# Basic features which distinguish Finno-Ugric languages



## LilianaB

What are the basic features which distinguish Finno-Ugric languages? I have been interested in the most important differences in syntax and morphology between the Finno-Ugric group and Indo-European languages. I have read somewhere that the differences between Finno-Ugric languages themselves are quite big and that there is only one sentence really which is a proof that they belong to the same group: Live fish lives in clean water, if I am not wrong.


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## ancalimon

I think the most important one is that they are agglutinative.

I also remember reading that Ogur was the same as Oguz in the far past but over time their pronunciation changed so much. I remember writing about this in this forum; Mahmud of Kashgar wrote that those people pronounced some letters differently in the past and they also turned into Polytheism from Tengri religion (Tengri is the concept covering infinity; a plus sign in a circle is the symbol explaining this) (they were probably influenced by Indians) and thus they were banished from being Turks and they migrated all around the world. He also mentions that since they worshiped more than one God (like their leaders, trees, statues they built, fire, etc) they could no longer be considered Turks.

For example Uyghur are considered "Oy Ogur", Hungarians are considered "On Ogur", Bulgarians are considered "Pol Ogur"


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## LilianaB

Hi, Ancalimon. What do you exactly mean by Ogur people? There is an alphabet Abur, an old alphabet used by the Komi-Zyryan people. Later on it was replaced with the cyrillic. Was Ogur the Proto language for the Finno-Ugric languages?


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## ancalimon

LilianaB said:


> Hi, Ancalimon. What do you exactly mean by Ogur people? There is an alphabet Abur, an old alphabet used by the Komi-Zyryan people. Later on it was replaced with the cyrillic. Was Ogur the Proto language for the Finno-Ugric languages?



No.  Ogur are a large group of people divided from the Oghuz people in the far past.  They are both OQ people.  (OQ meaning arrow, line or erect in its basic form and one of its more complex forms is OQU meaning read, to understand the signs)

http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/13_Oguz_and_Ogur/OguzesEn.htm
http://s155239215.onlinehome.us/turkic/13_Oguz_and_Ogur/TurkoSlavicSymbiosisOPritsakEn.htm

Of course there is no concrete evidence that Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages share a common root at the moment (as far as I know)


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## entangledbank

The morphology is most distinctive for:

(1) Agglutinative: it's common to have multiple suffixes on both nouns and verbs.
(2) Vowel harmony: roots generally have the same kind of vowel in terms of front/back or rounded/unrounded, and suffixes have more than one form, to match the kinds in the root.
(3) Numerous cases, including specifically three for the meanings "in", "into", and "out of", and another three for "on", "onto", and "off".

I can't think of any specifically syntactic feature that's strikingly different from Indo-European, but in common between Finnish and Hungarian (the only two I know anything about). Finnish has a negative verb, and Hungarian has different transitive and intransitive conjugations. Otherwise, word order and the use of cases, participles and so on wouldn't look too alien to Indo-European.

All of (1), (2), (3) make FU different from IE, but only (3) is really distinctive (distinguishing it from the many cases of Basque, for example, which doesn't have that threefold local set). FU shares (1) and (2) with neighbouring language families such as Turkic and (further afield) Mongolian, which led many people to posit a larger Ural-Altaic family. I don't think anyone much believes in this any more.

"Fish" is _kala_ in Finnish, _hal_ in Hungarian, which gives you a /k ~ h/ alternation seen in a few other words, such as _kolme ~ három_ "three". The numerals are mostly recognizably related, but not many other words are. You have to really look hard - they're about as far apart as two major branches of Indo-European.


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## LilianaB

Thank you. What about verb conjugations, tenses, moods, and things like that. Are they very different from Indo-European languages? I was told that the verb in Hungarian can be replaced by the noun with appropriate affixes. So the function of the verb would be taken over by the noun in many cases. A sentence such as:_ I go home_, _I am at home_ will be expressed only by changing the affixes. I do not know if this is true.


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## entangledbank

In normal sentences, verbs are verbs (and there's a fully inflected verb "be") and nouns are nouns. It may be possible to contrive examples using Hungarian's extensive morphology, but in everyday sentences it looks much like IE syntax.

However, I do recall an example in that old book _The Loom of Language_ showing that the same inflections could be used on nouns and verbs in Samoyede, which is part of the larger Uralic grouping that includes Finno-Ugric: _lambau_ "my ski", _lambar_ "your ski", _lambada_ "his/her/its ski"; _madau_ "I cut", _madar_ "you cut", _madada_ "she/he/it cut". This is not true for either Finnish or Hungarian, though as I'm at work I haven't got my books to consult and can't remember exactly how similar the personal endings may be. (Both languages use noun suffixes for "my", "your" etc.)


