i have finnish friends. i can only order beer: oksi oelat, kitos pallian! but they told me finnish is different from all other languages, which is weird because usually a language has at least one brother or sister. and why all the way up there? why isn't it like swedish, danish or norwegian, or russian?

albanian is supposedly like latin. i know 2 words: gru, which is woman or wife and po, which means yes.

please, tell me about other languages. i am very curious about all languages including dead langua ges. if you have knowledge, please share it all, i'm sure not one of us will be bored by it.•

How to be concise since it is necessary to tell the humanity history ... I try :

ONE BOOK, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue
Merritt Ruhlen
John Wiley & Sons; ISBN: 0471159638

Four links http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_04/uk/doss0.htm
For initiation by a complete and pedagogical dossier

http://www.sil.org/
whose Linguistic Creed is http://www.sil.org/sil/linguistic_creed.htm

http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/contents.asp
All languages are slowly changing, and related varieties are diverging
for the most part. Most languages are related to some other languages:
to some more closely and to others more distantly.

http://omniglot.com/ de Simon AGER
No languages history without writting systems history


Only four, because all the important thousands complementary others are linked here by them.

Safi

Safi, I am aware of a French region called Languedoc, or similar. Does this literally mean, in English, "language of Oc?" is it a dead language of that region?

i'm grateful for your references. i am still hoping for some anecdotes from people's travels or something. like a colleague who was in italy, "with" an italian girl and she said "basta, basta" (stop) and he thought she said "faster, faster". maybe he made that up, but anyway....

there are lots of portugese people here and i know their language is very different sounding. i have also heard that it's hard to learn. c

Two little anecdotes for wildflowerchild. When I was on a bus in Bologna, Italy I turned to my Greek friend and said "Na katso?" which means "Can I sit down?" in Greek. The Italian passengers were horrified because in Italian cazzo means dick.

Similarly in in Greek we say "Gia chara" as a greeting or farewell which literally translates as 'Health and Joy". An Egyptian friend always gets a laugh out of this because in Arabic it means "You shit".

I know of a US lady who, traveling in Australia, mentioned that she is a big fan of baseball and roots for the Chicago Cubs. You will understand the reaction when you recall the Australian-slang meaning of "root".