The Finnic languages, also known as Baltic Finnic languages, constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around seven million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia.
Traditionally, eight Finnic languages have been recognized. The major modern representatives of the family are Finnish and Estonian, the official languages of their respective nation states.Finnic Peoples at Encyclopædia Britannica The other Finnic languages in the Baltic Sea region are Ingrian and Votic, spoken in Ingria by the Gulf of Finland, and Livonian, once spoken around the Gulf of Riga. Spoken farther northeast are Karelian, Ludic, and Veps, in the region of Lakes Onega and Ladoga.
In addition, since the 1990s, several Finnic-speaking minority groups have emerged to seek recognition for their languages as distinct from the ones they have been considered dialects of in the past. Some of these groups have established their own orthographies and standardised languages. Võro and Seto, which are spoken in southeastern Estonia and in some parts of Russia, are considered dialects of Estonian by some linguists, while other linguists consider them separate languages. Meänkieli and Kven are spoken in northern Sweden and Norway respectively and have the legal status of independent minority languages separate from Finnish. They were earlier considered dialects of Finnish and are mutually intelligible with it. Additionally, Karelian was not officially recognised as a distinct language in Finland until 2009, despite there being no linguistic confusion about its status.
The smaller languages are endangered. The last native speaker of Livonian died in 2013, and only about a dozen native speakers of Votic remain. Regardless, even for these languages, the shaping of a standard language and education in it continues. Livonian has gone through revival efforts, and since 2020, one child in Latvia has been taught Livonian as their primary native language.
History Prior to the appearance of the Finnic speakers on the coast of the Baltic Sea, it was likely inhabited by speakers of a Paleo-European, "Paleo-Baltic" group of languages, whose speakers seem to have been assimilated by early Finnic-speaking communities. These languages seem to have left a small impact on the vocabulary of the Finnic languages. As examples, the Proto-Finnic words *saari , *neemi , *jänes and *ilbes have been pointed out as probable loanwords from Paleo-Baltic.
The geographic centre of the maximum divergence between the Finnic languages is located south of the Gulf of Finland. A glottochronological study estimates the age of the common ancestor of existing languages to a little more than 1000 years. However, Mikko Heikkilä dates the beginning of the diversification (with South Estonian as the first split) rather precisely to about 150 AD, based on loanword evidence (and previous estimates tend to be even older, like Pekka Sammallahti's of 1000–600 BC). There is now wide agreement that Proto-Finnic was probably spoken at the coasts of the Gulf of Finland.
Some Slavic loanwords such as Finnish pappi and risti are, in view of their Christian meanings, palpably late borrowings from East Slavic, and may date as late as the 10th century, likely about 800 AD; but they are widely found in Finnic and look like they descend from Proto-Finnic, which for this reason is sometimes dated very late, as mentioned above. These loanwords were likely borrowed into an early Finnic dialect continuum.
Classification
The Finnic languages are located at the western end of the Uralic language family. A close affinity to their northern neighbors, the Sámi languages, has long been assumed, though many of the similarities (particularly lexical ones) can be shown to result from common influence from Germanic languages and, to a lesser extent, Baltic languages. Innovations are also shared between Finnic and the Mordvinic languages, and in recent times Finnic, Sámi and Moksha are sometimes grouped together.
General characteristics
There is no grammatical gender in any of the Finnic languages, nor are there articles or definite or indefinite forms.
The morphophonology (the way the grammatical function of a morpheme affects its production) is complex. Morphological elements found in the Finnic languages include grammatical case suffixes, verb tempus, mood and person markers (singular and plural, the Finnic languages do not have dual) as well as participles and several infinitive forms, possessive suffixes, clitics and more. The number of grammatical cases tends to be high while the number of verb infinitive forms varies more by language.
One of the more important processes is the characteristic consonant gradation. Two kinds of gradation occur: radical gradation and suffix gradation. They both affect the plosives , and , and involve the process known as lenition, in which the consonant is changed into a "weaker" form. This occurs in some (but not all) of the oblique case forms. For geminates, the process is simple to describe: they become simple stops, e.g. kuppi + -n → kupin (Finnish: "cup"). For simple consonants, the process complicates immensely and the results vary by the environment. For example, haka + -n → haan, kyky + -n → kyvyn, järki + -n → järjen (Finnish: "pasture", "ability", "intellect"). The specifics of consonants gradation vary by language (see the separate article for more details). Apocope (strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian) has, in some cases, left a phonemic status to the phonological variation in the stem (variation caused by the now historical morphological elements), which results in three phonemic lengths in these languages.
Vowel harmony is also characteristic of the Finnic languages, despite having been lost in Livonian, Estonian and Veps.
The original Uralic palatalization was lost in proto-Finnic, but most of the diverging dialects reacquired it. Palatalization is a part of the Estonian literary language and is an essential feature in Võro, as well as Veps, Karelian, and other eastern Finnic languages. It is also found in East Finnish dialects, and is only missing from West Finnish dialects and Standard Finnish.
