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Critique of the Finno-Ugric and Uralic Language Groups

For the following reasons, some linguists criticize the classification of the Finno-Ugric languages and the Uralic family:

• The primary grammatical similiarity of these languages is agglutination. But agglutination also occurs in non-Finno-Ugric and non-Uralic languages, like Turkish, Basque, Etruscan, Persian, Armenian, and Sumerian.
• The words of the Uralic and Finno-Ugric languages are very different. This includes the Basic Words, like family words (mother, father, brother, sister), words for body parts, like eyes, leg, hand, foot, neck, etc., words for living environment like house, grass, way, path, and the like, household tools like fork, bottle, and vessel, and foods like bread, fat, corn, and meat.
• These language categories came into existence at the end of the 19th century and were created by foreigners (no Finns, Estonians, Hungarians or others whose languages are categorized to be in this group). In Hungary the linguist who promoted this group was Joseph Budenz, who learned Hungarian when he was 23 years old, and was never able to speak it on the level of a native speaker. The categories came into existence for political reasons and not for linguistic ones.
• The speakers of the here grouped languages are anthropologically very different (Finnish and Estonian European, Nordic, Lappic Mixed, North European and Asian, Hungarian European mixed, others Mongolian), this indicates, that these people have never lived together (except Finnish, Estonian and the Mongolian people), and the grammatic similarities are consequences of the Sumerian cultural emission.

Grammar

Typology for Turanian agglutinating languages

Here are the features af all Turanian agglutinating languages listed, including Turkish, Persian, Basque, etc. Here we call Turanian agglutinating languages those languages that reside along the emission line of the Sumerian culture, e.g. Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Basque, Etruscian Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, etc...

• Nouns
  • Extensive use of independent suffixes, also known as (agglutination)
  • No noun classes, that is no grammatical gender of words
  • Many grammatical cases (Turkish, Finnish) or no grammatical cases at all (Hungarian). For Hungarian foreign linguists (e.g. B. Collinder) created "cases", but these are unused in Hungarian grammar, since counterproductive for understanding and learning.
  • Use of possessive suffixes to indicate ownership, therefore no possessive pronouns, and generally no usage of pronomes, but of suffixes. (ház, házam /=house, my house/)
• Verbs
  • The verb "have" either not existing or seldom used, as in Hungarian
• Phonetics
  • vowel harmony – may not exist in all, like Estonian or Persian
  • Accent is typically on a fixed word position, once in a word. In Hungarian and Finnish always the first syllable of a word, in Turkish, Armenian and Persian the last syllable is accented, with a few exceptions.
  • Turanian languages prefer vocals followed by consonants and vice versa, however this is not true for Estonian. At the begin of a word they typically do not use double consonants.

Grammatical differences among languages of the Finno-Ugric/Uralic Group

• Articles
  • Finnish and Estonian have no article (grammar)s, Hungarian has both determinate (the=a,az) and indeterminate (a = egy) articles.
• Nouns
  • Finnish uses the plural even if the sentence clearly indicates that plurality, Hungarian uses the plural inflection only if plurality were otherwise unclear. Example: five boys = öt fiú (five boy) in Hungarian. This is expressed exactly in the same way in Turkish. Japanese goes one step ahead in this concept, and does not build plural at all, uses double words instead, e.g. I see hills = I see hill-hill.
  • Plural markers are very different. Hungarian uses 'k', Finnish -i, -t.
  • Finnish ending order is: case ending-ownership ending. In Hungarian ownership ending always precedes the place, art, or time defining ending, e.g. házának.
  • Hungarian has and uses 6 levels of endings (ház, házak, házaké, házakéi, házakéié, házakéiétól /=house, houses, belongs to houses, belong to houses, belong to objects, that belong to houses, from objects, that belong to objects, that belong to houses/), Finnish/Estonian have maximal 4 levels, they do not have two level ownership endings.
• Adjectives
  • Finnish conjugates the adjectives with the noun: nices girls, Hungarian does not: nice girls.
• Verbs
  • Finnish uses negative verbs, Hungarian does not.
  • Finnish does not have a have verb in the sense of have in "I have a dog", Hungarian has such a verb (nekem van = I have)
  • Hungarian uses two verb conjugations, /vár- várok, várom, ... /= wait, wait for something/) that are also unknown in Finnish/Estonian.
  • Hungarian verbs can easily express, doing something repeatedly or only once for a short time. (csavar-csavargat-csavarint /= sqeeze, squeeze repeatedly, squeeze once, shortly/). Finnish misses this concept.
  • Hungarian uses verb modification prefixes, (ír, megír /=writes, writes and finishes it/) that are unknown in Finnish or Estonian.
• Phonetics
  • Finnish lacks the Hungarian phonems a, (pronounced as a sound between a and o), e, í, ó, ú, õ,û, gy, ty, ny, z, zs, c (noted by B. Collinder)
  • Finnish contains 17 diphtongs, while Hungarian contains none.
  • Estonian uses sometimes lots of vocals following each other, like in the sentence: Kuuuurijate töööö jäääärel. This is not the case for Hungarian
• Finnish features, unknown in Hungarian
  • Dual, which means, besides singular and plural there is also a dual (grammatical number) form of nouns. This is completely unknown in Hungarian.
  • Three-way distinction in the local case system – unknown in Hungarian

Other features

• palatalization – is present also in English and Slavic languages, irrelevant here

Words

The vocabularies of the Finno-Ugric or Uralic languages are very different. The differences suggest that the people who spoke these languages' ancestors (if any) never lived together, and also suggest, that the grammatic similarities are consequences of the Sumerian cultural emission.

