🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8464@charon.cwi.nl>, aeb@cwi (Andries Brouwer) writes:
>sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:

<translating a discussion for which he is not necessarily responsible--rma>

>:::Despite Hungarian and Finnish are related, it is supposedly only the
>:::numbers 1-6 which are the same. (And you have to look twice to see it.)

>What about Hu. v'er / Fi. veri (blood)?

>::Actually one has now concluded that Finnish and Hungarian are not related.
>::One still has a division of Finnish-Ugrian languages, but where the parts
>::are not related to each other.  The reason one earlier believed them to be
>::related, is surely due to that that they sound superficially dissimilar.

>:I have to say, I am quite surprised over this piece of information.  Any of
>:you linguists out there who can shed a light on this?

>I hardly know anything about Finnish-Ugrian comparative linguistics, but this
>does not sound like information at all. Let us see:
>
>Hu. sz'az / Fi. sata (hundred)  [borrowed? cf. satem]
>Hu. h'az / Fi. kota (house)  [borrowed? cf. Haus]
>
>Hu. h'arom / Fi. kolme (three)
>Hu. hat / Fi. kuusi (six)
>Hu. hal / Fi. kala (fish) and Hu. h'al'o / Fi. kalin (net)
>Hu. (meg)hal / Fi. kuole- (to die)
>
>Hu. k'ez / Fi. k:asi (hand)
>Hu. k"o / Fi. kivi (stone)
>
>So, one might guess a correspondence h-k before a,o,u; k-k elsewhere.
>
>Hu. v'iz / Fi. vesi (water)
>
>Hu. tud / Fi. tunte- (to know)
>Hu. l'ud / Fi. lintu (goose)
>Hu. ad / Fi. anta- (to give)
>
>It seems to me that it would be very difficult to explain such correspondences
>away as coincidences.

If those were the only correspondences, positing a relationship would be highly
questionable.  However, there are a large number of good correspondences,
outlined for example in the works of Bjorn Collinder, which demonstrate the
relationship conclusively.

(At least, they are conclusive to an Indo-Europeanist.  Those who deny the
relationship between Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic languages would probably
not hesitate to deny this one as well.  And Colin Renfrew would show how they
had been in place for 11000 years...)
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_