Uralic languages impetus from the fact that these languages, unlike most of the other languages spoken in Europe, are not part of what is now known as the Indo-European family. In 1717, Swedish professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish and Hungarian, of which about 40 are still considered valid. Several early reports comparing Finnish or Hungarian with Mordvin, Mari or Khanty were additionally collected by Leibniz and edited by his assistant Johann Georg von Eckhart. In 1730, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published his book ("The North and East Parts of Europe and Asia"), surveying the geography, peoples and languages
Finnish language Finnish has only two fricatives in native words, namely and . All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Finnish speakers can usually reliably distinguish and . (The official alphabet includes 'z' [z] and 'ž' [ʒ], but these are rarely used correctly, including by the Swedish-speakers, who also struggle with those sounds.) Palatalization is characteristic of Uralic languages, but Finnish has lost it. However, the Eastern dialects and the Karelian language have redeveloped a system of palatalization. For example, the Karelian word "d'uuri" , with a palatalized , is reflected by "juuri" in Finnish and Savo dialect "vesj" is