Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!brl-tgr!matt From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Scand. Languages - Finnish - Korean Message-ID: <2780@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 10:07:40 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2780 Posted: Mon Nov 4 10:07:40 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 21:39:16 EST References: <518@tjalk.UUCP> <126@crin.UUCP> <5@druri.UUCP> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 23 CLIVE writes: > Actually, Finnish is related to Korean, believe it or not. They are > both of Ural-Altaic origin. Nothing like either Scandinavian or > Chinese. Not so fast! When I studied Korean in college, my professor (Prof. Wagner) explained that Korean was an Altaic language, that Finnish and Hungarian were Uralic languages, and that there was something called the "Ural-Altaic language group." He cautioned, however, that no one had ever proved the connection between the Uralic and Altaic language groups. So in my mind, the "Ural-Altaic language group" is still just a hypothesis. Can any linguist straighten me and Clive out on this point? Also, Turkish, like Korean, is an Altaic language, although Korean is Mongolian and Turkish is (surprise!) Turkic. Does that mean that my college knowledge of Korean would be of any help if I wanted to learn Turkish? After all, Turkish uses a completely different alphabet from Korean, and there aren't even any Chinese characters interspersed with the alphabetic text to help me out semantically :-) . -- Matt Rosenblatt