FinnoUgricspeaking

Finno-Ugric-speaking refers to communities and individuals who speak languages in the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. The Finno-Ugric group is commonly divided into two subgroups: Finnic languages, which include Finnish, Estonian, Sami, Karelian, Veps, and Livonian; and the Ugric languages, comprising Hungarian, Khanty, and Mansi. Some classifications place Sami with Finnic; terminology varies among linguists.

Geographically, Finno-Ugric languages are spoken across northern and eastern Europe and western Siberia. Hungarian is concentrated in Hungary, with communities abroad. Finnic languages are dominant in Finland and Estonia, with minority speakers in parts of Sweden, Norway, Russia, and the Baltic states. Sami languages are spoken by small communities in the Sápmi region, spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Russian Kola Peninsula. The Ugric languages Khanty and Mansi are spoken in the western Siberian region around the Ob and Yenisei basins.

Demographically, Hungarian has by far the largest number of speakers among Finno-Ugric languages, roughly 13–15 million. Other Finnic languages are spoken by smaller communities, with Finnish around several million and Estonian around one million. Many smaller Finnic and Ugric languages are endangered, facing language shift to national or regional languages.

Linguistically, Finno-Ugric languages are typically agglutinative with rich inflection and, in Finnic languages, vowel harmony. They generally lack grammatical gender, and word order is relatively flexible. The Finno-Ugric group is a traditional classification within the Uralic family, with ongoing discussions about subgroup boundaries and historical contact among speaker communities.