The other day I went to the little bookstore near our Winn Dixie and found a book in Finnish! I bought it on the spot, hardly caring what it was about. Well, I've started in on it. It's slow going because I need to look up many words, and with Finnish you don't just 'look up a word' as you can in Spanish... it often takes a bit of time to deconstruct the word into various smaller words, or at least separate the ending, sometimes reconstruct the altered original stem, etc. But ah, the feeling when it goes well, and you have an actual sentence in front of you!
Right. So, how much have I read?
Erm... the front and back cover? XD I've only had a bit of time after breakfast! I'll summarize, but please don't get mad for bad translations. XD
The Title is: Tyttö ja kartanonherra
My Translation: The girl and the lord of the estate
The author is Catherine Cookson. I was pretty sure the book was translated, which is a bit sad but oh well. I checked the publication page and it says, Englanninkielen alkuteos The Dwelling Place ilmestyi 1971 Suomentanut Eva Siikarla. Right, definitely translated, and older, too.
I started in on the back cover.
Cissie Brodin, köyhän maatyöläisen kymmenpäisen sisaruparven vanhin, menettää molemmat vanhempansa. Cissie päättää pitää perheen koossa hinnalla millä hyvänsä. Hän sijoittaa pesueensa nummelle kallioluolaan ja aloittaa taistelun jokapäiväisestä leivästä. Juuri kun elämä alkaa sujua, mahtavan aateliskartanon nuoriherra raiskaa Cissien - ja pian tyttö huomaa odottavansa lasta.
Cissie Brodin, the oldest of ten siblings in a poor serf family, loses both parents. Cissie decides to keep the family together at whatever cost. She relocates the brood to a craggy den on the moors and begins the full time struggle to eat (lit. for bread). Just when life begins to flow(?), the lord of a great noble estate rapes Cissie - and soon the girl discovers that she is pregnant.
Notes:
1.) I love Finnish. Some words are just so beautiful! Like sujua for flow, luola for cave. And raiskaa is dreadful and perfect. Then again, where does it get words like tyttö for girl? :S
2.) Nummi = Moors.... seriously? I haven't read a book set on the moors since Secret Garden, and now suddenly I'm reading both this and Wuthering Heights. :S
3.) The little grab line is: Koskettava, romanttinen lukuromaani! This seems to mean "Moving (or touching), romantic chapter-novel!"
Somehow, with the subject matter, I don't think this is a children's book, but the grab line is trying to convince me otherwise. XD
Showing posts with label Finnish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Finnish. Show all posts
June 10, 2009
May 13, 2009
March 27, 2009
Japanese
Finnish is now open for me - a broken language, and we look each other in the eye. This doesn't mean that I have a mastery over it. Far from it. My vocabulary is laughable, my knowledge of the grammar rudimentary and mostly theory. But the language is broken, broken open, and what I mean by that is this:
When I look at a page of Finnish text, it is foreign, yes. Foreign and yet not nonsense. My mind accepts it as language, and scans over it seeing not an impenetrable wall of barely pronounceable symbols but words. Words I may not know, but which I can nevertheless look up in a dictionary or even guess from context because I know enough about the language to wrestle the words down to their searchable form, identify singular or plural and cases, and I even have possession of a surprisingly large though still modest collection of root words and components, some of which I don't fully understand but which nevertheless occasionally manifest as intuition. The words, the sentences, they fall apart in my mind - and even when the meaning is hidden to me, I am fully confident that the meaning exists and can be found. Before the language broke, they didn't, I wasn't.
Someone once said, after a week or two of intensive effort with some language or another, "I have learnt enough to continue to learn more." Perhaps I am making it sound as though the breaking of a language is some single moment, one turning point. There are more turning points than that, of course. At some point, perhaps the next big leap for me in Finnish, the language begins to yeild itself from primary sources. A little closer in there is confidence, and new words come more swiftly, attaching themselves to a growing structure in the mind which is the grasp of that language, instead of hovering weakly and tenuously in midmind.
