Talk:Finno-Permic languages

Merger proposal
It was bit of a coin toss over whether to direct the merge here or to Finno-Volgaic languages, but one of these has to go, as a genetic grouping. Finnic languages I suppose would actually be best left as a disambig of all the various Finno-Whicheveric families.

Where to put the discussion about all the different historical meanings on the term, I'm unsure, but currently it seems to be duplicated over at Volga F., also mentioned at Finno-Ugric languages, and tangented at Uralic languages. Could these be tied together into one of the articles, say Finno-Ugric? This seems like needless duplication too. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 11:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd have to look through in more detail, but it appears to me that the Finno-Ugric languages article should be home to all of this without endless sub-articles for sub-groupings. "Group" article at top, "individual" language articles underneath for more detail. The "intermediate" level articles I checked appear to be little more than tabular repetitions of information at Finno-Ugric languages, with ever so slightly more detail. I really don't see how the article current structure can be maintained reasonably. I'd expect that 99.99% of anyone with an interest in any of the Finno-Ugric peoples is going to look for the Finno-Ugric languages, or for the specific language. While there are always strong opinions on language origins and relationships, how to best organize really should be part of a WP project on Finno-Ugric languages. (Is there one/has one been considered?) —PētersV (talk) 14:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm afraid you're not going to get a consensus with this suggestion. The view that the term Finnic languages have often been used to designate all the Finno-Permic languages has been based on a earlier belief that Permic languages are closer to Finnish than to Hungarian As the article also explains: this usage is regarded incorrect by Finno-Ugric specialists. I would keep it self explanatory, it's historic split anyway. Meaning Finno-Permic languages, the subgroup contains Finnic languages and Permic languages.--Termer (talk) 02:35, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

PS. Not to mention that in Finland the term Finnic languages = Baltic-Finnic languages only, that's quite far from Finno-Permic languages.--Termer (talk) 02:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I was rather under the Finnish impression of "Finnic" myself. I was looking at the map of Finno-Ugric language distribution. Would it make sense to have another map at a "higher" level so that some of the geographical alignments of the major subgroups would be more evident? While I realize that some past designations have reflected geographical, not linguistic, separation, there might still be some benefit, perhaps there are some groupings that appear more logical than others (assuming they also reflect majority current scholarship, of course). Thinking out loud. —PētersV (talk) 21:45, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Meaning Finno-Permic languages, the subgroup contains Finnic languages and Permic languages. Do I understand correctly you would like to merge (the current contents of) Finnic languages with Volga-Finnic languages then? Sounds OK to me too, tho I'd still like to see all this terminology hassle handled in a single place. So for example, here's how I would imagine the Finnic languages article should look like. That is, something that gets right to the point about the ambiguity of the term and does't try to duplicate one or more of the individual subfamily articles.

For that matter, I would have no problem with merging all three of these articles (Finnic, Finno-Volgaic & Finno-Permic). I don't see why every possible clade requires its own article, especially if the validity of more than one is/has been disputed and there isn't anything specific to say about the clade other than its subdivision. OTOH I think merging them all into Finno-Ugric would be a bit on the rash side (if everything is to to go into the "master" node, that's surely Uralic languages). Finno-Lappic is probably OK too. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 18:42, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The main purpose to keep those articles separately is to make it clearer for the reader. I mean, if the articles you mentioned would be merged, it would be like saying, these are all the same. Clearly it's not the case. The meaning of Finno-Permic is not the same as Finno-Volgaic etc. So lets say the reader wants to find out what exactly Finno-Permic means and in case it's merged with something else, a search would redirect it to whatever merged title and the meaning of it would be buried under it. Lets say in case someone wants to find out what exactly are Finno-Ugric languages, the search should take it straight to it without the need to getting the info from the Uralic languages for example. So, once more: the main purpose keeping everything in it's own slot is to provide the reader with the right on target definition(s) what exactly is/are the meaning(s) of the terms.--Termer (talk) 05:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally I don't see any reasons for merging any of these articles. I agree that the whole thing should be organized better on WP though and the articles need a lot of work. At this stage merging them all together would just make the whole thing even more fuzzy I think. And finally, I don't understand why would you merge Finnic, Finno-Volgaic & Finno-Permic and leave out Baltc-Finnic?


