Wiktionary:About Proto-Ugric

Proto-Ugric is the hypothetical last common ancestor of the Ugric languages: Hungarian, Mansi and Khanty. If Proto-Ugric existed separately from Proto-Uralic is not certain, as various scholars have attempted to explain most if not all similarities between the Ugric languages as resulting from prolonged contact. Most specialists however continue to accept an Ugric subgroup of the Uralic family, implying that at least some similarities have their origin in a common Ugric proto-language.

No substantial reconstruction of Proto-Ugric exists. Uralisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (UEW) gives Proto-Ugric reconstructions only for words that are exclusively Ugric (for which no known descendants in other Uralic languages were known at the time of publication). Sammallahti (1988) outlines Proto-Ugric reconstructions for numerous words inherited from Proto-Uralic, while Róna-Tas & Berta (2011) outline Proto-Ugric reconstructions for numerous words with descendants in Hungarian. All three tentative reconstructions have major differences from each other, for example in the number and quality of vowel phonemes reconstructed (ranging from Sammallahti's ten to Róna-Tas & Berta's six), and in the reconstruction of the Ugric reflexes of Proto-Uralic *s, *d and *ď.

Due to the precarious status of Proto-Ugric, the current convention on Wiktionary is to create Proto-Ugric entries only for Hungarian words that do not have a Proto-Uralic etymology, roughly equal to the words reconstructed as Proto-Ugric in UEW: see Category:Hungarian terms derived from Proto-Ugric for these.

Conventions on the formatting of Proto-Ugric entries should follow those for Proto-Uralic: see About Proto-Uralic.