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## LilianaB

Thank you. This has been very interesting.


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## francisgranada

entangledbank said:


> ... in Samoyede, which is part of c grouping that includes Finno-Ugric: _lambau_ "my ski", _lambar_ "your ski", _lambada_ "his/her/its ski"; _madau_ "I cut", _madar_ "you cut", _madada_ "she/he/it cut". This is not true for either Finnish or Hungarian ...



At this point, being a native speaker, I have to disagree:

íro*m* - I write
íro*d* - you write (=thou writest)
írj*a* - he/she writes
etc...

háza*m *- my house
háza*d* - your house (=thy house)
ház*a* - his/her house
etc...

rajta*m* - on me
rajta*d* - on you (=on thee)
rajt*a*- on him/on her
etc...


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## LilianaB

This is very interesting. Do you have any constructions where the idea usually expressed by a verb is expressed by a noun with affixes? Is it the same in Finnish and Estonian?


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## kirahvi

In Finnish the endings are different:

kirjoitan - I write
kirjoitat - you write
kirjoittaa - he/she writes

taloni - my house
talosi - your house
(hänen) talonsa - his/her house (you can't omit the possessive pronoun in third person in Finnish)

päälläni - on me
päälläsi - on you
päällään - on him/her


And there's no construction like the one LilianaB asks about in Finnish.


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## LilianaB

Thank you. Is there anything else strikingly different in Finnish compared to Indo-European languages.


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## kirahvi

I really don't think Finnish is as strikingly different from Indo-European languages as people often seem to believe.

The negative verb has already been mentioned, as has the complex declension and a very limited amount of adpositions.
The verbs can be modified with suffixes a lot more than in any IE language that I know. The aspect and prefixation of Slavic languages comes the closest, but still doesn't quite compete with Finnish.


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## francisgranada

Today in Hungarian the verbs and the nouns cannot be "mixed", inspite of the common origin of the endings ("personal markers") . The situation is a bit more complex than it may seem from my examples (there are different transitive and intransitive conjugations, subjunctive, etc ...). So, using the the words of entangledbank: "verbs are verbs and nouns are nouns".

You could notice in the previous Hungarian and the Finnish examples a difference from the IE languages: instead of prepositions, there are postpositions that can be provided also by possessive endings ("personal markers"):

päälläni (F), rajtam (H) - on me


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## Ben Jamin

A very important difference between the Finno-Ugric family and the Indoeuropean family is the lack of genders in the Finno-Ugric. In Finnish there are even no separate pronouns for he and she, it's hän for both sexes. So, if you here somebody calling a man 'she' or a woman 'he', the chance is big that the 'hän' is a native speaker of a Finno-Ugric language. (By the way, it seems that it would be useful to import such a genderless pronoun into English in our times of political ('anti sexist') correctness.


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## francisgranada

Ben Jamin said:


> A very important difference between the Finno-Ugric family and the Indoeuropean family is the lack of genders in the Finno-Ugric. In Finnish there are even no separate pronouns for he and she, it's hän for both sexes ...



The same in Hungarian, *ő* (he, she) for both sexes. 



> ...it seems that it would be useful to import such a genderless pronoun into English in our times of political ('anti sexist') correctness



The first step has been done: in plural there's no difference (_they_, unlike e.g. in Spanish  _ellos_, _ellas_)


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## francisgranada

Another feature of the Hungarian, different from the IE (but as far as I know it's not valid for the Finnish):

The plural is expressed, let's say, only if "it is necessary":

sok ház - many houses (litt. "many house")
három szép ház - three nice houses (litt. "three nice house")
kék szeme van - she/he has blue eyes (litt. "she has blue eye", or even more litterally: "blue eye-her is")

But:
háza*k* - houses
szép háza*k* - nice houses (Spanish: bella*s* casa*s*)

(The "marker" of the plural is *-k.*) Thus the opposition of the singular and the plural is not so "symmetrical" as in the IE languages, where the case endings implicitely contain information also about the plural/singular (even in the nominative case). In Hungarian, only the plural is marked and the singular (unmarked) is rather "number indifferent" than strictly singular.


