I would guess that it's realted to the other Teutonic languages except that it doesn't resemble them very closely.
2006-07-09 10:40:44 · 4 answers · asked by DNE 3 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Finnish is not related to the "Teutonic languages". Its closest relatives are Estonian and several smaller languages--Karelian, Votic, Livonian, Veps, etc. It is a little more distantly related to the Lapp languages. It is in the Uralic language family and is only very distantly related to Hungarian. It it not related to any other language of Europe, but there are Uralic languages scattered from Finland across northern Russia to western Siberia.
2006-07-09 15:14:16 · answer #1 · answered by Taivo 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's not related to any other known language, except possibly Hungarian. Finnish and Hungarian share some grammatical structure but do not sound alike and native speakers do not understand each other. This is something that linguists noticed in trying to answer the same question you asked.
What's odd is that Finland and Hungary are not geographically isolated from the other countries that border them, yet they have nothing in common linguistically with their neighbors.
2006-07-09 11:30:32 · answer #2 · answered by Cluny Brown 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Maybe Flemish. It's around the same area.
2006-07-09 10:48:27 · answer #3 · answered by Saturn16 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Thats a thoughie!!
2006-07-09 10:45:09 · answer #4 · answered by Nrassm 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