Proto-Finnic language

Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish and Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been reconstructed by linguists. Proto-Finnic is itself descended ultimately from Proto-Uralic.

Three stages of Proto-Finnic are distinguished in literature.

Views on when and where Proto-Finnic was spoken have varied over the years. Many of the older sources do not recognize Middle Proto-Finnic, recognizing only Early and Late Proto-Finnic:

^{a. Sammallahti places the divergence of South Estonian from Late Proto-Finnic (myöhäiskantasuomi, which he uses to refer to the stage before that point) at around 600–500 BC.}

^{b. Korhonen recognizes a distinction between Middle and Late Proto-Finnic but does not specify the date of transition.}

^{c. Lang places the transition from Early to Middle Proto-Finnic somewhere between 800–500 BC.}

Proto-Finnic is thought to have been spoken around the Gulf of Finland, but theories on its earlier location have varied; traditionally it has been considered that Proto-Finnic arrived first on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Finland, but it has also been suggested that Middle Proto-Finnic was spoken in an area in modern-day Estonia and northeastern parts of Latvia.

The sounds of Proto-Finnic can be reconstructed through the comparative method.