Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate refers to

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

s from unidentified non-

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...

and non-

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 ...

that are found in various

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...

, most notably

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...

. The presence of Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami languages was demonstrated by

Ante Aikio Ante Aikio (Sámi: Luobbal Sámmol Sámmol Ánte; born 1977) is a Finnish linguist of Sámi origin who has been a professor of Sámi languages at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, Norway since 2015. Prior to this he has been a ...

. Janne Saarikivi points out that similar substrate words are present in

Finnic languages The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 mi ...

as well, but in much smaller numbers. The number of substrate words in

Sámi The Sámi ( ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people inhabiting the region of Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Murmansk Oblast, Rus ...

likely exceeds one thousand words. Borrowing to Saami from Paleo-Laplandic probably still took place after the completion of the Great Saami Vowel Shift. Paleo-Laplandic likely became extinct about 1500 years ago. The

Nganasan language The Nganasan language (formerly called , ''tavgiysky'', or , ''tavgiysko-samoyedsky'' in Russian; from the ethnonym , ''tavgi'') is a moribund Samoyedic language spoken by the Nganasan people. In 2010 it was spoken by only 125 out of 860 Nganasa ...

also has many substrate words from unknown extinct languages in the

Taimyr peninsula The Taymyr Peninsula (russian: Таймырский полуостров, Taymyrsky poluostrov) is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administrati ...

Theories

According to Aikio, the speakers of the

Proto-Samic language Proto-Sami is the hypothetical, linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed common ancestor of the Sami languages. It is a descendant of the Proto-Uralic language. Homeland and expansion Although the current Sami languages are spoken much further t ...

arrived in Lapland around 650 BC and fully assimilated the local Paleo-European populations by the middle of 1st millennium AD. In his opinion, the detailed reconstruction of these languages is impossible. The languages of more eastern post-

Swiderian culture The Swiderian culture is an Upper Palaeolithic/Mesolithic cultural complex, centred on the area of modern Poland. The type-site is ''Świdry Wielkie'', in Otwock near the Swider River, a tributary to the Vistula River, in Masovia. The Swideria ...

s might have influenced Finno-Ugric languages as well. According to

Peter Schrijver Peter Schrijver (; born 1963) is a Dutch linguist. He is a professor of Celtic languages at Utrecht University and a researcher of ancient Indo-European linguistics. He worked previously at Leiden University and the Ludwig Maximilian University o ...

, some of these substrate languages probably had many

geminated In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...

consonants. A lexical comparison with the hypothetical Pre-Germanic substratum yields no results. Some examples of

Kildin Sami Kildin may refer to: * Kildin Island * Kildin class destroyer * Kildin Sami * Ostrov (air base) Ostrov (Russian: ''Веретье'' ("Veret"); also Ostrov-5, Gorokhovka) is a Russian Air Force air base

words and corresponding Northern Sami cognates without convincing

Uralic 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 ...

/Finno-Ugric (or any other) etymologies: Most of these words have

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...

s in all Sami languages. A more extensive list of such words can be found in G. M. Kert's 2009 work on Sami toponymics. Semantically, pre-Sami substrate consists mostly of basic vocabulary terms (i.e. human body parts) and nature/animal names, and lacks terms of kinship and societal organization, which suggests a rather low level of socioeconomic development in pre-Sami cultures. Some possible substrate words can also be found in

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

Pre-Finno-Volgaic substrate

There are also some examples of possible substrate words in

Finno-Volgaic languages Finno-Volgaic or Fenno-Volgaic is a hypothetical branch of the Uralic languages that tried to group the Finnic languages, Sami languages, Mordvinic languages and the Mari language. It was hypothesized to have branched from the Finno-Permic langua ...

that differ from the Pre-Sami substrate, i.e. Proto-Finno-Volgaic ''*täštä'' "star", or ''*kümmin'' "ten". Some words in Finno-Volgaic languages contain rare consonant clusters, which suggests loanwords from unknown languages. Finnish words such as ''jauho'' (Eng. flour), ''lehmä'' (cow), ''tähti'' (star), ''tammi'' (oak) and ''ihminen'' (human) could be substrate words. Aikio (2021) lists some other substrate vocabulary as: Irregular correspondences among Uralic languages are frequent among some words, such as 'to milk' and '

hazelnut The hazelnut is the fruit of the hazel tree and therefore includes any of the nuts deriving from species of the genus ''Corylus'', especially the nuts of the species ''Corylus avellana''. They are also known as cobnuts or filberts according t ...

'. These are presumed to be non-native loanwords by Aikio (2021):

Toponyms

Some

toponyms Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

appear to be of non-Uralic origin; for example, a word "koita" regularly appears in

hydronym A hydronym (from el, ὕδρω, , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a ...

s for long and narrow bodies of water and is thus probably the continuation of the native word for "long, narrow". Many other toponyms in

seem to come from a substrate language or from many substrate languages: among these are

Saimaa Saimaa ( , ; sv, Saimen) is a lake located in the Finnish Lakeland area in southeastern Finland. At approximately , it is the largest lake in Finland, and the fourth largest natural freshwater lake in Europe. The name Saimaa likely comes from a ...

Imatra Imatra is a town and municipality in southeastern Finland. Imatra is dominated by Lake Saimaa, the Vuoksi River and the border with Russia. On the other side of the border, away from the centre of Imatra, lies the Russian town of Svetogorsk. ...

, Päijänne and

Inari Inari may refer to: Shinto * Inari Ōkami, a Shinto spirit ** Mount Inari in Japan, site of Fushimi Inari-taisha, the main Shinto shrine to Inari ** Inari Shrine, shrines to the Shinto god Inari * Inari-zushi, a type of sushi Places * Inari, ...

. There are also toponyms from a substrate language in

Sápmi (, smj, Sábme / Sámeednam, sma, Saepmie, sju, Sábmie, , , sjd, Са̄мь е̄ммьне, Saam' jiemm'n'e) is the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people. Sápmi is in Northern and Eastern Europe and includes the ...

; for example, an ending -ir (< *-ērē) is commonly found in names of mountains and is probably the continuation of the substrate word for mountain. Other such toponymic words are 'watershed', ''*čār-'' 'uppermost (lake)', *- 'isolated mountain', - 'mountain top on the edge of a mountain area', ''*sāl-'' 'large island in the sea', - 'seashore cliff', and ''*inč-'' 'outermost island'.

Languages

Because there are irregularities in Sami substrate words, they might have been borrowed from distinct, but related languages. In the west, the substrate languages probably had an s-type sibilant which corresponds to an š-type sibilant in the east. Because we only have fragments of Lakelandic Sami which were preserved in Finnish placenames and dialectal vocabulary, the features of the Paleo-Lakelandic substrate in Lakelandic Sami cannot be studied. Many placenames in Finland come from Sami words of unknown origin which are likely substrate words, such as ''jokuu'' from Proto-Sami ''*čuokōs'' ‘track, way’. The Sami substrate in Finnish dialects also reveals that Lakelandic Sami languages had a high number of words with an obscure origin, likely deriving from old languages of the region.

References

{{Eurasian languages Pre-Indo-Europeans Languages extinct in the 1st millennium Unclassified languages of Europe Uralic languages Linguistic strata