Re: Uusisuom's influences

Ray wrote:
>At 2:59 pm -0400 1/4/01, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >Ray wrote:
> >> >>Lithuanian = highly prized for its Indo - European roots. Many of its
> >>words
> >> >>can be traced back to ancient India and the Sanskrit language.
> >> >
> >> >Traced back to IE, surely; but Sanskrit?
> >>
> >>Of course not.  The vocab of Lithuanian can no more be traced back to
> >>ancient India than can the vocab of English or Welsh.  Lithuanian,
>nearly
> >>all the languages of Europe (Saami, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian &
>Basque
> >>are AFAIK the only exceptions)
> >
> >We-ell, there's a whole lot of tiny Uralic langs - Ingrian, Votian,
> >Udmurtian, Mari, Komi etc -
>
>I know - but I hadn't realized these were all on the European side of the
>Urals.
>
> >plus Kalmyk (Mongolian),
>
>I know of Kalmyk, but I hadn't realized it had speakers in Europe.  I
>thought it was strictly Asian.
Hm, the "Europe-Asia Border Problem"? I thought it was strictly European ...
Well, I usually consider the border to be Ural Mountains-Ural River-Caspian
Sea - Russian southern border-Black Sea. Kalmyk is, AFAIK, spoken in
southern Russian, northwest of the Caspian Sea and thus in Europe.

An encyclopaedia of mine hails it as the "only Mongolian language of
Europe".
>
> > a bunch of Turkic langs
> >- Turkish, Tatar, Crimean Tatar,
>
>Yes, I tend to think of Turkish as Asian as most of Turkey is in Asia
>(indeed, the old 'Asia Minor'); I'd forgotten it had a European foothold in
>Thrace and I'd forgotten there were still Turkic langs in the Crimea.
Tatar and a few other Turkic langs are spoken in the Volga Basin.
>
> >Kazakh, etc -
>
>in Europe?
Well, it's the official language of Kazakhstan, and according to the border
I set out above, the NV corner of Kazakhstan lies in Europe. If the local
people of that corner speak Kazakh, I don't know.
>
> >and Maltese.
>
>Is Malta part of Europe or part of North Africa?
Of Europe, or that's at least what I learnt in school.
>
> >I'm probably forgetting something too.
>
>Yes, I'm not sure where the Europe-Asian boundary is drawn across the
>Caucasus; it is likely we should include Kartvelian (Georgian) in the
>non-IE list of European langs.
According to how I draw the border, Georgian is Asian, but isn't Ossetic
(spoken in both Russia and Georgia) related to it? There's a whole lot of
langs in the North Caucasus, and IIRC most aren't IE.

                                                      Andreas
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