The very first stage, the first crack, when you learn enough to continue to learn more - the language retains it's foreigness but suddenly, magically, gives up it's utterly impossible and alien quality - you look over the landscape of the language and, gasping at the breadth and depth of the challenges ahead, but accepting them, looking the language in the eye - that first crack sounds, and changes everything, opens those doors that at first seemed impenetrable and are now, startlingly, not.
Japanese broke tonight, just that first tiny crack. Yes, after years of halfheartedly circling it, coming in every once in a while for the softest and weakest of attempts: a charge at the hiragana, perhaps, as I forced the syllabary's 46 characters into my head for a brief time before letting them leak out again. I would learn to say, "I am learning" half a dozen times and each time almost magically forget it the moment it became untrue.
It has to be said that I don't really experience this breaking with the Indo-European languages. (Maybe a tiny bit with Faroese, but starting after the first crack, perhaps? :)) Finnish was the first, and a self discipline I rarely find drove me to that second stage. I had a timeline, and a long, empty summer, and every morning before temptation set in I'd pack my bag with Beginner's Finnish (hehehe), nothing else. If I failed - tossed in the newspaper, Anna Karenina, my calculus book (jk), almost anything... alongside it, then I failed. Suddenly Finnish was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to learn Finnish, but I didn't want to study it. It was hard.
Then that first layer broke, I heard that first crack, and it became a joy. The language was mine. It was broken. It didn't yet have much to show for it, but I felt it and I knew it!
Three days at Kiser's. Danny, a television, a pantry, two crazy dogs, and Colloquial Japanese... Colloquial Japanese won about 1/4th of the time. Hours passed as I fed myself phrases. But I didn't want to learn them as phrases! I wanted to learn them as words. I wanted to build that first structure in my mind that the rest of the language could build from. But it was hard. I swallowed the words, but they were alien and didn't want to mean anything, or be remembered. I told myself the langauge would crack, like Finnish. It would give me a glimpse of it's landscape so I could face the road ahead. It bent, and bent, but didn't crack...
I came home today and I had to pack for the move. I packed and packed and out of nowhere, searing hot, crimson, a hiragana character would blaze through my mind. I would suddenly feel に (ni) so strongly that I could hardly keep from calling it out. I wanted to write に, type に, paint に... then it was gone. Talking to my mom I almost said, か (ka). "That was weird," I thought for a moment, my true puzzlement stillborn as か began to emerge onto my mental field.
After the rest of them went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table and wrote Kanji to the sound of the washing machine. 男 - Otoko - Man. I kept getting the stroke order wrong when I just wrote it 'naturally'. I filled a page with little 田's, determined to form some muscle memory around it. I filled a page with them. A college ruled page, with ten on each line.
I heard a crack. A long time in coming, if you count all those half hearted years. But I buckled down on Monday. And tonight I heard the first crack.
I know exactly 25 Kanji. I am on chapter 3 of a beginner's book. I'm only halfway through Katakana. And it doesn't matter one bit.
No spaces. Three writing systems. Counters. Particles.
It's not lunacy. It's not alien. It's merely foreign. Merely as-of-yet unknown. It's waiting for me. I know that now. And for the next three months, as often as I can spare a snatch of time, it shall be my pleasure to rip the secrets of the language limb from limb. And be humbled by it. Alternatively. It has begun.
When I look at a page of Finnish text, it is foreign, yes. Foreign and yet not nonsense. My mind accepts it as language, and scans over it seeing not an impenetrable wall of barely pronounceable symbols but words. Words I may not know, but which I can nevertheless look up in a dictionary or even guess from context because I know enough about the language to wrestle the words down to their searchable form, identify singular or plural and cases, and I even have possession of a surprisingly large though still modest collection of root words and components, some of which I don't fully understand but which nevertheless occasionally manifest as intuition. The words, the sentences, they fall apart in my mind - and even when the meaning is hidden to me, I am fully confident that the meaning exists and can be found. Before the language broke, they didn't, I wasn't.
