the country where I want to be…
Hallo,
hurra, mein erstes posting hier:
The Finnish language
Found a good crash course in Finnish…
WHEN FINNS SPEAK — EVERYBODY LISTENS (it’s just that nobody
else understands)
- Bill farmer (Knight-Ridder newspapers)
SOMEWHERE IN BERLITZ – Finnish is easy. All you do is
taperecord English and then play it backwards.
The language itself is like the Finns themselves-- it has
nothing to do with Russia or Sweden, despite their proximaty.
Finnish, I think, was invented by an ancient king who commanded
the people in his dominion to speak like him upon the penalty of
death.
The monarch’s name shall I give as Toivo I, or Toivo the
stutterer. It was Toivo’s lingual philosophy that „why use one
letter when two or three would do“.
Take the word for cigarette lighter. It is savukkeensytytin,
which is the reason why so many Finns carry matches.
When the Finns start a word they see how many foreigners they
can weed out on the first syllable. Take the Finnish word for
„93“. The first three letters are „yhd“. That eliminates a lot
of competition right there.
For the full Finnish word for „93“ I would advise you fasten
your seat belts and put on your crash helmet.
Here it goes – „yhdeksänkymmentäkolme“.
According to Berlitz, that is pronounced simply:
„EWHdayksaenKEWMmayntaeKOALmay“.
Finns have died of old age trying to count to 100. Part of the
problem with the Finnish language is that the Finns don’t mess
around with little bitsy words at all. If they are going to use
the word „the“ or „a“ or „by“ they just stick it onto a nearby
word as an ending.
And don’t think you are going to get away with not pronouncing
every letter, either. Nothing is wasted in Finnish. Sometimes,
when they use a couple or three vowels in a row, they’ll put two
little dots over the tops of some of them just to break the
monotony. Those little dots mean something. In the word „pencil
sharpener“, which is spelled „kynänteroitin“, they put two
little dots over the „a“ and that means it is pronounced like an
„a“ and an „e“ slopped together. It also means that you are
going to find a lot of dull pencils in Finland. It is the
only language I know of where the phonetic spelling is more
complicated than the regular spelling.
To say „pencil sharpener“ in Finnish, for example, you should
start with a bottle of good Finnish beer. Take a deep breath,
roll back your eyes and say:
KEWnae (run the „a“ and „e“ together now, remember?) nTAYR (stop
here and have a sip of beer) roa (then comes a very, very small
„i“ that fools a lot of people, but, without it the word means
„spinach“ or something entirely different from „pencil
sharpener“) tti (more beer, please) yn.
Okay, all together now: „KEWnaenTAYroaitti yn!“
There now, wasn’t that easy? Where’s the bottle opener?
During a recent visit of Finland I never saw a crossword puzzle.
The papers weren’t large enough to cover both horizontal and
vertical I guess.
The word for „no“ is „aye“, which means yes in English, and the
word „hyvää“ (with two little dots side by side over both „a“'s
or „ae-ae“) means hello or goodbye depending on what direction
you’re going.
Now the word for „yes“ is simple. It is „kyllä“. The trouble is,
nobody uses it. They all say „joo“ or „yoa“ or „yo“, which
naturally, is not Finnish at all, but is Swedish. To say „yes,
yes“ they all say „yo-yo“.
I can’t imagine what the finnish word for „yo-yo“ is, but it
must be dandy-dandy.
Finnish is related to Hungarian by a previous marriage. That’s
why the second language of Finland is, of course, Swedish.
Everyone speaks English however, so don’t worry if you ever go
there.
For an emergency, I tried to learn the Finnish expression for
„Get me a doctor, quick“, which is „noutakaa nopeasti lääkäri“,
but by the time I memorized it I was well again.
oh well.
baw
))