Finnic languages

The Baltic-Finnic languages ​​are a subgroup of the Finno -Ugric group within the Uralic language family. They are spoken in Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Karelia, Ingria and around the Great Lakes, as well as in space Tver ' in the North -West of Russia.

Classification of languages

Among the Baltic-Finnic languages ​​include ten to twelve languages:

• Finnish real Finnish
• Meänkieli (or Tornedalfinnisch ) ( in Tornedalen [ Sweden ] )
• Kvenisch (or Quänisch ) ( in Finnmark and Troms [ Norway ] )

• Real Karelian
• Lüdisch
• Olonetzisch

Characteristics

The Baltic-Finnic languages ​​are geographically on the western periphery of the Uralic language area. Next relatives are the Sami languages ​​in the north and the Volga- Finnic languages ​​of central Russia. Typological seen, the Finnish Baltic Sea some special features.

At the level of phonetics (not in the former Wepsischen ), these include the vowel and consonant quantity as well as the wealth of diphthongs. The consonants is pronounced rather weak in the center of the linguistic region, while especially in the more eastern languages ​​takes place approximation to the Russian phonemes.

The morphology is characterized by a mixture of flektiven and agglutinating agents. In the context of flexion, composition and derivation, the word stems or Basislexeme phonetically aligned (so-called stage change) are. General modifying elements as in other Uralic languages ​​are readjusted or suffixed. Prefixation and Präponierung can also be found in varying degrees, but are then almost exclusively on language contact due to Indo-European languages ​​.

The case systems are highly developed in all languages ​​, and include a minimum of 11 ( Livonian ), but also in part to over twenty ( Vepsian ) Kasusbeziehungen. Related information is usually more or less vary greatly, as the Baltic Finnish cases except the nominative, genitive and the morphologically usually not independent accusative express no grammatical, but semantic relations. This can be expressed by adpositions in there as well as in other languages ​​without change of meaning, so that the boundary between case and word structure is fluid. A special feature of the Finnish Baltic Sea is the partitive, which is mainly used to distinguish between partial and total object.

Linguistic history

Osteseefinnische tribes populated at the beginning of our era the areas around Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland in close proximity to the Baltic and Germanic tribes mentioned by Tacitus and in his Germania as Fenni. Thus, the Baltic-Finnic languages ​​were already affected in the earliest days of Indo-European languages ​​. Many borrowings from Germanic Proto-Germanic have a shape that is to ask about on a par with the Gothic, see King and ring, Finnish kuningas and rengas, Germanic ( reconstructed ) * and * kuningaz hrengaz. Even in the later ( separate ) development of the Baltic-Finnic languages ​​took over especially the Finnish repeatedly borrowed words from different language levels of the North Germanic languages, but also from the Slavic predecessor language of Russian, which is why the Baltic-Finnic languages ​​are also available for the Germanic and Slavic linguistic research of great interest. Beginning of the reign of Sweden over Finland, the Swedish exercised more influence on the Finnish, Estonian was influenced by the Teutonic Order from Low German. For more recent tracks from Russian come, especially in the Baltic-Finnic languages ​​of Russia.