The Ugric or Ugrian languages ( or ) are a branch of the Uralic language family.
Ugric includes three subgroups: Hungarian, Khanty, and Mansi. The latter two are traditionally considered to be single languages, though they are sometimes considered to be small subdivisions of the Ugric language family due to considerable dialectical differences. A common Proto-Ugric language is posited to have been spoken from the end of the 3rd millennium BC until the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in Western Siberia, east of the southern Ural Mountains. Of the three languages, Khanty and Mansi have sometimes been set apart from Hungarian as Ob-Ugric, though features uniting Mansi and Hungarian in particular are known as well.
The name Ugric is derived from ugry (), a Russian exonym of the Magyars (Hungarians) and also the name of the historical northern Russian region of Yugra. A connection between these words was first suggested in the beginning of 16th century. However, according to István Vásáry the etymological connection between these two words has not been verified, and the name Ugric is based on a folk etymology.
Phonetic development
Consonants
Two common phonetic features of the Ugric languages are a rearrangement of the Proto-Uralic (PU) system of sibilant consonants and a lenition of velar consonants:
- PU *s and *š merged (possibly into or ) and developed into a non-sibilant sound, yielding Mansi , Khanty *ɬ → or (depending on dialect), and were lost in Hungarian.
- PU *ś depalatalized to *s.
- PU medial *x, *k, *w generally lenited to *ɣ.
It has however been pointed out that these changes are applicable to the Samoyedic languages as well.
The consonant cluster *lm is in the Ugric languages mostly reduced to a single (e.g. PU *śilmä 'eye' → Hungarian szem, Mansi сам , Khanty сем ). A peculiar exception is the numeral '3', in which Hungarian (három) and Mansi (хурэм ) point to an original cluster *rm, whereas the rest of the Uralic family suggests original *lm (Khanty холәм, Finnish , Estonian kolm, Inari Sami kulma, Erzya колмо, etc.) This has frequently been listed as an argument for considering Hungarian more closely related to Mansi than Khanty. The reverse has also been suggested—Hungarian and Mansi retaining the original form of the numeral, whereas Khanty and all the Finno-Permic languages would have innovated for some reason. Perhaps due to analogy with number 4, "*neljä".
Hungarian and the current literary standards of Mansi and Khanty all share a spirantization of Proto-Uralic *k to or before back vowels, e.g. 'fish': PU *kala → Hungarian hal, Mansi хул , Khanty хул . This is itself not a common Ugric feature — remains in other Mansi and Khanty dialects (e.g. Eastern Khanty , Southern Mansi 'fish'), but it has been argued to result from a proto-Ugric split of *k to front and back allophones ~ , with the latter then independently spirantizing in each three cases.
The three Ugric varieties also share the lateralization of Proto-Uralic *δ to *l (as do the Permic languages), but it is possible this postcedes the emergence of retroflex *ɭ from PU *l in Khanty. argues that many known loanwords and suspectable substrate vocabulary show too much irregularity in sound correspondences to be derived from a common Ugric proto-language, and may have been borrowed independently into Hungarian and Ob-Ugric, or even all three of Hungarian, Mansi and Khanty; while for others, it is unclear if they were actually innovated, or represent rather common retention from Proto-Uralic.
Structural features
- An original ablative case marked by -l
- A series of original locative cases, formed from postpositions derived from a pronoun root *nä
- Possessive suffixes are placed before case suffixes, not after them as in the other Uralic languages
- A class of "instable" verb stems, in which alternation between CV and CVC stem variants occurs, e.g. ‘to take’: Hungarian ve- ~ vev- ~ vesz-, Mansi *wi- ~ *wæj-, Khanty *wĕ- ~ *wĕj-.
- Distinct attributive and nominal forms of the numeral '2': Hungarian két vs. kettő, Mansi кит vs. китиг, Khanty (Northern) кат vs. катән, (Eastern) vs.
- Found in Hungarian and Mansi, an extended form of the caritive suffix containing -l.
- Distinct verb conjugations according to the transitivity of the verb. It is sometimes termed as “definite” versus “indefinite” conjugation, because also the definiteness of the object can play a role when selecting between the two. This feature is within the Uralic family also found in the Mordvinic languages, and it is likely to not represent a common Ugric innovation; the particular details of the construction are different in all three Ugric languages.
- Verbal prefixes, which modify the meaning of the verb in both concrete and abstract ways
;Examples from Mansi
ēl(a) – 'forwards, onwards, away'
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| jōm- 'to go, to stride' || ēl-jōm- 'to go away/on'
|-
| tinal- 'to sell' || ēl-tinal- 'to sell off'
|}
xot – 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity'
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| min- 'to go' || xot-min- 'to go away, to stop'
|-
| roxt- 'to be frightened' || xot-roxt- 'to take fright suddenly'
|}
;Examples from Hungarian
el – 'away, off'
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| ugrik 'to jump' || elugrik 'to jump away'
|-
| mosolyog 'to smile' || elmosolyodik 'to start to smile' (implying a lack of control)
|}
ki – 'out (of)'
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| ugrik 'to jump' || kiugrik 'to jump out'
|-
| néz 'to look' || kinéz 'to look out'
|}
In Hungarian, the citation form of verbs is the present tense indicative of the 3rd person singular form, which is given here, which does not have any suffixes.