Re: Uusisuom's influences

Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>Daniel44 wrote:
>
> > It's major two influences have been Finnish and Lithuanian:
> >
> > Finnish = one of the oldest modern languages in Europe; ties to
> > Saami nomadic languages,
>
>Well, if I understand things correctly, the Finns originally spoke
>some Proto-Indo-European language, but later took over the language
>of the proto-Saami when the Finns came to what is now known as Finland.
>So I'd say it's more than "ties" to Saami ;-). Finnish is Saami with
>a PIE substrate.
How sure are you on that? After checking up several encyclopaedias, I find
they all agree that Saami is a group of its own within the Finnic langs,
while Finnish is counted to the Baltic-Finnic group, which also includes
Estonian, Karelian, Ingrian and several other langs. If the Finns originally
spoke a IE lang, mustn't the lang they took over rather been a Baltic-Finnic
lang?

Also, tho' I know that it's not very popular to mix genetics into
discussions on language, rather reliable sources tell me that genetically,
the Saami can be considered a mix of the "Germanic" peoples who came to
Norden from the south and the "Finnic" peoples that came to Norden from the
east. Genetically, the Finns are closer to the other Finnic-speaking groups
than the Saami are, which suggests that they may be closer
linguio-historically (is that a word?) too.

                                                      Andreas
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