Finnic languages in the context of "Jumala"

The Uralic languages (/jʊəˈrælɪk/ yoor-AL-ik), sometimes called the Uralian languages (/jʊəˈreɪliən/ yoor-AY-lee-ən), are spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt and Komi spoken in the European parts of the Russian Federation. Still smaller minority languages are Sámi languages of the northern Fennoscandia; other members of the Finnic languages, ranging from Livonian in northern Latvia to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; the Samoyedic languages and the other members of the Ugric languages, Mansi and Khanty spoken in Western Siberia.

The name Uralic derives from the family's purported "original homeland" (Urheimat) hypothesized to have been somewhere in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains, and was first proposed by Julius Klaproth in Asia Polyglotta (1823).

Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Russia. The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland, the larger islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and over 2,300 other islands and islets on the east coast of the Baltic Sea. Its capital Tallinn and Tartu are the two largest urban areas. The Estonian language, of the Finnic family, is the official language and the first language of the majority of its population of nearly 1.4 million. Estonia is one of the least populous members of the European Union and NATO.

Present-day Estonia has been inhabited since at least 9,000 BC. The medieval indigenous population of Estonia was one of the last pagan civilisations in Europe to adopt Christianity following the Northern Crusades in the 13th century. After centuries of successive rule by the Teutonic Order, Denmark, Sweden, and the Russian Empire, a distinct Estonian national identity began to emerge in the mid-19th century. This culminated in the 1918 Estonian Declaration of Independence from the then-warring Russian and German empires. Democratic throughout most of the interwar period, Estonia declared neutrality at the outbreak of World War II, but the country was repeatedly invaded and occupied, and ultimately annexed into the USSR. Throughout the de facto Soviet occupation, from World War II until 1991, Estonia's de jure state continuity was preserved by diplomatic representatives and the government-in-exile. Following the 1988–90 "Singing Revolution" against Soviet rule, full independence was restored on 20 August 1991.

Finnish (endonym: suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li]) is a Finnic language of the Uralic language family, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland, alongside Swedish. In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish) are official minority languages. Kven, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian counties of Troms and Finnmark by a minority of Finnish descent.

Finnish is typologically agglutinative and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs are inflected depending on their role in the sentence. Sentences are normally formed with subject–verb–object word order, although the extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure. Finnish orthography uses a Latin-script alphabet derived from the Swedish alphabet, and is phonemic to a great extent. Vowel length and consonant length are distinguished, and there are a range of diphthongs, although vowel harmony limits which diphthongs are possible.

The Baltic Finnic peoples, often simply referred to as the Finnic peoples, are the peoples inhabiting the Baltic Sea region in Northern and Eastern Europe who speak Finnic languages. They include the Finns, Estonians (including Võros and Setos), Karelians (including Ludes and Livvi), Veps, Izhorians, Votes, and Livonians. In some cases the Kvens, Ingrians, Tornedalians and speakers of Meänkieli are considered separate from the Finns.

The bulk of the Finnic peoples (more than 98%) are ethnic Finns and Estonians, who reside in the two independent Finnic nation states—Finland and Estonia.

Livonian (Livonian: līvõ kēļ or rāndakēļ) is a Finnic language that originated on the Livonian Coast of the Gulf of Riga, located in the north of the Kurzeme peninsula in Latvia but also used to be spoken in the Salaca River valley. Although its last known native speaker died in 2013, a child, Kuldi Medne, born in 2020, is reported to be a native speaker of Livonian. Her parents are Livonian language revival activists Jānis Mednis and Renāte Medne. Also, there are about 40 reported L2 speakers and 210 having reported some knowledge of the language. Possibly uniquely among the Uralic languages but similarly to Latvian and Lithuanian, Livonian has been described as a pitch-accent language (or restricted tone language, see below).

Some ethnic Livonians are learning or have learned Livonian in an attempt to revive it, but because ethnic Livonians are a small minority, opportunities to use Livonian are limited. The Estonian newspaper Eesti Päevaleht erroneously announced that Viktors Bertholds, who died on 28 February 2009, was the last native speaker who started Latvian-language school as a monolingual. Some other Livonians had argued, however, that there were some native speakers left, including Viktors Bertholds' cousin, Grizelda Kristiņa, who died in 2013. An article published by the Foundation for Endangered Languages in 2007 stated that there were only 182 registered Livonians and a mere six native speakers. In a 2009 conference proceeding, it was mentioned that there could be "at best 10 living native" speakers of the language.

Wends is a historical name for Slavs who inhabited present-day northeast Germany. It refers not to a homogeneous people, but to various people, tribes, or groups depending on where and when it was used. In the modern day, communities identifying as Wendish exist in Slovenia, Austria, Lusatia, the United States (such as the Texas Wends), and in Australia. One present-day group, the Lusatian Sorbs of Eastern Germany, remain in the Wendish homeland.

In German-speaking Europe during the Middle Ages, the term "Wends" was interpreted as synonymous with "Slavs" and sporadically used in literature to refer to West Slavs and South Slavs living within the Holy Roman Empire. The name has possibly survived in Finnic languages (Finnish: Venäjä [ˈʋenæjæ]; Estonian: Vene [ˈvene]; Karelian: Veneä), denoting modern Russia.

Estonians or Estonian people (Estonian: eestlased) are a Finnic ethnic group native to the Baltic Sea region in Northern Europe, primarily their nation state of Estonia.

Estonians primarily speak the Estonian language, a language closely related to other Finnic languages, e.g. Finnish, Karelian and Livonian. Estonians can also be classified into subgroups according to dialects (e.g. Võros, Setos), although such divisions have become less pronounced due to internal migration and rapid urbanisation in Estonia in the 20th century.