[HPforGrownups] Re: LONG: School-locations, mostly Durmstrang

[Christina Gross]

No: HPFGUIDX 6017

On 23.11.2000 at 07:53:57 Rita Winston wrote:

>I suspect that Hungarian isn't as related at all THAT to Finnish / 
>Estonian. I mean, English and French and German and Greek and 
>Russian are all related by being Indo-European languages.

Forgive me if this puts me straight into lecture mode, but I suddenly
feel that hours of boring lectures I had to sit through when I
studied translations where not in vain. ;-)

The languages Christian mentioned belong to the Finno-Ugrian group of
languages. German, Swedish English and a couple of others are
Germanic languages. French, Italian, Spanish etc. are Romance
languages. Finno-Ugrian, Germanic, Romance and a couple of other
groups form the Indo-European language family. So Finnish and
Hungarian are closer related that, say, Finnish and Swedish.

And while I'm at it, even though it is true that there are ethnic
Germans in Bulgaria and other Balkan states and krumm is the German
word for crooked, Krum doesn't necessarily have to be a German name.
The single m doesn't look right to me, but then AFAIK Rowling doesn't
speak German, and as the professor who gave the above mentioned
boring lectures used to say: with names everything is possible. 

<end lecture mode>

I like Christian's theory about the location of Durmstrang. I don't
remember who mentioned Hunt for Red October, but I, too, had the
images from the beginning of the movie in my mind when I wondered
where Durmstrang might be. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all American members

Christina
--
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elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
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