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
Agglutination would (in the largest scope ever proposed) include the Uralic and Turkic languages as well as Mongolian, Korean, Tamil and Japanese. However, contemporary linguistics views this proposal as controversial. On the other hand, it is also the case that some languages that have developed from agglutinative proto-languages have lost this feature. For example, contemporary Estonian, which is so closely related to Finnish that the two languages are mutually intelligible, has shifted towards the fusional type. (It has also lost other features typical of the Uralic families, such as vowel harmony.) Examples of agglutinative languages include the Uralic languages, such as