--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jdcroft@...> wrote:

> Regarding
>
> > I'm just reading "Sumerian mythology" by Samuel Noah Kramer. He
> > claims that the Sumerians language was not related to indo-
> > european or semitic languages, rather to the finish language
> > family. Is this belief still prevalent among linguistics?
>
> I believe the connections of Sumerian were regarded originally as
> Turanian on the basis of the fact that both Turanian (now called
> Turkic or Altaic) was also an agglutinative tongue. Perhaps the
> connection to Finnish came from the theory that Turkic was a part

of

> the Uralo-Altaic Superfamily. Most researchers today also separate
> Uralo-Yukaghir from Altaic languages.
>
> Most linguists today hold that Sumerian was a linguistic isolate.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Regards > John

Is this view (that Sumerian was a linguistic isolate) also held by
those on Cybalist? Has there been any conjecture why Sumerian is an
isolate?

Gerry