Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language. However, unlike in Finnish and Hungarian, the two most widely-spoken Finno-Ugric languages, Estonian has lost vowel harmony. It is thus more innovative than Finnish and Hungarian.
Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as backness, rounding, height and advanced tongue root. In Finnish vowel harmony is based on backness. In Hungarian, however, backness and rounding are both important.
Though Finnish and Hungarian both have vowel harmony, Finnish is much more closely related to Estonian. This is clear from their vocabulary. In Finnish, the word tänään means today. The vowels are low front unrounded with quantitative length. The first vowel is short, and the second is long. However, in Estonian the same word is täna. Vowel harmony is not present because the first word is low front unrounded and the second is low back rounded. The vowels do not agree in backness or in rounding.
Another example is the Finnish word kysymys, which means question. The vowel is high front rounded. In Estonian, the same word is küsimus. The vowels in the word are high front rounded, high front unrounded and high back rounded. Unlike in the Finnish word, the vowels neither agree in backness nor in rounding.
Though Estonian has lost vowel harmony, it restricts the vowels [æ], [ø], [y] and [o] to the initial syllable. They rarely occur in other syllables of the word. Estonian once had vowel harmony, but no longer does. This loss of vowel harmony exemplifies language change.
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