The word Uralic refers to the Uralic languages and their speakers. It is named for the Ural region of Russia. See also:
Altaic is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. The hypothetical language family has long been rejected by most comparative linguists, although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority. Speakers of the constituent languages are currently scattered over most of Asia north of 35° N and in some eastern parts of Europe, extending in longitude from the Balkan Peninsula to Japan. The group is named after the Altai mountain range in the center of Asia.
Finno-Ugric or Finno-Ugrian (Fenno-Ugrian) is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by some contemporary linguists such as Tapani Salminen and Ante Aikio as inaccurate and misleading. The three most-spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, are all included in Finno-Ugric, although linguistic roots common to both branches of the traditional Finno-Ugric language tree are distant.
Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia. Though a historically important proposal, in a contemporary context it is typically considered a fringe theory. Although the exact composition varies based on proponent, it typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages; as well as the Dravidian languages.
The Uralic languages form a language family of 38 languages spoken natively by approximately 25 million people, predominantly in Europe and northern Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other significant languages with fewer speakers are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt, Northern Sámi, Komi, Karelian and the Samoyedic languages, all of which are spoken in northern regions of Scandinavia and parts of the Russian Federation.
Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and formerly proposed language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share a common descent: the similarities among Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing. Just as Altaic, internal structure of the Uralic family also has been debated since the family was first proposed. Doubts about the validity of most or all of the proposed higher-order Uralic branchings are becoming more common. The term continues to be used for the central Eurasian typological, grammatical and lexical convergence zone.
Ural may refer to:
The Ugric or Ugrian languages are a proposed branch of the Uralic language family. The name Ugric is derived from Ugrians, an archaic exonym for the Magyars (Hungarians) and Yugra, a region in northern Russia.
Samoyedic can refer to:
The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550,000 speak the most widely spoken language, Udmurt. Like other Uralic languages, the Permic languages are primarily agglutinative and have a rich system of grammatical cases. Unlike many others, they do not have vowel harmony.
Indo-Uralic is a controversial language family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic.
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, and Eskaleut. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his book Language Relations across Bering Strait. Some have attempted to include Nivkh in Uralo-Siberian. Until 2011, it also included Chukotko-Kamchatkan. However, after 2011 Fortescue only included Uralic, Yukaghir and Eskaleut in the theory, although he argued that Uralo-Siberian languages have influenced Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It is considered a fringe theory by linguists.
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is thought to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differentiated Proto-Languages. Some newer research has pushed the "Proto-Uralic homeland" east of the Ural Mountains into Western Siberia.
Khanty, previously known as Ostyak, is a Uralic language spoken in the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Okrugs. There were thought to be around 7,500 speakers of Northern Khanty and 2,000 speakers of Eastern Khanty in 2010, with Southern Khanty being extinct since the early 20th century, however the total amount of speakers in the most recent census was around 13,900.
Uralic–Yukaghir, also known as Uralo-Yukaghir, is a proposed language family composed of Uralic and Yukaghir.
The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the Uralic languages, grouping together the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) languages. Both languages are split in numerous and highly divergent dialects. They, along with Hungarian, are often thought to comprise the Ugric branch of the Uralic languages, though the acceptance of Ugric is less frequent than acceptance of Ob-Ugric.
Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian county Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent.
The Proto-Uralic homeland is the hypothetical place where speakers of the Proto-Uralic language lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into separate distinct languages. Various locations have been proposed to be the Proto-Uralic homeland.
The Kama culture is an Eastern European Subneolithic archaeological culture from the 6th-4th millennium BC. The area covers the Kama, Vyatka and the Ik-Belaya watershed.
The Ural Mountains extend from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan in the south over a distance of 1,500 mi (2,400 km), the boundary between Europe and Asia. Human occupation begins in the Paleolithic and continues to this day.