 * Well, Baltic-Finnic is clearly a valid family and distinct concept. The distinction between Finno-Volgaic and Finno-Permic is also clearly there so if you insist on keeping the articles for explanatory purposes, fine too, most language families are divided as densely as possible around here (NB, with that logic we also need a separate article on Volga-Finnic languages, eventually). What I'm not seeing is how exactly is "Finnic" distinct, rather than shorthand for this family or the other? Currently the article states, Finnic languages is a language group including Baltic-Finnic languages and Volga-Finnic languages which is ehttp://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_sig.png

Your signature with timestampxactly the definition of Finno-Volgaic. And in the table, it lists out different classifications of the Finno-Permic languages, but still under the heading of "Finnic languages". So we need a merge - of the linguistic content, I must stress. Clearly this is a disputed term that can't be just redirected, it will have to be left as a disambiguation at least. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:07, 29 July 2008 (UTC) Volga-Finnic languages was there, just that one guy thought Finno-Volgaic would be more needed on WP and reverted the article, and there is a discussion going on on the talk page, Talk:Finno-Volgaic_languages. Regarding Finnic languages then currently on WP, this is in sync with Finnic peoples that according to the sources are Baltic Finns and Volga Finns. I think it would be important to keep it current with peoples-languages nowadays as versus for example Finno-Permic and Finno-Volgaig is used more in historic sense, it takes it back to about 2000BC when Finno-Ugrig languages split down into further branches. The main problem is that all these terms have been and are used with different meanings and the best we can do, lay out every possible interpretation in each article. --Termer (talk) 00:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * OK how about this, we'll just make Finnic languages into a disambiguation page like this:

Finnic languages may refer to:
 * Finno-Permic languages
 * Finno-Volgaic languages
 * Baltic-Finnic languages and/or Volga-Finnic languages

That should make it much more clear and solve the issues you've raised.--Termer (talk) 16:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, as I don't see any opposition here I guess it means consensus and I'll just make it happen and clean it up.--Termer (talk) 01:50, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

the validity of the group as a taxonomical entity is questioned.
since the given source clearly spells out The highest-level branches in the binary classification, Finno-Volgaic, Finno-Permian, and Finno-Ugrian, have not been subject to much debate, it's clear the claims about Finno-Permic languages validity questioned in the article can't be based on the source. "Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages" mostly focuses on Samoyedic vs Finno Ugric and doesn't say even close to anything like "Nowadays the validity of the (Finno-Permian) group as a taxonomical entity is questioned" like the article claims. It may question the validity of the Uralic group as a taxonomical entity if anything but it's doing this as a primary source. --Termer (talk) 06:13, 26 May 2011 (UTC)


 * OK yes… since debate is lacking, it does seem that "the validity is questioned" (in general?) is too strong a statement. I suppose that could be beefed up with some recent family trees that implicitly fail to support FP. (A PDF compiling some examples: ) But for that matter, if debate is lacking, I'm not sure this node even ultimately needs an article of its own. We still have no real information here, just some views on how this person or that groups the languages included, or dates the stage. IME it's hard to find any discussion on Finno-Permic from the 20th century, it's something that apparently got stuck into the family tree in the 19th and has just hung there ever since. The closest I've found are Viitso's consonant isogloss study, which rejects FP, and Michalove's lexicostatistical one, which supports it. (Both cited in the main Uralic languages article.) -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 08:08, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

not sure this node even ultimately needs an article of its own. Maybe that's what we should do, redircet this to Finnic languages and then explain in the article, in a chapter how the term has been used traditionally: Finnic-languages=Finno-Permic languages for example according to --Termer (talk) 16:41, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

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What is this passage supposed to mean?

Finno-Permic is not Finnic
An editor has added "Finnic" to this article. I have not found a single source defining Finno-Permic as Finnic. Moreover, a source used on this same article page clearly excludes Finno-Permic from the Finnic definition. Blomsterhagens (talk) 09:45, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Typo in image.
Not really a big problem, but anyway - it will be good to fix it. There is typo in image called "A map of the approximate distribution of the Finno-Permic Language Family, with different colour gradients corresponding to different subdivisions of the family." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Permic_languages#/media/File:Finno-Permic_Languages0.png ) It says "Komi-Peryak", while right is "Komi-Permyak"ю