5 ms·

I’m curious, why?

• rekoros 5y ago
  Mainly because it is not closely related to any other Indo-European language - not an easy feat.
  • thaumasiotes 5y ago
    How are we counting? Greek forms its own branch of Indo-European, notable for how easy it is to distinguish from other Indo-European languages. Being different from "other similar languages" mostly just means a history involving more being conquered than conquering.
    • andrewzah 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_isolate The largest one is likely Korean. Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_language#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_language#Classificati...
    • rekoros 5y ago
      I'm not a linguist, so I don't really know. But, even middle-of-Europe Hungarian is related - somewhat - to Khanty and Mansi, and to a lesser extent to Finnish. I just think it's kind of incredible when a language exists in the center of Europe in 2021 that isn't quite related to anything. Armenian and Greek qualify as well, but they're much more prominent than Albanian - so, less mysterious :-)
      • thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > But, even middle-of-Europe Hungarian is related - somewhat - to Khanty and Mansi, and to a lesser extent to Finnish. > I just think it's kind of incredible when a language exists in the center of Europe in 2021 that isn't quite related to anything. But we just stipulated that Albanian is an Indo-European language. It's much more closely related to the general run of European languages than Magyar or Finnish is. The language isolate in Europe is Basque.
        • rekoros 5y ago
          Yeah, that's true - "not quite related to anything" is definitely wrong word choice here. Perhaps a better way to say it is "it's so impossible to understand, I can't believe it's actually related to anything" :-)
      • mdp2021 5y ago
        > it's kind of incredible when a language exists in the center of Europe ... that isn't quite related to anything Presumably, one factor is being "prisoners of Geography" (expression of Tim Marshall). See the map https://decolonialatlas.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/raised-relief-southern-europe-day.jpg?w=1024 https://decolonialatlas.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/raised-r... from Anton Balazh ( https://www.shutterstock.com/g/antartis?irgwc=1&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Skimbit%20Ltd.&utm_source=10078&utm_term= https://www.shutterstock.com/g/antartis?irgwc=1&utm_medium=A... ), ...Hungary is in a way a protected "Inner Carpathia". Also quite visible on OpenTopoMap, https://opentopomap.org/#map=6/46.800/19.116 https://opentopomap.org/#map=6/46.800/19.116
  • deleted 5y ago
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