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## kirahvi

In Finnish the noun is always in singular after a numeral, but it's in partitive rather than nominative:

yksi talo - one house
kaksi talo*a *- two houses (partitive singular)
kaksi kaunis*ta* talo*a *- two beautiful houses (partitive singular)


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## francisgranada

kirahvi said:


> In Finnish the noun is always in singular after a numeral, but it's in partitive rather than nominative ...



Interesting, because it's another example for the difference between the Uralic (or at least the Finno-Ugric) and the Indoeuropean languages. 

_"Moni kaunis talo" _is like in Hungarian, but why "_usea*t* kaunii*t* talo*t*_"? This looks very "indoeuropean" (grammatical congruence).

P.S. Could you give some other examples for the use of the partitive case (regardless of the plurality)? (I'd like to compare it with the Hungarian)


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## ancalimon

francisgranada said:


> At this point, being a native speaker, I have to disagree:
> 
> íro*m* - I write
> íro*d* - you write (=thou writest)
> írj*a* - he/she writes
> etc...
> 
> háza*m *- my house
> háza*d* - your house (=thy house)
> ház*a* - his/her house
> etc...
> 
> rajta*m* - on me
> rajta*d* - on you (=on thee)
> rajt*a*- on him/on her
> etc...



That's similar to Turkish.

ev*im* - my house
ev*in* - your house
ev*i* - his/her house

yazar*ım* : I write  (I'm a writer)
yazar*sın* : You write  (You're a writer)
yazar : He/she writes  (He/She is a writer)


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## francisgranada

Hello, Alcalimon.

For sake of this discussion, I have two questions:

How do you say in Turkish "on me", "in me", "with me" ... ?
How do you say in Turkish "three nice/beautiful houses" ? (i.e. the noun "house" is in singular or in plural?)


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## kirahvi

francisgranada said:


> Interesting, because it's another example for the difference between the Uralic (or at least the Finno-Ugric) and the Indoeuropean languages.
> 
> _"Moni kaunis talo" _is like in Hungarian, but why "_usea*t* kaunii*t* talo*t*_"? This looks very "indoeuropean" (grammatical congruence).



Moni kaunis talo is congruence as well - they're all in nominative singular. Useat kauniit talot is all in nominative plural. I'm not sure I understand what's confusing you about it. Could you elaborate?

EDIT: And I realized I made a stupid mistake in my previous post concerning moni/monta - and now the pairs are not symmetrical, so I'll just edit that part out. Hopefully someone will tag along and explain the situation better.

The many houses construction also changes according to the case needed:

Useat kauniit talot ovat _sinisiä_. Many beautiful houses are _blue_. (blue: part. pl.)
Usei*ssa* kaunii*ssa* taloi*ssa*. In many beautiful houses.




francisgranada said:


> P.S. Could you give some other examples for the use of the partitive case (regardless of the plurality)? (I'd like to compare it with the Hungarian)



Juon kahvi*a* ja syön leipä*ä*. I'm drinking coffee and eating bread.
Ostitko omenoi*ta*? Did you buy apples?

Luin kirjan.(nominative) Prečítala som knihu.
Luin kirja*a*. (partitive) Čítala som knihu.

Partitive occurs always with negation.

Veljelläni on koira. My brother has a dog. (nominative)
Veljelläni ei ole koira*a*. My brother doesn't have a dog. (partitive)


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## ancalimon

francisgranada said:


> Hello, Alcalimon.
> 
> For sake of this discussion, I have two questions:
> 
> How do you say in Turkish "on me", "in me", "with me" ... ?
> How do you say in Turkish "three nice/beautiful houses" ? (i.e. the noun "house" is in singular or in plural?)



üç hoş ev

üç: three
hoş: nice
ev: house

(We don't use the plural suffix "ev*ler*" because üç (three) already makes the house plural. It's against the mathematics of Turkic languages. It would render the equation invalid)
http://ddi.ce.itu.edu.tr/about-turkish/a-mathematical-modeling-on-turkish
http://www.google.com.tr/url?sa=t&r...sg=AFQjCNFu_eKxGJrZOQuBe2wLzXdRZpY9VQ&cad=rja

The plural suffix "ler (s)" can even be used on its own. It's not against the rules.  For example someone can say "ler" and the other person can say "neler? (what are those things?)"

