Uralic adventures

[Karhunkynsi]

I have seen million different maps about spread of Indo-European languages but never proper one about Uralic languages. As I dont whine, I act, so I made one. What do you think ? I noticed we have a new member with name Jaska, I'm especially interested what you think. Arrows are not supposed to be other than broad generalizations (ie. they dont follow river routes etc).

[T-Dominator]

Correct ways in many cases.

[Karhunkynsi]

Correct ways in many cases.

Thanks, I was not blind shooting :lol: . There should be hundred small arrows from all of those big arrows but I tried to keep it simple.

[T-Dominator]

Thanks, I was not blind shooting :lol: . There should be hundred small arrows from all of those big arrows but I tried to keep it simple.

You kept. Has anyone different ideas about the ways or arrows?

[Zupan]

hey N carrying mong! This map was quite good :)

But you could have added one more arrow. From C -> H direct route if you get it. Through the swamplands.

[Azvarohi]

So you've thrown the Comb Ceramic = Finno-Ugric into the garbage disposal?

What makes you put the various urheimat locations where you put them? Not saying I'm disagreeing at the moment, just interested.

[Karhunkynsi]

hey N carrying mong! This map was quite good :)


I'm actually I1d-mong.



But you could have added one more arrow. From C -> H direct route if you get it. Through the swamplands.

Yes I could have but that would actually be even more wrong than the G arrow. I could have spread the C-box much more to west (touching the Baltic sea). That would be pretty much correct but would have broken my nice dynamics, see: G arrow starts from the F arrow.

---------- Post added 2010-07-01 at 22:28 ----------


So you've thrown the Comb Ceramic = Finno-Ugric into the garbage disposal?


Hahaa, archeologist looks at he language map :)

Nope, these are not in any other historical perspective except: A -> (B,C,D) -> Rest. They represent linguistic split from Proto-Uralic, nothing else.

My personal opinion is that CC = Finno-Ugric. Many disagree. This map how ever does not relate to that. No time frame here.



What makes you put the various urheimat locations where you put them? Not saying I'm disagreeing at the moment, just interested.

By the massive amount I've been through of scholarly literature about the subject. This is my personal view. Just to name few: Ramstedt, Janhunen, Marcantonio, Häkkinen, Mallory, Koivulehto, Helimsky, Castren etc.

I have never seen anyone building a proper "spread map" of Uralic languages. So I had to build one.

[PeterThaGreat]

You have placed the Uralic homeland way too west. According to the recent linguistic evidence the homeland is in the East of Urals, we have become back to square one.


Besides, what makes you think Finns have approached the lands of modern Finland from South and not from the East via Carelia? It looks this all your "let's westernize" the origins of Finns-thingy. Is there really solid evidence that proto-Finnics would have taken such a swing via Baltics? I dount.

Anyway, what was the anthrotype of proto-Uralic folk, were they mongoloids, as previously assumed?

Other than that, really nice graphics.

[Karhunkynsi]

You have placed the Uralic homeland way too west. According to the recent linguistic evidence the homeland is in the East of Urals, we have become back to square one.


Actually I placed the Uralic Urheimat exactly where Jaakko Häkkinen, 2009, placed it (see pic):
http://www.sgr.fi/susa/92/hakkinen.pdf

According to you _Finns_ came from Northeast Asia around year 700 AD. You think you have any credibility to comment anything ?



Besides, what makes you think Finns have approached the lands of modern Finland from South and not from the East via Carelia?


"Finns" have come to Finland both through Karelian Isthmus and island hopping from Estonia. Arrows give only broad generilized direction for _language_ spread.



It looks this all your "let's westernize" the origins of Finns-thingy. Is there really solid evidence that proto-Finnics would have taken such a swing via Baltics? I dount.


Again Mr. "Finns came from Northeast Asia year 700 AD, Prof. Juha Janhunen told me so" can keep his wisdom to himself.



Anyway, what was the anthrotype of proto-Uralic folk, were they mongoloids, as previously assumed?


They looked like Dolph Lundgren, now get lost.

[PeterThaGreat]

^Jaahas,

well is that proto-Uralic urmheit at the Eastern side of Urals? Coz' that what Juha Janhunen has assessed over the ancestral home of Uralics.

I have never said, or atleast meant that Finns have come directly to the present day area's of Finland from Northern Asia, they have obviously come via Eastern shores of the Baltics around 0-400AD, according Aspelin the date is more later, I am sorry, incase you have I have expressed myself unclearly. And with "Finns" I obviously mean the founding population of Finns.

[Azvarohi]

Hahaa, archeologist looks at he language map :)

One can never know what roams your Uralic mind except reindeers.


They represent linguistic split from Proto-Uralic, nothing else.

I think that one atleast can agree that the Samoyedic split took play way before any major contact with Indo-Europeans (maybe even before the split of Indo-Iranian?), since the loanwords in Finno-Ugric from IE is lacking in Samoyedic. The Urals probably served as a barrier that prohibited any larger contact between the migrating Proto-Samoyedic people and the staying Proto-Finno-Ugric, which would put the homeland some distance from the south Urals.


I have never seen anyone building a proper "spread map" of Uralic languages. So I had to build one.

I think Valev Uibopuu have some maps in his "Finnougrierna och deras språk", however it is from 1989 and the maps are much older than that. The Volga river area seem to be very popular as location for either Proto-Uralic or Proto-Finno-Ugric. Funny is that Swedes that have taken the question into literature seem to put it west of the Urals, while some Hungarians put i east of the Urals. :)

[Karhunkynsi]

^Jaahas,

well is that proto-Uralic urmheit at the Eastern side of Urals? Coz' that what Juha Janhunen has assessed over the ancestral home of Uralics.


There certainly was proto-Uralic migration/movement to Siberia. See Samoyeds from my map.



I have never said, or atleast meant that Finns have come directly to the present day area's of Finland via Northern Asia, they have obviously come via Eastern shores of the Baltics around 0-400AD, according Aspelin the date is more later, I am sorry, incase you have I have expressed myself unclearly.

Yes you have. You are just changing the story again. Even this new version of your story is nonsense as it assumes migration of Finnish people as "monolithic marching army".

[PeterThaGreat]

There certainly was proto-Uralic migration/movement to Siberia. See Samoyeds from my map.



Yes you have. You are just changing the story again. Even this new version of your story is nonsense as it assumes migration of Finnish people as "monolithic marching army".

LOL. Why the hell I would change my theory, I have't read anything recent in regards to my theory. As I said, I apologize incase I have expressed myself unclearly. But the way you postulate it is something I cannot agree upon, and I have never done in the past either.

No, I don't think there was monolithic army, there has been population movements from all directions, I am referring to the Uralic-speaking founding group which brought the language gave thus the foundations for modern Finnish ethnicity which really was born in the 1800's.

[Motörhead Remember Me]

I'm actually I1d-mong.
Mongmongmongmongmong.

Yes I could have but that would actually be even more wrong than the G arrow. I could have spread the C-box much more to west (touching the Baltic sea). That would be pretty much correct but would have broken my nice dynamics, see: G arrow starts from the F arrow. The map is good. It gives a good larger picture. Of course regions should be looke at with bigger resolution where we could add different groups within the language families.


Hahaa, archeologist looks at he language map A crossdisciplinary approach has its strengths and weak point. Language and cultural diffusion plays tricks.


My personal opinion is that CC = Finno-Ugric. Many disagree. This map how ever does not relate to that. No time frame here. I tend to believe CC is paleo European/proto Uralic in culture. It's maybe to early to be Finno Ugrian. But again; language and pottery is tricky to mix. There is no proof what languages were spoken by those people.


By the massive amount I've been through of scholarly literature about the subject. This is my personal view. Just to name few: Ramstedt, Janhunen, Marcantonio, Häkkinen, Mallory, Koivulehto, Helimsky, Castren etc.

