Freakout moment of the day:

[emilyzilch]

Renée Zellweger is half-Sámi.
Not freaky, but pretty cool, is the fact that Joni Mitchell is also half-Sámi.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Hi Emily! :o)

Intriguing, but as ever, Wikipedia gets its facts wrong. Sami is NOT a Finno Ugric language- it's unique. There are only three Finno Ugric languages- Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian- the first two are mutually comprehensible, Hungarian definitely isn't!

Err

[emilyzilch]

Actually, no. All the above languages are in the Uralic family, and traditionally it was assumed that Sámi and Finnish were both Finno-Ugric (members of the same sub-branch), an assumption that is only just recently being challenged.

Hungarian is pretty far removed from Finnish, probably no more closely related as Sámi minus the joys of areal convergence.

Still, I'm freakin' out. RENÉE ZELLWEGER? That's just... startling.

[stardragonca]

Joni Mitchell was born not far from here, and not at all far from where I grew up and lived most of my life.
People from Alberta and people from Saskatchewan have elaborate ritual arguments over who gets to have bragging rights to being Joni Mitchell's place of origin.
Not in aid of anything, I was just saying.

Not location

[emilyzilch]

Well, Sámi is an ethnicity, not a place of origin, so I reckon she must be from where you are from. :-)

Re: Not location

[stardragonca]

Silly people from Saskatchewan try and claim her on the spurious grounds that she grew up there. Silly, silly.

Canada is a nation of immigrants, and always has been, and Western Canada particularly has people of every possible ancestry, many more of every possible half ancestry, many, many more of every possible quarter ancestry... and a lack of ability to care what religion someone else is.
And we have a lot of cattle. And wheat.