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Joseph Stalin

#21
EddieN said:
Definitely NOT an Indo-European language and possibly no linguistic relatives (at least any major language relatives). It has its own, unique alphabet, as does Armenian, but both were ultimately derived from the Greek alphabet.

Yep, Hungarian & Finnish are related as is Estonian to them. Estonian & Finnish are a bit like Spanish & Portuguese with Hungarian a lot more distant. Say like Spanish & German or something.
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I would say that the "distant-but-still-close" to portuguese/spanish is romenian.
Armenian is indo-european btw, I think you know that, just said to avoid anyone thinking its not.

The big family of hungarian, finnish and estonian is the Finno-Ugric family. There is some polemic hypothesis that Finno-Ugric and Indo-European families are related, and I wouldnt doubt it given the proximity of cultures, and some very strong resemblence on the pronouns.
 
#23
Human Bass said:
I would say that the "distant-but-still-close" to portuguese/spanish is romenian.
Armenian is indo-european btw, I think you know that, just said to avoid anyone thinking its not.

The big family of hungarian, finnish and estonian is the Finno-Ugric family. There is some polemic hypothesis that Finno-Ugric and Indo-European families are related, and I wouldnt doubt it given the proximity of cultures, and some very strong resemblence on the pronouns.
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Romanian is also a neat language and culture. Very cool people.

Romany on the other hand... cool lang and folks I'm sure, but not the particular ones I met :(
 
#25
Human Bass said:
The big family of hungarian, finnish and estonian is the Finno-Ugric family. There is some polemic hypothesis that Finno-Ugric and Indo-European families are related, and I wouldnt doubt it given the proximity of cultures, and some very strong resemblence on the pronouns.
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I've heard that as well (see "Nostratic" & suchlike) and notice the similarities but I'm definitely in no position to debate whether pronouns were borrowed or inherited from a common ancestor.

BTW, nobody ever try to learn Hungarian unless you have to, okay? You might as well learn to play the Theremin with your feet so you can play bass with your hands at the same time.
 
#26
EddieN said:
I've heard that as well (see "Nostratic" & suchlike) and notice the similarities but I'm definitely in no position to debate whether pronouns were borrowed or inherited from a common ancestor.

BTW, nobody ever try to learn Hungarian unless you have to, okay? You might as well learn to play the Theremin with your feet so you can play bass with your hands at the same time.
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I tried, once. I have several friends who are either Hungarian or Hungarian descended.
I couldn't get past the first "segedvegednegednagycz"
 
#28
Slavic languages surely sound "consonant heavy" for westerns.

BTW, i've seen some people saying that portuguese sounded like a "slavic spanish", included mine (Im from the northeast of Brazil, we have a very distinct accent)
 
#29
Human Bass said:
Slavic languages surely sound "consonant heavy" for westerns.

BTW, i've seen some people saying that portuguese sounded like a "slavic spanish", included mine (Im from the northeast of Brazil, we have a very distinct accent)
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Absolutely true! The first time I ever heard Portuguese it sounded like a combination of Russian/Polish and Spanish. Much more consonant heavy than Spanish to me. It's a great sounding language.
 
#30
Relic said:
Absolutely true! The first time I ever heard Portuguese it sounded like a combination of Russian/Polish and Spanish. Much more consonant heavy than Spanish to me. It's a great sounding language.
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I find that really weird...portuguese consonants are fairly simple, except for the LH sound, all other consonants are super commun.
 
#31
I haven't heard Portuguese spoken in quite a while, so I don't precisely remember exactly what it was that sounded so Slavic to me. Like specifically which consonants and such, but it was very very definite.
I'll try to explain, I hope this makes sense...
As a non Portuguese speaker, my impression of Spanish vs Portuguese is that Spanish is much "lighter" and "free-flowing", my wife is from Costa Rica and when she and her family speak it's almost musical - there's various vocal inflections and tones, vowels held for longer etc, Portuguese also has that a bit but it also seems more grounded with consonants and more "sh" sounds "ch" sounds, harder "k" sounds? I dunno hard to remember for sure. Slavic languages have a lot of those digraphs and tend not to be as free-flowing as Latin languages in general.
 
#34
Human Bass said:
Invalid Link Removed :)
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oh yeah that's it definitely, thanks. Actually as I listen to it, I have to say that it also sounds a bit Germanic/Dutch to me. I can hear some similar words that would be recognizable to a Spanish-speaker but it has a very different sound altogether. Very cool language.
Is there enough similarity between Spanish and Portuguese that communication is possible without translation?
 
#35
Relic said:
oh yeah that's it definitely, thanks. Actually as I listen to it, I have to say that it also sounds a bit Germanic/Dutch to me. I can hear some similar words that would be recognizable to a Spanish-speaker but it has a very different sound altogether. Very cool language.
Is there enough similarity between Spanish and Portuguese that communication is possible without translation?
Click to expand...

I guess the germanic impression is because of my brazilian northeastern accent, its a bit "singy", musical.

Portuguese speakers have a much easier time understanding Spanish than vice-versa. Im not sure why, but by looking at the map, Portugal is inside Spain, so i suppose that Portuguese really came from Spanish, more like a little sister, so its not hard to us to "look back" to our roots.
 

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