Re: Who's in Ill Bethisad anyway?

Padraic wrote:

> > But Padraic, it isn't based on Finnish. It's based on
> > North Saami. (Admittedly related they are, though :) ).
> Er. Educate me! What's the difference? Is NS a Finnish
> dialect, unrelated, etc?
It is related, though definitely not a dialect. The tree goes:

Uralic -> Finno-Ugric -> Finno-Lappic -> Balto-Finnic (Est, Finnish)
                                      -> Lappic (e.g. NS)

See http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/families/Uralic.html for
a more detailed family tree.

North Saami is spoken in northern Sweden and Norway while
Finnish is spoken in - of course - Finland. The Saami is the
original people of Scandinavia. The current theory is that
they survived in the north and west coast of Norway, immigrated
there like 10.000 years ago when the ice started to melt away.
Then came the IE-peoples thousands of years later. The theory
also says that the Finns are an IE people which moved into
Finland and took over the language already spoken there, i.e.
Proto-Saami.

My guess is that if you did a Swadesh comparison you would see
that they are related, but not as much as, say, Swedish and
Danish. Rather Swedish and German.
Examples:

Finnish_______Saami_______Seimi______________

kieli         giella      giall    'language'
yksi          okta        ochta    'one'
kaksi         guokte      gwochtë  'two'
kolme         golbma      collë    'three'
kala          guolli      gwoli    'fish'

-but-

pitkä         guhkki      gëlhi    'long'
koira         beana       beannë   'dog'
puu           muorra      mworrë   'tree'

The grammar of Finnish and Saami are very similar though.
(As similar as all of the IE languages, of course.)

> Well, are they still part of Scotland?
Yup.

> If so, then they
> are now citizens of the Federated Kingdom (and hence at
> the very vanguard of civilisation, enightenment, etc.) ;)
> I have the feeling that the Shetlands are out of the way
> enough that _most_ FK issues won't affect them, and certainly
> very little of their history would affect the major themes
> of FK history (with all due resepct, of course!). Now, if
> they're able to get any helium out with their oil in the
> North Sea, then of course the FK will be quite interested.
Well, the oil is something that the FK government takes care
of. The Seimi live in piece on their islands and are quite
happy with the way things are. They don't want to break out
of the FK to form a republic of their own, afaik. Plus, I guess
there live a bunch of Scottish and Gaelic and perhaps other
peoples on the Shetlands, just like today.

> > I'm guessing "That Germanic Soundshift language" would be
> > Germanech by Jörg Rhiemeier.
> No.
Ah, Robert Hailman. I must have missed that. Sorry about that.
It'll be interesting to see what you come up with.

||| daniel

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