Ob-Ugric languages
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The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the
Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
, grouping together the
Khanty The Khanty (Khanty: ханти, ''hanti''), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (russian: остяки) are a Ugric indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, together ...
(Ostyak) and
Mansi Mansi may refer to: People * Mansi people, an indigenous people living in Tyumen Oblast, Russia ** Mansi language * Giovanni Domenico Mansi Gian (Giovanni) Domenico Mansi (16 February 1692 – 27 September 1769) was an Italian prelate, theolog ...
(Vogul) languages. Both languages are split in numerous and highly divergent dialects. They, along with Hungarian, are often thought to comprise the
Ugric The Ugric or Ugrian languages ( or ) are a proposed branch of the Uralic language family. The name Ugric is derived from Ugrians, an archaic exonym for the Magyars (Hungarians) and Yugra, a region in northwest Russia. Ugric includes three ...
branch of the Uralic languages, though the acceptance of Ugric is less frequent than acceptance of Ob-Ugric. The languages are spoken in the region between the
Urals The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through European ...
and the
Ob River } The Ob ( rus, Обь, p=opʲ: Ob') is a major river in Russia. It is in western Siberia; and together with Irtysh forms the world's List of rivers by length, seventh-longest river system, at . It forms at the confluence of the Biya (river), Biya ...
and the
Irtysh The Irtysh ( otk, 𐰼𐱅𐰾:𐰇𐰏𐰕𐰏, Ertis ügüzüg, mn, Эрчис мөрөн, ''Erchis mörön'', "erchleh", "twirl"; russian: Иртыш; kk, Ертіс, Ertis, ; Chinese: 额尔齐斯河, pinyin: ''É'ěrqísī hé'', Xiao'erj ...
in central
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
. The forests and forest steppes of the southern Urals are thought to be the original homeland of the Ugric branch. Beginning some 500 years ago the arrival of the Russians pushed the speakers eastward to the Ob and Irtysh. Some Mansi speakers remained west of the Urals until as late as the early 20th century. Hungarian split off during the 11th century BC. The Ob-Ugric languages have also been strongly influenced by nearby
Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...
, especially
Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary
is an umbrella term for different
. Mansi has about 1,000 speakers while Khanty has about 10,000 speakers, all within Russia. Until 1930, these languages had no written or literary traditions, but since 1937 have used a modified
Cyrillic alphabet , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
. However, no significant texts have been created in these languages and they have few official usages.


Nature of the relationship

The status of the Ob-Ugric languages as a close areal grouping is clear, with adjacent varieties regularly sharing isoglosses and having loaned vocabulary back and forth (as well as from common external sources, e.g. from eastern dialects of Komi into northern dialects of Mansi and Khanty). This effect is particularly clear between the more eastern and northern varieties of Mansi, and the more western varieties of Khanty. Modern-day Northern Mansi and Northern Khanty continue to affect each other's evolution. Some areal similarities are also shared with their eastern Samoyedic relatives, in particular between Khanty and Selkup, but also Forest Nenets. The relationship to Hungarian is looser: in their current state, the Ob-Ugric languages are radically different from Hungarian in phonology, syntax, and vocabulary. The existence of a common Ob-Ugric period after the separation from Hungarian and the rest of Uralic is not universally accepted: some linguists treat all common features of Mansi and Khanty as either later convergence under mutual influence, or retentions from the common Ugric and earlier periods. Most Uralic classifications group Khanty and Mansi together even if they reject Ugric, but Salminen (2007) and Janhunen (2009) reject Ob-Ugric as well. (Janhunen classifies Hungarian and Mansi together, omitting Khanty.) ''Glottolog'' and ''Ethnologue'' take the agnostic approach of Salminen. Typological features distinguishing the Ob-Ugric languages include: * The lack of a systematic voicing contrast. , however, is a frequent consonant word-medially. * Retention of Proto-Uralic word-initial *w as . (Also a feature of Nenets.) *
Vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
is found in the most archaic varieties, southern Mansi and eastern Khanty. *
Ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German ''Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...
of vowels, particularly in eastern Khanty * In the northern dialects: a change *k → before
back vowel A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...
s. (A similar change also occurred in Hungarian.) * Retention of
subject–object–verb Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...
(SOV) word order * Retention of
dual number In algebra, the dual numbers are a hypercomplex number system first introduced in the 19th century. They are expressions of the form , where and are real numbers, and is a symbol taken to satisfy \varepsilon^2 = 0 with \varepsilon\neq 0. Du ...
* Partial or full replacement of the original 2nd person pronominal and suffixal elements; marked by the consonant in most Uralic languages but for the most part in Ob-Ugric. * A smaller case system than in other Uralic languages, including a lack of the
genitive case In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
.


References

{{Uralic languages Uralic languages Languages of Russia