Just a correction about finnish language family

[AlephZero]

I hope you guys don't take this as a rant cause it's not one 

I found this line from Gareth on an old post and just wanted to correct it:

"Finnish seems to be one of the languages that absolutely no-one speaks, other than the Finnish themselves.  As I understand it, it has almost no relevance to Norwegian, Swedish or Danish etc.

I have an English friend who emigrated there and had real trouble picking up the lingo, not only is it an odd language, but also the natives aren't used to anybody trying to speak it as a second language.  It seems they all speak excellent English and Swedish anyway."

Yes, it's true finnish has nothing to do with scandinavian languages, however...

The Finno-Ugric family of languages has many different languages

Finnish
Sami
Estonian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Hungarian
and lots of little known ones as
Komi
Karelian
Mansi
Khanty
etc etc...

So sorry for the rant   

[kkokkolis]

I think that Finnish ate relative to Turkish too. That's what my wife says. She is a Linguistics speSmurfpillst.


Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος· καὶ τ’ ἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον.
Φιλόδημος Γαδαρεύς

[AlephZero]

Different family of languages, but Turkish is interesting too =)

[enki_ck]

 

I have to ask though, do you speak any of the other languages? Or understand them? I studied Hungarian and lived in Budapest for 6 months and even tried to learn Finnish for a few weeks but although there are similarities in grammar the languages themselves are quite different.

For instance the Slavic languages are all very similar and I can understand most of them. I can also understand some Dutch due to the similarities with German and English. But the knowledge of Hungarian didn't help me one bit with Finnish. I'm not a native speaker though and my Hungarian isn't that good so I'd love to hear how it is from your view.

I'm not trying to prove you wrong here. I would really love to hear this comparison from an actual native speaker. I love learning different languages and learning about them and their history. I also speak a few.

[enki_ck]

I think that Finnish ate relative to Turkish too. That's what my wife says. She is a Linguistics speSmurfpillst.


Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος· καὶ τ’ ἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον.
Φιλόδημος Γαδαρεύς

They are both agglutinative languages, same as Hungarian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language

[Steinar]

Erm... Latvian and Lithuanian are Balto-Slavic languages, not Finno-Ugric. So they're not even in the Uralic family, but are Indo-European languages.

Edit: This is not meant to belittle Finnish, I think it's as relevant as any other language. I just don't like lumping stuff together that don't belong together.

[Whoey]

if you're bored, have a look at Basque!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language

 

[AlephZero]

Well, as for being finnish.. yes i know finnish quite well =D

And i know finnish and hungarian have very little in common

[kkokkolis]

Older scholars talked about the Uroaltaic family of languages that came from Asia to Europe. Now I see that they are divided to the Uralic (Finnohungrish) and Altaic (Turkish) families.
They still have a Turku in Finland!


Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος· καὶ τ’ ἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον.
Φιλόδημος Γαδαρεύς

[AlephZero]

But they share some similarities nonetheless... not that im a linguist 

[AlephZero]

But youre right

Note to self: Never correct anyone's post while drunk 

[kkokkolis]

Relations between languages might be either from a common ancestry or from a neighborhood exchange of words and terms.
Greek for example have common ancestry with Latin and Protogerman. But we loaned a ton of words to English and other languages and we also have thousands of newer Italian, Turkish, Slavic, French and, recently, English (American in fact words).
So Finnish have same ancestry with Hungarish (Uralic family) and neighborhood exchange with Baltic languages.


Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος· καὶ τ’ ἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον.
Φιλόδημος Γαδαρεύς

[AlephZero]

Youre absolutely right

[enki_ck]

Erm... Latvian and Lithuanian are Balto-Slavic languages, not Finno-Ugric. So they're not even in the Uralic family, but are Indo-European languages.

Edit: This is not meant to belittle Finnish, I think it's as relevant as any other language. I just don't like lumping stuff together that don't belong together.

Good catch on the Latvian and Lithuanian, I'm a bit embarrassed I didn't notice that part. 

@kkokkolis

Turkish has much more similarities to Hungarian, those nations traveled together for a long time if I remember my language history lessons correctly.

[kirk13]

Don't know about it being a rant,but its been damn interesting!

[Suveges]

Jó napot kivánok!

[enki_ck]

Jó napot kivánok!

Jó estét kívánok.

[Gareth]

I, happily, stand corrected.

Komi
Karelian
Mansi
Khanty

....though I think you are making the last four up.

 

[kirk13]

Karelian...Wasnt Han Solo Karelian?

[kkokkolis]

Isn't that hyvää yötä?



Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος· καὶ τ’ ἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον.
Φιλόδημος Γαδαρεύς

[AlephZero]

Nope, not making em up, they are actual languages, dying languages as far as I know, except for the Karelian. All exist within the borders of Russian Federation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages