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How does the difference between Hungarian and Finnish compare with the difference between English and Russian?
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Uralic languages
Distribution of the Uralic languages.
The degree of linguistic similarity between Hungarian and Finnishâtwo of the least closely related members of the Finno-Ugric groupâis comparable to the difference between English and Russian, both of which belong to the Indo-European family.1
While Hungarian and Finnish share a common Uralic ancestry, they have diverged significantly over millennia. In contrast, more closely related Finno-Ugric languages, such as Finnish and Estonian, exhibit a level of difference similar to that found between highly diverse dialects of the same language.1