Gotta love learning russian

[AlfredJPruffock]

However, both are easy compared to Hungarian which is a complete bitch and doesn't have anything in common with other European languages!

Not so fast WS, I think you will find that Hungarian is very similar indeed to Finnish, this odd fact continues to puzzle linguistics

[WageSlave]

Not so fast WS, I think you will find that Hungarian is very similar indeed to Finnish, this odd fact continues to puzzle linguistics

That's true, Alf. I believe it's also similar to Estonian. However, none of them belong to the common Indo-European family of languages. Off the top of my head I can't remember which family they belong to (and I can't be arsed to google for it), but I when I was learning Hungarian I recall something in the text book about a shared root with Persian. I'm sure Threaded can enlighten us

[Francko]

That's true, Alf. I believe it's also similar to Estonian. However, none of them belong to the common Indo-European family of languages. Off the top of my head I can't remember which family they belong to (and I can't be arsed to google for it), but I when I was learning Hungarian I recall something in the text book about a shared root with Persian. I'm sure Threaded can enlighten us

Yes it is, Estonian/Finnish/Hungarian come from the same root. Not latvian, though, which is closer to lithuanian.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Aye WS

Interesting to reflect that both the Finns and the Hungararians are well known for being prone to depression, I wonder if this is a consequence of being exposed to such an odd language, well just a thought !

Pip Pip !!!

AJP

[WageSlave]

According to Wikipedia...

Hungarian is a member of the Ugric languages, a sub-group of the Finno-Ugric language family, which in turn is a branch of the Uralic languages. Connections between the Ugric and Finnic languages were noticed in the 1670s and established, along with the entire Uralic family

[darmstadt]

Back in 1993 I was involved in a project with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Russian Space Agency , (IKI) which involved the transfer of an IBM midrange computer, being part of the initial planning for the International Space Station.

Based in Germany at the time I was taught Russian for several months, altough I had to translate German to Russian , I did find it took about six months to become accuostemed to the Cyrillic script and the grammer can be daunting, but dont get too hung up about this, if you simply listen to the Russian language it is very easy to pick up.

I had a marvellous time when I went to Moscow, the Russians are friendly and intelligent and were great to work with.

But do visit St Petersburg which is is achingly beautiful , so much so I went back there again a few yeas ago.

And then a few years later I was involved in transferring a couple of mainframe computers from there to Russia. Didn't bother with learning the language, just pointed at the big boxes and told them to take them away. The blokes had driven straight through from Minsk in a couple of old lorries which they loaded up and then drove straight back.