Finnic Languages
The Finnic (Fennic) or Baltic Finnic (Balto-Fennic) languages are a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people.
The major modern representatives of the family 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, and Votic, spoken around the Gulf of Finland and Lakes Onega and Ladoga. Võro and Seto (modern descendants of historical South Estonian) 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.
Meänkieli (in northern Sweden) and Kven (in northern Norway) are Finnish dialects that the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway have given the legal status of independent languages. They are mutually intelligible with Finnish.
The geographic centre of the maximum divergence between the languages is located south of the Gulf of Finland.
Read more about Finnic Languages: General Characteristics, List of Finnic Innovations, Subclassification
Famous quotes containing the word languages:
“No doubt, to a man of sense, travel offers advantages. As many languages as he has, as many friends, as many arts and trades, so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge his own.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)