The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) constitute a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25 million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, which are official languages of Hungary, Finland, and Estonia, respectively, and of the European Union. Other Uralic languages with significant numbers of speakers are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt, and Komi, which are officially recognized languages in various regions of Russia. 

The name "Uralic" derives from the fact that areas where the languages are spoken spread on both sides of the Ural Mountains. Also, the original homeland (Urheimat) is commonly hypothesized to lie in the vicinity of the Urals. 

Finno-Ugric is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though Finno-Ugric is widely understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages. Scholars who do not accept the traditional notion that Samoyedic split first from the rest of the Uralic family, such as Tapani Salminen, may treat both terms as synonymous. 

In recent times, linguists often place the Urheimat (original homeland) of the Proto-Uralic language in the vicinity of the Volga River, west of the Urals, close to the Urheimat of the Indo-European languages, or to the east and southeast of the Urals. Gyula László places its origin in the forest zone between the Oka River and central Poland. E. N. Setälä and M. Zsirai place it between the Volga and Kama Rivers. According to E. Itkonen, the ancestral area extended to the Baltic Sea. P. Hajdu has suggested a homeland in western and northwestern Siberia. Recent ancient DNA analysis revealed that Uralic haplogroup N1 (Y-DNA) was originated from northeastern China, Liao river region, which is a new candidate of the homeland.
Is this just one tongue, or is it made up of many?
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) constitute a language family of 38 languages