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DFW

(56,905 posts)
17. Non-European languages that are spoken in Europe were included except for the oldest one
Tue Oct 11, 2022, 01:06 PM
Oct 2022

I saw that Finnish and its offshoots as well as Hungarian were listed. They are geographically European, but not linguistically.

Basque was not, and probably correctly so. It is is no way related to the Indo-Iranian languages, or, as far as any linguistics scholar has been able to determine, to anything else. Neuk piskat Euskera aitxutendot (I understand a little Basque). It is so removed from anything else, it is practically its own language group. There are distinctive dialects (Bilbao Euskera is different from what is spoken in Donostia), but they are all equally impossible. I have been in small Guipúzcoa villages where it is still the main spoken language, and it might as well be Martian. Unless you know it, there is no possible way to figure it out.

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