[HPforGrownups] Language minutiae

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 6031

Christina Gross wrote:

> 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.
>
> 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.

Okay, like anyone cares by now, here's a linguistic clarification. I am
pleased that my recollections matched the Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Language, which I snuck into the sleeping baby's room to get to check this
stuff.

Indo-European Family. Contains zillions of languages, subgrouped as follows:
Albanian, Anatolian (extinct--Hittite, mostly), Armenian, Balto-Slavic,
Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Italic (which is referred to as
"Romance" above"), and Tocharian (extinct--the furthest eastern reach of the
language family, Chinese Turkestan, and postulated by some to be the
language spoken by the "caucasian" mummies of that region). *Not*
Finno-Ugric.

Uralic Family. Contains two branches, Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic.

I'm happy to ramble on forever about things linguistic, but oddly, people
seem to glaze over after a few minutes, so you may now all go back to things
that interest you. Thank you and goodnight.

--Amanda