IE "Urheimat" and evidence from Uralic linguistics

[Ante Aikio]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000 JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

> -- as far as I know, the Uralic Urheimat is generally placed around the Ural
> mountains (hence the name).  A bit further east than the central Ukraine,
> although not much further. Subsequent spread was to the west _and_ east;

To be more precise: the region between Volga and Urals is the usual
theory these days, although some suggest more fanciful
scenarios. Lexical substrate suggests that the Siberian U languages
(Khanty, Manysi, Samoyedic) have moved to the current areas from Europe
(e.g., roughly 75% (!) of the proto-Samoyedic lexicon is without
a credible etymology). A strong lexical substrate from an unknown language
seems to exist in Saamic too; as for Finnic, the case is not as clear.

> hence Uralic (or Finno-Ugric) languages are found from Siberia all the way
> west to Finland (further, counting Sammi).

Saami must of course also be taken into account, since it as much a Uralic
language as all the others. Thus, in 1800's Uralic languages were spoken
from mid-Scandianavia (South Saami) to Baikal (Mator Samoyed, which is now
extinct).

 - Ante Aikio