Kaisa or Jaakko Häkkinen?

---------- Post added 2010-07-02 at 08:31 ----------


LOL. Why the hell I would change my theory, I have't read anything recent in regards to my theory. As I said, I apologize incase I have expressed myself unclearly. But the way you postulate it is something I cannot agree upon, and I have never done in the past either.

No, I don't think there was monolithic army, there has been population movements from all directions, I am referring to the Uralic-speaking founding group which brought the language gave thus the foundations for modern Finnish ethnicity which really was born in the 1800's.

What made up this "Uralic" founding group? Men and women or only men or only women? Where did they come from? Why did they suddenly appear? Who were there before them? What happened to them? Etc... You've spread false ideas and disinformation without basis in any research and you are again to be ridiculed if you continue here.

[PeterThaGreat]

Actually, comparing you and me craniometric wise you are closer to "mong"... So I'd shut up if I was you. Anyway, "mongs" are fine. Nothing wrong with being "mong". "Mong" women are beautiful.

Back to topic Uralic language dispersal.


Yes, but this is population science, not individual. Eventhough you'd be Max von Sydow and me Mika Häkkinen it wouldn't change anything.

Besides, I disagree with you with the comparison. You look craniometric wise more mong than I do.

Yep, there's nothing wrong with being mong. I'd love to see that more Finns would embrace their Ugric-asiannes instead of the messianic quest for being seen as white-Europeans, (although, I am sure there's plenty of the "mong-loving" Finns as well)

[Evi]

Karhunkynsi, I disargee with your placement of proto-Ugric. Because modern Ob-Ugrians share so much common at least with Finnic-Permic ethnicities (vocabulary, including loans from Iranian languages, at least also distribution of Y chr. haplogroups and mtDNA haplogroups, which in Ob-Ugrian case just have bigger Mongoloid input). Also Hungarians seem to have lots of common words with Komi (personally the Komi have said so).

Why you didn't take my saying into account? I was writing all of this before (except maybe about Hungarian and Komi language similarities).

[Karhunkynsi]

Why you didn't take my saying into account? I was writing all of this before (except maybe about Hungarian and Komi language similarities).

I was pretty much thinking of formation stage of Sargat culture region defining Ugrics in my map. You are ofcource right that there was indeed Ugrics much more to west too and the general situation is much more complex than in my map.

[Karhunkynsi]

I think that one atleast can agree that the Samoyedic split took play way before any major contact with Indo-Europeans (maybe even before the split of Indo-Iranian?),


I have seen term pre-proto-Aryan used for that linguistic stage. Basically late PIE.



since the loanwords in Finno-Ugric from IE is lacking in Samoyedic. The Urals probably served as a barrier that prohibited any larger contact between the migrating Proto-Samoyedic people and the staying Proto-Finno-Ugric, which would put the homeland some distance from the south Urals.


Samoyedic had contacts with Iranics and Tocharians. Basically just different and later set of IE's.

[OldPretan]

Mr Bear, did you check out these links posted in the Finnish forum a few weeks back? Are they too fanciful for consideration? I liked that they gave an explanation for the origins of the non IE language allegedly spoken by the northern Caledonii (Picts).
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/FinnoUgricbkgd.html


The traditional views on the Finno-Ugric languages (Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, etc) were developed in the late 1800's with no evidence other than linguistic distances, and since then other fields of science like archeology and genetics has failed to support the traditional theory of a tight origina and migrations of tight-knit groups. When the question is viewed fresh, using all the information now available in 2006, a different picture emerges, that suggests the Finno-Ugric cultures are remnants of the original hunter-fisher people of Europe, and that in continental Europe they were all lost due to cultural replacement. In other words the language of the original dugout boat hunter-fishers that emerged from the archeological Maglemose Culture out of flooded northern Europe around 10,000-6,000 BC can be viewed as generally "Uralic" but more specifically "Proto-Finno-Ugric". The out-of-Uralic-Europe theory has been promoted and publicized by Finnish linguist Kalevi Wiik.

[Lemminkäinen]

Mr Bear, did you check out these links posted in the Finnish forum a few weeks back? Are they too fanciful for consideration? I liked that they gave an explanation for the origins of the non IE language allegedly spoken by the northern Caledonii (Picts).
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/FinnoUgricbkgd.html

This is neither new nor accepted theory today. FU-based lingua franca isn't very popular among Finnish linguists. It was somehow a follower of the continuity theory, which is also buried.

[Motörhead Remember Me]

Karhunkynsi, I disargee with your placement of proto-Ugric. Because modern Ob-Ugrians share so much common at least with Finnic-Permic ethnicities. How do the modern Ob-Ugrians not correspond with their proto Ugric placement on the map?

---------- Post added 2010-07-02 at 09:56 ----------


Mr Bear, did you check out these links posted in the Finnish forum a few weeks back? Are they too fanciful for consideration? I liked that they gave an explanation for the origins of the non IE language allegedly spoken by the northern Caledonii (Picts).
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/FinnoUgricbkgd.html

There's some truth to this but migration, language and cultural diffusion are really enigmatic.

---------- Post added 2010-07-02 at 09:56 ----------


This is neither new nor accepted theory today. FU-based lingua franca isn't very popular among Finnish linguists. It was somehow a follower of the continuity theory, which is also buried.

Partly it is so, yes.

[Karhunkynsi]

http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/FinnoUgricbkgd.html

Yeah, I've seen these and I think that site has lot of good ideas (especially on technical side, how the hunter+fisher languages spread with canoes etc).

My map is based on traditional, comparative linguistic model. It's map that basically any Uralicist, atleast in principle could agree.

Atlanto-Finnic can not be proven by comparative method as there is no Atlanto-Finnic language to compare with. At the moment there are projects going on to have better reconstructions of dead Finnic languages of Russia's NW (from toponyms etc). Perhaps someday some of those lessons there can be used to either validate or disqualify the Atlanto-Finnic theory.

[OldPretan]

Yeah, I've seen these and I think that site has lot of good ideas (especially on technical side, how the hunter+fisher languages spread with canoes etc).

My map is based on traditional, comparative linguistic model. It's map that basically any Uralicist, atleast in principle could agree.

Atlanto-Finnic can not be proven by comparative method as there is no Atlanto-Finnic language to compare with. At the moment there are projects going on to have better reconstructions of dead Finnic languages of Russia's NW (from toponyms etc). Perhaps someday some of those lessons there can be used to either validate or disqualify the Atlanto-Finnic theory.

Doggerland and those areas to east & west would have been ideal for swampies but further inland and northwards in the then British peninsula would not have been good canoe territory.

Some research into comparison between what little (runic inscriptions?) remains of N. Pictish and Finnic would be interesting, also Cymric/britannic (insular P-celtic) would then have a substrate lacking in Gaelic.

[Evi]

How do the modern Ob-Ugrians not correspond with their proto Ugric placement on the map?
Because I actually suspect that at least part of Ob-Ugrian ancestors were same as Perm-Finnic ancestors. The "coincidence" of f.e. similarity of haplogroups between these two groups are very interesting, I myself have a "Komi" maternal haplogroup. The European maternal haplogroups of Komi and Khanty are practically same, while they are different from Finnish and Saami European maternal haplogroups. Of course, it needs further research, and some real Komi, Udmurt, Khanty people in 23andMe at least.

Also linguistically I suspect that Perm-Finnic languages share more common words and features with Ugric languages than with Baltic-Finnic languages. Also this needs further research.

In the end we talk about Permic group primarly. To whom were they closer originally - to Baltic Finnic group, or to Ugric? That's the main question for me. I am not totally sure about the correctness of current Uralic language tree.

[Karhunkynsi]

Some research into comparison between what little (runic inscriptions?) remains of N. Pictish and Finnic would be interesting, also Cymric/britannic (insular P-celtic) would then have a substrate lacking in Gaelic.

