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I'm looking to get more into Uralic historical linguistics and Proto-Uralic. Particularly I'm really interested in Proto-Uralic and the development of Finnish, but all other subjects are welcome as well - I know a lot less on Uralic languages other than Finnish, but I'm always willing to learn. What should I read to get some footing in the subject?

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Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/

There are two unfortunate news here. Firstly the research is scattered around and I can't think of any definitive references that would be easy places to start. Secondly you need to be able to read some languages in order to be able to get full access to the literature. More and more is being written in English but you still find a lot of literature that's in Finnish, Russian or German. I've even seen a few papers written in Inari Saami and Komi. Those were probably exercises to develop the technical vocabulary of the languages but also probably partly linguistic showing off. I'm a bit bummed here myself for not having bothered to learn Russian.

You should look at the publications of the Fenno-Ugrian Society. The journal SUSA/JSFOu has been online for the three last issues while the SUST/MSFOu series includes a lot of monographs and article compilations many of which are online as well. You might also want to look at the papers published in Linguistica Uralica.

Some papers you might be interested in are:
Janhunen (1982), On the structure of Proto-Uralic, link
Sammallahti (1988), Historical phonology of the Uralic languages, link
Janhunen (2007), The primary laryngeal in Uralic and beyond, PDF
Janhunen (2009), Proto-Uralic—what, where, and when?, PDF
Aikio (2012), On Finnic long vowels, Samoyed vowel sequences, and Proto-Uralic *x, PDF
Häkkinen (2012), Early contacts between Uralic and Yukaghir, PDF
Kallio (2012), The non-initial-syllable vowel reductions from Proto-Uralic to Proto-Finnic, PDF

Remember also the FrathWiki pages on Uralic which compile a lot of diachronic stuff. And for Saamic sound history there's lecture material for the consonants (PDF) and vowels (PDF). Both of these are from The Saami Languages - An Introduction (Sammallahti, 1998).

From the reference books I've been reading Abondolo's Uralic Languages (from Routledge's Language Family Series, 1998). It has a fair amount of information of the included languages as well as some diachronic stuff, but because of its format it can't go very deep into the subject anywhere. Other people should have experience from other reference books.

If you are interested in the Finnish sound history and willing to invest some effort in your studies, your best bet will be learning to read Finnish as it is the language of most of that literature. In that case Kielen vuosituhannet (Lehtinen, 2007) would be a great resource. It describes the development from Proto Uralic into the Finnish dialects and is written on the level of an undergraduate university course or an informed enthusiast.

Actually, I can read German, and sometimes Finnish, but not really Russian. Also, thanks for all your links!

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Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/

Excellent, consider getting Kielen vuosituhannet as exercise material and bedside reading. Unfortunately FUF, which is one of the best resources for the papers in German, is hopelessly backwards when it comes to accessibility. You'll have to ask for any specific papers you'd be interested in.

As gach notes, the info is indeed rather scattered. There are no comprehensive overviews of Uralic history and all the etymological dictionaries are out of date (less so than Pokorny's though). Also, Hungarian definitely needs to be added to the list of languages you'd need to know to be able to read everything written on the topic.

If you or anyone has specific questions though, I run a blog about Uralic historical linguistics these days. (I've mentioned this before on the forum, but bears repeating, besides I switched the platform a while ago.) Plenty of it fairly technical currently, but suggestions on topics to write about are welcome…

The Frathwiki pages are my doing as well. I imagine you might be particularly interested in the page for Finnish, where I've attempted to compile the entire history of sound changes from PU to Finnish.

If you can read Finnish, Puolikuiva alkuperäsivusto by linguist Jaakko Häkkinen (and the associated forum — we also have an in-English section, but 99% of the discussion goes on in Finnish) has an abundance of information aimed at laypeople on what the linguistic, genetic and archeological evidence can reveal about Finnish prehistory.

Lastly, if you just want a general overview of stuff, some useful Wikipedia entries (again, you can blame me for a non-trivial part of these articles):

• Proto-Uralic
• Proto-Samoyedic
• Proto-Finnic
• Proto-Samic
• Hungarian-Finnic sound correspondences
• Consonant gradation

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[ˌʔaɪsəˈpʰɻ̊ʷoʊpɪɫ ˈʔæɫkəɦɔɫ]

Quite a lot of information - I motion for this to be moved to the L&L museum.

That might not be a terrible idea at all.

I'll leave it here for the moment, since I think people are more likely to see recent topics in L&L. But I'll move it for archiving later.

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Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

While this thread is still recent, I suppose I ought to ask: what would be good resources if I could read Russian and Hungarian?

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Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/

I read neither, so I can't offer a good answer. One place to look is Linguistica Uralica, which publishes quite a lot in Russian.

Not sure if anyone will see this, but here goes . . . does anyone have .pdf sources on Vepsian, Mansi, Komi, or Udmurt?

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Here's a Vepsän kieli pähkinänkuoressa ("Veps in a Nutshell"), though it's pretty much what you can find in Wikipedia too.

For those who can read Russian, Udmortology Project has various resources.

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[ˌʔaɪsəˈpʰɻ̊ʷoʊpɪɫ ˈʔæɫkəɦɔɫ]

Anyone know of anything nice on Finnish dialects?

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Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/