Someone once said, after a week or two of intensive effort with some language or another, "I have learnt enough to continue to learn more." Perhaps I am making it sound as though the breaking of a language is some single moment, one turning point. There are more turning points than that, of course. At some point, perhaps the next big leap for me in Finnish, the language begins to yeild itself from primary sources. A little closer in there is confidence, and new words come more swiftly, attaching themselves to a growing structure in the mind which is the grasp of that language, instead of hovering weakly and tenuously in midmind.
The very first stage, the first crack, when you learn enough to continue to learn more - the language retains it's foreigness but suddenly, magically, gives up it's utterly impossible and alien quality - you look over the landscape of the language and, gasping at the breadth and depth of the challenges ahead, but accepting them, looking the language in the eye - that first crack sounds, and changes everything, opens those doors that at first seemed impenetrable and are now, startlingly, not.
Japanese broke tonight, just that first tiny crack. Yes, after years of halfheartedly circling it, coming in every once in a while for the softest and weakest of attempts: a charge at the hiragana, perhaps, as I forced the syllabary's 46 characters into my head for a brief time before letting them leak out again. I would learn to say, "I am learning" half a dozen times and each time almost magically forget it the moment it became untrue.
It has to be said that I don't really experience this breaking with the Indo-European languages. (Maybe a tiny bit with Faroese, but starting after the first crack, perhaps? :)) Finnish was the first, and a self discipline I rarely find drove me to that second stage. I had a timeline, and a long, empty summer, and every morning before temptation set in I'd pack my bag with Beginner's Finnish (hehehe), nothing else. If I failed - tossed in the newspaper, Anna Karenina, my calculus book (jk), almost anything... alongside it, then I failed. Suddenly Finnish was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to learn Finnish, but I didn't want to study it. It was hard.
Then that first layer broke, I heard that first crack, and it became a joy. The language was mine. It was broken. It didn't yet have much to show for it, but I felt it and I knew it!
Three days at Kiser's. Danny, a television, a pantry, two crazy dogs, and Colloquial Japanese... Colloquial Japanese won about 1/4th of the time. Hours passed as I fed myself phrases. But I didn't want to learn them as phrases! I wanted to learn them as words. I wanted to build that first structure in my mind that the rest of the language could build from. But it was hard. I swallowed the words, but they were alien and didn't want to mean anything, or be remembered. I told myself the langauge would crack, like Finnish. It would give me a glimpse of it's landscape so I could face the road ahead. It bent, and bent, but didn't crack...
I came home today and I had to pack for the move. I packed and packed and out of nowhere, searing hot, crimson, a hiragana character would blaze through my mind. I would suddenly feel に (ni) so strongly that I could hardly keep from calling it out. I wanted to write に, type に, paint に... then it was gone. Talking to my mom I almost said, か (ka). "That was weird," I thought for a moment, my true puzzlement stillborn as か began to emerge onto my mental field.
After the rest of them went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table and wrote Kanji to the sound of the washing machine. 男 - Otoko - Man. I kept getting the stroke order wrong when I just wrote it 'naturally'. I filled a page with little 田's, determined to form some muscle memory around it. I filled a page with them. A college ruled page, with ten on each line.
I heard a crack. A long time in coming, if you count all those half hearted years. But I buckled down on Monday. And tonight I heard the first crack.
I know exactly 25 Kanji. I am on chapter 3 of a beginner's book. I'm only halfway through Katakana. And it doesn't matter one bit.
No spaces. Three writing systems. Counters. Particles.
It's not lunacy. It's not alien. It's merely foreign. Merely as-of-yet unknown. It's waiting for me. I know that now. And for the next three months, as often as I can spare a snatch of time, it shall be my pleasure to rip the secrets of the language limb from limb. And be humbled by it. Alternatively. It has begun.
November 26, 2008
Sonni Hullu ja Puuro
When I produced Sonni, Liisa asked whether I remembered Hullu and Puuro as well. The answer is "Of course, my dear, and the sentence that tied the three together, as unlikely as it would seem!"