This is intresting idea. I googled a bit and there is actually very recent study about Pictish symbol stones. They are now proven to be writing:
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/03/26/rspa.2010.0041.full#aff-1

They use very advanced math in order to verify that the symbol stones are infact writing. They can not depicher them yet but one day..

Article about the discovery:
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/ancient-scotland-written-language.html

[OldPretan]

This is intresting idea. I googled a bit and there is actually very recent study about Pictish symbol stones. They are now proven to be writing:
http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/03/26/rspa.2010.0041.full#aff-1

They use very advanced math in order to verify that the symbol stones are infact writing. They can not depicher them yet but one day..

Article about the discovery:
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/ancient-scotland-written-language.html

Wow, I'm on the right track.
As Uralic adventures go, are there opportunities for canoeing holidays amongst Suomi's swamps & streams?

Looking at that sentence, which I crafted for its alliterative qualities, is there some link between swamp & Suomi?

[Evi]

Very good question is about Mordvian languages, especially about Erzya language. They are more similar to Baltic-Finnic languages, than to Mari language, if I am not mistaken (yet Mordvian languages and Mari language are united in Volgaic-Finnic branch). According to one source, the similarity of words between Erzya and Saami languages is so big, that it is like 40-50% of words are similar.

http://www.erzan.ru/news/erzya-i-saami-yazyki-ochen-blizki

[Tuohikirje]

Wow, I'm on the right track.
As Uralic adventures go, are there opportunities for canoeing holidays amongst Suomi's swamps & streams?

Looking at that sentence, which I crafted for its alliterative qualities, is there some link between swamp & Suomi?

I believe most supported theory is Proto-Baltic *zeme, low-lying/flat land.
Baltic word *sämas, to live, corresponds to Latvian *säms, a Finn or inhabitant from Estonian island Saarenmaa. *Sämenis i.e. NW wind or wind from Saarenmaa, in Lithuanian *sömenis.
*Edit. Somu is a Finn according to modern Latvian dictionary.

Historically Suomi name has not been restricted only to modern Finland.
Like Ruotsi name (modern Sweden in Finnish) ment all 'western people, who came by boats' meaning all people west from e.g. Karelia.

Canoeing in Finland! Absolutely.

http://www.wildcanoe.com/EN/ENwildcanoe.html

[Evi]

I believe most supported theory is Proto-Baltic *zeme, low-lying/flat land.
Baltic word *sämas, to live, corresponds to Latvian *säms, a Finn or inhabitant from Estonian island Saarenmaa. *Sämenis i.e. NW wind or wind from Saarenmaa, in Lithuanian *sömenis.
They must be really old words, otherwise I don't recognise them, neither sāmas, neither sāmenis. I recognise only zeme, which means "land".


*Edit. Somu is a Finn according to modern Latvian dictionary.
That's bad dictionary. "Finn" (a male gender) in Latvian is soms (pronounced as "suoms"), "Finn" (a female gender) in Latvian is somiete (pronounced as "suomiete") and "Finns" in Latvian usually is somi (pronounced as "suomi"), although there is female form somietes (pronounced as "suomietes"). Country Finland is Somija (pronounced Suomija)

P.S. Letter O in Latvian language is usually pronounced as diftong UO.


By the way, the modern Latvian names soms, somiete, Somija etc. most likely are borrowed from the Finns directly. One of main reasons is because in Latvian language F is foreign sound, so word Finn or Finlandia would just sound weird for Latvian ears.


The thing that differs all Baltic-Finnic languages, and also Erzyan language apart from other FU languages, is that they have Baltic loanwords.

I would say that Erzyan language possibly should be included almost in Baltic-Finnic branch. And I am not the only one who talks so.

[Karhunkynsi]

The thing that differs all Baltic-Finnic languages, and also Erzyan language apart from other FU languages, is that they have Baltic loanwords.


Evi, Balto-Fennic languages are not defined by loanwords (not from Balts, nor from Germanics) but due to internal structure of Uralic language family.

[Jaska]

I have seen million different maps about spread of Indo-European languages but never proper one about Uralic languages. As I dont whine, I act, so I made one. What do you think ? I noticed we have a new member with name Jaska, I'm especially interested what you think. Arrows are not supposed to be other than broad generalizations (ie. they dont follow river routes etc).

Hi,

very good map in general! Only those curves G and D are too curvy, bending to the areas where Uralic speakers did not pass in their journey. But as we can see with the curve H, the point is the destination, not the route: the Saami did not circulate via White Sea. :-)



well is that proto-Uralic urmheit at the Eastern side of Urals? Coz' that what Juha Janhunen has assessed over the ancestral home of Uralics.

Well, Janhunen has recently agreed with the concusions of Häkkinen 2009, who - following Petri Kallio 2006 - locates Proto-Uralic near the Volga bend area (linked by Karhunkynsi) – see the Acknowledgements in page 75:

http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust258/sust258_janhunen.pdf



I think that one atleast can agree that the Samoyedic split took play way before any major contact with Indo-Europeans (maybe even before the split of Indo-Iranian?), since the loanwords in Finno-Ugric from IE is lacking in Samoyedic.

Not any more: there are many Proto-Indo-European loanwords found in the Samoyedic branch, too: *nimi ’name’, *wixi- ’to take’, *pexi- ’to cook’ etc. There are also Late Proto-Aryan loanwords in Samoyedic and Ugric, which have participated in all the sound changes of these branches, meaning that they were adopted while the language was practically still at the level of Proto-Uralic.

Consequently, Proto-Uralic is nowadays seen to be contemporary with Late Proto-Aryan (~ 2000 BC), not Late Proto-Indo-European.

---------- Post added 2010-07-04 at 22:48 ----------


Karhunkynsi, I disargee with your placement of proto-Ugric. Because modern Ob-Ugrians share so much common at least with Finnic-Permic ethnicities (vocabulary, including loans from Iranian languages, at least also distribution of Y chr. haplogroups and mtDNA haplogroups, which in Ob-Ugrian case just have bigger Mongoloid input). Also Hungarians seem to have lots of common words with Komi (personally the Komi have said so).

In the end we talk about Permic group primarly. To whom were they closer originally - to Baltic Finnic group, or to Ugric? That's the main question for me. I am not totally sure about the correctness of current Uralic language tree.

It is normal that the languages spoken close to each others for centuries or millennia share common words and features. But the crucial point is, that the Permic languages share ancient features with the other Finno-Permic branches (Finnic, Saamic, Mordvinic, Mari[c]) and only later/younger features with the Ugric branches (Mansic, Khantic, Hungaric).

What do you mean with the current family tree? There are quite a few of them:

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Sukupuu.pdf
(Sukupuu = ’family tree’, suomalais-mordvalainen = ’Finno-Mordvinic’, itämerensuomalainen = ’[Balto-]Finnic’)



Very good question is about Mordvian languages, especially about Erzya language. They are more similar to Baltic-Finnic languages, than to Mari language, if I am not mistaken (yet Mordvian languages and Mari language are united in Volgaic-Finnic branch). According to one source, the similarity of words between Erzya and Saami languages is so big, that it is like 40-50% of words are similar.

Volgaic branch has been deserted long ago, at least in Finland. Nowadays there seems to be no evidence for that – see Tapani Salminen 2002:

http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/kuzn.html

It is also clear, that on the phonetical level Saamic, Finnic and Mordvinic (but not Mari[c]) all go back to the same reconstruction level, which can be named as Western Uralic dialect.

And like Karhunkynsi said, we cannot draw the family tree on the basis of loanwords – and like Tapani Salminen says, we cannot draw it on the basis of common retentions (the features that are inherited from the common protolanguage), either: we can only draw the family tree on the basis of common innovations.



