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jaete posted:I'm not a linguist, but I think both Finnish and Estonian are the last surviving members of (a certain branch of) Finno-Ugric languages, while Hungarian is a bit further away. Historically there were lots of languages in that language family, but over time people speaking Slavic languages ended up taking over those geographical areas, so that only a few (big) spots of Finno-Ugric are left. Estonia and Finland are both kinda remote and semi-isolated which makes sense in this context. There are also several tiny spots of almost-extinct Finno-Ugric languages, mainly in what is now Russia. Yeah, Finnish and Estonian are really close and I think about as mutually intelligible as the Scandiavian languages, Hungarian is a part of the same language family, but whereas those two can be said to be in the Finnic branch, Hungarian is in the Ugric branch and besides having that belonging to the same group are probably about as similar to each other as say English is to Greek or Persian, that is to say no mutual intelligibility to speak of, but if you know a little bit about languages and/or their history you might be able to identify commonalities and such indicating they are actuallly part of the same language family. Finnish and Estonian aren't the only suriving members of the Finnic branch though, there's also the Sami languages spoken by indigenous peoples in Fenno-Scandinavia that are much closer to Finnish and Estonian than say Hungarian and Komi are, though whether they are to be classified as a different sub-branch of that branch or a differerent branch all-together (with similarities being more quirks of vicinity), seems to be debated still. Mokotow posted:That’s a great write-up, I had no idea how these languages stack against each other. I guess this reminds me of the turkic language group on a smaller scale - there are spots of turkic stretching all the way to China, some of them fairly ancient and quite different from other, more modern branches. Well the thing with the Turkic languages is that the major geographical expansion of that group happened pretty recently in history, only about 1000 years ago, and it was only really the one language/branch that did the expanding and then diverged into most of the big modern Turkic languages, which by large are actually still pretty drat similar to each other, enough that there is still a great deal of common ground, mostly complicated by stuff like different writing systems and foreign loan words more than the actual Turkic base of the languages.
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Feb 15, 2022 12:05
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Weyd posted:I could have a base level conversation in Estonian with a finn speaking in Finnish and we'd understand each other for the most part. Hungarian, on the other hand, outside of some surface-level similarities, might as well be a moon language to me. Yes and that's really the thing with the IE languages as well when you get to the different branches, you don't even have to get really different, someone speaking French and another German* aren't going to make sense of each other, unless they actually know the other language (and then the point is moot in any case). It just seems like alot of people when they hear about Finnish and Hungarian being part of the same language family they forget (or weren't even aware of) that factor of the IE languages and assume extremely mistakenly that belonging to the same family implies any meaningful amount of mutual intelligibility. *Or poo poo take two West Germanic languages, English and Dutch, if it weren't for Dutch people pretty much knowing English universally, they wouldn't be able to hold a conversation each speaking their own language. When something's as close as the Scandinavian languages and Finnish and Estonian, that's when you should begin to realize that where a language stops and another begins is typically were arbitrary in those cases. Or perhaps "arbitrary" is not the right word. Arbitrary in, I guess ,scientific terms, but there are still valid and identifiable historical, cultural and political reasons for those languages to be viewed as separate. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 12:20
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OddObserver posted:Hungarian migration was also only about 1100 years ago, but Finnish one seems to may have been way older than that (3000?) so yeah.... As you say, Hungarian and Finnish (or rather the Finnic and Hungarian sub-families) had diverged long before the Hungarians (and there are other Ugric languages still around, in small numbers, in Russia, that also aren't like Finnish) migrated into the Carpathian basin. Again the large modern-day Turkic language are the result of a relatiely recent divergence because it's one language (or language branch) that spread and then diverged along with that fairly recent migration, there's other smaller Turkic languages around that did nto really expand out of their old hoemland in the same dramatic fashion and they are more different from those big ones (Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, etc) generally than those are from each other.
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Feb 15, 2022 16:07
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a podcast for cats posted:There are usual talking points about the propriety of some people treating Red Army day as a men's counterpart to 8th of March, whether or not Father's day is a good substitute, whether 8th of March should be abolished due to it's socialist origins, whether men even need or deserve their own day, whether or not compulsory military service turns boys into men, etc, etc, etc. Wasn't that kind of how Red Army day worked in the Soviet Union? As basically a men's day counterpart of women's day.
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Feb 23, 2022 16:16
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From just having driven through there and been to a restaurant with run by an incredibly talky elder immigrant from there, I always thought Slovenia seemed like the nicest EE country to live in, it's like Northern Italy or Austria without the Italians or Austria. Though maybe it doesn't count as Eastern Europe, I dunno. e: Ah, I seem to have missed the point of why this was being discussed. Disregard. Still seems like a decentish place to visit at least, maybe live, but that's probably a more complicated question. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Apr 6, 2022 |
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Apr 6, 2022 17:06
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Herstory Begins Now posted:My experience has been that in the most booze soaked countries it's less about speed of drinking and more about how early they start drinking. Especially on work days. min/maxing your countries booze consumption really requires having a drink or two with lunch. There's also some cultural tipping point where alcohol is suddenly completely inescapably everywhere and there is zero barrier to drinking. Well, there's a reason France is #5 (and not too far short of the top) on that list despite as far as I'm aware not having that much of a reputation for heavy weekend or binge drinking. On all my visits there I always had the impression that a decent chunk of the population were just constantly ever so slightly drunk. Dwesa posted:Or beer being often cheaper than common non-alcoholic drinks (like in Czechia). I'm pretty sure that's Denmark as well. Beer is laughably cheap there for a Scandinavian country. They're a ways down on the list. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Apr 13, 2022 |
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Apr 13, 2022 10:00
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Well technically that's not an oligarchy. That's a one man show.
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Jun 20, 2022 11:17
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Doctor Malaver posted:I visited Armenia 7 years ago and saw a country that was I'm not sure about the demographics on their part (probably not awesome, considering former Soviet Union) but Azerbaijan, though it is incredibly unequal, is not super poor (nominal GDP per capita is almost 4x Armenia's), and with its oil and gas and its relationship with Turkey (and Israel), not as isolated as Armenia.
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Sep 15, 2022 23:07
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Mr. Apollo posted:The WHO says the death toll could increase eight-fold. It struck in the dead of night. In Syria buildings are damaged and even the older ones probably didn't have the best regulations or construction to withstand this, new ones are probably useless. I wouldn't trust Turkish building regulations to be much better, especially not in the relatively impoverished and neglected south east. The weather's also been bad, there's been a snow storm if I read it right, and temperatures are below freezing. Road infrastructure and airports have been destroyed or critically damaged. The rebel-held areas and the Turkish border regions are chocked full of Syrian refugees. Yeah, this one is going to get much worse.
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Feb 7, 2023 12:22
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