weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (03/29/86)
In article <874@tektools.UUCP> steves@tektools.UUCP (steve shellans) writes: >Years ago I picked up a piece of information that is intriguing, but I >have never been able to confirm. It is: The Finnish and Hungarian languages >are related to each other but to no other languages. > >Can anyone confirm? Are there any theories as to how this might have >evolved, and when? From a table in my _Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary_, found by looking up the word 'language': Ural-Altaic is a major language family, on par with Indo-European. It is divided into three groups, as follows: Finno-Ugric Turkic Mongolian ----------- ------ --------- Magyar Uigur Mongolian Finnish Turkish Estonian Uzbek Kirghiz Magyar (roughly pronounced MAWDyor) is the language spoken in Hungary. These peoples all started around the Urals and migrated. The Magyar have a fascinatingly complicated history, too long to relate here, and ended up in the middle of Europe with everyone else around them speaking nothing but Indo-European languages. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- As a side question, this seems to be the appropriate newsgroup to ask. Does anyone out there use a dictionary besides me? I never use 'spell' for example, but keep my Webster's I've had since high school next to my terminal when posting. And when someone uses a word I don't know, I <gasp> look it up. It takes up to a minute sometimes. A very useful and informative minute. Does anyone out there even OWN a dictionary anymore? ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720