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To: SunkenCiv

The level of incomprehensibility between Finnish, Estonian, and Magyar is quite interesting, suggesting a divergence dating back probably millennia


5 posted on 07/19/2025 11:36:27 PM PDT by Cronos
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To: Cronos

Agglutinative languages (Proto-Uralic is believed to have been) tend to wander off like a road in no time, which has led to a lot of reclassications, changing the branches of agglutinative language trees, and the like.

The extinct ancient agglutinative languages (Sumerian, Elamite, Kassite, and probably the Indus Valley/Harappan tongue) appear to be isolates, but as they’re only known from scripts, and their possibly unknown contemporary related tongues were never recorded, they may have managed to survive.


6 posted on 07/20/2025 12:04:29 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (The moron troll Ted Holden believes that humans originated on Ganymede.)
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To: Cronos
The level of incomprehensibility between Finnish, Estonian, and Magyar is quite interesting, suggesting a divergence dating back probably millennia

Correct. I speak Magyarul. If I hear Finnish or Estonian in the next room behind a closed door, the sounds do sound like Hungarian.....but if I hear those languages spoken, I don't understand a word of it. Hungarian is so totally different from any of the Indo European languages. It was a real surprise to me when I first went there in the early 90s and could not understand one single word. I was used to going all over Western Europe and understanding a lot of the words even if I didn't speak the language.

11 posted on 07/20/2025 3:50:43 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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