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From: eldridge@alc.com (Miriam Eldridge)
Subject: Re: Gaelic eye?
Message-ID: <1995Apr19.001142.13708@alc.com>
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Reply-To: eldridge@alc.com
Organization: Ascent Logic Corporation, Inc.
References: <3n0no5$i1r@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 00:11:42 GMT
Lines: 34

In article i1r@netnews.upenn.edu, ccardona@mail2.sas.upenn.edu (Maelstrom) writes:
> 0228@causus>
> Distribution: 
> 
> Paulo da Costa (dacosta@prl.philips.nl) wrote:
> 
> : >example the Gaelic word for a rabbit "kanin" compared to finnish "kaniini".
> : >Nothing of the kind can be found in either English, Norwegian or Swedish.
> 
> : See Dutch "konijn" and German "Kaninchen".
> 
> Spanish: Conejo.
> 
> Doth this mean that Finnish is really a Romance language or that Spanish 
> is really a Finno-Ugartic (sp?) language?  Or have I found a connection 
> between an Ancient Iberian Language and Finnish??? :) hehehehe :)
> 
> 
> cris

Well, chew on this: Finnish raja (pronounced like the Spanish
raya), both mean boundary or border; laija (pronounced like
Spanish laya), both meaning type or kind, if I remember my
Spanish correctly; Finnish paltto, overcoat; in Italian it's
palto', and so on. I think the common source for these words
was Old Gothic. Recall that Spain and Italy were invaded by
Germanic "barbarians," and a significant influence of Old
Gothic can also be discerned in the Finnish wordstock. Although
it's not originally an Indo-European language, it has taken on
a perfectly Indo-European word order and a lot of its vocabulary,
besides the German habit of loan-translations.

Miriam

