# Finnish/Latin



## Nonstar

Hello!
I got some material about morphological and syntatic features in English the other day and it was mentioned that English used to be latinized, losing its Latin morphemes throughout history, as an example, the verbs. This material quoted some examples of what it was like back in time, with nominative, accusative, genitive, and so on. Part of the material , though, featured an example in Finnish. The verb conjugation of 'sing' (off the top of my head):
1st p s: laulan
2nd p s: laulavi
3rd p s: laulat > just like Latin: bibat (drink)
1st p pl: laulamme 
2nd p pl: laulatte 
3rd pl: laula... (can't remember)

Question: Is Finnish, somehow, Latinized? Must be a silly question, but how on Earth? It really surprised me. 

Please correct my mistakes.


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## phosphore

And what should _latinised_ mean in this context?

For the Finnish verb _laulaa_ see here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/laulaa. It's actually _laulaa_ for the 3.p.sg. and _laulat_ is for the 2.p.sg., while the 3.p.pl. is _laulavat_.


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## Nonstar

_Latinised_? I think it means under the influence of Latin as a determiner of what to be like. I mean, did Finnish somehow copy Latin? Did it receive influence? How? In the same fashion as English did? How did the verbal inflexion occur in Finnish?  Thanks for the link, phosphore, I have checked it.


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## berndf

I am not sure where you got this idea from that English was Latinized. The English declension system had Romance (Vulgar Latin and French) influence but this concerned mainly the composed tenses, like perfect and pluperfect which are not native in English.

But the declension system of Old English with its three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) and its five cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive and instrumental) and the conjugation system with present and past tenses and indicative, subjunctive and imperative moods is completely Germanic and is not taken from Latin.  And also the distinction between strong and weak verbs (_run, ran, run_ vs. _look, looked, looked_) existed long before the first encounter between Germanic speakers and Romans.

The similarity to Latin is because both languages had a common ancestor which these concepts (cases, genders, tenses, moods) already existed.


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## Nonstar

Thanks for the information, berndf. Well, regardless of my incorrect assumption about English, my main query is about Finnish. To me there's a similarity between Finnish and Latin in that specific case I quoted in my first post. I have scarce, if none at all, on Latin but something caught my eye and I felt intrigued.


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## DrWatson

I somehow can't understand how Finnish could be "latinized". Do you mean both Finnish and Latin have rich inflectional morphology? If so, then that hardly means anything. Or do you mean the verb endings are similar? I don't know about the development of Latin verb endings, but I can tell how Finnish verb endings have formed:

1st s: _laula/n_ < *_laula/m_ < *_laula/mi _(from _minä_ 'I')
2nd s: _laula/t_ < *_laula/ti_ (from _sinä_, earlier *_tinä_, 'you')
3rd s: _laula/a_ << *_laula/__βi_ < *_laula/βa_ (_-__βa_ is historically a marker for present tense. The _β _sound is a voiced bilabial fricative)

1st pl:_ laula/mme_ < *_laula/k/me/k_ (the 1st _k_ is historically a marker of present tense, the 2nd _k_ is a marker of plural, _me_ means 'we')
2nd pl: _laula/tte_ < *_laula/k/te/k _(similar development, _te_ means 'you (pl.)' )
3rd pl: _laula/vat_ < *_laula/__βa/t_ (_-__βa_ + _t_, a marker of plural)

To my knowledge, this development happened long before Finnish had any contacts with Latin.


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## sakvaka

My dear Watson, thank you for your comment. I'd like to add that _laulavi_ is nowadays a poetical form for singular 3rd person. 

Finnish is most strongly influenced by Germanic languages, not Romance ones.


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## Nonstar

Thank you all for the input. Apparently I got the information I was looking for. Being a Romance language speaker made me somehow wonder _whether_ there was any connection between Latin and Finnish morphological development or similarities, for some historical reason I fail to realise. In fact, I expected you to say that both have nothing to do with each other and also who influenced whom. 
Thanks again!


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## Gavril

A different question: do Finnish speakers find Latin relatively easy to learn and read, compared to speakers of languages that don't have a lot of noun and verb suffixes (as both Latin and Finnish do)?


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## muhahaa

Also, past participles: Finnish laule-ttu,  canta-tus.

Accusative: Finnish -n < *-m, Latin -m.
Ablative: Finnish -ta (partitive), -l-ta (ablative), -s-ta (elative), Old Latin -d

Could be coincidental, but there are theories about the relationship of Indo-European and Uralic (Indo-Uralic, Nostratic).

