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I must also add that Finnish is said to be the 'icebox' of (Indo-)European languages. Over the centuries, the interaction between the Finnish people and the rest of Europe has made quite an impact in the Finnish language. A number of originally Indo-European structures and words have survived 'deep-frozen' in Finnish, relatively unchanged. A text-book example is the Finnish word 'kuningas' (king). Etymologists have reconstructed the original Indo-European form to be *kuningaz. The word was obviously borrowed into Finnish at an early stage. In other languages, the present-day words deriving from that root have obviously gone through major changes: 'king' (English), 'König' (German), 'kung' (Swedish) etc.

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