Words in Turkish are "2 bits".

on me: üstümde   (üst: up, surface)
in me: içimde   (iç: inside)
with me: benimle


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## LilianaB

kirahvi said:


> Partitive occurs always with negation.
> 
> Veljelläni on koira. My brother has a dog. (nominative)
> Veljelläni ei ole koira*a*. My brother doesn't have a dog. (partitive)



This is very interesting. partitive occurs always with negation in Polish or at  least the Genitive replaces the Accusative. The  is true in Russian as well,  and some people still use it this way, whereas others tend to replace it with the Accusative these days, which sounds unnatural to me, but apparently this is the new tendency. I do not know if this is the new tendency in Polish as well, but I doubt it, although I do not have that much contact with Polish.


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## francisgranada

kirahvi said:


> Moni kaunis talo is congruence as well - they're all in nominative singular. Useat kauniit talot is all in nominative plural. I'm not sure I understand what's confusing you about it. Could you elaborate? ...



Useatkauniit talot is all in plural, which is not the case of Hungarian. In Hungarian the plural is marked only once (or not marked), so there is no congruence from this point of view. I.e. comparing with the Hungarian, the Finnish construction is nearer to the IE. Apropos: why "moni kaunis talo" is in singular while "Useat kauniit talot" is in plural?

In Hungarian we have, for example:

Szép háza*kban*  (and not *_szépekben házakban_) - In beautiful houses (-k plural, -ban in)
Sok szép házb*an* (and not *_sokban szépben házban_) - In many beautiful houses (no plural because of the presence of "sok=many", -ban in)


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## kirahvi

francisgranada said:


> Useatkauniit talot is all in plural, which is not the case of Hungarian. In Hungarian the plural is marked only once (or not marked), so there is no congruence from this point of view. I.e. comparing with the Hungarian, the Finnish construction is nearer to the IE. Apropos: why "moni kaunis talo" is in singular while "Useat kauniit talot" is in plural?



Your question is why I edited the post where I mentioned the moni/monta thing in the first place: it is possible to say usea kaunis talo in singular (as in many a beautiful house is blue, for example), but it is very rarely used. I would rather use the word moni in this case, moni kaunis talo. And this is exactly why I made the mistake of not making the pairs 100% symmertical: usea with singular just sounds plain weird to me in nominative, even if it is grammatically correct.

So, to recap:

many in Finnish can be translated either moni or usea. They both are conjugated to agree with the rest of the sentence: moni/monet/monta/monia etc. or usea/useat/useaa/useita etc. (nominative singular/plural and partitive singular/plural). Often the sentence can be in either singular or plural without the meaning changing significantly: monella naisella on lyhyet hiukset OR monilla naisilla on lyhyet hiukset. (Many a woman / many women have short hair.)

The Finnish usage seems to be closer to IE than the Hungarian usage, definitely.


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## Ben Jamin

kirahvi said:


> Your question is why I edited the post where I mentioned the moni/monta thing in the first place: it is possible to say usea kaunis talo in singular (as in many a beautiful house is blue, for example), but it is very rarely used. I would rather use the word moni in this case, moni kaunis talo. And this is exactly why I made the mistake of not making the pairs 100% symmertical: usea with singular just sounds plain weird to me in nominative, even if it is grammatically correct.
> 
> So, to recap:
> 
> many in Finnish can be translated either moni or usea. They both are conjugated to agree with the rest of the sentence: moni/monet/monta/monia etc. or usea/useat/useaa/useita etc. (nominative singular/plural and partitive singular/plural). Often the sentence can be in either singular or plural without the meaning changing significantly: monella naisella on lyhyet hiukset OR monilla naisilla on lyhyet hiukset. (Many a woman / many women have short hair.)
> 
> The Finnish usage seems to be closer to IE than the Hungarian usage, definitely.



I have only a basic command of Finnish, based mostly on practical communication and I almost always heard such substantives in partitive: “monta kaunista taloja”.


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## kirahvi

Ben Jamin said:


> I have only a basic command of Finnish, based mostly on practical communication and I almost always heard such substantives in partitive: “monta kaunista taloja”.



It should be either monta kaunista taloa (partitive singular) or monia kauniita taloja (partitive plural).

Yes, monta always works with partitive. The word itself is already in partitive: moni - monta.

But the word moni can be in other cases as well depending on what the rest of the sentence is.


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## francisgranada

kirahvi said:


> Juon kahvi*a* ja syön leipä*ä*. I'm drinking coffee and eating bread.
> Ostitko omenoi*ta*? Did you buy apples?
> 
> Luin kirjan.(nominative) Prečítala som knihu.
> Luin kirja*a*. (partitive) Čítala som knihu.



