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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