by the Finnish language
This sounds most interesting to me. As a member of this organization, I am going to attend and will report back here afterwards. Everyone is welcome of course.
from Canadian Friends of Finland in British Columbia
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Added 9:30 pm. Sunday 22nd April:
The lecture was excellent, very informative and fascinating. Ms Elg began in Finnish, so wonderful and rare now to my ear – then switched to English, with a Finnish accent. I often have trouble understanding accents, even Finnish ones but still I was able to catch most of the information along with the help of the slides of language charts and maps. A good turnout and lots of questions throughout and everyone most appreciative.
Ms Elg described the Finnish language program at the University of Washington, one of many universities around the world that teach Finnish as I found out earlier.
I am poorly versed in the academic study of language and its structure and terms so hope I explain this correctly. The Finnish language is ‘synthetic’ or mostly agglutinating as opposed to ‘analytic’. What that means is that It modifies and inflects the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence. (thanks wikipedia). An interesting simple example she used was with the word:
talo – a house
talo/ssa – in a house
talo/ssa/ni – in my house
talo/ssa/ni/kin – in my house too (4 words)
So, one word replaces many words in the equivalent English and many other languages. Some words can be from 6 to 10 cases. Hungarian can have up to 24 cases!
The study of language can aid in the study of racial genetics. In the case of the Basque, they are a unique language and people unrelated to any other, never mixed. Not so with the Finns, it seems. They have lived in Finland up to 6000 years. Other peoples came in later at different times from east, southeast, south and west and blended genes and language, mostly along the coastal regions but not much in the north. (See more about the Finno-Ugric peoples in wikipedia.)
What I don’t understand is how the study of languge can determine its age. For example the oldest Finnish word kala (fish) is 6000 years old. Loan words have been dated to reveal the periods of movement by different groups into Finland. Very personal words like äiti (mother), which came from German less than 1000 years ago (a surprise to us all), reveal close relationships like marriage and children. Yet that word is not currently in the German language.
A brief mention was made of a controversial theory presented by Professor Emeritus Kalevi Wiik of the University of Turku in Finland. He argues that Finno-Ugrian languages may originally have been spoken by the whole of northern Europe, that it may be Europe’s oldest language. More about his theories here or his home page in Finnish.
So much more but I’ll leave it at that! No definitive answers but interesting food for thought on our language, where we came from and who we mixed with. This has been a wonderful addition to my readings over the years and to the numerous links, many in Finnish, which I’ve gathered here and there.
April 21, 2012 in Anthropology, Current Events, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Linguistics by Marja-Leena
Minority languages are becoming ever more rare particularly as American English becomes the norm for business around the world and largely because the US is such a dominant country in all global affairs. it’s uncommon for American children growing up to learn even the rudiments of a second language whereas in Europe and Asia most most kids learn 2 or 3, including English.
With the understanding that from 50 to 90% of languages are expected to become extinct within the next century a group of concerned linguists got together around 1998 and began the Rosetta Project. Like the original Rosetta stone where Greek provided the key for scholars to interpret Egyptian hieroglyphics, the 5 cm Disk consists of an earth map at the center with spokes radiating outward holding 27,000 language data pages. The outer ring consists of the same phrase in half a dozen languages that spirals in toward the center. The best part is that no fancy equipment is required to read it other than having some form of magnifying device.
I’m sure Finnish is still far from being an endangered language but it’s very nice that a project like this one will allow people to learn how to say things in ways the dominant languages can’t.
Susan, as you know, I’ve written here a few times about dying languages. So how come I’ve never heard of the Rosetta Project? That is just amazing, thanks for the link!
Finnish isn’t threatened yet, but it has a relatively small population of speakers. English is dominating there too, especially with the younger generation, in the universities and in high tech fields. Just today I read in an expatriate Finnish/English magazine (no link, sorry) that foreign students love to study in Finland because “the Finnish people are the most capable and fluent English-speakers among all the European countries.” So they learn Finnish using English. That Rosetta Disk may well be needed more and more in the future.
Marja-Leena!
I wonder if this person who gave out lecture, is related to Taina Elg, who was a dancer and I believe lived most of her life in Hollywood and got some roles in some movies. One with Gene Kelly, I think. But maybe not, as Aija had a strong Finnish accent. Maybe the universities these days take original speakers.
As it come to Kalevi Wiik, it seems that he has retreated, because he was attacked so strong here by other language researchers. The fact is, that Uralic Altaic peoples (I mean now the language) covered most of North Europe and North Siberia as the earliest people’s after the last ice age. Warming was slow, and there were time to time ice coming back.
The timing of the age of the language is not so very difficult – although researchers are very jealous of their position – it just simply goes with comparing with other related languages. Indo-Aryan peoples lived much more South during and soon after ice age on Eurasian continent. But yes, for instance Turkish is our far relative language.
Noun and consonant shifts are the main factors in development of languages. There has been during the history (pre-written kind) influences of Indo Aryan and maybe Nadeen languages (Nadeen includes Amer-indian languages), but the research of course continues.
The problem has been during last almost hundred years of being able to go to the places and collect languages and their grammars, because of the Russian governments, which most of the time has been not very helpful to the Western researchers. Russians are of course newcomers, only since about 1200-1400-hundreds, so they behaved like newcomers. Actually it was easier for archaeologists and linguists to do their gathering of information during Tzarist regimes than during 1900-hundreds on.
If you think of carrying further the research, it’s starting to be in hurry as the smaller relative languages are dying. Biggest problem is the big oil and gas fields that are in the heart of our language relations. People have lost their lands and often all of the past identity.
Ripsa, I wondered the same thing for I remember Taina Elg from some Finnish magazines my parents subscribed to when I was young! I should have asked Aija if they are related. She is young and from Finland, working as a visiting lecturer in Washington, while husband and family are back home.
I think I first heard of Kalevi Wiik at Hanhensulka’s blog. He had several posts a few years ago on the Finnish language and genes which I would have liked to have linked to if they had been in English, for I learned a lot from them.
Thank you for all this additional information!