In Hungarian, in the above examples the accusative should be used, formed by suffix *-t*. As far as I know, the accusative ending -t existed also in Finnish, but it's now limited to some pronouns. Is this true?

P.S. Do you speak Slovak?


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## kirahvi

francisgranada said:


> In Hungarian, in the above examples the accusative should be used, formed by suffix *-t*. As far as I know, the accusative ending -t existed also in Finnish, but it's now limited to some pronouns. Is this true?
> 
> P.S. Do you speak Slovak?



The object in Finnish can be either in accusative or partitive, and accusative is generally speaking just a term for the non-partitive objects. Accusative is either like genitive or nominative (nominative plural also ends with *-t*, though), no special endings there. That's why accusative isn't considered a case of its own by some linguists. The accusative ending *-t* is, indeed, only found in pronouns:

Näen sinu*t*. I see you.
Näet minu*t*. You see me.


But getting back on topic about the differences between FU and IE languages:

How about the future in other FU languages? In Finnish there is no specific future form, the present is used instead and the future is conveyed in other words. There is a new tendency to use a special construction to convey the meaning of future in the spoken language, but it's not used in the official language and it's grammatically incorrect.

Menen Helsinkiin. I go to Helsinki.
Menen Helsinkiin huomenna. I'll go to Helsinki tomorrow.
*Tulen menemään Helsinkiin. I'll go to Helsinki. (lit. I come to go to Helsinki)

PS. Áno, hovorím po slovensky. Bývala som tam.


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## francisgranada

The future in Hungarian:

1. Using the verb _fogni _(to grip, to hold, to catch  ...), which is conjugated and the main verb is in infinive. E.g.:
*fog*ok menni - I shall go
*fog*sz menni - you will go
*fog* menni - he/she will go
etc...

2. Using the present tense (a possibility present in most/many languages, I think). E.g.:
holnap ír neked - tomorrow he/she (will) write you
majd ír neked - he/she will write you (litterally cca. "then he/she writes you")
(_holnap _- tomorrow, _neked _- to you, _majd _- cca then, _írni _- to write)

3. Using the future formant -*nd*-: 
írom - I write (present)
íra*nd*om - I shall write (future)

This kind of future is no more used today. But there exists a future participle, that is used in some cases even today, e.g. _ (le)íra*nd*ó _with the meaning of "it will be, or rather, it has to be written (down)".


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## muhahaa

francisgranada said:


> Today in Hungarian the verbs and the nouns cannot be "mixed", inspite of the common origin of the endings ("personal markers") . The situation is a bit more complex than it may seem from my examples (there are different transitive and intransitive conjugations, subjunctive, etc ...). So, using the the words of entangledbank: "verbs are verbs and nouns are nouns".
> 
> You could notice in the previous Hungarian and the Finnish examples a difference from the IE languages: instead of prepositions, there are postpositions that can be provided also by possessive endings ("personal markers"):
> 
> päälläni (F), rajtam (H) - on me



Proto-Indo-European was supposedly a postposition language (like most of languages with SOV word order).


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## LilianaB

Can people who speak Finnish understand other Finno-Ugric languages such as Komi, or Estonian to certain extent? I know Hungarian is probably incomprehensible.


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## Ben Jamin

LilianaB said:


> Can people who speak Finnish understand other Finno-Ugric languages such as Komi, or Estonian to certain extent? I know Hungarian is probably incomprehensible.



I don’t know much about the Komi language, but knowing basic Finnish, I can understand single words of the Lappish (Sami) language, and parts of sentences in Estonian. Generally Estonians understand more Finnish than the other way round. Hungarian  for Finns is as unpenetrable as Greek for an Englishman: only about 50 words can be understood both ways (not counting international words like television).


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## LilianaB

Thank you. Is Finnish hard to learn?


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## LilianaB

Hi, Everyone.

Do Finno-Ugric languages have different forms of adjectives to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness?

How is negation formed? Are there any auxiliary verbs, or is there any particle indicting negation attached to the basic verb form? 

Are there any articles in Finno-Ugric languages. Thank you. Any input will be highly appreciated.


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## francisgranada

LilianaB said:


> ...Do Finno-Ugric languages have different forms of adjectives to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness?



I don't know what you exactly mean, but in Hungarian there's no specific form. The definiteness is expressed by articles.



> How is negation formed? Are there any auxiliary verbs, or is there any particle indicting negation attached to the basic verb form?