Selected cognates

The following are some cognates from across the Uralic family, which may serve to give an idea of how big are the differences in these languages. This table is from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and originally contained an error, it mixed up tenew (ín) with vene (ér) in Hungarian.

Bold illustrates words being quite different in form from the other in a line. The word "father", Finnish isä, could be a cognate of the Hungarian word ős (ancestor), but the correct Hungarian word for father is apa. The other problematic word pair is suoni-ér /=vein/. Duo to the completely different word form they are clearly no cognates, therefore is the word ér is bold.

This table also illustrates, that especially the so called ugric group has very big differences to Hungarian, even though the theory says, they are linguistically nearer to Hungarian, than others in the whole Finno-Ugric/Uralic category.

Finnish, Mordvin, Komi and Hungarian Basic Words

Here some of the Basic Words in Finnish, Mordvin, Komi and Hungarian. The English words are bold for better orientation. The concept of basic words is explained in detail on the Talk:Critique_of_Finno-Ugric_and_Uralic_language_groups#Basic_Words page

The Mordvin (Erzya) and Komi words are from the Swadesh list. They are there with cyrillic letters, in this table you can see their latin form following the Hungarian phonetic rules.

See also Numbers, Word collection, Another word collection.

Swadesh lists of some languages discussed here

207-word Swadesh lists for certain discussed languages can be compared and contrasted at the Rosetta Project website: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Erzya (Mordvin), Komi-permyak

Phoneme set of some languages discussed here

Here the phoneme set of some of the here discussed languages: Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish.

Numbers

Here are the numbers from 1 to 10 in Finnish, Estonian, North Sami, Erzya, Mansi, and Hungarian:

Bold are the words, that are very unsimilar to the rest of the line.

Text illustrating some languages

Finnish: Kaikki ihmiset syntyvät vapaina ja tasavertaisina arvoltaan ja oikeuksiltaan. Heille on annettu järki ja omatunto, ja heidän on toimittava toisiaan kohtaan veljeyden hengessä.

Estonian: Kõik inimesed sünnivad vabadena ja võrdsetena oma väärikuselt ja õigustelt. Neile on antud mõistus ja südametunnistus ja nende suhtumist üksteisesse peab kandma vendluse vaim.

Sami: Buot olbmot leat riegádan friddjan ja olmmošárvvu ja olmmošvuoigatvuoðaid dáfus dássásažžab, Sudhuude kea addib huervnu ha ianedivdym ha vyigjat gakget neabbydut gyunnuudeaset gyivdy vuekhakaš vuoinnain.

Hungarian: Minden emberi lény szabadon születik és egyenlõ méltósága és joga van. Az emberek, ésszel és lelkiismerettel bírván, egymással szemben testvéri szellemben kell hogy viseltessenek.

English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Finnish and Estonian are clearly very similar, their speakers understand each other in great parts. The others are quite far in appeareance and vocabulary from the above ones.

Summary

The criticizers of the Finno-Ugric and Uralic language groups say, that this language group is clearly underdetermined that is, this group has no features, that would clearly differentiate it from other language groups. The languages of these "groups" are clearly related by agglutination and the features, that are common among the Turanian (Sumerian) agglutinating languages. However, this artificial mini group have very few words common, and no common grammar except of the Sumerian type of agglutination, which is also characteristic for Turkish, Basque, Persian, Etruscan, Armenian and other languages, and therefore it is unlogical and counterproductive to classify them into this artificial, in reality by nothing justified mini groups.

See also

• Uralic languages
• Finno-Ugric languages

References

• Marcantonio, Angela (2004) 'What Is the Linguistic Evidence to Support the Uralic Theory or Theories?' In Linguistica Uralica 40, 1, pp 40-45.
• Marcantonio, Angela (2003) The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics.
• Marcantonio, Angela & Pirjo Nummenaho & Michela Salvagni (2001): 'The "Ugric-Turkic Battle": A Critical Review'. In Linguistica Uralica 37, 2, pp81-102. online version
• The Untenability of the Finno-Ugrian Theory from a Linguistic Point of View by Dr. László Marácz
• Numbers
• Word collection
• Another word collection
• Kalevi Wiik
• K. Julku
• Henrik Meinander