General History · Question
Which of the following is not in the Indo-European language family?
Answer
Finnish
The story behind the answer
Finnish is not Indo-European; it belongs to the Uralic (Finno-Ugric) family, alongside Estonian and Hungarian. Uralic languages are known for features like vowel harmony, extensive case systems, and agglutination, and they lack many core Indo-European roots. By contrast, Hindi (Indo-Aryan), English (Germanic), and Russian (Slavic) are all branches of the Indo-European family.
Context tip: Indo-European languages spread across Europe and into South Asia over millennia, forming major branches such as German