The negative is in Hungarian formed regularly using the particle _*nem *_(e.g. _nem írok_ - I don't write) and with verbs in subjunctive/imperative using the particle _*ne *_(e.g. _ne írjak_ -  [que yo] no escriba, let me not write...). The proper word _ne_ _(>nem_) is probably of Uralic (or at least Finno-Ugric) origin.  But as far as I know, there are different constructions in the Finnish. 



> Are there any articles in Finno-Ugric languages


In Hungarian, the definite article is _*az*, *a*_ (before consonant) and the indefinite article is _*egy *_("one"). This is but a Hungarian development, not common to all of the Finno-Ugric languages. Even in the old Hungarian written documents (before the 14th century),  the word _*az*_ (or _*oz*_, the archaic form of _az_) was used only in it's original function, i.e. as a demonstrative pronoun ("that"), so the cathegory of the article is in Hungarian relatively recent.


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## LilianaB

Thank you.How many tenses do you have in Hungarian, and is it common to all Finno-Ugric languages, or most at least? 
How many different modes and aspects do you have, or rather, how are they expressed? How many types of participles are there in Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric languages?


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## kirahvi

In Finnish there's no specific construction to mark definiteness and there are no articles either. In spoken language people sometimes use _se_ (it) and _yks(i)_ (one) like articles, but it's far from being official usage.

The negation in Finnish is marked by a special negative verb.

_*En* kirjoita. _I don't write. (_Kirjoitan._ I write.) 
_*Et* kirjoita. _You don't write. (_Kirjoitat._ You write.)
_*Ei* kirjoita. _He/she doesn't write. (_Hän kirjoittaa. _He/she writes.)
_*Emme* kirjoita. _We don't write. (_Kirjoitamme._ We write.)
_*Ette* kirjoita._ You don't write. (_Kirjoitatte._ You write.)
_*Eivät* kirjoita._ They don't write. (_He kirjoittavat._ They write.)

There are four tenses: present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect. _Kirjoitan_ (I write), _kirjoitin_ (I wrote), _olen kirjoittanut_ (I have written), _olin kirjoittanut_ (I had written).

The frequently used modes are indicative (_kirjoittaa_), conditional (_kirjoittaisi_) and imperative (_kirjoita!_). There's also potential (_kirjoittanee_), which is used in written text, but hardly ever in spoken language. Many people don't even know these days how to form it correctly. There's also optative (_kirjoittaos_), but it's very, very rare. The only reason I know about optative being present in Finnish is that I looked into Georgian recently. I don't remember ever hearing about it in Finnish classes in school.

And there are six participles (that I can think of, anyways):

kirjoittava - Kirjoittava mies. A man *that writes*.
 kirjoittama - Miehen kirjoittama. *Written by* a man.
 kirjoittanut - Kirjoittanut mies. A man *that has written*. 
kirjoitettu - Kirja, joka on kirjoitettu. A book that *has been written*. 
kirjoitettava - Kirjoitettava kirja. A book that *is being written/has to be written/can be written*.
kirjoittamaton - Kirjoittamaton kirja. A book *that hasn't been written*.


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## LilianaB

Thank you, Kirahvi. Do you conjugate verbs? The participle system is similar to the one in Baltic languages. I do not know if the way they are formed is the same, but the types are similar. Is formal Finnish really so different from informal Finnish. I read somewhere that the forms may be totally different, forms of the same word in formal and informal speech.


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## Explorer41

Hello,

My question is not about grammar, but rather about vocabularies. Do the vocabularies of the Finno-Ugric languages share common metaphors, distinct from the ones common to the Indo-European languages?

I mean words sharing a similar system of meanings, but not necessarily sounding similarly. For example, the English word "boundary", the Russian word "граница" and the French word "limite" all mean a line placed between two systems, and all of them share a delimiting and separating meaning. Interesting coincidence, because the word for a line between two systems could just as well have a linking connotation, because systems make interaction by means of their boundaries, connecting them together.

I'm sure such coincidences exist among Finno-Ugric languages, too. Are there any coincidences which would seem strange for a speaker of an Indo-European language? Probably some metaphors may live long in the memory of peoples, therefore  they could constitute a distinctive feature of a language family.

Thanks for any replies!


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## francisgranada

The problem with answering your question is that probably nobody speaks more that one Finno-Ugric language in this forum . 

As to boundary, in Hungarian it is "határ" and has the same connotation as boundary, limite or granica. But I think it's natural: no border is needed when we do not want to separate something from something else ... When connecting people, the borders are rather destroyed (e.g. the Berlin Wall).


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