Ugric languages
| Ugric | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Hungary and Western Siberia |
| Linguistic classification: |
Uralic
|
| Subdivisions: | |
| Glottolog: | None |
The Ugric languages
|
|
The Ugric or Ugrian languages (/ˈjuːɡrᵻk/ or /ˈjuːɡriən/) are a branch of the Uralic language family. The term derives from "Ugres", an old exonym of the Hungarians, and Yugra, a region in western Siberia.
They include three subgroups: Hungarian, Khanty, and Mansi. The last two have traditionally been considered single languages, though their main dialects are sufficiently distinct that they may also be considered small subfamilies of 3–4 languages each. A common Proto-Ugric language is posited to have been spoken from the end of the 3rd millennium BC until the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in Western Siberia, east from the southern Ural mountains. However, recent reconstructions of Uralic have not generally found support for Ugric. Of the three languages, Khanty and Mansi have traditionally been set apart from Hungarian as Ob-Ugric, though features uniting Mansi and Hungarian in particular are known as well.
Two common phonetic features of the Ugric languages are a rearrangement of the Proto-Uralic (PU) system of sibilant consonants and a lenition of velar consonants:
It has however been pointed out that these changes are applicable to the Samoyedic languages as well.
...
Wikipedia