I am reminded of a quote from the Last Unicorn:
"Your name is a golden bell, hung in my heart.
I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name."
It's like Norwegian. No. It's quite different again. I fear losing my Finnish in a way that I don't fear losing my Norwegian, perhaps because of it's very foreignness, but as of yet it remains with me, the words fluttering on my lips like an enchantment. It is everything. The delicate, precise nature of the double letters, the steady consonant-vowel alteration, the simple miracle that one can learn two names for the same thing and feel both of them in their heart.
Like an enchantment. Like if I remember, and pronounce them properly, release each name onto the wind, they will pull the wonders of the last summer around me.
And that...
I am reminded of a quote from the Last Unicorn:
"Your name is a golden bell, hung in my heart.
I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name."
It's like Norwegian. No. It's quite different again. I fear losing my Finnish in a way that I don't fear losing my Norwegian, perhaps because of it's very foreignness, but as of yet it remains with me, the words fluttering on my lips like an enchantment. It is everything. The delicate, precise nature of the double letters, the steady consonant-vowel alteration, the simple miracle that one can learn two names for the same thing and feel both of them in their heart.
Like an enchantment. Like if I remember, and pronounce them properly, release each name onto the wind, they will pull the wonders of the last summer around me.
And that...
October 22, 2008
October 02, 2008
Japanese
So I've been having a lot of fun with Japanese lately. :D I haven't had more than a few hours of actually studying since the year started. It's amazing how time flies when you live with all your friends, right? Still, somehow the basic structure is coming to me. The trick seems to be letting your preconception of grammar fly away, and replace it with... I don't know. It's odd. But today I managed a short something in a formula I'd never memorized, and which was utterly different from English. And Mayumi actually said it was 100% correct. :P
Kyo wa Finansu desu ka?
Lit: Today - is it finance?
Fig: So do you have Finance first today?
So here's the closest I can get to describing what I'm starting to understand about Japanese:
1.) The particals function a bit like cases. But don't try to cookie cut them to match the cases you know. They're more often about the importance a word has in expressing the meaning, or some other such, than the word's strict grammatical function.
2.) If it is implied, don't say it. Seriously. If you're not worried about being polite, one word will sometimes work fine for a sentence. Be polite and you've got two, one essentially meaningless. And this is OK. Let is go... :P
I can't wait to see Mrs. Hirayoshi and tell her about Mayumi and how much I like Miso soup now and that I can finally read about 95% of the Kana and even a few very useful Kanji and I'm putting together real original sentences and it's seeming less impossible with every minute.
And a special thanks to Finnish for proving that one can draw blood from a stone - even a seemingly impenetrable language begins to give up it's secrets. That's about where I am with Finnish - oh, it's still foreign, oh I can't read anything... maybe with pictures too I get a main idea... but it's no longer impossible. I see eye to eye with it and I could take it if I had the time and desire both. If I can get to that point with Japanese, I'll be thrilled. And I've just taken a significant step in that direction.
Kyo wa Finansu desu ka?
Lit: Today - is it finance?
Fig: So do you have Finance first today?
So here's the closest I can get to describing what I'm starting to understand about Japanese:
1.) The particals function a bit like cases. But don't try to cookie cut them to match the cases you know. They're more often about the importance a word has in expressing the meaning, or some other such, than the word's strict grammatical function.
2.) If it is implied, don't say it. Seriously. If you're not worried about being polite, one word will sometimes work fine for a sentence. Be polite and you've got two, one essentially meaningless. And this is OK. Let is go... :P
I can't wait to see Mrs. Hirayoshi and tell her about Mayumi and how much I like Miso soup now and that I can finally read about 95% of the Kana and even a few very useful Kanji and I'm putting together real original sentences and it's seeming less impossible with every minute.
