“The truth should not be proclaimed but searched for”.

We are taught that there is a Uralic language family. We are taught that Hungarian and Finnish are genetically related languages. This is false!

But why is false information taught to us? We can learn the reasons why textbooks teach this falsity as well-established facts from Professor Angela Marcantonio’s book: The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics. There is a historical explanation: it’s the Darwinian model’s effects on linguistics in the 19th century. But there is more! Did you know that the Uralic-Hungarian genetic relationship theory was promoted by the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy? The author wants to draw attention to the term ‘theory’. As it is a theory, it’s not veritable nor falsifiable, it implies that it’s not based on ‘scientific evidence’. She tells us why linguists believe in the validity of the theory. They simply assume that the Uralic paradigm was established scientifically and nobody questioned it ever again.

She criticizes the method as well. The Uralic language family is established by means of the Comparative Method, however there are many problems with its application. First of all, comparing random words, it ‘fails to distinguish whether the corpus is the result of a true linguistic connection or chance resemblances.’ Second, the reconstructions of the Proto-Uralic node contain more sound-rules than regular etymologies. Third, it’s impossible to distinguish inherited elements from borrowings because borrowed elements assimilate to the sound system of the language in a short time, if not the very time of the borrowing. It means, that it’s impossible to claim whether a linguistic connection is a result of common ancestor, borrowings or chance resemblances.

Well, if the linguistics don’t help us to collect evidence for the Uralic theory, let’s search for evidence from other fields! She examines the historical sources and proves, archeological findings and genetic evidence, but at the end she draws the conclusion: neither linguistic, nor historical, archeological or genetic evidence exists. The whole Uralic language family and the Uralic-Hungarian relatedness are just theory without any evidence.

The final conclusion is that ‘the correlation among the Uralic languages and between the Uralic languages and their neighbours are better described in terms of intersecting isoglosses. These languages form a dialectal continuum.’ The author sees a connection among the so-called Altaic and Uralic languages. Hungarian has a particular importance as it has an extremely poor correlation with Ugric and Finnic languages. If it’s really needed to classify this language, it would be better to categorize it as an ‘Inner Asian’ language as the historical sources testify to this view.

To sum up, the biggest matter is the lack of scientific evidence which if not available means any theory remain only a theory.

It’s not only extremely good and comprehensive book about the foundation of the Uralic theory, but you can also acquire more and other very useful knowledge about linguistics and the issues in the field.