I'm of Akhiska Turk(a Cuman tribe in Caucasus) and Kazakh blood from fatherside and I have N also...It shows those Uralics also reached Caucasus a lil bit...

Actually it does not show that. If you mean haplogroups N1b or N1c, they seem to have been present also in the Turkic expansion: these paternal lineages are found within the Turkic peoples and even in Turkey. So the N of Caucasus has most probably spread there with the Turkic expansion.

[Karhunkynsi]

Well, Janhunen has recently agreed with the concusions of Häkkinen 2009, who - following Petri Kallio 2006 - locates Proto-Uralic near the Volga bend area

PTG, I quoted this for you to read.

[Jaska]

The Netstorage of Helsinki University sucks right now, so I had to upload my map here:

http://karvapalo.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Uekspansio.bmp/full

The name of my folder does not mean anything - I just got tired to see all the names were reserved, even "karpalo" ('cranberry'), so I just added a nonsentic syllable ("karvapalo" is literally 'hairburn'). ;)

So, there are only the first three stages of Uralic expansion (marked I, II and III).

LU = II. Western Uralic > III. Mordvinic, Finnic, Saamic (and the lost languages)
IU = II. Eastern Uralic > III. Hungaric, Mansic, Khantic and Samoyedic
U = I. Uralic > II. Middle Uralic > III. Maric, Permic

And here is the family tree it is based on:

http://karvapalo.kuvat.fi/kuvat/Sukupuu.bmp

[Karhunkynsi]

It looks like there is some Uralic group missing between Ugrics and Samoyedics.

Janhunen:



Without going into the question concerning the possibility of a Proto-Uralic
presence in the Minusinsk basin, it is relatively safe to follow the ethnolinguistic
history of the region backwards to the arrival of Turkic (later Yenisei Turkic),
which ended the Tashtyk (or Hunnish) period in the region. The historical distribution
of the local ethnolinguistic groups strongly suggests that the dominant
language in the Minusinsk basin before Turkic, that is, the language of the Tashtyk
Culture, was Yeniseic (Proto-Yeniseic), while the dominant language before
Yeniseic, that is, the language of the Tagar Culture, must have been Samoyedic
(Proto-Samoyedic). Much speculation has been presented concerning the possible
linguistic identities of the Karasuk, Andronovo, Okunevo, and Afanasievo
Cultures, but nothing certain can be said. Even so, the Indo-European elements
in Samoyedic suggest that some early eastern form of Indo-European (Proto-
Tocharian?) may have been present in the region either before Samoyedic or in
parallel with it (Janhunen 1983).


There is something missing between proto-Uralic urheimat and the proto-Samoyedics of Tagar culture. Or did the Ugric speaking zone actually spread much further east ? I'm obviously suggesting the pre-Sargat formation stage.

[Jaska]

There is something missing between proto-Uralic urheimat and the proto-Samoyedics of Tagar culture. Or did the Ugric speaking zone actually spread much further east ? I'm obviously suggesting the pre-Sargat formation stage.
Yes, it is intriguing. I see two options:

1) Pre-Samoyedic (part of the Eastern Uralic dialect) was carried far to the east, forming a Uralic island in the middle of Palaeo-Siberian languages. The distance to the closest relatives in the Urals was thousands of kilometres.
+ Proto-Samoyedic is quite an archaic language, but it nevertheless has gone through a massive change in vocabulary. This could be explained by early isolation (from related languages) in the foreign language environment.
+ There is one thing common between Kama-Ural-region (Eastern Uralic) and Altai-Sayan-region (Samoyedic): rich bronze metallurgy. And these areas seem to have interconnected very quickly during the Seima-Turbino-period (common bronze artifacts spread in the taiga zone between the Sayan region and Finland). This time-depth happen to match the Uralic expansion determined by the linguistic results.

2) The whole of Western Siberia was covered by Eastern Uralic languages between the Ugric and Samoyedic languages.
– No traces of such languages have been found. On the contrary, Janhunen himself has proposed that there is a recent Palaeo-Siberian substrate in Khanty.

So, the first explanation seems to be more credible so far.

[Evi]

It is normal that the languages spoken close to each others for centuries or millennia share common words and features. But the crucial point is, that the Permic languages share ancient features with the other Finno-Permic branches (Finnic, Saamic, Mordvinic, Mari[c]) and only later/younger features with the Ugric branches (Mansic, Khantic, Hungaric).
I would like to find out more about this.

I am not linguist or specialist, but there seem to be a lot of very same words in Khanty and Komi (also Udmurt) languages? Could they be just loanwords from Komi language to Khanty language?


What do you mean with the current family tree? There are quite a few of them:

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Sukupuu.pdf
(Sukupuu = ’family tree’, suomalais-mordvalainen = ’Finno-Mordvinic’, itämerensuomalainen = ’[Balto-]Finnic’)
I meant the oldest one. Those youngest family trees, which you have posted, aren't accepted yet officially, at least not in Russia, as far as I know (I posted in some Russian-speaking forums the Finnish version of trees, and it was news to posters there).

And we still have to argue, which of tree models is most correct one? And the models seem to be created only by Finns?

Of course, there is no doubt that the old family tree model has to be changed.



Volgaic branch has been deserted long ago, at least in Finland. Nowadays there seems to be no evidence for that – see Tapani Salminen 2002:

http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/kuzn.html

It is also clear, that on the phonetical level Saamic, Finnic and Mordvinic (but not Mari[c]) all go back to the same reconstruction level, which can be named as Western Uralic dialect.
Yes, it looks like that. I just find weird why Mordvian languages were once united together with Mari language under Volgaic branch? I guess it is some of the Soviet nonsense?


And like Karhunkynsi said, we cannot draw the family tree on the basis of loanwords – and like Tapani Salminen says, we cannot draw it on the basis of common retentions (the features that are inherited from the common protolanguage), either: we can only draw the family tree on the basis of common innovations.
I didn't claim such kind of thing at all. Karhunkynsi maybe misunderstood me. By loanwords I meant Iranic loanwords, which seem to be similar in Permic and Ob-Ugric languages, and which could be one of traits, that could suggest existence of united Permic-Ugric language, because of that the languages now have same Iranic loanwords. Although, on other hand, it is suggested, that Khanty received the Iranic loanwords through Komi language. But yet again, some other thesis was against the Komi role. Perhaps I should search for this information now somewhere.

By the way, there is a lot of mess about the Eastern Finno-Ugric languages! First of all, the Volgaic branch itself has been a mess. Second, there is mess about Mordvian languages, as oficially exists only one, single Mordvian language, but the speakers themselves insist, that Erzyas and Moksas speak two different languages, and can't be considered as "dialects". Third, there is total mess about Khanty and Mansi languages. My mother, the native speaker of Khanty Eastern dialect, has opinion, that Northern Khanty dialect and Eastern Khanty dialect are in reality different languages, while Eastern Khanty dialect and Mansi language are not different languages, but more like dialects. She understands Mansi language better than Northern Khanty dialect. According to some new publications, Northern Khanty group diverged from rest Ob-Ugric groups earlier, and only later Mansi dialects diverged from other Khanty groups. Fourth, there is some mess also about Komi language. Sometimes researchers talk about two languages - Permic-Komi and Zyrian-Komi. The Komi speakers themselves disagree with that, they have opinion, that Permic-Komi and Zyrian-Komi are not seperate languages, they are just different dialects, where they understand each other quite well.

I hope that at least Finns could clean up this linguistic mess in Uralic family tree.

[Skadesisuolu]

They must be really old words, otherwise I don't recognise them, neither sāmas, neither sāmenis. I recognise only zeme, which means "land".


There may be other explanation than a borrowing from baltic zeme. An alternative I am aware of is borrowing from old norse or proto germanic "sámr" meaning "dark grey". However recently it has been challenged, and this word have been borrowed into old norse from saami "samo-" meaning "dark, foggy; dark and foggy weather". The word can also be seen in finnic "sumea, samea".

