Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/11/09

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Subject: [Leica] Non-Indo-European European languages
From: jorg.willems at pp.inet.fi (Jorg Willems)
Date: Tue Nov 9 23:04:10 2004

You are almost correct, Nathan.

Finnish and Estonian are indeed closely related: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_language

Finnish is very different from any Indo-European language because it is a
agglutinative language which more or less means that it has no prepositions.
(I'm sure Daniel Ridings has a more precise explanation :)

My native language is German and I speak fluently Finnish. Listening to
Estonian is for me like listening to Dutch:  I think I should understand it
but I do not. My Finnish wife claims that she understand up to 30% but what
she really meant is that she understands just enough to guess through
context what the 30% could mean (I hope she doesn't read this;-).  Most
people in Estonia speak quite good Finnish because they watch Finnish TV
particularly during the time when they were part of the Soviet Empire but I
do not know any Finn that speaks Estonian (I'm sure there are but I don't
know any)

To bring it back to Leica:  6 weeks ago we made a one day trip to Tallinn
and climbed the tower of the Oleviste church.  These pictures are for our
family and friends back in the USA but I think the LUG is family enough.  I
am hesitant to show them because we have so many excellent photographers
here on the LUG .... and those pictures are not made with our Leicas because
our Nikon LS-2000 broke and I just got an e-mail from Nikon Support saying :
"Total cost with parts is about 350-400 euros inc.tax. +sending cost".  I am
not spending $500 to repair the scanner.

http://www.sirjester.com/Finland/Tallinn/slides/A1.html

Regards
J?rg


-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+jorg.willems=pp.inet.fi@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+jorg.willems=pp.inet.fi@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
Nathan Wajsman
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 6:25 AM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] Non-Indo-European European languages

I believe you are correct, and that Estonian is also in that category--I 
know that the Finns and Estonians can more or less understand each 
other, so their languages must be related.

Nathan






Replies: Reply from dorysrus at mindspring.com (Don Dory) ([Leica] Non-Indo-European European languages)
In reply to: Message from nathan.wajsman at planet.nl (Nathan Wajsman) ([Leica] Non-Indo-European European languages)