Sino-Uralic hypothesis

The Sino-Uralic hypothesis, also called Sino-Finnic, is a long-range proposal linking the Sinitic, or Chinese, languages with the Uralic languages, put forward as an alternative to the mainstream classification of Sinitic within the Sino-Tibetan family. It has been advanced by linguist Jingyi Gao, building on earlier work by nineteenth-century linguists including Karl August Hermann. Mainstream comparative linguistics firmly places Sinitic within Sino-Tibetan, and the proposed connection to Uralic and other families is generally regarded as speculative.