Re: The Lithuanian language is cool.

In article <HXOdi.180389$_s4.169405@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "J.
Anderson" <andersons6@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Eugene Holman" <holman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:holman-1906071353150001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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.

But a first impression is what you are facing when getting to know a
language. The fact that the numerals from one to six are cognates

Hungarian egy [ed'] 'one' is not thought to be cognate with yksi/üks by
most specialists in the field.

in the
three languages doesn't help a Finn or an Estonian to understand Hungarian
words like öt or hat. In Estonian and spoken Finnish they are practically
identical: viis and kuus.

You provided interesting background information, thank you for that, but I
wanted to illustrate that the difference between Finnish/Estonian and
Hungarian is approximately the same as between Swedish/Icelandic and Urdu.

Having had to study all three of the languages, I would say that the
resemblance is somewhat closer: perhaps more like Swedish and Russian,
where many basic vocabular items also reveal themselves to be cognates
once one learns the phonological history: bro[de]r - brat' 'brother',
mjölk - moloka 'milk', rå - krov' 'raw (Sw)/blood (Ru)', jag - ja 'I', kam
- zub 'comb (Sw)/tooth (Ru)', vatten - voda 'water', korn - zerno 'grain',
träd - derevo 'tree', full - pol'nyï 'full', näsa - nos 'nose', två - dva
'two', tre - tri 'three', fyra - chetyre 'four (cf. Gothic fidwor)', fem -
pjat' (cf. Gothic fimf)'.

In addition to sharing a surprising amount of basic inherited vocabulary,
Finnish and Hungarian, in particular have evolved, independently along
quite similar lines. The Hungarian case system is more elaborate than that
of Finnish are Estonian, but it is obviously built up according to the
same logic as well as of some of the same elements. The -n of the
Hungarian superessive case (Budapesten 'in Budapest'), for example, is
historically the same -n that shows up in Finnish as the essive
(latvempana 'closer to the treetop'), as well as as a trace in the
inessive (*talo-s-na > talossa 'in the house', cf. siinä 'in it').
Although I found Hungarian quite difficult at first, the more I learned of
its grammar and linguistic history, the more I could appreciate its clear
relationship to Finnish, despite their strikingly different past five
thousand years of history.

Although Finnish and Estonian share far more vocabulary and phonology than
either does with Hungarian, even if Finnish and Hungarian both retain
vowel harmony that (standard) Estonian has recently abandoned, Finnish and
Hungarian are in many ways grammatically more similar, whule Estonian, the
case system of which is eroding and being replaced by more analytic
constructions, is evolving along a different path.

Regards,
Eugene Holman
.

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