User talk:Antifinnugor~enwiki/Critique of Finno-Ugric and Uralic language groups

Why is this article here? It is entirely POV and shows a woeful lack of even the most basic linguistic knowledge, let alone any understanding of the workings of the languages listed. This is the sort of thing that gives WP a bad name.

--- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.255.94 (talk) 20:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think your argumentation is right.

Lots of false arguments :

The primary grammatical similiarity of these languages is agglutination. But agglutination also occurs in non-Finno-Ugric and non-Uralic languages, like Turkish, Basque, Etruscan, Persian, Armenian, and Sumerian.

That doesn't prove that they are unrelated : the germanic family is caracterised by declension of nouns ; latin, greek and russian too ; does that meen that the germanic family is false ?

These language categories came into existence at the end of the 19th century and were created by foreigners (no Finns, Estonians, Hungarians or others whose languages are categorized to be in this group). In Hungary the linguist who promoted this group was Joseph Budenz, who learned Hungarian when he was 23 years old, and was never able to speak it on the level of a native speaker. The categories came into existence for political reasons and not for linguistic ones.

And what ? The indo-european family was discovered by an Englishman basing himself on Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Persian. He was neither an Indian, nor a Greek, nor a Latin, nor a Persian. But the indo-european family does exist and is reconized.

Extensive use of independent suffixes, also known as (agglutination)

Also exists in Amerindian languages, so don't tell me it's Sumerian influence.

No noun classes, that is no grammatical gender of words

Like in most languages.

Finnish and Estonian have no article (grammar)s, Hungarian has both determinate (the=a,az) and indeterminate (a = egy) articles.

"Egy" is the number "one" and "a, az" is a demonstrative, there isn't any real article.

Finnish uses the plural even if the sentence clearly indicates that plurality, Hungarian uses the plural inflection only if plurality were otherwise unclear. Example: five boys = öt fiú (five boy) in Hungarian.

This construction using singular after a numeral also exists in finnish.

Finnish ending order is: case ending-ownership ending. In Hungarian ownership ending always precedes the place, art, or time defining ending, e.g. házának.

English word order is : adjective - noun. French's one is : noun - adjective. They are nevertheless related.

Hungarian has and uses 6 levels of endings (ház, házak, házaké, házakéi, házakéié, házakéiétól /=house, houses, belongs to houses, belong to houses, belong to objects, that belong to houses, from objects, that belong to objects, that belong to houses/), Finnish/Estonian have maximal 4 levels, they do not have two level ownership endings.

German has 4 cases of declension, English none. They are nevertheless related.

Finnish conjugates the adjectives with the noun: nices girls, Hungarian does not: nice girls.

German conjugates the adjectives with the noun: nices girls, English does not: nice girls. They are nevertheless related.

Finnish does not have a have verb in the sense of have in "I have a dog", Hungarian has such a verb (nekem van = I have)

The verb "have" either not existing or seldom used, as in Hungarian

You should not contradict yourself, it's not serious.

Hungarian verbs can easily express, doing something repeatedly or only once for a short time. (csavar-csavargat-csavarint /= sqeeze, squeeze repeatedly, squeeze once, shortly/). Finnish misses this concept.

English can easily express, being doing something (I'm talking). German misses this concept. They are nevertheless related.

Finnish contains 17 diphtongs, while Hungarian contains none.

This is only a different way to treat ancient long vowels.

Estonian uses sometimes lots of vocals following each other, like in the sentence: Kuuuurijate töööö jäääärel. This is not the case for Hungarian

Hungarian would write Kúúrijate tõõ jéérel.

Dual, which means, besides singular and plural there is also a dual (grammatical number) form of nouns. This is completely unknown in Hungarian.

It has simply been merged with plural, just like indo-european dual extant in latin.

Let's see a bit what you think to be false cognates :

heart 	sydän, sydäm- 	süda, südam- 	čotta, čoddaga 	šüm- 	śələm 	səm 	szív 	sēw lap 	syli 	       süli 	         salla, sala 	šəl 	syl 	jöl 	öl 	- eye 	silmä 	       silm 	        čalbmi, čalmmi 	šinča 	śin 	sem 	szem 	sew

You can see that North Sami's initial "č" and Mari's initial "š" correspond good to the other languages' initial "s", and passing from one to another of these sounds is very common. We can't say these are false cognates.

hand 	käsi 	käsi 	giehta, gieđa 	kö 	ki 	köt 	kéz 	-


 * Getting from *käti to "käsi" is called assibilation and is very common.
 * The loss of a final consonant explains "kö" and "ki".
 * "G" and "k" are very similar sounds and are interchangeable, like "t" and "đ". "Gieđa" can be so related to "käsi"
 * We can't say these are false cognates. An aproximation for the original word could be *kjätV, V designateing an unknow vowel.
 * For the benefit of anyone stumbling here, some additional notes on Uralic "hand" *käti:
 * *ä becomes regularly a long *ää in Samic, then raises to *ee before the high vowel *i; then difthongizes to /ie/. All simple stops become lax b d g initially, preaspirated hp ht hk medially.
 * *t is indeed lost in Permic (incl. Komi) when occurring singly within a word.
 * Mari "kö" is however erroneous; the word is kit. (See here: )
 * A regular law in Khanty turns first *ä to /e/, then *e to /ö/ near /k/.
 * -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah

father 	isä 	isa 	áhčči, áhči 				apa 	niiśe

The word "father", Finnish isä, could be a cognate of the Hungarian word ős (ancestor), but the correct Hungarian word for father is apa.