And a special thanks to Finnish for proving that one can draw blood from a stone - even a seemingly impenetrable language begins to give up it's secrets. That's about where I am with Finnish - oh, it's still foreign, oh I can't read anything... maybe with pictures too I get a main idea... but it's no longer impossible. I see eye to eye with it and I could take it if I had the time and desire both. If I can get to that point with Japanese, I'll be thrilled. And I've just taken a significant step in that direction.
September 06, 2008
One Last Library Rant and some Random Stuff About Japanese Roommates
Went back to the library today to check out the Finnish and Synesthesia books. The Finno-Ugric language section blew me away. I'll be honest - I was expecting a display half the size of the Scandinavian one. Instead, it was easily twice as large. For a few minutes, I'll admit, I kept my hand on it as if I was touching earth, I almost couldn't bear to take my hand away and not touch them, afraid they would stop being real. They even had a few very, very poor books (by poor I mean very small and falling apart) on Sami. One was a sort of dictionary arranged in some non-alphabetical way that translated Finnish into four dialects of Sami. One would have to be really desperate to work with that.
But the Finnish books were much nicer. I picked a big huge volume, fully half the size of my Unabridged English Dictionary back home. It barely fit in my backpack. It's called a Basic Course in Finnish, but it's absolutely humongous. I giggled a bit to see that I could flip to the end of the book and still get the main idea of many of the readings. That's what even the tiniest slice of immersion does to language acquisition, I suppose. Still, I can learn A LOT from it, I can already tell.
Another surprise - I went looking for books on Sami culture and I found a big section and, here's the kicker, on the way through the eastern stacks I realized that I was staring at a whole block of encyclopedias in Scandinavian languages. ENCYCLOPEDIAS! That's the most glorious thing, which I haven't even begun to tap yet... the fact that here the books in foreign language extend far out of the foreign language section and into the main stacks! Oh, the awaiting fun! :D
And it occurs to me that the tight fear I've lived with for a while, that I would run out of materials, that I had to ration myself... all of that is over now. I no longer need to grasp at fragments, at anything. A few years ago I would carefully fold and save a candy wrapper if it listed the instructions in anything less common than Spanish. Of course in todays world it was always a little silly, because there's so much content available online in different languages, but there was something oddly respectful... almost venerating about it... a sort of waste not, want not attitude, that even this wrapping paper had worth... I could use it to learn perhaps two or three new words... like corn syrup or hazelnut.
It would be lovely if I could keep this sense of desperation, as ludicrous as it is now and has ever been, and apply it to the almost guilty excess suddenly available to me. I would tear through that library like no one has before. :D I seriously feel my mouth water a bit just thinking about it. I'm such a lazy little child polyglot, though... if I had more discipline I wouldn't even be taking the time to sit here and salivate and fantasize about it, I would be eating the books right now.
Unfortunately my brain does have it's limits and I spent 3 hours in class today, 4 hours studying stuff from class, 1 hour learning Arabic letters, 30 minutes smashing my head against the Faroese pronunciation guide, and 20 minutes chatting in Swedish-Norwegian. And at the Arabic lesson today Ashley seemed to have some sort of emotional bond with every letter... she couldn't let us move on without saying it again and again and cuddling it in her mouth like it was something precious or something sweet or occasionally (take Ain) something deliciously dirty. Given my reading material lately I almost felt like she had some sort of personality synestesia about the whole thing. Mah interdisciplinary erosion!!! But soon to bed, soon to bed. ^^ I am happy now and it's almost too much, it's too good for me and makes me feel a bit desperate. Let's be honest, I can't have all of them, ah, life is so finite...
Enough with that. Not that again. XD
In other news I love the Japanese roommates and how they constantly feel like they have to apologize and not only that but they are always asking me for help translating these bizarre apology phrases. Such as the traditional Japanese thing to say when, for example, you are at a friends house and the friend's husband or wife comes home and you say something bizarre to him/her like "I am sorry and grateful for intruding".
And I'm still trying to help them figure out the difference between a tan and a sunburn. I thought I made it clear but they keep arguing that both are bad for you, which is true but it's about the connotation and denotation damnit! :P
Funny Mispronunciations: Room - Loom, Rice - Lice.
