Uralic languages
The Uralic languages (/jʊəˈrælɪk/; sometimes called Uralian languages /jʊəˈreɪliən/) form a language family of 38[1] languages spoken by approximately 25 million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (which alone accounts for more than half of the family's speakers), Finnish, and Estonian. Other significant languages with fewer speakers are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt, Sami, Komi, and Vepsian, all of which are spoken in northern regions of Scandinavia and the Russian Federation.
| Uralic | |
|---|---|
| Finno-Samoyedic | |
| Geographic distribution | Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, and Northern Asia |
| Linguistic classification | One of the world's primary language families |
| Proto-language | Proto-Uralic |
| Subdivisions | |
| ISO 639-5 | urj |
| Glottolog | ural1272 |
.png) Geographical distribution of the Uralic languages | |
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The name "Uralic" derives from the family's original homeland (Urheimat) commonly hypothesized to have been somewhere in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains.
Finno-Ugric is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though Finno-Ugric is widely understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages.[2] Scholars who do not accept the traditional notion that Samoyedic split first from the rest of the Uralic family may treat the terms as synonymous.[3]