What does it mean that the Finno-Ugrian languages are related?
The FU languages still share some central characteristics and vocabulary items, allowing us to reconstruct many features and details of a common proto-language. From this proto-language, the present FU languages have developed to different directions, due to both internal drifts and foreign influences. Traditionally, this has been illustrated with a family-tree model, which, of course, is a coarse and simplified description of the relationship. Nowadays, many linguists draw a more bush-like model, with the main branches (Finnic, Sámi, Mordvin, Mari, Permian, Ugric, Samoyed) all equal; their internal relationships cannot be satisfactorily accounted for in terms of the family-tree model. The proto-language was spoken at least some six thousand years ago (roughly at the same time as the Indo-European proto-language), which means that the most distant branches of the FU language family are very distantly related. The relationship between Finnish and Hungarian could be compared to that betw