A special characteristic of the languages is the large number of diphthongs. There are 16 diphthongs in Finnish and 25 in Estonian; at the same time the frequency of diphthong use is greater in Finnish than in Estonian due to certain historical long vowels having diphthongised in Finnish but not in Estonian. On a global scale the Finnic languages have a high number of vowels.Feature 2A: Vowel Quality Inventories at World Atlas of Language Structures
Subgrouping The Finnic languages form a complex dialect continuum with few clear-cut boundaries. Innovations have often spread through a variety of areas, even after variety-specific changes.
A broad twofold conventional division of the Finnic varieties recognizes the Southern Finnic and Northern Finnic groups (though the position of some varieties within this division is uncertain): Southern Finnic North Estonian (including Standard Estonian) Central Estonian Eastern Estonian Insular Estonian Western Estonian South Estonian Kraasna Leivu Lutsi Mulgi Seto Tartu Võro Livonian Courland Livonian Salaca Livonian Votic Eastern Votic Western Votic Krevinian Northern Finnic ? Northeastern coastal Estonian Alutaguse dialect Coastal dialect Western Finnish (including Standard Finnish) Mid- and Northern Ostrobothnian dialects Peräpohjola dialects Southern Ostrobothnian dialects Southwestern dialects Tavastian dialects Meänkieli Kven Eastern Finnish Savonian dialects Southeastern dialects (Karelian Finnish) Ingrian Hevaha dialect Lower Luga dialect ? Kukkuzi () Oredezhi (Upper Luga) dialect Soikkola dialect Karelian Livvi (Olonets Karelian) Karelian Proper Northern (Viena) Southern Ludic Central Ludic Kuuďärv Ludic Veps Northern (Onega) Veps Central Veps Southern Veps = extinct variety; () = moribund variety.
A more-or-less genetic subdivision can be also determined, based on the relative chronology of sound changes within varieties, which provides a rather different view. The following grouping follows among others Sammallahti (1977), Viitso (1998), and Kallio (2014):
Finnic South Estonian (Inland Finnic) Coastal Finnic Livonian (Gulf of Riga Finnic) Gulf of Finland Finnic Northern Finnic Western Finnish Eastern Finnic Eastern Finnish Ingrian Karelian Ludic Veps Central Finnic (North/Standard) Estonian Votic
The division between South Estonian and the remaining Finnic varieties has isoglosses that must be very old. For the most part, these features have been known for long. Their position as very early in the relative chronology of Finnic, in part representing archaisms in South Estonian, has been shown by Kallio (2007, 2014).
Clusters *kt, *pt Clusters *kc, *pc(IPA: ) Cluster *čk(IPA: ) 3rd person singular marker South Estonian *kt, *pt > tt *kc, *pc > ts *čk > tsk endingless Coastal Finnic *kt, *pt > *ht *kc, *pc > *ks, *ps *čk > *tk *-pi
However, due to the strong areal nature of many later innovations, this tree structure has been distorted and sprachbunds have formed. In particular, South Estonian and Livonian show many similarities with the Central Finnic group that must be attributed to later contact, due to the influence of literary North Estonian. Thus, contemporary "Southern Finnic" is a sprachbund that includes these languages, while diachronically they are not closely related.
The genetic classification of the Finnic dialects that can be extracted from Viitso (1998) is:
Finnic Livonian (Gulf of Riga Finnic) South Estonian (Inland Finnic) Gulf of Finland Finnic Northern Finnic West Ladoga Western Finnish Eastern Finnic Eastern Finnish Northern Karelian Coastal Estonian (Northeastern coastal Estonian) Ingrian Kukkuzi dialect East Ladoga Southern Karelian Livvi–Ludic–Veps Central Finnic (North/Standard) Estonian East Central Finnic Eastern Estonian Alutaguse (Northeastern coastal Estonian) Votic
Viitso (2000) surveys 59 isoglosses separating the family into 58 dialect areas (finer division is possible), finding that an unambiguous perimeter can be set up only for South Estonian, Livonian, Votic, and Veps. In particular, no isogloss exactly coincides with the geographical division into 'Estonian' south of the Gulf of Finland and 'Finnish' north of it. Despite this, standard Finnish and Estonian are not mutually intelligible.
Southern Finnic The Southern Finnic languages consist of North and South Estonian (excluding the Coastal Estonian dialect group), Livonian and Votic (except the highly Ingrian-influenced Kukkuzi Votic). These languages are not closely related genetically, as noted above; it is a paraphyletic grouping, consisting of all Finnic languages except the Northern Finnic languages. The languages nevertheless share a number of features, such as the presence of a ninth vowel phoneme õ, usually a close-mid back unrounded (but a close central unrounded in Livonian), as well as loss of *n before *s with compensatory lengthening.
(North) Estonian-Votic has been suggested to possibly constitute an actual genetic subgroup (called varyingly Maa by Viitso (1998, 2000) or Central Finnic by Kallio (2014)), though the evidence is weak: almost all innovations shared by Estonian and Votic have also spread to South Estonian and/or Livonian. A possible defining innovation is the loss of *h after sonorants (*n, *l, *r).
Northern Finnic