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Or then it is neither, it's just Finnish. Why has it always have to be either Swedish or Russian?
I was kind of wondering the same thing. Why all the threads on whether this or that country is more similar to A or B?
But to people who don't have much experience with foreign languages, and who are looking superficially, one could draw a vague parallel between Russian grammar and Finnish grammar, at least regarding the presence of a case system for nouns. (Granted, it's a very limited, cursory view.)
Finnish is simply Uralic, and is not more Russian than say Khanty or Mansi is. Also I think there are more Swedish than Russian influences on the Finnish language, even if it's not very many there either.
Russian is more similar to Swedish than it is to Finnish, considering that Swedish and Russian (as well as most European languages) are Indo-European, while Finnish is not.
Russian, actually, is VERY similar to Icelandic, grammatically. Both are very old languages that have been isolated historically, whose isolation has preserved similar archaic grammatical structures.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 11-29-2013 at 01:08 PM..
Which country does Sweden share more in common with in your opinion? The Swedish language of course is many times closer to Norwegian, but many Finns can speak Swedish including a significant minority as their first language, some Swedes in the North can speak Finnish and Finland was a part of Sweden for centuries.
Overall Sweden seems somewhere in between Norway and Finland culturally - which would you consider it more like?
Sweden is of course much more similar to Norway and Denmark. In fact both southern Sweden and Denmark, coastal southern Norway were part of the cradle or birth of what was known as the Nordic Bronze Age and the beginning of the Germanic/Teutonic culture started there.
The same bronze age culture spread a bit later to the Finnish coastal areas as well, while Eastern Finland was more influenced by the Eastern bronze age.
What influences or examples do you have in mind? Some examples, perhaps.
I know there's some, but I would like to hear what they are in foreigners' eyes.
Genetically the most atypical Europeans are Finns! That makes your people unique and special, something to be proud of. Finns are not Germanic neither Slavic, but Finnic.
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