Re: Dark Women!
The bit up there with the Hungarians pretty much clears out the birthstory of Finnish language, but only the spoken part of it. As we know, there are usually two aspects, spoken and written language. This may sound odd, but the origins of spoken and written Finnish are different stories of their own. For a language that is still very much alive, Finnish bears an odd detail tied to it; it did not have a written form before the 15th century. And it did not just become to use, it was actually "invented" by one man (Mikael Agricola, a renowned scholar, plus the Bishop of Finland of his time). So written Finnish is de facto an artificial addition to the language. And what makes it even more odd is not that as one might think, it was not formed after languages with most cultural impact on the Finns, make that Swedish or Russian. Written Finnish was based on <I>Latin</i>. The spelling is exactly the same.
Explains why the Finns don't vocal their letters (and thus why it's a language so damn hard to learn) the same way than the rest of the Western world, doesn't it?
To expand the lesson a bit, let's talk a little longer about the origins of the Finnish language. First of all, Finnish is actually not a Scandinavian language. Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic are. Finnish is a Fenno-Baltic language, bonding the closest relation to Estonian. And when you spoke about Finnish bearing relation to some eastern European languages... well, the only one is Hungarian. Rest of the languages behind the former Iron curtain are almost all members of the Slavic language group.monkey said:Hey Finn,
Very interesting history lesson, and it's definitely not OT. Very much topic progression. I found it to be fascinating. I had actually heard some vague details of the connection of the Finns and their language with that of some of the Eastern European peoples, but nothing specific like you talk about. I know that the Finnish language is quite different from the other Scandinavian languages.
The bit up there with the Hungarians pretty much clears out the birthstory of Finnish language, but only the spoken part of it. As we know, there are usually two aspects, spoken and written language. This may sound odd, but the origins of spoken and written Finnish are different stories of their own. For a language that is still very much alive, Finnish bears an odd detail tied to it; it did not have a written form before the 15th century. And it did not just become to use, it was actually "invented" by one man (Mikael Agricola, a renowned scholar, plus the Bishop of Finland of his time). So written Finnish is de facto an artificial addition to the language. And what makes it even more odd is not that as one might think, it was not formed after languages with most cultural impact on the Finns, make that Swedish or Russian. Written Finnish was based on <I>Latin</i>. The spelling is exactly the same.
Explains why the Finns don't vocal their letters (and thus why it's a language so damn hard to learn) the same way than the rest of the Western world, doesn't it?
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