Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric ( or ), Finno-Ugrian or Fenno-Ugric is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by some contemporary linguists. The three most-spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, are all included in Finno-Ugric, although linguistic roots common to both branches of the traditional Finno-Ugric language tree (Finno-Permic and Ugric) are distant. The term "Finno-Ugric", which originally referred to the entire family, is sometimes used as a synonym for the
Proto-Uralic language Proto-Uralic was an agglutinative nominative–accusative language. Proto-Uralic nouns are reconstructed with at least six noun cases and three numbers, singular, dual and plural. Grammatical gender was not recognized and no Uralic language does so even today. Noun articles were unknown. The plural marker of nouns was *"-t" in final position and *"-j-" in non-final position, as seen in Finnish "talot" and "talojen" ("house" Pl.Nom and Pl.Gen). The dual marker has been reconstructed as *"-k-", but the dual number has been lost in many of the contemporary Uralic languages. The cases were: The cases had only one three-way locative contrast of