Language Families

[Joost Kremers]

At 09:54 5-6-00 -0500, you wrote:
>With so many good linguists on the list, I hope someone might confirm or
>correct my understanding that neither Finnish, Hungarian nor Basque are
>Indo-European languages.  Thanks,  Mark Morris


this, i can confirm. finnish and hungarian are part of the finno-ugric
language family (i.e., they're related, but about as mutually intelligible
as russian and english), and basque is an isolate. some seek ties between
basque and georgian, but AFAIK those ties have not been established.

HTH

joost kremers


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Joost Kremers (Mr.)
University of Nijmegen - The Netherlands
Department of Languages and Cultures of the Middle-East
PO Box 9103
6500 HD Nijmegen - The Netherlands
phone: +31 24 3612996
fax: +31 24 3611972