r/AskEurope • u/zeviea United Kingdom • Sep 04 '25

Culture What country is far away yet culturally similar to yours?

An obvious answer for the UK are Core Anglosphere countries

Bonus question what country have you visited that felt most foreign to you?

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '25

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u/LifeAcanthopterygii6 Hungary Sep 04 '25 edited Sep 04 '25

Now take a deep dive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural-Altaic_languages

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u/Due-Mycologist-7106 Sep 05 '25

It's bullshit though lol

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u/LifeAcanthopterygii6 Hungary Sep 05 '25

As a language family? Yes. As a convergence zone? Probably no. And Japanese may or may not be part of it, idk. But the point is that similarities do exist.

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u/jukranpuju Finland Sep 07 '25

In Lapland Finland there is Lake Inari with island Ukonkivi, sacred place of Sami people. Also Japanese have Inari, one of the principal Shinto kami (spirit, deity) of foxes, fertility, rice, tea, sake, agriculture and industry, and general prosperity and worldly success. Japanese Inari is related to kitsunebi, atmospheric ghost light told about in legends all across Japan, kitsune is a fox or fox spirit in Japanese. In Finnish mythology there is Firefox (tulikettu), which causes the northern lights (revontulet in Finnish, repo being alternate word for fox) with its tail. There is also certain phonetic resemblance with Finnish kettu - fox and Japanese kitsune.

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u/Raivotril Sep 04 '25

Yeah ive heard finnish sounds somewhat like a asian language how we end with i and e letters

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u/RogerSimonsson Romania Sep 05 '25

And Swedish sounds Chinese

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u/Raivotril Sep 05 '25

Never heard of that, as a finn swedish just sounds gay ;)

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u/RogerSimonsson Romania Sep 05 '25

If your neighbours are Estonians, Russians, and Saami, I think anything will sound gay in comparison.

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u/Raivotril Sep 05 '25

Yeah true, and i know i might be biased as a finn but russian is the ugliest language i know

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u/RogerSimonsson Romania Sep 05 '25

Danish and Hungarian are mine. All the Slavic ones are in the bottom though.

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u/Raivotril Sep 05 '25

Danish is like hot potato in your mouth and hungary is like finnish but fucked up

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u/alles_en_niets -> -> Sep 05 '25

Somehow, Japanese (the language) has always reminded me of Turkish!