Uralic languages ) (In Northern Sami, ( ), while the acute denotes a secondary palatal articulation ( , , ) or, in Hungarian, vowel length. The Finnish letter and the letter in other languages represent the high rounded vowel ; the letters and are the front vowels and . As is apparent from the list, Finnish is the most conservative of the Uralic languages presented here, with nearly half the words on the list below identical to their Proto-Uralic reconstructions and most of the remainder only having minor changes, such as the conflation of *ś into /s/, or widespread changes such as
Proto-Finnic language Proto-Finnic language Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish and Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been reconstructed by linguists. Proto-Finnic is itself descended ultimately from Proto-Uralic. Three stages of Proto-Finnic are distinguished in literature. The sounds of Proto-Finnic can be reconstructed through the comparative method. Reconstructed Proto-Finnic is traditionally transcribed using the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. The following UPA and related conventions are adopted in this article for transcribing Proto-Finnic forms: The Proto-Finnic consonant inventory had relatively few phonemic fricatives, much like that of the modern