On March 1st (Friday), at 13.00, in 314AB room we kindly invite you to a guest lecture by Finnish scholar Dr Johanna Laakso, professor of Finno-Ugric studies at the University of Vienna: Demystifying the Finno-Ugric Languages.
The Finno-Ugric (Uralic) language family is mostly known to outsiders only through its three nation-state languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian). Of these languages, often only anecdotal references to their allegedly exotic qualities (such as the huge number of cases or other inflectional forms) will cross the attention threshold of the general public, contributing to the general mystification of these languages. Often these myths are also spread and reproduced by speakers of these languages themselves.
In this talk, we will take a closer look at the purported "exotic" characters of the Finno-Ugric languages and then discuss the origins and impact of language myths in general.