Re: Rather OT for this group, but . . . . Re: Which flavour for the following usage..

From: Chris Burton (me_at_here.con)
Date: 04/22/04 

Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2004 12:25:52 +0100

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 05:41:04 +0000, Juha Siltala wrote:

> On 2004-04-22, Chris Burton <me@here.con> wrote:

Hi Juha

>
>> It's all indo-european, particularly when you start talking about trees
>
> If you go back far enough, yes. I'd say Icelandic, Swedish and those are
> all "Scandinavian" tongues, but I'm not that knowledgeable about the
> descendance of European languages really.
>
>> Finnish, Basque and Hungarian are different.
>
> The Finnishness of Basque is debatable, but the Fenno-Ugric (?) languages
> are an odd bunch in Europe, a small family of languages. Finnish,
> Estonian, Hungarian, and a few very small languages spoken in different
> parts of Russia. (The small ones in Russia are pretty much dead soon.)

Funny stuff. They are presumably older . . . so there must have been an
equality at some stage.

I suppose someone in prehistory invented a new pot or blade or something
which gave a technical advantage so his people's way of speaking became
dominant . . . .

 
>> The Swedes conquered Finland and Russia after inventing field artillery
>> in the early 17C

OK I'm not being accurate here . . . apologies

Finland was part of Sweden fron the 11thC . . . .

. . . . and despite occupying Russian territory for a number of years,
the Swedish army was beaten by the Russians at Poltava in 1709 thereby
ending Sweden's run as a major power.

>
> Nobody ever "conquered" Russia ever since Ivan founded it. It's quite
> inconceivable really.

Yes. But there's still quite a debate in this country about how much effect
the 5 week delay which was forced on the nazi invasion of Russia by the
Greeks holding out helped by Churchills sending of some troops, had on the
overall outcome.

I guess the nazis would have taken Moscow at the very least, but I suspect
the Soviets may well have collapsed and that it was therefore a more
significant deplyment of British troops than in the Normandy invasion.

> Finland is a young invention, originally a part of
> Sweden, taken by Russians in 1809, independent in 1917. There are about
> 300 000 (just a guess) Swedish speakers in Finland still, and it is an
> official language here, obligatory in school for all. (That doesn't mean
> we all speak very good Swedish though. :)

But better english than us I expect . . . .

chris

Relevant Pages

  • Re: For Our Favourite Russian Chauvinists
    ... > f language and even without Estonian state. ... > ek and probably more languages. ... >> process of grabbing some of the functions that Finnish acquired during the ... >> Finland with instructions in English and Swedish, ...
    (soc.culture.baltics)
  • Re: [SLE] How does one pronounce "SUSE"
    ... As I recall, he lived in a Swedish area of Finland, so by nationality, ... Whatever languages Linus may or may not speak, he is clearly Finnish, ...
    (SuSE)
  • Re: Shitty exchange rate, any place in europe worth visiting?
    ... Finnish is spoken as a mother tongue by a vast majority of the Finns. ... Naturally everybody in the civilized world must study his mother tongue at school. ... Finnish speakers must study Swedish at school. ... Then comes "foreign" languages ). ...
    (rec.travel.europe)
  • Re: The definition of the Standard variation of British English
    ... Danish, Swedish and Norwegian and Icelandic are different languages, but ... they derives from the same stock - Finnish derives from the Hungarian- ... There's no doubt Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic are ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: The definition of the Standard variation of British English
    ... Danish, Swedish and Norwegian and Icelandic are different languages, but ... they derives from the same stock - Finnish derives from the Hungarian- ... There's no doubt Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic are ...
    (alt.usage.english)
Loading