1. Classification

2. General characteristics

3. Subgrouping
    Southern Finnic  Northern Finnic 

4. List of Finnic innovations
    Sound changes  Grammatical changes 

5. See also

6. Notes

7. Citations

8. References

9. External links

The Finnic languages (Fennic), or Baltic Finnic languages (Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic),{{refn|Outside Finland, the term Finnic languages has traditionally been used as a synonym of the extensive group of Finno-Permic languages, including the Baltic Finnic, Permic, Sami languages, and the languages of the Volga Finns.^[1][2] At the same time, Finnish scholars have restricted it to the Baltic Finnic languages;{{sfn|Laakso|2001|p=180}} the survey volume The Uralic Languages uses the Latinate spelling Fennic to distinguish this Baltic Finnic (Balto-Fennic) use from the broader Western sense of the word.^[3] In 2009, the 16th edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the World abandoned the Finno-Permic clade altogether and adopted the nomenclature of Finnish scholars.^[4]|group=nb}} are a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by Finnic peoples, mainly in Finland and Estonia, by about 7 million people.

Traditionally, eight Finnic languages have been recognized.^[5] The major modern representatives of the family are Finnish and Estonian, the official languages of their respective nation states.^[6] 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 of recognition as distinct languages, and have established separate literary standard languages.^[5] Northern Karelian, Tver Karelian and Livvi represent the three main dialect groups of Karelian, which earlier had been an unwritten language. Võro and Seto (modern descendants of South Estonian) are spoken in southeastern Estonia and earlier were considered dialects of Estonian. The Meänkieli dialects and Kven are spoken in northern Sweden and Norway and have the legal status of independent minority languages. They were earlier considered dialects of Finnish and are mutually intelligible with it.

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.^[7]

The geographic centre of the maximum divergence between the languages is located south of the Gulf of Finland.

Classification

The Finnic languages are located at the western end of the Uralic language family. A close affinity to their northern neighbors, the Sami 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, Samic and Mordvinic are frequently considered together.{{citation needed|date=September 2016}}

General characteristics

There is no grammatical gender in any of the Finnic languages, nor are there articles or definite or indefinite forms.^[8]

The morphophonology (the way the grammatical function of a morpheme affects its production) is complex. 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 {{IPA|/k/}}, {{IPA|/t/}} and {{IPA|/p/}},^[8] 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"). (See the separate article for more details.) Vowel harmony (lost in Livonian, generally also in Estonian and Veps) is also an important process. Historically, the "erosion" of word-final sounds (strongest in Livonian, Võro and Estonian) may leave a phonemic status to the morphophonological variations caused by the agglutination of the lost suffixes, which results in three phonemic lengths in these languages.

The original Uralic palatalization was lost in proto-Finnic,^[9] 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.^[8]

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.^[8]

There are 14 grammatical cases in Estonian and 15 in Finnish, which are denoted by adding a suffix.

Subgrouping

The Finnic languages form a complex dialect continuum with few clear-cut boundaries.{{sfn|Laakso|2001|p=207}} Innovations have often spread through a variety of areas,{{sfn|Laakso|2001|p=180}} even after variety-specific changes.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}

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):{{sfn|Viitso|1998|p=101}}

† = 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),^[10] Viitso (1998), and Kallio (2014):^[11]

• 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).^[9][11]

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.{{sfn|Viitso|1998|p=101}} Thus, contemporary "Southern Finnic" is a sprachbund that includes these languages, while diachronically they are not closely related.

Viitso (2000)^[12] 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 Bay 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.{{sfn|Viitso|1998|p=101}} The languages regardless share a number of features, such as the presence of a ninth vowel phoneme õ, usually a close-mid back unrounded {{IPA|/ɤ/}} (but a close central unrounded {{IPA|/ɨ/}} 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)^[11]), 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).^[11]

Northern Finnic

The Northern Finnic group has more evidence for being an actual historical/genetic subgroup. Phonetical innovations would include two changes in unstressed syllables: *ej > *ij, and *o > ö after front-harmonic vowels. The lack of õ in these languages as an innovation rather than a retention has been proposed, and recently resurrected.^[11] Germanic loanwords found throughout Northern Finnic but absent in Southern are also abundant, and even several Baltic examples of this are known.

Northern Finnic in turn divides into two main groups. The most Eastern Finnic group consists of the East Finnish dialects as well as Ingrian, Karelian and Veps; the proto-language of these was likely spoken in the vicinity of Lake Ladoga.^[10] The Western Finnic group consists of the West Finnish dialects, originally spoken on the western coast of Finland, and within which the oldest division is that into Southwestern, Tavastian and Southern Ostrobothnian dialects. Among these, at least the Southwestern dialects have later come under Estonian influence.

Numerous new dialects have also arisen through contacts of the old dialects: these include e.g. the more northern Finnish dialects (a mixture of West and East Finnish), and the Livvi and Ludic varieties (probably originally Veps dialects but heavily influenced by Karelian).

Salminen (2003){{citation needed|date=March 2016}} present the following list of Finnic languages and their respective number of speakers.

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