Finnic

Finnic, also called Baltic Finnic, is the westernmost branch of the Uralic family, spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. Its two chief languages are Finnish and Estonian.

Proto-Finnic was probably spoken on the coasts of the Gulf of Finland, and its dialects began to separate around AD 150. They absorbed words from older Paleo-Baltic tongues and later from Germanic, Baltic and East Slavic neighbours. A literary form came in the sixteenth century, when Bishop Mikael Agricola created the first comprehensive Finnish orthography from western dialects and began translating the Bible; written Finnic served mainly religion for centuries.

Under Swedish rule Finnish had no official standing, and after Sweden lost Finland in 1809 the Fennoman movement took up its cause, with Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala leading a revival that carried the language into administration and literature.