[Jaska]

I would like to find out more about this.

I am not linguist or specialist, but there seem to be a lot of very same words in Khanty and Komi (also Udmurt) languages? Could they be just loanwords from Komi language to Khanty language?
Either they are old (inherited from Proto-Uralic) or new (loans from one language to other), because at the phonological level there are no common innovations between the Permic and Ugric languages, and at the lexical level Permic clearly belongs to the Finno-Permic group.

One good example is Aryan/Iranian word *saras 'sea, big lake etc.' which was first loaned to Proto-Uralic *sara/*šara and this leads regularly to the words like Hungarian ár ~ Mansi tuur ~ Khanty Laar, and Udmurt šur ~ Komi šor.

Later this same Iranian word was borrowed again, giving the words Udmurt zariź ~ Komi zaridź, and through these the word was borrowed into Mansi söärś ~ Khanty sāret'.

Another even Proto-Uralic-level Aryan loanword is U *asira (<-- A *asura 'lord' > Ir. ahura), which is represented by words like Mordvin azoro ~ Komi ozïr ~ Udmurt uzïr ~ Mansi uuter. As you can see, in the old words *a is u and *s is t in Mansi (compare to U *saras). There are a plenty more of such Proto-Uralic words where these sound correspondences occur.

So, in the young loans the vowels and consonants look like very similar, but in the ancient cognates they look very different, because the languages have developed to the separate directions.



I meant the oldest one. Those youngest family trees, which you have posted, aren't accepted yet officially, at least not in Russia, as far as I know (I posted in some Russian-speaking forums the Finnish version of trees, and it was news to posters there).

And we still have to argue, which of tree models is most correct one? And the models seem to be created only by Finns?
I think that among the Finno-Ugrian studies in Finland (and a little in Estonia too) there has been more discussion about the Uralic family tree, while in Hungary and Russia they have been quite content with that over a century old family tree. :) Language barrier may of course be one factor, as far as we don't use the "international" languages - but even in 1984 Kaisa Häkkinen questioned the traditional family tree in an article in German, so maybe they aren't just interested in this subject in Hungary or Russia...



Yes, it looks like that. I just find weird why Mordvian languages were once united together with Mari language under Volgaic branch? I guess it is some of the Soviet nonsense?
Hard to say... Maybe one reason was geographic adjacency, another perhaps the (every now and then) speculated common origin of the ethnonymes (< A *mrta- 'mortal')?



I didn't claim such kind of thing at all. Karhunkynsi maybe misunderstood me. By loanwords I meant Iranic loanwords, which seem to be similar in Permic and Ob-Ugric languages, and which could be one of traits, that could suggest existence of united Permic-Ugric language, because of that the languages now have same Iranic loanwords. Although, on other hand, it is suggested, that Khanty received the Iranic loanwords through Komi language. But yet again, some other thesis was against the Komi role. Perhaps I should search for this information now somewhere.
There are later Iranian influence even separately into Permic and Ugric languages, so these common words may be independent. But as I showed in the beginning of this message, it can be told when the word is old and when young, and usually also what is the loan direction.

The loanwords still don't have any power to prove anything about the common Permic-Ugric proto-language.



By the way, there is a lot of mess about the Eastern Finno-Ugric languages! First of all, the Volgaic branch itself has been a mess. Second, there is mess about Mordvian languages, as oficially exists only one, single Mordvian language, but the speakers themselves insist, that Erzyas and Moksas speak two different languages, and can't be considered as "dialects". Third, there is total mess about Khanty and Mansi languages. My mother, the native speaker of Khanty Eastern dialect, has opinion, that Northern Khanty dialect and Eastern Khanty dialect are in reality different languages, while Eastern Khanty dialect and Mansi language are not different languages, but more like dialects. She understands Mansi language better than Northern Khanty dialect. According to some new publications, Northern Khanty group diverged from rest Ob-Ugric groups earlier, and only later Mansi dialects diverged from other Khanty groups. Fourth, there is some mess also about Komi language. Sometimes researchers talk about two languages - Permic-Komi and Zyrian-Komi. The Komi speakers themselves disagree with that, they have opinion, that Permic-Komi and Zyrian-Komi are not seperate languages, they are just different dialects, where they understand each other quite well.

I hope that at least Finns could clean up this linguistic mess in Uralic family tree.
That is very interesting. It is nowadays common - at least here in Finland - to speak about 4 Mansic and 5 Khantic languages. But some old-school scholars still consider these only dialects.

There are certain language areas between these Mansic and Khantic languages, so that eg. Northern Mansi and Northern Khanty have developed very similar structure. Still, as long as we look at the sound history and oldest features of the language, all the Mansic languages belong together and all the Khantic languages belong together. Recent contacts cannot change the taxonomic status of a language.

---------- Post added 2010-07-08 at 15:55 ----------






Looking at that sentence, which I crafted for its alliterative qualities, is there some link between swamp & Suomi?

I believe most supported theory is Proto-Baltic *zeme, low-lying/flat land.
Baltic word *sämas, to live, corresponds to Latvian *säms, a Finn or inhabitant from Estonian island Saarenmaa. *Sämenis i.e. NW wind or wind from Saarenmaa, in Lithuanian *sömenis.
*Edit. Somu is a Finn according to modern Latvian dictionary.

There may be other explanation than a borrowing from baltic zeme. An alternative I am aware of is borrowing from old norse or proto germanic "sámr" meaning "dark grey". However recently it has been challenged, and this word have been borrowed into old norse from saami "samo-" meaning "dark, foggy; dark and foggy weather". The word can also be seen in finnic "sumea, samea".
Nowadays the ethnonymes sápmelaš ~ hämäläinen seem to go back to a common protoform *šämä-, which may be borrowed either from Baltic *žeme ’land’ or Germanic *sæma ’dark’.

In the 90’s they tried really hard to connect Suomi with this word, but it was way too complicated. There is a pair of plausible Northwest Indo-European originals for the name Suomi, one meaning ’human’, another ’land’:

http://www.kotikielenseura.fi/virittaja/hakemistot/jutut/1998_613.pdf

[Evi]

That is very interesting. It is nowadays common - at least here in Finland - to speak about 4 Mansic and 5 Khantic languages. But some old-school scholars still consider these only dialects.

There are certain language areas between these Mansic and Khantic languages, so that eg. Northern Mansi and Northern Khanty have developed very similar structure. Still, as long as we look at the sound history and oldest features of the language, all the Mansic languages belong together and all the Khantic languages belong together. Recent contacts cannot change the taxonomic status of a language.
Well, maybe I should talk more with my mother, she is real expert about Khanty language. Eastern Khanty language is native to her, but she knows also Northern Khanty language since childhood. And she has been writing schoolbooks in Khanty language for children, participating in making dictionaries etc.

I don't know Khanty language myself. It is so very contrasting to knowledge level of my mother, but there is a proverb that "shoemaker's children don't have shoes" or in similar way.

[Tuohikirje]

Jaska!

What would you say as an expert about the alleged Iranian word Jumis, Juma, Jumi (God). Why Iranian origin?

This is interesting because my grandmother (allegedly Sami) has a surname (Jumis**) derived from this word, which I find more than peculiar.

They lived next to one of the famous 'Jatulin tarha's' in northern Finland.

*Edit. I could not find anything of gardens of Jatuli in English. This link in Finnish.

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jatulintarha

[Motörhead Remember Me]

As Uralic adventures go, are there opportunities for canoeing holidays amongst Suomi's swamps & streams?

It's the best way to get around in summer-Finland...

[Tuohikirje]

It's the best way to get around in summer-Finland...

Heck.

I have my Ultimate Return Flight Ticket booked 01.10.2010.