I have too much imagination, see, I keep imagining Mayumi and I sharing a loom or they all eating lice out of each other's hair when they say the obvious things. :P There are a few others too... it's the kind of thing you can never think of when you want to but every time you hear it you giggle again. ;)
I totally <3 living with foreigners. And books. So far other than feeling slightly like a loser for really, truly, madly, and deeply not giving a shit about parties/drinking, I'm loving University.
P.S. - It was a strange feeling to find that they had an entire WALL in the library devoted to books about poultry. There was one huge shelf easily the size of the Scandinavian and Finno-Ugric shelves combined, perhaps even as much as 50% bigger, devoted to a series called "Poultry Science". And there were more "Poultry Nutrition" books than Icelandic, Faroese, Old Icelandic, and Old Norse combined.
It's none of my business, of course, why should I begrudge the poor student who is obsessed with feeding chickens as I am with languages his jollies? I shouldn't, of course, that's the easy answer, and of course agricultural science and stuff are actually majors here unlike all but the most famous of European languages, so they really have more of a right to be on the shelves, but it's also at once hilarious and a bit sad. :P
But the Finnish books were much nicer. I picked a big huge volume, fully half the size of my Unabridged English Dictionary back home. It barely fit in my backpack. It's called a Basic Course in Finnish, but it's absolutely humongous. I giggled a bit to see that I could flip to the end of the book and still get the main idea of many of the readings. That's what even the tiniest slice of immersion does to language acquisition, I suppose. Still, I can learn A LOT from it, I can already tell.
Another surprise - I went looking for books on Sami culture and I found a big section and, here's the kicker, on the way through the eastern stacks I realized that I was staring at a whole block of encyclopedias in Scandinavian languages. ENCYCLOPEDIAS! That's the most glorious thing, which I haven't even begun to tap yet... the fact that here the books in foreign language extend far out of the foreign language section and into the main stacks! Oh, the awaiting fun! :D
And it occurs to me that the tight fear I've lived with for a while, that I would run out of materials, that I had to ration myself... all of that is over now. I no longer need to grasp at fragments, at anything. A few years ago I would carefully fold and save a candy wrapper if it listed the instructions in anything less common than Spanish. Of course in todays world it was always a little silly, because there's so much content available online in different languages, but there was something oddly respectful... almost venerating about it... a sort of waste not, want not attitude, that even this wrapping paper had worth... I could use it to learn perhaps two or three new words... like corn syrup or hazelnut.
It would be lovely if I could keep this sense of desperation, as ludicrous as it is now and has ever been, and apply it to the almost guilty excess suddenly available to me. I would tear through that library like no one has before. :D I seriously feel my mouth water a bit just thinking about it. I'm such a lazy little child polyglot, though... if I had more discipline I wouldn't even be taking the time to sit here and salivate and fantasize about it, I would be eating the books right now.
Unfortunately my brain does have it's limits and I spent 3 hours in class today, 4 hours studying stuff from class, 1 hour learning Arabic letters, 30 minutes smashing my head against the Faroese pronunciation guide, and 20 minutes chatting in Swedish-Norwegian. And at the Arabic lesson today Ashley seemed to have some sort of emotional bond with every letter... she couldn't let us move on without saying it again and again and cuddling it in her mouth like it was something precious or something sweet or occasionally (take Ain) something deliciously dirty. Given my reading material lately I almost felt like she had some sort of personality synestesia about the whole thing. Mah interdisciplinary erosion!!! But soon to bed, soon to bed. ^^ I am happy now and it's almost too much, it's too good for me and makes me feel a bit desperate. Let's be honest, I can't have all of them, ah, life is so finite...
Enough with that. Not that again. XD
In other news I love the Japanese roommates and how they constantly feel like they have to apologize and not only that but they are always asking me for help translating these bizarre apology phrases. Such as the traditional Japanese thing to say when, for example, you are at a friends house and the friend's husband or wife comes home and you say something bizarre to him/her like "I am sorry and grateful for intruding".
