The English Words Sun and Sol in Your Language

Suomalainen,

Thanks for continuing the discussion. I didn't realize that Livonian had so few speakers even as an endangered language. Overall, I don't disagree with what you say. You sound like a pretty intelligent person.

The only other thing I might say, however, is that sometimes people are not related to the languages that they speak or at least not very much. Modern DNA analysis is overturning a lot of previously held concepts about language and ethnography. For example, Luca Cavalli-Sforza's data indicates that the Saami (Lapps) are genetically most closely related to the Greeks and the Sardinians and so are the Yugoslavs for the most part too (maybe even some American Indian groups?). If this is so, the Saami and the Yugoslavs acquired their present languages from foreigners at relatively late dates in history. I admit that more research still needs to be done in these areas but it will be interesting to see what the results are when they finally are completed.

English is fast becoming one of the largest languages in the world spoken by people who are not native (i.e. English; Anglo-Saxon etc.).

Thanks for saying thanks each time! Pass Mcthru and have a good Mcday!

Yes. Even simple words like "Please", "Thank you" and "You're Welcome" go a long way

Brennus,
thank you for the compliment.
I agree with you that linguistic and genetic relationship are often a different thing. Genetically Finns and Saami are very different, next to Sardinians, Basques, Yugoslavs and Irish the Saami differ genetically most from Finns (among the European nations). On the other hand, Finns are close to our Germanic neighbours in west and southwest, though languages belong to totally different groups.
One explanation is that several waves of Germanic immigrants have arrived in Finland and become gradually assimilated by the Finns. As a result about 80% of our genes are of western origin. The Saami didn´t, however, receive this western gene flow, and remained therefore genetically closer to the original Finno-Ugric type.
It was an interesting piece of information that I didn´t know that the Saami resemble Sardinians, Yugoslavs and Greeks (I only knew that they all were far from the Finns). That could indeed be explained by assuming a Proto-Indo-European people whose genes have been preserved in isolated pockets and on the edges of our continent.

Suomalainen,

I pretty much agree with you even though no one including the experts has all the answers. However, certainly Germanic Swedes, Teutonic knights and German Hanseatic traders were all in Estonia and / or Finland at various times. The Finns have still an even older association with Teutonic peoples ... Tacitus mentions Finns as being present among the Gothic invaders of the Roman Empire.

The Finns are indeed an important people. At one time they were more widespread ranging as far south as Poland and parts of the Ukraine but they were later either overrun or in some cases driven northward by the Slavs. I understand that the Latvians are basically Indo-Europeanized Finns. The Slavs also destroyed most of the Scythians, finished off the last of the eastern Celts and sent the Germanic tribes scurrying to places as far away as England, Iceland and even North Africa. It's ironic that today they are largely peaceful agricultural peoples.

Finnish has distant links to Korean and Japanese. Many people living in northern Russia are actually of Finnish stock and Stalin would not allow Finnish anthropologists to study any of them when he was in power there. Some linguists believe that Proto-Indo-European may have started out as a dialect of Finnish. For example, Finno-Ugrian words for things like 'name', 'owl', 'pine tree' and 'wet' (there are probably even better examples) are similar to the words for these in most Indo-European languages.

Take care, and hope to hear from you again on Antimoon whether it is about Finno-Ugrian speaking peoples or any other subject.

--- Sincerely,
Brennus

A Finnish professor (Kalevi Wiik) claims that the reason why the modern Germanic languages have stress on the first syllable of the word is that Finno-Ugrians who have earlier inhabited most of Northern Europe have changed language but something of the pronunciation of the original Finno-Ugric tongue has been preserved.
Northern Russia was also populated by Finno-Ugrians. When Russians invaded along rivers from south, they assimilated the original inhabitants but many traces of Finnic languages were left: Russian 'u menja sobaka' is similar construction as Finnish 'minulla (on) koira' while the other Slavic languages use similar constructions as English (I have a dog).
Remnants of the Finno-Ugrians still exist: Mordvinian (700 000), Mari or Cheremis (500 000), Udmurt or Votyak (500 000), Komi (350 000), on the eastern side of Ural Khanty or Ostyak (14 000), Mansi or Vogul (3000), and the very remote Samoyed languages (Nenets 25 000, Enets 200, Nganasan 800 and Selkup 2000). Figures mean approximate numbers of speakers. The present policy in Putin´s Russia is devastating, especially for Maris.
You could indeed say that Latvians are Indo-Europeanized Finns. Most of present Latvia was 2000 years ago inhabited by ancestors of Livonians and Southern Estonians - Latvian shows many traces of deep Finnic influence, e.g. stress on the first syllable (Lithuanian has free and moving stress, as Russian and Proto-Slavic).
Probably the evidence on links between Finno-Ugric languages and Korean and Japanese isn´t very strong. Previously linguists spoke about Ural-Altaic languages but if I am correct, most of them think nowadays that even the family of Altaic languages is hypothetic (it comprised Turkic, Mongol and Tungus languages, the last group is spoken by less than 100 000 people in vast area in Sibir). I think that most linguists consider both Korean and Japanese as isolates.
Maybe Uralic and Indo-European languages are derived from a common root. Though it sounds very flattering to us, I would think it is an exaggeration to say that Proto-Indo-European is a dialect of Finnish.
The words you mentioned are in Finnish: name = nimi (Est nimi, Liv nim, Sami namma, Komi nim), owl = pöllö (Est öökull, Sam skuolfi), pine tree = mänty/petäjä (Est mänd, S-Est pettäi, Liv piedag, Sam beahcci), wet = märkä (Est märg, S-Est likõ, Liv kai^zi, Sam njuohcci).
What is your mother tongue and nationality, Brennus?
Nice to hear again from you.
with best wishes, "suomalainen"

Suomalainen,

Hello. Prof. Kalevi Wiik's theory must certainly be taken into consideration. I've read a couple of articles in passing about possible Finnish influences on Old Norse and Icelandic. I remember reading in Collier's Encyclopedia a long time ago that Russian appeared to have a Finnish substratum in perhaps the the same way that French (and even Dutch) has a Celtic substratum from the earlier Gauls.