First I will go to sauna, take my Lapponian herder to the woods and ride in the woods on my horse.

Goodbye Slavs, as fun it has been, not as good as back home could ever never be.

:evilgrin:

[JaM]

Is this language Finnic? To me it sounds Russian inflenced With all the snir, nir whistling S sounds (Listen, and maybe it becomes clear what I mean) It is Udmurt, according to the description. We are the champions in Udmurt.

Of course we also have the -sk suffix here, so that may resemble Russian accidently too, but this is in Russia, so maybe Udmurt is influenced by Russian today?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6SDt0zYPFs&feature=related

I listened to it again, and now I hear Turkish sounding stuff!! Meiram like words?

[Tuohikirje]

Is this language Finnic? To me it sounds Russian inflenced With all the snir, nir whistling S sounds (Listen, and maybe it becomes clear what I mean) It is Udmurt, according to the description. We are the champions in Udmurt.

Of course we also have the -sk suffix here, so that may resemble Russian accidently too, but this is in Russia, so maybe Udmurt is influenced by Russian today?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6SDt0zYPFs&feature=related

I listened to it again, and now I hear Turkish sounding stuff!! Meiram like words?

Certainly it sounds a lot different than Finnish (Karelian dialect influenced) song with a lot of long and clean vowels. Abroad foreigners laugh allways at my strong R in Finnish. Rrrrrrr and clean long vowels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ozxHOXf8I


In terms of genealogical classification, the Udmurt language belongs to the Permian branch of the Finno-Ugric languages of the Uralic family, and is most closely related to the Komi languages: Komi-Zuryanskiy and especially Komi-Permyalskiy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udmurt_language

Modern Udmurt language has loans from neighbouring Russian and Tatar languages.

[Karhunkynsi]

I listened to it again, and now I hear Turkish sounding stuff!! Meiram like words?

Couldnt understand a bit :lol:

Udmurt should have influence not only from Russian but also from Turkic- and Iranic-languages. Iranic layer obviously beeing very old. Turkic influence is still propably the strongest as Turkic speakers such as Tatars and Bashkirs are their close by neighbours.

After the Mongols destroyed Volga Bolgaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Bulgaria), Udmurts also became under their rule. They were also included at the Khanate of Kazan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khanate_of_Kazan) after Golden Horde (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_horde) broke into pieces:

After that Muscovy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscovy) (some insist to call it Russia) took over Khanate of Kazan.

That region has influences from all over the place but mainly Uralic, Indo-Iranic, Turkic and Slavonic.

[Jaska]

Jaska!

What would you say as an expert about the alleged Iranian word Jumis, Juma, Jumi (God). Why Iranian origin?
Finnish jumala ~ mari jumo ~ mordvin Jumi-?, jondol 'salama' = "jumalantuli" truly seems to go back to Aryan *dyuman- 'bright; heavenly' (attribute of Indra).

However, Finnish word jumi may be of different origin: there is a latvian word jumis 'spirit of grain/crops' (viljanhaltija), which comes close to the Estonian word jumm meaning 'bundle/truss of flax' (pellavakimppu). But it still is far from Finnish jumi, which is a mythical creature capable of shooting arrows etc.

There is only one attestation of Mordvin God-name Jumishipas, but it might be a bridge between jumala and jumi. But we cannot know for sure...



This is interesting because my grandmother (allegedly Sami) has a surname (Jumis**) derived from this word, which I find more than peculiar.
Maybe there are explanations for this surname in the Sukunimikirja (etymological dictionary of Finnish family names), but I don't have it and thus I cannot say if there are any other words this name could be connected.

There is a word jumiš 'twin' in Saami, which is cognate of Finnish jama and it also comes from Aryan languages:

http://kaino.kotus.fi/algu/index.php?t=sanue&lekseemi_id=31975&hakusana=j%C5%ABme%C5%A1&sanue_id=26222
(Álgu - the etymological database of Saami languages)

[Evi]

The name of main Ob-Ugric god is Numi-Torum. It is suggested that Numi is related to Jumo, Jumi, Jumala etc., what you think Jaska? And what you think about word Torum?

[PolskiMoc]

Uralic languages certainly branch off further East. Uralic languages probably ultimately branched off of Altaic languages. A very long time ago.
But, Probably 15,000+ years ago Uralic & Altaic speakers were likely nearly the same. before URalic speakers spread westward.

[Karhunkynsi]

Uralic languages certainly branch off further East. Uralic languages probably ultimately branched off of Altaic languages. A very long time ago.
But, Probably 15,000+ years ago Uralic & Altaic speakers were likely nearly the same. before URalic speakers spread westward.

This kind of outlandish claims should be supported with long list of conclusions from long list of references.

[Karhunkynsi]

And what you think about word Torum?

Imo this is clearly linked to larger North Eurasian tradition spanning from the Turkic tribes at the east all the way to Germanic traditions at the west. Tengri-Torum-Taara-Turisas- Thor-Donner etc.

They also are pretty similar in substance. All have something to do directly with the sky and thunder ,except Turisas who is Tavastian god of war but we know too little about him anyway. Thurizas is also name of the old Norse rune with meaning: Thor.

Edit: ah, I forgot the Celtic Taranis.

[Jaska]

The name of main Ob-Ugric god is Numi-Torum. It is suggested that Numi is related to Jumo, Jumi, Jumala etc., what you think Jaska? And what you think about word Torum?
Imo this is clearly linked to larger North Eurasian tradition spanning from the Turkic tribes at the east all the way to Germanic traditions at the west. Tengri-Torum-Taara-Turisas- Thor-Donner etc.

They also are pretty similar in substance. All have something to do directly with the sky and thunder ,except Turisas who is Tavastian god of war but we know too little about him anyway. Thurizas is also name of the old Norse rune with meaning: Thor.

Edit: ah, I forgot the Celtic Taranis.

Word numi ’upper’ has short u in both Mansi and Khanty, so it must be a young word, because such a correspondence does not go back to any Proto-Uralic vowel. There is no examples of correspondence Finno-Permic *j ~ Ob-Ugric *n either, so the words are probably not related.

Toorum ~ Toorem is also unetymological and it must be a new word in Ob-Ugric languages, too. There is no clear phonetic connection to the names listed by Karhunkynsi: vowel would match the Germanic word, but Donner represents better the original form, and only later in Proto-Nordic (-Scandinavian) has the n disappeared.

It is still possible that all these names (or part of them) are inherited separately from the lost Palaeo-European languages, because there seem to be no Uralic nor Indo-European etymology for them. But it is also possible that it is only a pure coincidence or chance that there happen to be t and r in all of these words/names. Of course, if it is always a god of heaven, the probability of chance diminishes.



Uralic languages certainly branch off further East. Uralic languages probably ultimately branched off of Altaic languages. A very long time ago.
But, Probably 15,000+ years ago Uralic & Altaic speakers were likely nearly the same. before URalic speakers spread westward.
Even the Altaic hypothesis cannot have been proven, much less the Ural-Altaic hypothesis. It is still possible that the languages are ultimately related, but because all the similarities until today can be explained by contacts, there should occur a whole bunch of new evidence before we would need to reconsider the situation. I, for example, believe that all human languages are ultimately related, but this cannot be proven, because there is not enough common features left. The time-depth is much too deep, tens of thousands of years.

And when it cannot be proven, we must not speak about it as a scientific fact.

[Karhunkynsi]

Of course, if it is always a god of heaven, the probability of chance diminishes.


Yes, they all are connected to sky (not heaven). I forgotted few from the list:

Hattian: Taru/Teshub, the skygod
Hittite : Tarhun, the skygod

[takoja]

here's the symbol of Turisas, tursaansydän

hmm

[Jaska]

Yes, they all are connected to sky (not heaven). I forgotted few from the list:

Hattian: Taru/Teshub, the skygod
Hittite : Tarhun, the skygod
Sorry, sky is what I meant. :whoco: :D

So we can add one more possibility: influence of some ancient southern civilization. There are really widespread religious and mythological motifs anyway, and this might be one of this kind, too.