And I'm still trying to help them figure out the difference between a tan and a sunburn. I thought I made it clear but they keep arguing that both are bad for you, which is true but it's about the connotation and denotation damnit! :P
Funny Mispronunciations: Room - Loom, Rice - Lice.
I have too much imagination, see, I keep imagining Mayumi and I sharing a loom or they all eating lice out of each other's hair when they say the obvious things. :P There are a few others too... it's the kind of thing you can never think of when you want to but every time you hear it you giggle again. ;)
I totally <3 living with foreigners. And books. So far other than feeling slightly like a loser for really, truly, madly, and deeply not giving a shit about parties/drinking, I'm loving University.
P.S. - It was a strange feeling to find that they had an entire WALL in the library devoted to books about poultry. There was one huge shelf easily the size of the Scandinavian and Finno-Ugric shelves combined, perhaps even as much as 50% bigger, devoted to a series called "Poultry Science". And there were more "Poultry Nutrition" books than Icelandic, Faroese, Old Icelandic, and Old Norse combined.
It's none of my business, of course, why should I begrudge the poor student who is obsessed with feeding chickens as I am with languages his jollies? I shouldn't, of course, that's the easy answer, and of course agricultural science and stuff are actually majors here unlike all but the most famous of European languages, so they really have more of a right to be on the shelves, but it's also at once hilarious and a bit sad. :P
April 19, 2008
Happy Finnish
Since I might go to Finland in time for Ruisrock, I looked up the bands that will be performing then and have listened to a bit of their music on youtube. Not surprisingly, much of it is in Finnish. :)
Comments on youtube, as always, are amusing. First a myriad of arguments as to whether Finland is in Scandinavia...
And I'm sorry, I just can't help but laugh at this one. :D
Comments on youtube, as always, are amusing. First a myriad of arguments as to whether Finland is in Scandinavia...
assssssskicker (3 months ago) Show Hide
+1 
Marked as spam Reply | Spam
Why would the Finns want anything to do with you guys, i travelled through 'SCANDANAVIA' and the only good thing in Denmark was the hot dogs in copenhagen airport, i was bored to tears, oslo weren't much better things picked up in stockholm (good night life) and the party really started in Helsinki, Made some great friends and stayed a while, so overall you can shove Your boring Scandanavian moaning denmark up your arse SIDEWAYS.
During the world war II (that big one)there were only two european capital cities (being country at war), which were not occupied by foreign nation. And those were LONDON in England and HELSINKI in Finland. And by the way Finland has the best scooling system in the world (Pisa survey 2006). You should go there and have some knowledge.
Yours sincerelly
And even,
Yours sincerelly
And even,
Where can i listen to Finish Language?
... Right here, maybe? :P Finnish is seriously fun, especially with the music. It's got that same sort of simple syllable structure that Japanese has, that makes it sound light and happy... but it's somehow has this springy sound to it too. And then the rolled r's really set it apart. :D I heart them.
... Right here, maybe? :P Finnish is seriously fun, especially with the music. It's got that same sort of simple syllable structure that Japanese has, that makes it sound light and happy... but it's somehow has this springy sound to it too. And then the rolled r's really set it apart. :D I heart them.
And I'm sorry, I just can't help but laugh at this one. :D
November 12, 2007
Modal Verbiage
When it came to the partitive in Finnish (with it's little detour into Italian), I was less than pleased with the native's explanatory attempts and less so with that of the textbook. Eventually, I went online and printed out every long, lengthy, overdone explanation of the idea until finally it made sense in my head.
There's a certain level in my mind where I need to make things make sense. I'm finally getting to a level in some of my pursuits where, not only do I sometimes need to have something explained more fully to reach that level, I sometimes need to sit down, concentrate, and make a strong mental effort to get my mind around it.