 * Don't you see "-iśe" in "niiśe" ?
 * Words don't need to mean exactly the same thing to be cognates : words may change sense, for exemple, the french abri "shelter" comes from a word signifieing "to take a sunbath" !
 * We can't say these are false cognates.

fire 	tuli 	tuli 	dolla 	tul 	ti̮l 		tűz 	tuu

"T" and "d" are very similar sounds and are interchangeable, like "o" and "u", so "dolla" corresponds perfectly to "tuli" with moreover the same change of final vowel we saw between "gieđa" and "käsi".


 * Indeed the Samic vowel development is that *i becomes increasingly laxer >, then finally changes to a. This is a common vowel development, quite similar to how English "short U" in "bus", "cut", "nun", from Old English short *u, is /a/ in Australian English. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah

1 	yksi 	üks 	ütś 	okta 	ohta 	vejke 	ikte 	akva 	egy 2 	kaksi 	kaks 	katś 	guokte 	kyeh´ti kavto 	kokət 	kityg 	kettő 3 	kolme 	kolm 	kolm 	golbma 	kulma 	kolmo 	kumət 	hurum 	három 4 	neljä 	neli 	nelli  njeallje nelji 	ńiľe 	nələt 	nila 	négy 5 	viisi 	viis 	viiś 	vihtta 	vitta 	veƭe 	wizət 	at 	öt 6 	kuusi 	kuus 	kuuś 	guhtta 	kutta 	koto 	kuδət 	hot 	hat

Just take a look to the reconstructed proto-uralic words, that perfectly explain your supposedly false cognates, according to basic well known linguistic rules : *ykte, *kakte, *kolm-, *neljä-, *vit(t)e, *kut(t)e.


 * Mansi akwa contains a particularly interesting development: first, the *ü splits to *i and labialization of the velar (*yk- > ikʷ-, see cheshirization); then there is here too a general laxing of *i to /a/, as you also see in "5".
 * Hungarian negy involves a development *lj > *lʲ > dʲ. This sequence predates the rise of the old Hungarian ly, which as a phoneme does not descend from proto-Uralic.
 * For "3", the difference between Mansi-Hungarian *karmi and others' *kolmi has indeed been a long-standing problem. One theory is that -rm- is original and it was changed by influence of -lj- (ykti kakta karmi neljä > ykti kakta kalmi neljä). This kind of a change is very very frequent, seen for example in how Finnic hand ended up with kaksi (by influence of yksi), or how English (like other Germanic languages) has four rather than whour by influence of five.-- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah

7 	seitsemän 	seitse 	čieža 	sisem 	sat 	hét

Getting from "s" to "h" is a well known linguistic phenomenon, also found in greek : *so > ho /the/.


 * These actually ARE independant words; or rather, independant loans from various Indo-European languages (ultimately PIE *septm.) -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah

10 	kymmenen 	kümme 	logi 	kemeń 	lov 	tíz

You have there two roots, each language keeping one (cf indo-european oinos and sem, both meaning "one"). Hungarian "tíz" is an indo-european loan.


 * Finnic does actually have *luki too; it just has changed to mean "to read" (lukea). -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:44, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Finnish: Kaikki ihmiset syntyvät vapaina ja tasavertaisina arvoltaan ja oikeuksiltaan. Heille on annettu järki ja omatunto, ja heidän on toimittava toisiaan kohtaan veljeyden hengessä. Estonian: Kõik inimesed sünnivad vabadena ja võrdsetena oma väärikuselt ja õigustelt. Neile on antud mõistus ja südametunnistus ja nende suhtumist üksteisesse peab kandma vendluse vaim. Sami: Buot olbmot leat riegádan friddjan ja olmmošárvvu ja olmmošvuoigatvuoðaid dáfus dássásažžab, Sudhuude kea addib huervnu ha ianedivdym ha vyigjat gakget neabbydut gyunnuudeaset gyivdy vuekhakaš vuoinnain. Hungarian: Minden emberi lény szabadon születik és egyenlõ méltósága és joga van. Az emberek, ésszel és lelkiismerettel bírván, egymással szemben testvéri szellemben kell hogy viseltessenek. English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Finnish and Estonian are clearly very similar, their speakers understand each other in great parts. The others are quite far in appeareance and vocabulary from the above ones.

English : ''All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.''

Feroian : ''Øll menniskju eru fødd fræls og jøvn til virðingar og mannarættindi. Tey hava skil og samvitsku og eiga at fara hvørt um annað í bróðuranda.''

These languages don't like similars, but they are undoubtedly related.

All this proves that you do not at all know anything about linguistics, so don't come and say us ""you're wrong"", you don't know what you're talking about. -- Sajasaze 18:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)