Proto-Finnish language

The Sami language was formed from Finnish during the period from 1500 BC to 1000 BC. The fact that the Sami language has similarities with Finnish was shown early and the fact of the division proves that they have the links between one another. So the migration on the map of Europe can be painted as the image below.

There is a question about preceded of Finnish, it is the Proto-Finnish language and it is a reconstructed language. Consonants of this language are shown below in the table.

The modern Finnish language has the next consonants,

This table represents the fact that many sounds disappeared from the Finnish language and several sounds appears during the period from the 4000 BC (it is a theoretical start of using the Proto-Finnish language). The Proto-Finnish language was connected closely with Proto-Finno-Ugric and Proto-Sami and it has many traits of several Scandinavian languages. As it is shown above, the two sounds of the modern Finnish language appear since the era of Proto-Finnish.

They are

• “ʋ” (Labial-Approximant, like in the word Rwanda [ruʋandɐ], the sound close to the English “w”) and
• “ʔ” (Glottal-Plosive also Glottal-Stop, ba?d [ba:d], the small sound between ‘uh-oh.’).

The tables above show the consonant phonology of the both Finnish languages. And the target of this series is to show way from the Kurgan culture to Scandinavia. As parts of it Proto-languages and modern will be used and described together.

Resources,

• “The Glottal Plosive: A Phoneme in Spoken Modern Persian or Not?”, Carina Jahani.
• Wikipedia

This article was written by Ilya Duchanin.