Everything about The Baltic-finnic Languages totally explained
The
Baltic-Finnic languages, spoken around the
Baltic Sea by about 7 million people, are a branch of
Finnic languages belonging to the
Finno-Ugric group of the
Uralic language family. The Finnic division of the language groups includes:
Baltic-Finnic languages,
Volga-Finnic languages,
Permic and
Sami together with the
Ugric division of
Hungarian and the
Ob-Ugric languages
Mansi (Vogul) and
Khanty (Ostyak) make the
Finno-Ugric group of the
Uralic language family.
The major modern representatives of Baltic-Finnic languages are
Finnish and
Estonian, the official languages of their respective nation states. The other Finnic languages in the Baltic Sea region are
Ingrian,
Karelian,
Ludic,
Veps,
Votic, spoken around the
Gulf of Finland and Lakes
Onega and
Ladoga. The
Seto language and
Võro are spoken in south-eastern
Estonia and
Livonian in parts of
Latvia.
The smaller languages are disappearing. In the 20th century both
Livonian and
Votic had fewer than 100 speakers left. Other groups of which there are records have long since disappeared.
One of the characteristic features in the Baltic-Finnic languages is
consonant gradation. Two kinds of gradation occur: the radical and suffix gradation with the plosives K, T and P.
belongs to the Estonian literary language and is essential feature in
Võro,
Veps,
Karelian and other eastern Baltic-Finnic languages. The Finnish literary language is the only Baltic-Finnic language that doesn't have palatalization.
However, Baltic-Finnic palatalization isn't of Uralic origin; rather, it's apparently reacquired from Slavic. This can be seen in that it isn't an independent feature as in original Uralic, but dependent on the following vowel as in Slavic.
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 is greater in Finnish than in Estonian.
There are 14 noun
cases in Estonian and 15 in Finnish, which are denoted by adding a suffix.
Baltic-Finnic languages share some obviously noticeable features. The consonant sets are rather simple, featuring no voicing contrast, and almost all are
alveolar consonants. However, there are two
chronemes, which are phonemic: short, half-long
geminate and over-long
geminate consonants distinguish meanings and thus are different
phonemes. The same goes with vowels; short, half-long and over-long vowels distinguish meanings. The meaning-distinguishing effect is the strongest in Estonian and Võro, where all three lengths are fully phonemic; other languages distinguish only two lengths, where half-long is an allophone of short. There is a large number of vocalic phonemes with strong contrasts between them and complex diphthong systems. For example, Estonian has nine monophthongs [aeiouyæøɤ] in three different lengths, and 26 diphthongs, each a distinct
phoneme. The modern Baltic-Finnic diphthongs are an exclusively Baltic-Finnic innovation.
The morphophonology (how the grammatical function of a
morpheme affects its production) is complex. One important morphophonological process is
vowel harmony, another
consonant gradation. This is a
lenition process, where a word-final stop is changed into a "weaker" form with some (but not all) oblique cases. For geminates, the process is simple to describe: geminates become simple stops, for example
kuppia →
kupin. For simple consonants, the process complicates immensely, since the stops would become voiced fricatives, but there are no such fricatives, and some other consonant is selected instead, according to the phonetic environment. For example,
haka → haan, kyky → kyvyn, järki → järjen (Finnish). Another important process, strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian, is the "erosion" of word-final sounds. This may leave a phonemic status to the morphophonological variations caused by the agglutination of the lost suffixes, which is the source of the third length level in these languages.
In grammar, Baltic-Finnic languages follow the pattern of Uralic languages.
With the
Sami languages Baltic-Finnic languages share
consonant gradation and the three-way consonant length contrast. Relative to
Proto-Uralic, both have developed noninitial labial vowels and lost the labial glide preceding initial labial vowels. These features can be caused by a common ancestry (for example a distinct protolanguage giving rise to Proto-Baltic-Finnic and Proto-Sami), areal influence (Finnic peoples and Sami have coexistenced in the same areas), or coincidence.
Palatalization was lost in proto-Finnic, but dialects reacquired it, probably from Slavic. Standard or Western Finnish, however, did not. Therefore, it's found in East Finnish dialects and
Estonian, and their descendants, but not originally in West Finnish dialects. Palatalization is stronger and more widespread in
Võro,
Veps,
Karelian and other eastern Baltic-Finnic languages. For more features, see
Finno-Ugric languages.
The
Urheimat of Baltic-Finnic speaking peoples is believed to be somewhere in the region of what is now Estonia, and consequently, the most central, integrated and oldest loans are from the
Baltic languages, (proto-)
Lithuanian and (proto-)
Latvian. German and Russian are also the origin of some loans, added with other Germanic, such as
Gothic or later
Swedish, loans. There is little overt Russian influence in most languages, except in smaller languages, such as
Karelian, which has a long history of close contact with
Russian.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Baltic-finnic Languages'.
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