Topic summary
Finnic language
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Finnic languages.
Southern Finnic
The Southern Finnic languages consist of North and South Estonian (excluding the Coastal Estonian dialect group), Livonian and Votic (except the highly Ingrian-influenced Kukkuzi Votic). These languages are not closely related genetically, as noted above; it is a paraphyletic grouping, consisting of all Finnic languages except the Northern Finnic languages. The languages nevertheless share a number of features, such as the presence of a ninth vowel phoneme õ, usually a close-mid back unrounded/ɤ/ (but a close central unrounded/ɨ/ in Livonian), as well as loss of *n before *s with compensatory lengthening.