Finnic languages: Difference between revisions

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Balto-Fennic languages are a subgroup of Finno-Ugric languages, spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 6 million people. Of them Template:Ll and Template:Ll are the official languages of their respective nationstates. Other Balto-Fennic languages are smaller and without national recognition, such as Template:Ll and Template:Ll. Several have recently extinguished or extinguished in practice, such as Template:Ll, Template:Ll and Template:Ll.

Sami languages do not belong to this group; their relation is more distant. They are unrelated to the Indo-European languages, such as the Baltic, Slavic or Germanic languages.

There are many shared roots, but there is little or no mutual intelligibility. Balto-Fennic languages are rather distinct from the rest of Fenno-Ugric languages, but form a tighter group together. Their split was approximately 1000 years ago. They have a phonemic three-way contrast between vowel lengths, a large number of vocalic phonemes with strong contrasts between them and rather simple consonant sets. For example, Estonian has eight monophthongs in three different lenghts, and 26 dipthhongs, each a distinct phoneme. Also, voiced plosives and consonant clusters are not recognized by the prominent languages Finnish and Estonian. Palatalization is retained, except by Western or standard Finnish. For more features, see Finno-Ugric languages.

The Urheimat is somewhere about the today's Estonia, and consequently, the most central, integrated and oldest loans are from the Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. German and Russian are also the origin of some loans, added with other Germanic such as Gothic or later Swedish loans.

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 [[Sami languages]] do not belong to this group; their relation is more distant. They are unrelated to the Indo-European languages, such as the Baltic, Slavic or Germanic languages.
-There are many shared roots, but there is little or no mutual intelligibility. Balto-Fennic languages are rather distinct from the rest of Fenno-Ugric languages, but form a tighter group together. Their split was approximately 1000 years ago. They have a phonemic three-way contrast between [[vowel length]]s, a large number of vocalic phonemes with strong contrasts between them and rather simple consonant sets. For example, Estonian has eight monophthongs in three different lenghts. Also, voiced plosives and consonant clusters are not recognized by the prominent languages Finnish and Estonian. [[Palatalization]] is retained, except by Western or standard Finnish. For more features, see [[Finno-Ugric languages]].
+There are many shared roots, but there is little or no mutual intelligibility. Balto-Fennic languages are rather distinct from the rest of Fenno-Ugric languages, but form a tighter group together. Their split was approximately 1000 years ago. They have a phonemic three-way contrast between [[vowel length]]s, a large number of vocalic phonemes with strong contrasts between them and rather simple consonant sets. For example, Estonian has eight monophthongs in three different lenghts, and 26 dipthhongs, each a distinct [[phoneme]]. Also, voiced plosives and consonant clusters are not recognized by the prominent languages Finnish and Estonian. [[Palatalization]] is retained, except by Western or standard Finnish. For more features, see [[Finno-Ugric languages]].
 The [[Urheimat]] is somewhere about the today's Estonia, and consequently, the most central, integrated and oldest loans are from the [[Baltic languages]], Lithuanian and Latvian. German and Russian are also the origin of some loans, added with other Germanic such as Gothic or later Swedish loans.