It's strange that at the same time the Teutonic Knights were opressing the Russians of the Republic of Novgorod in the early 13th century, the Russians themselves were oppresssing their Finnish neighbors and waging a secret war, if you will, against the Karelians.

Regarding Finno-Ugrian- Indo-European cognates, the cognates for "wet" in the Finno-Ugric languages are actually their word's for 'water' e.g. Fin.; Est. 'vesi', Hung. viz. Finnish and Estonian words for 'young' nuori & noor, are surprisingly similar to words for 'new' in the Indo-European languages languages e.g. Armenian nor, Icelandic nyr, Irish nua, Latin nova, Greek nearos 'young, fresh' ,Albanian i ri etc. Fin. hammas Est. hammas (hamba) 'tooth' is most likely related to English comb, Old High German kamb (from Proto-Germanic *kambaz) and Ancient Greek gomphos "tooth, tooth-shaped edge used in ship building."

You've probably heard of the "Nostratic theory" which postulates a relationship of Eskimo, Finno-Ugrian, (maybe Altaic) to Indo-European on one side and Hittite, Georgian and Semitic as relatives of Indo-European on the other side. It sounds reasonable to me despite the fierce opposition to it from consrvative linguists.

My mother tongue is English. My ancestry is mixed western European: English, Scottish, Irish, Breton, French, Dutch. My first ancestors arrived in America gloriously on the Mayflower (1620), my last ancestors arrived not so gloriously around 1860 from Ireland and Scotland after being kicked out by English landlords. Most mysterious, are my Breton / French ancestors who arrived in Maryland in the late 1600's. We don't know how they got there or if they were Roman Catholic or Huguenot. Most French settlement in North America was in Canada and Louisiana.

Anyhow, take care, and I hope to see your posts on Antimoon again.

--- Brennus

Brennus,
You had interesting examples of similar words like wet - vesi and new - nuori/noor. How much do you know about the Finno-Ugric languages? In Mordvinian ´water´is ´vet´ and in Mari (Cheremis) ´büt´ (the first sound is labial b/v like in Spanish). The sound ´t´ exists in partitive case also in Fin ´vettä´, Est ´vett´, Liv ´vieta´, Hung ´vizet´. Maybe I have read sometimes about the idea that these words have common roots in Indo-European and Finno-Ugric, but at least I didn´t remember it actively. I have heard about the ´Nostrathic theory´. I think that the difficulty is that when we go so far back in time it is increasingly difficult to say whether similarities depend on common proto-language or language contact or it they are accidental. Anyway, the hypothesis is interesting.
You could even make a list of word resemblances between Finnish and Japanese: Fi keikari = Ja haikara (dandy), nenä = hana, juopporatti = yopparatta hito (drunkard) but these are probably or coincidences in two languages that happen to have in some respects similar sound system.
´Hammas´ is a Baltic loan word that replaced the old Finno-Ugric word ´pii´ (Hungarian ´fog´) in the Balto-Finnic languages. Hungarian has regularly replaced ´p´ with ´f´: Fi pääsky = Hu fecske (swallow), puu = fa (tree), pää = fej (head), punoa = fon (to twist), pesä = fészek (nest)etc.
By the way, where in the US do you live?
with best wishes, Suomalainen

Lithuanian language, WOW!
I just heard on one lithuanian on line radio station this prahistoric Indoeuropean Language and WOW! It sounds almost like russian, with a slight greek, latin and indo-iranian melodity and maybe germano-celtic intonation. Seems like it's been highly conserved for ages and remained truly Indoeuropean, with all its complexity.
Greetings;

In Norwegian, we say "sol", and "sola" is "the sun"

Hebrew:

shemesh: sun
hashemesh: the sun

about "sun" or "sol"
we japanese say in various way...for example...
"taiyou" "ohisama" "hi"
these all are same meaning" sun".
Most standard word is "taiyou".
but this is in the case of peaple in Tokyo.
Peaple in western area of japan often use "ohisan".
byebye

Suomalainen, if you're still reading -- I just stumbled across this forum wondering about the etymology of "aurinko", because, as you say, it is specific to Finnish and doesn't appear in the other fenno-ugric languages. Do you know anything about its etymology?
Thanks in advance,
-- spiky (foreigner in Finland)

Dear Spiky,
As far as I know, nobody knows about the etymology of "aurinko". There is nothing corresponding to it in any other Finno-Ugric language, nor in any other language from which it could have been borrowed. Perhaps our ancestors only found this kind of combination of sounds nice and thought it was suitable for the shiny object. The late professor Lauri Kettunen meant that many anomalies in the vocabulary of languages can have arisen from children´s speech - infants indeed make often funny words of their own.
By the way, where do you come from, Spiky, and how long have you stayed in Finland?

Hello. For some reason, no Russians (Russian speakers) participated. I would like to make up for that. Here is my bit:

The Sun: sontse (in writing: solntse; солнце)
a sun: sontse (see above)
a star: zvezda (last syllable stressed)
The Moon: luna (last syllable again)
a moon = luna OR sputnik (companion, fellow traveler)

Best regards
Gennady