.g. postvelar harmony). Vowel harmony - Vowel-consonant harmony. Some languages have harmony processes that involve an interaction between vowels and consonants. For example, Chilcotin has a phonological process known as vowel flattening (i.e. post-velar harmony) where vowels m ...

See also:

Vowel harmony, Vowel harmony - Explanation, Vowel harmony - Features of vowel harmony, Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony & umlaut terminology, Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony archiphonemes and underspecification, Vowel harmony - Examples in selected languages, Vowel harmony - Uralic languages, Vowel harmony - Altaic languages, Vowel harmony - Yokuts, Vowel harmony - Korean, Vowel harmony - Japanese, Vowel harmony - Other languages, Vowel harmony - Other types of harmony, Vowel harmony - Vowel-consonant harmony, Vowel harmony - Links, Vowel harmony - Bibliography

Read more here: » Vowel harmony: Encyclopedia II - Vowel harmony - Other types of harmony

The first mention of a Uralic people is in Tacitus' Germania, mentioning the Finns as adjacent to Germanic territory. In the late 15th century, European scholars noted the resemblance of the names Hungaria and Yugria, the names of settlements east of the Ural. They assumed a connection, but did not look into linguistic evidence. In 1671, Swedish scholar Georg Stiernhielm commented on the similarities of Lapp, Estonian and Finnish, and also on a few similar words in Finnish and Hungarian, while the German scholar Martin V ...

See also:

Finno-Ugric languages, Finno-Ugric languages - Origins, Finno-Ugric languages - History, Finno-Ugric languages - Structural features, Finno-Ugric languages - Classification, Finno-Ugric languages - Disputes, Finno-Ugric languages - Common vocabulary, Finno-Ugric languages - Numbers, Finno-Ugric languages - Finno-Ugric Swadesh lists

Read more here: » Finno-Ugric languages: Encyclopedia II - Finno-Ugric languages - History

Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, harmony refers to the assimilation of sounds that are not adjacent to each other. For example, a vowel at the beginning of word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word. The assimilation sometimes occurs across the entire word. This is represented schematically in the following diagram: See also:

Vowel harmony, Vowel harmony - Explanation, Vowel harmony - Features of vowel harmony, Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony & umlaut terminology, Vowel harmony - Vowel harmony archiphonemes and underspecification, Vowel harmony - Examples in selected languages, Vowel harmony - Uralic languages, Vowel harmony - Altaic languages, Vowel harmony - Yokuts, Vowel harmony - Korean, Vowel harmony - Japanese, Vowel harmony - Other languages, Vowel harmony - Other types of harmony, Vowel harmony - Vowel-consonant harmony, Vowel harmony - Links, Vowel harmony - Bibliography

Read more here: » Vowel harmony: Encyclopedia II - Vowel harmony - Explanation