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. \n*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. This theory however is not universally accepted among linguistics. 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, all of the Finno-Ugric branch. Some characteristic features of these languages are:

• Extensive use of independent suffixes\n* Large set of grammatical cases\n* Vowel harmony\n* No usage of gender \n

  Family tree

  \nTrace the subtrees in the corresponding articles.
• Finno-Ugric languages\n*Samoyedic languages

External links

• Reliable information and links at:\n** http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/fu.html\n** http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/samoyed.html

Category:Uralic languages\n\n\n\n\nzh-cn:乌拉尔语系