Editing Karelian language (section)

==Classification==
Karelian is a [[Finnic languages|Finnic language]]<ref>[https://brill.com/display/title/31801]</ref> from the [[Uralic languages|Uralic]] language family, and is closely related to [[Finnish language|Finnish]].<ref>{{cite web|title=The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire – THE KARELIANS|url=http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/karelians.shtml|access-date=2010-06-06}}</ref> Finnish and Karelian have common ancestry in the Proto-Karelian language spoken in the coast of [[Lake Ladoga]] in the [[Iron Age]], and Karelian forms a [[dialect continuum]] with the Eastern dialects of Finnish.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/sugl/oppimat/imsjohd/suomi.html |title=Suomi itämerensuomalaisena kielenä |access-date=2009-11-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111111155456/http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/sugl/oppimat/imsjohd/suomi.html |archive-date=2011-11-11 }}</ref> Earlier, some Finnish linguists classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish, sometimes known in older Finnish literature as {{lang|fi|Raja-Karjalan murteet}} ('Border Karelian dialects'), but today Karelian is seen as a distinct language. Besides Karelian and Finnish, the Finnic subgroup also includes [[Estonian language|Estonian]] and some minority languages spoken around the [[Baltic Sea]].