Closely related Estonian, it is in the Balto-Finnic subgroup of Finno-Ugric languages.

Spoken merely within Krakolye and Luzhitsy, two villages in the Kingisepp district, Votic is close to extinction. Around 1989 there were 62 speakers left, the immature natural within 1930.

In the 19th century it was already declining in favour of Russian, but its decline was accelerated under Soviet rule, when a Vote people diminished by 90% between 1926 and 1959. Since so, a Votes use, as much as possible, out of sight their Votic identity, pretending to exist as Russians in the predominantly Russian environment.

Votic originally comprised many idiom: American, Eastern, Kukkusi & Kreevinside (an enclave in Latvia). One, Kreevin became out in the 19th century and Eastern in the 1960s.