P.S. This was one example of occasions where our mother tongue pushes through: in Finnish taivas means both 'heaven' and 'sky'. There are different kind of Englishes among us non-native speakers, and usually for me it is easier to understand English written by another Finn than English written by speaker of some other language. The meanings, choosing the words, syntactic structures and even stylistic features vary between the "thinking languages", even though we all write in English.

[Karhunkynsi]

So we can add one more possibility: influence of some ancient southern civilization. There are really widespread religious and mythological motifs anyway, and this might be one of this kind, too.


Yep, I think so too. There is how ever none similar naming scheme at Sumer, atleast I'm not aware of any. Same goes to ancient Egypt too. There obivously is skygods etc but their names are not t/d..r...-something. It's not very likely Indo-European motif either as there are many IE skygods with motifs such as Baltish Perkunas (proto-IE Perkwunos), Vedic Aryan Indra, the lord of devas (I guess you got the heaven, Finn:Taivas right afterall :lol: ) etc. Devas means gods.

T/d..R.. seems like something very old North Eurasian.

[Tuohikirje]

Well :lol:.

If I can choose, I take this one because I used to read Hopeanuoli and shoot with talja.
A Findian is allways a Findian.


But it still is far from Finnish jumi, which is a mythical creature capable of shooting arrows etc.

[takoja]

Mr Bear, did you check out these links posted in the Finnish forum a few weeks back? Are they too fanciful for consideration? I liked that they gave an explanation for the origins of the non IE language allegedly spoken by the northern Caledonii (Picts).
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/index.html
http://www.paabo.ca/uirala/FinnoUgricbkgd.html

A Fellow named Paul Dunbavin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dunbavin) has written a book which actually, I guess, adresses this same issue. He isn't a linguist, so I don't know how scientifically waterproof his theory is (as I'm not a linguist either :lol:), so I guess the book can be called a bit pseudo scientific-nesh-noid...and so on. But anyway here is the book (though without number of pages)

Picts and Ancient Britons (http://books.google.fi/books?id=-t0D6iw85M4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=paul+dunbavin+Picts+and+Ancient+Britons:+An+Exp loration+of+Pictish+Origins&source=bl&ots=Jhia7pmm82&sig=H7DlwEhrriIvNM872mKgXtMf7Qs&hl=fi&ei=PXdATIXnJpSkOOyL7egM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[Jaska]

A Fellow named Paul Dunbavin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dunbavin) has written a book which actually, I guess, adresses this same issue. He isn't a linguist, so I don't know how scientifically waterproof his theory is (as I'm not a linguist either :lol:), so I guess the book can be called a bit pseudo scientific-nesh-noid...and so on. But anyway here is the book (though without number of pages)

Picts and Ancient Britons (http://books.google.fi/books?id=-t0D6iw85M4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=paul+dunbavin+Picts+and+Ancient+Britons:+An+Exp loration+of+Pictish+Origins&source=bl&ots=Jhia7pmm82&sig=H7DlwEhrriIvNM872mKgXtMf7Qs&hl=fi&ei=PXdATIXnJpSkOOyL7egM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)

If we consider the Finnic etymologies Dunbavin presents for some Pictish names, there really are some major weaknesses.

1. Caledonia < Fi. kalaton 'fishless'

Dunbavin mentions that according to someone the Caledonians didn't eat fish. Such a semantic "donkey's bridge" (do they use this in English?) are very easy to find. Whatever the explanation ('green', 'small', 'no fish', 'much deers' etc.), it is always too easy to find a mention that there is something like this connected toa certain people. It is also too easty to find explanations for names, because there is no known meanings for the names. Therefore one should first find a stratum of loanwords, because then one must find similar-looking word WITH the similar meaning, and this is much harder than find only a similar-looking word for a name.

2. Logi < Fi. lohi 'salmon'

Another tribal name, but even worse explanation than the one before. Firstly, Dunbavin says that the name Caledonia included all the tribes, and that they didn't eat fish. Now he claims that the name of this tribe would come from the word 'salmon (fish)'. Secondly, the Finnic word is of Baltic origin and was at the form *loši until the mid-first millennium AD! Long after the emergence of Picts...

All the rest Finnic explanations go down to the same toilet.

[OldPretan]

Here's something that occurred to me since I posted here. When the Dalriadan Scots spread gaelic to Caledonia most of it would have overlaid p-celtic, but in the far north west it would have overlaid this putative non-IE. See the dark green on the map here:-
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Teuchter
One of the characteristics of Teuchter English is the unvoicing of consonants - just becomes chust, bank > pank. Where else in Europe does this happen?

[Jaska]

Here's something that occurred to me since I posted here. When the Dalriadan Scots spread gaelic to Caledonia most of it would have overlaid p-celtic, but in the far north west it would have overlaid this putative non-IE. See the dark green on the map here:-
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Teuchter
One of the characteristics of Teuchter English is the unvoicing of consonants - just becomes chust, bank > pank. Where else in Europe does this happen?
Interesting, but this can be due to internal development, too - it doesn't have to be substrate influence from the lost language. Only loanwords can prove contact, not the phonological developments.

Voicing and devoicing can occur without external influence; for example, in most of the Uralic languages there are voiced plosives (stops) even though there were none in Proto-Uralic, while in the Spanish voicedness is not distinctive feature in plosives (voiced plosives have spirantized) even though it usually is in Indo-European languages:

http://wals.info/feature/4?tg_format=map&v1=cfff&v2=cd00&v3=c00d&v4=c909&s=20&z3=3000&z4=2999&z1=2998&z2=2997

And when we go back 6000 years in time, we see the linguistic map of Europe as follows:
- Indo-European in the narrow area North of Black Sea.
- Uralic in the narrow area near Ural Mountains.
- Basque probably in South-West Europe, but not for sure.
- All the other areas (huge majority) are inhabitated by the speakers of since then disappeared Palaeo-European languages. There were about ten of them in the Mediterranean alone as recently as 2000 years ago (Iberian, Tartessian, Etruscan, Picenean, Siculean etc.)

So, in British Islands there were more probably some Palaeo-European languages than any languages belonging to the known language families.

[Magavariko]

Interesting, but this can be due to internal development, too - it doesn't have to be substrate influence from the lost language. Only loanwords can prove contact, not the phonological developments.

Voicing and devoicing can occur without external influence; for example, in most of the Uralic languages there are voiced plosives (stops) even though there were none in Proto-Uralic, while in the Spanish voicedness is not distinctive feature in plosives (voiced plosives have spirantized) even though it usually is in Indo-European languages:

http://wals.info/feature/4?tg_format=map&v1=cfff&v2=cd00&v3=c00d&v4=c909&s=20&z3=3000&z4=2999&z1=2998&z2=2997

And when we go back 6000 years in time, we see the linguistic map of Europe as follows:
- Indo-European in the narrow area North of Black Sea.
- Uralic in the narrow area near Ural Mountains.
- Basque probably in South-West Europe, but not for sure.
- All the other areas (huge majority) are inhabitated by the speakers of since then disappeared Palaeo-European languages. There were about ten of them in the Mediterranean alone as recently as 2000 years ago (Iberian, Tartessian, Etruscan, Picenean, Siculean etc.)

So, in British Islands there were more probably some Palaeo-European languages than any languages belonging to the known language families.

-Picenean and siculean are IE languages.
-Tartessian is undeciffered, but there are not proofs that show it to be a non-IE language. Last (and very polemic, Koch and Wodtko) studies point to be IE.
-If basque can be linked to other language, that's iberian for sure.
-Etruscans were possibly bronze age newcomers.
-I mostly agree with your phonetical analysis :D, but the deeper we go, the harder to proof if a word is a loanword. FU languages share many words with IE languages, some of them are loanwords, but others could be "common roots" as well.

