If you have ever tried to learn Hungarian, Finnish, or Estonian, you would have realized that they are completely different from their geographical neighbors. Apart from a few regional dialects like Karelian (spoken in eastern Finland and in the corresponding adjacent Russian provinces), no bordering nation’s language is similar to that of the three previously mentioned.  

The lingual links between the Hungarians and Finns has long been known as the two have been thought to have a common ancestor based in the Ural Mountains just 3,000 years ago; however, new DNA evidence points to a different origin point and, consequently, new neighbors. 

The Magyars, future Hungarians, had settled west of the Carpathian Mountains in the adequately named Carpathian Basin circa 895-96 CE to escape growing competition with rival nomadic groups, the Pechengs and Bulgarians, in their ancestral homelands located in the Volga River and Ural Mountain regions. Likewise, the Finnish peoples had also left the Urals for Estonia and later Finland, but 2,500 years prior to the Hungarians. Migratory paths and shared DNA between Finns, Estonians, and Hungarians explain the similarity between their languages and the differences with that of their Indo-European neighbors. 

But recently, a new DNA analysis has moved their ancestral origin thousands of kilometers east. This study, led by ancient DNA expert David Reich, attributes the origin of the Uralic languages to the Seima-Turbino culture 2,000 kilometers east. The Seima-Turbino culture thrived in the Yakutsk region of Russia. Researchers have pinpointed two main regions in Yakutsk as Uralic’s point of origin: the Lena River Basin and Lake Baikal. 

The first region is the Lena River Basin, the origin of most Uralic languages today. It is believed that the modern day languages of Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish have all originated from the Lena River basin. 

 Meanwhile, the second is Lake Baikal, located farther south. It is home to the endangered Ket language. Ket, now spoken by only a few thousand people, is part of the largely extinct Yeniseian languages. Yet, according to the researchers, Ket’s relevance to lingual history is far more interesting.

In Finnish, instead of saying “in my house,” you would stack the two prepositions at the end of the noun, forming one longer word. In Navajo, part of the Na Dene language family group, you do the same. For example, to say “in my house” you would say “Talossani,” where “ssa” means “in” and “ni” means “my”. And that goes for most words in Finnish and Navajo. So how come two languages on opposite sides of the globe have the same grammar? 

Interestingly enough, that same group of researchers that figured out a new origin basin for Uralic also decided to check out the DNA of some Native Americans. They found that most Ket men shared Haplogroup Q-M242, which is the primary group for most Na Dene Native Americans. This evidence supports the already existing Dene-Yenisian Theory which proposes a common ancestor for the two groups to explain their lingual similarities despite their geographic distance. 

New discoveries and research in lingual links continue to advance our understanding of how different languages originated and evolved. Knowing this, next time you decide to learn a new language on Duolingo, consider taking Navajo and Finnish together. You would be able to save time, and learn two new languages at once!