Re: The Lithuanian language is cool.

In article <FQBdi.180174$kR.170418@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "J.
Anderson" <andersons6@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

<deletions>

Try to compare it with Magyar or Est, Finn ;-)

Finnish / Estonian / Hungarian:

1 yksi / üks / egy
2 kaksi / kaks / kettö
3 kolme / kolm / három
4 neljä / neli / négy
5 viisi / viis / öt
6 kuusi / kuus / hat
7 seitsemän / seitse / hét
8 kahdeksan / kaheksa / nyolc
9 yhdeksän / üheksa / kilenc
10 kymmenen / kümme / tíz

That should give you an idea of how far the Baltic Finnish languages really
are from Hungarian...

First impressions are deceptive. The numerals from 'two to 'six' are
cognates in all three languages, and the word for 'seven' is an
Indo-European borrowing, although from different sources. The same holds
true for the word for 'hundred': sata, sada, száz.

As to cognatehood, consider the word for five.

The first thing that we have to understand is that, phonologically
speaking, Finnish is the most conservative of the three, while Hungarian
is the most innovative, kind of like Italian (conservative) and French
(innovative) among the Romance languages or Icelandic (conservative) vs.
Danish (innovative) within Scandinavian, or Serbian (conservative) vs.
Czech (innovative) within Slavic.

The Finno-Ugric word for 'five' is usually reconstructed as *wit(t)e.
Finnish and Estonian have lengthened the stressed vowel and assibilated
the intersyllabic consonantism, presumaby after the unstressed final vowel
had been raised to -i, resulting in the series iof sound changes -te > -ti
-t'i > -si. Estonian subsequently underwent apocope (loss of the
unstressed final vowel) as well as compensatory lengthening of the
remaining stressed vowel. Phonetically (standard) Finnish has ['vi:si],
many colloquial varieties have [vi:s], and Estonian has [vi:.s], with a
somewhat longer vowel than Finnish has.

Hungarian has undergone a different path of development. The old initial
bilabial *w- did not undergo fortition as it did in Baltic-Finnic, Sámi
(vittâ and vihta), or Erzya Mordvin (vete), but rather disappeared,
leaving a trace as the labialization of the vowel, roughly *wit(t)e >
*wet(t)e > *wöt(t)e > *öt(t)e. The word underwent apocope and the
word-final consonantism was simplifie, thus modern Hungarian öt. Similar
developments help understand the relationship between Finnish kuusi,
Estonian kuus, and Hungarian hat.

When comparing the cognates in Finno-Ugric languages it must be remembered
that throughout their history the have had a stres accent on the initial
syllable. Thus unstressed and final syllables have, particularly in
Estonian and Hungarian, tended to be lost due to phonetic attrition.

Even though Hungarian and Baltic-Finnic are thought to have gone their
separate ways some five thousand years ago, their basic vocabularies
exhibit a surprisingly large number of cognates (Finnish, Estonian,
Hungarian):


puu, puu, fa 'tree'
pää, pea, fó´ 'head'
talvi, talv, tél 'winter'
tunte-, tund-, tud- 'know'
te, te, ti 'you pl-'
käsi, käsi, kéz 'hand'
kivi, kivi, kó´ 'stone'
kala, kala, hal 'fish'
kolme, kolm, három 'three'
mene-, mine-, men- 'go'
me, me, mi 'we'
mi-, mi-, mi 'what'
maksa, maks, máj 'liver'
neljä, neli, négy [ne:d'] 'four'
nuoli, nool, nyíl 'arrow'
veri, veri, vér 'blood'
vesi, vesi, víz 'water'
voi, voi, vaj 'butter'
jää, jää, jég 'ice'
anta-, and-, ad- 'give'
ole-, ole-, vol- 'be'

Regards,
Eugene Holman
.

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