The word correspondences between IE and Uralic, like *kwelH / *kulki "move" (Fi. kulke- "move", Eng. wheel), *deH3 / *toxi "give" (Fi. tuo- "bring", Gr. do- "give"), *wed / *weti "water",  are usually considered borrowings from Proto-IE to Proto-Uralic, but some have suggested Indo-Uralic/Nostratic relationship (these are part of the basic vocabulary). IE laryngeals corresponding with Uralic *k and laryngeal *x.

Could someone tell us the Uralic reconstructions of the participles (is Hungarian -tt related to the Finnish past participle -ttu)?

Was the meaning of the *-mi / *-H2e, *-si / *tH2e distinction similar to Hungarian -m / -k, -d / -l distinction (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_verbs#Definite_and_indefinite_conjugations, and did that feature exist in Proto-Uralic? If there's a Proto-Uralic first person ending *-k, there would be a correspondence of the IE laryngeals and Uralic *k also in grammar instead of only in vocabulary.


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## Ben Jamin

muhahaa said:


> Could be coincidental, but there are theories about the relationship of Indo-European and Uralic (Indo-Uralic, Nostratic).


The similarity of the verb endings in Finnish and IE is very unlikely to be coincidental, purely statistically. The influence may be, however, not from a common ancestor (Nostratic) but through the contacts between the languages of the two families. The similarities are not limited to the above examples. They loans go both ways, not only from Indoeuropean to Finnic to , but also from Finnic to IE (Germanic, Baltic and Slavic).


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## Nonstar

Thank you guys for enriching the thread!


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## phosphore

Ben Jamin said:


> The similarity of the verb endings in Finnish and IE is very unlikely to be concidental, purely statistically. The influence may be, however, not from a common ancestor (Nostratic) but through the contacts between the languages of the two families. The similarities are not limited to the above examples. They loans go both ways, not only from Indoeuropean to Finnic to , but also from Finnic to IE (Germanic, Baltic and Slavic).


 
How likely is it for one language to borrow case and verbal endings from another?


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## bibax

> Question: Is Finnish, somehow, Latinized?


And why not Slavicized? The hypothetical Czech verb laulati (inf. laul-a-ti with the thematic vowel -a- like Latin laudare) would be conjugated (ind. pres.):

laulám
lauláš
laulá

lauláme
lauláte
laulají

Quite similar to Finnish.


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## Ben Jamin

phosphore said:


> How likely is it for one language to borrow case and verbal endings from another?


 Which case endings do you have in mind?


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## phosphore

English case and Finnish verbal endings in this particular case. But my question was more general than that. I'm wondering whether the question has already been addressed in literature and asking if it has ever been shown to what extent one language may influence another in morphology. I'm very skeptical on that point.


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## Ben Jamin

phosphore said:


> English case and Finnish verbal endings in this particular case. But my question was more general than that. I'm wondering whether the question has already been addressed in literature and asking if it has ever been shown to what extent one language may influence another in morphology. I'm very skeptical on that point.


The only English case ending surviving is the Saxon genitive *'s*, which is now not regarded as a genuine case ending, rather a suffix, and the personal pronoun endings of possesive and object case. 
So, you mean perhaps Old English, or even Saxon endings?
I have, however, never heard about case endings and conjugational endings being related to each other. The conjugational  endings are rather incorporated personal pronouns in a suffix form. What makes you think that they might be related?


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## francisgranada

phosphore said:


> English case and Finnish verbal endings in this particular case. But my question was more general than that. I'm wondering whether the question has already been addressed in literature and asking if it has ever been shown to what extent one language may influence another in morphology. I'm very skeptical on that point.




So am I.
And not only concerning the declension/conjugation, but even the fundamental words of a language, as personal and demonstrative pronouns, verbs like to be, to go,  to have etc.


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## phosphore

Ben Jamin said:


> The only English case ending surviving is the Saxon genitive *'s*, which is now not regarded as a genuine case ending, rather a suffix, and the personal pronoun endings of possesive and object case.
> So, you mean perhaps Old English, or even Saxon endings?
> I have, however, never heard about case endings and conjugational endings being related to each other. The conjugational endings are rather incorporated personal pronouns in a suffix form. What makes you think that they might be related?


 
I'm sorry, Nonstar stated in the first post that just as English case endings were influenced by Latin (or so he read) Finnish verbal endings were too. Then you stated that the similarities in verbal endings between Finnish and the Indo-European languages were rather result of mutual contact than of a common ancestor. That's where I asked how likely it is for case and verbal endings of one language to be influenced by another one. I just don't understand what you are talking about now?


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