Uralic languages the discovery: the German scholar Martin Vogel, the Swedish scholar Georg Stiernhielm and the Swedish courtier Bengt Skytte. Vogel's unpublished study of the relationship, commissioned by Cosimo III of Tuscany, was clearly the most modern of these: he established several grammatical and lexical parallels between Finnish and Hungarian as well as Sami. Stiernhelm commented on the similarities of Sami, Estonian and Finnish, and also on a few similar words between Finnish and Hungarian. These authors were the first to outline what was to become the classification of the Finno-Ugric, and later Uralic family. This proposal received some of its initial
Northeastern coastal Estonian The characteristics of the dialect group are mostly shared with the Northern group of the Finnic languages. In contrast to , where "-de-" plural and "-si-" preterite are usual, the coastal dialects have "-i-" plural and "-i-" preterite. According to some authors, the 'Finnish-like' features of the coastal Estonian dialects are archaisms, rather than Finnish or Ingrian influence. The Northeastern coastal dialect of Estonian is nowadays alternatively split into two dialects: Coastal dialect and Alutaguse dialect, the former being more closely related with Southern Finnish dialects (note the non-presence of õ [ɤ], also absent in Finnish), Izhor and Votic languages,