In reply to:

Finns


Oh, for pity's sake! I have nothing whatever against Finns; I was trying to make the point that nobody (well, scarcely anybody) else speaks Finnish. As I understand it, Finnish is a member of the Finno-Ugric language group, which has only 3 members (Finnish, Hungarian and, I believe, Estonian) and they are so different from all other European languages and to be almost totally unintelligible to anyone else. Indeed, it has been said that the Finno-Ugric languages are rivalled for exclusivity and unintelligibility only by Albanian and Euzkadi (Basque), which are not even Indo-European languages and which have no known relatives. I wish when I started this I had referred to a Basque composer, except I don't know of any.