[Jaska]

-Picenean and siculean are IE languages.
-Tartessian is undeciffered, but there are not proofs that show it to be a non-IE language. Last (and very polemic, Koch and Wodtko) studies point to be IE.
-If basque can be linked to other language, that's iberian for sure.
-Etruscans were possibly bronze age newcomers.
-I mostly agree with your phonetical analysis :D, but the deeper we go, the harder to proof if a word is a loanword. FU languages share many words with IE languages, some of them are loanwords, but others could be "common roots" as well.
North-Picene is non-Indo-European to my knowledge (and not related to South-Picene). Sorry, I meant Sican, not Siculean; though there are no written evidence, but if it would be Indo-European, it should be faraway offshoot...

Those common words between Uralic and Indo-European are so similar in the proto-language level, that they cannot be inherited. How could it be, that while the languages are very different in phonological, morphological and lexical level, their common "inherited" words wouldn't have changed a bit? So those words are with great probability loanwords.

[EliasAlucard]

Linguistics ---> Urheimat Theories

Also some stupid mong OT bullshit deleted. Thread is placed in Urheimat Theories now and the discussion in the thread should focus on the urheimat of Uralic languages, and when the proto-branch of this and that Uralic language(s) split off and where.

//mod

[noachite]

Well, what I think happened was this. Indo-European and Uralic are each other's closest relative, and were probably a unity with Altaic (and Sumerian!) in western Mongolia called Eurasiatic. In 10,000 BC the Indo-Uralics went west, marrying Burushaskis on the way. The "Nostratics" went to Anatolia, but our friends the Uralics went to the Ukraine. They were eventually driven to the lower Volga when the PIE's went north. Hybridization between PIE's and Uralics caused the Satem change. Uralics who went to Siberia intermarried with Yeneseians and became Samoyedes. Those who strayed farthest became Yukaghirs! But the ones who married the old Vasco-Caucasian people in northen Scandinavia became the Saami! The Sumerians went to Azerbaijan and later to Mesopotamia, with startling result.:o

[EliasAlucard]

Well, what I think happened was this. Indo-European and Uralic are each other's closest relative, and were probably a unity with Altaic (and Sumerian!) in western Mongolia called Eurasiatic.The "Eurasiatic" macro-language hypothesis is not consistent with the genetic autosomal data (there's no way Japanese is closer related to Indo-European than Afro-Asiatic is, unless Japanese was imposed upon Mongoloids by proto-Caucasoids or something).

As for Uralic and Indo-European, it's so and so...


Many higher-level relationships between Proto-Indo-European and other language families have been proposed, but these hypothesized connections are highly controversial. A proposal often considered to be the most plausible of these is that of an Indo-Uralic family, encompassing PIE and Uralic. The evidence usually cited in favor of this consists in a number of striking morphological and lexical resemblances. Opponents attribute the lexical resemblances to borrowing from Indo-European into Uralic. Frederik Kortlandt, while advocating a connection, concedes that "the gap between Uralic and Indo-European is huge", while Lyle Campbell, an authority on Uralic, denies any relationship exists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language#Proposed_genetic_connections

^^ I believe this is correct, because Uralic is more eastern than Indo-European, and Y-DNA N1 frequencies in Uralic speakers shows Uralic came from the east.

[Jaska]

Back to business? I guess this belongs to this thread. Here are some maps about the movement/development of Proto-Uralic to Finland / into Finnish (other branches are not marked, although it wouldn't be an impossible task):
http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Suomensynty.html

As the first split within the haplogroup N1c1 seems to have occurred between the Asian and the European groups, it would be interesting to get a high resolution analysis of the Siberian Uralics: there should be haplotypes belonging to the European group, predicted from the linguistic results (supposed that N1c1 was present in the River Kama 4 000 years ago).
http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/N1c1.xps (or .pdf)

[Jaska]

Here is my freshest article in English:
http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust264/sust264_hakkinenj.pdf

On the basis of the Pre-Proto-Uralic loanwords in Yukaghir the Pre-Proto-Uralic homeland must with a great probability be located somewhere near Altay-Sayan region.

[Jaska]

Maybe there is something in the Uralic-Yukagir connection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic%E2%80%93Yukaghir_languages):

... as Yukagirs are surprisingly high on the list of Finnish FastIBD matches in one of the latest Dienekes' experiments (http://dodecad.blogspot.com/2012/08/fastibd-analysis-of-eastcentral.html).
It is interesting that they are higher than Nganasans or Altai peoples. If, as Polako guessed, there are partly Russians included, why there are no partly Russians in other indigenous populations?

These could be segments brought to the west by the speakers of Pre-Proto-Uralic.

[Lemminkäinen]

It is interesting that they are higher than Nganasans or Altai peoples. If, as Polako guessed, there are partly Russians included, why there are no partly Russians in other indigenous populations?

These could be segments brought to the west by the speakers of Pre-Proto-Uralic.

Yukagirs seem to have a very interesting connection according to FastIBD. Were they Kurgans?

Mongol 22,5
Chuvashes 21,6
Daur 21
Finnish-D 20,1
Russian-D 20
Russian (Vologda) 19,7
Mordovians-Y 19,7
Finn-30 19,1
Belarussian 19
Mongola 18,8
Ukrainian-D 18,7
Ukrainian-y 18,2
Kyrgyz_Bishkek_Ho 18,1

[Jaska]

What comes to this recent study, suggesting South Siberian origin for Pre-Proto-Uralic...
http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust264/sust264_hakkinenj.pdf

...it reminds me of this my earlier work on haplogroup N1b and how the best lineage-wise continuity from the Asian founder haplotype to the European type N1b-E can be found in Ob-Ugric and Komi populations:
http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/N1b.pdf

And now I heard that N1a and N1b seem to shared a common ancestor after N1, which would properly locate the origin of this new para-haplogroup near Altay region:
http://s12.postimage.org/je3g9i6w9/N1a_ja_N1b.jpg (http://postimage.org/image/je3g9i6w9/)

N1b seems to be the northern branch and could quite reasonably be connected to the spread of Pre-Proto-Uralic speakers. Of course they may also have been N1c1-men among them:
http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/N1c1.pdf

[George1]

"Jaska said -> Oh, please! Read my link. Are you claiming that Proto-Uralic originates in South Asia?"

Kelteminar culture - Neolithic culture of Caucasoid fishermen who lived in the southern Aral Sea region in the VI-III millennium BC. e. [1] [2] [3] V.A. Alekshin "Archaeology of Central Asia". Researchers have drawn parallels and believe that culture related to Pit–Comb Ware culture and belonged to the circle of the Finno-Ugric peoples. [4] Replaced by the Tazabagyabsky culture. The existence of this culture is often used as an argument against the existence of the Aryan ancestral homeland in Central Asia. Discovered by expedition in 1939 (Tolstov)
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B8%D 0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D1 %83%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%82%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B0

[Jaska]

http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/Keski-AasiaU.jpg

Evidence for Proto-Uralic location:
http://www.sgr.fi/susa/92/hakkinen.pdf

Evidence for Pre-Proto-Uralic location:
http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust264/sust264_hakkinenj.pdf

Evidence for Early, Middle and Late Proto-Aryan location:
http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/jphakkin/UralicEvidence.pdf

[Polako]

It is interesting that they are higher than Nganasans or Altai peoples. If, as Polako guessed, there are partly Russians included, why there are no partly Russians in other indigenous populations?

These could be segments brought to the west by the speakers of Pre-Proto-Uralic.

One of the "Yukagirs" is almost fully East Slavic. Have a look at Dienekes' population portraits.