Abstract
Scholars had already suggested the relationship of some Finno-Ugrian languages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the linguistic affinity of the Finno-Ugrian languages was proven only at the end of the eighteenth century by two Hungarian pioneers of comparative linguistics, János Sajnovics and Sámuel Gyarmathi. Henrik Gabriel Porthan (1739-1804), professor of rhetoric and a great humanist, brought their ideas to Finland. He was strongly influenced by August Ludwig Schlözer, author of a comprehensive and critical survey of the history of the Finno-Ugrian peoples. Having studied Sajnovics' work in Göttingen, Porthan published an extensive account of it in a Finnish newspaper in 1779, demolishing previous ideas about the kinship between Finnish and Hebrew. Porthan urged Finnish scholars to investigate the Finno-Ugrian languages of Russia, of which very little was then known (some lists of words and short grammars were all that was available).
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