Language Families

[Leonel Hermida]

Further to the remark that:

>The fact that some basic Basque 
>words seem to be derived from even simpler concepts i.e. aizkora (axe) 
>sharing the same root as the word aitz (rock) may mean that Basque is an 
>extremely old language,

and in the same sense, I apologize for being off-topic, but can't fail to draw attention 
to the following very basic Basque words which I'm sure all share the same (pre-historic and 
exceedingly primitive) root, though I've never seen that stated before 
by any professional linguist:

EME=female
AMA=mother
EMAKUME=woman
EMAZTE= woman, wife
UME=child 
SEME=son

On the other hand, I did see it stated by more than one competent linguist (sources available
if requested) that the putative (genetic) relationship postulated by some between the Uralic 
(Finnish, Hungarian, etc.) language family and the Turkic language family (this being 
known as the Ural-Altaic hypothesis) is far from being proved at all.
Of course the statement that Finnish and/or Hungarian are Turkic languages 
('Turkish' in stead of 'Turkic' would even be worse) was *never* seriously put 
forth by any professional (or even amateur) linguist and is, as Fran plainly put it, 
not true. 
One last thing while I have your attention, is about the influence of Mongolian on at least one Uralic 
language, namely Hungarian: it comes to the mind the word *bátor* meaning *brave* which apart 
from being  a fairly common word in Hungarian enters in the very name of the capital city of Mongolia 
(Ulaan Baator, I think). This must be attributed to historical contact between Turkic and Uralic (better,
Hungarian and a few others) on one side and Turkic and Mongolian on the other, rather than being 
evidence of any (genetic) relationship whatsoever between Uralic and Mongolian.

Best, 

Leonel Hermida

-----Original Message-----
From: TruBluPooh at aol.com <TruBluPooh at aol.com>
To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu <nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu>
Date: Monday, June 05, 2000 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: Language Families


>Basque is currently understood to be an isolate language, though a connection to 
>Georgian and other Caucasian languages is being pursued.  Other linguists 
>believe it may be related to some non-Arabic North African languages.  Yet, 
>others believe it to be entirely in situ.  The fact that some basic Basque 
>words seem to be derived from even simpler concepts i.e. aizkora (axe) 
>sharing the same root as the word aitz (rock) may mean that Basque is an 
>extremely old language.
>
>John-Francis Fragoso Grasso