Oddly enough, I always thought that was just a weird way to speak of learning... never really understood it. I knew that it sometimes happened to less intelligent people with easier things, and pitied them. I knew it sometimes happened to super-geniuses with their original theories, and respected them. But I didn't realize it would actually happen to me before I was out of high school. :P
It happened in Spanish the other day with the future uses of the Subjunctive, for example. "Voy a decirte, tan pronto como ella venga." It means, "I'm going to tell you, as soon as she comes." The subjunctive is, loosely, used to demonstrate subjectivity. So in my mind scheme, the first part would be subjective, since it depends on the second.
But no, it's the second part which is in subjunctive. Eh? I wish I could just memorize that and be done with it, but it doesn't make sense to me. Kiser says that of course 'I'm going to tell you", it's the condition, 'her coming', which is uncertain. You can't be sure it will happen, it's in the future.
But then how can Spanish express anything in the future without the subjunctive? Future could carry a certain amount of doubt along with it inherently, but why would this inherent room for possibility and change be implied in some usages, but not others? I would use it for everything or nothing, according to that line of thinking, but then, I didn't invent the language.
"Voy a decirte, tan pronto como ella venga."
So they should both be in subjunctive. Or neither one should be. But if you're going by degrees of subjectivity, a rather subjective matter in of itself, then I would still, incorrectly, choose to make the first part subjunctive and the second part indicative.
Even with all the hazy 'whys' of the subjunctive aside, even looking at this one isolated construction, I have to ask - How can something that depends on something 'subjective' be objective? If it depends on something that is uncertain, how can it be certain? How can the indicative rely upon the subjunctive?
I think I'll ask Altadonna about this tomorrow. For now I'm just speculating. For Spanish, fortunately, I have the luxury of asking my elders. :D Norwegian is another matter entirely.
Skulle. Bør. Burde.
Should. Should. Should.
Which one is which? At first I thought it was the only tangle in the mercifully similar to English modal system. I was wrong. It only opened the door, and wasn't itself resolved in the process! Books skirt the subject as if it were of no importance. Evan wouldn't give me a decent answer, and neither would Svein. Lene gave it her best shot, and I was content with her explanation for a while. Then, the more I thought about it, I couldn't think of any situation under her system in which I would be able to use Skulle. And, as Skulle is a word, there must therefore be a flaw in the system as I understood it.
So finally I found this way too linguistic and scholarly artical, online, about all the Norwegian modal verbs and their being "Epistemic vs. Non Epistemic, Quotative vs. Assertive vs. Probabilitive vs. Speculative, Partly Dynamic Deontic - Partly Epistemic, Dynamic vs. Deontic, Compulsative vs. Colitive vs. Intentive vs. Abilitive, Necessitive vs. Appropriative vs. Possibilitive, and Directive vs. Hortative vs. Permissive"
Yeah, it makes me want to die inside. But it actually goes fairly slowly, actually provides enough information to crack it's own code. And I firmly believe that if I give it a little time, go at it with a clear, unhurried mind, throw at it all of my pitiful self taught linguistic background and knowledge of Latin roots, and try to use my common sense, I will come out of it understanding Skulle, Bør, Burde, and the rest, and even learn some useful new words in the process.
Forget memorizing dates, formulas, or vocabulary lists. THIS is learning.
There's a certain level in my mind where I need to make things make sense. I'm finally getting to a level in some of my pursuits where, not only do I sometimes need to have something explained more fully to reach that level, I sometimes need to sit down, concentrate, and make a strong mental effort to get my mind around it.
Oddly enough, I always thought that was just a weird way to speak of learning... never really understood it. I knew that it sometimes happened to less intelligent people with easier things, and pitied them. I knew it sometimes happened to super-geniuses with their original theories, and respected them. But I didn't realize it would actually happen to me before I was out of high school. :P
It happened in Spanish the other day with the future uses of the Subjunctive, for example. "Voy a decirte, tan pronto como ella venga." It means, "I'm going to tell you, as soon as she comes." The subjunctive is, loosely, used to demonstrate subjectivity. So in my mind scheme, the first part would be subjective, since it depends on the second.
But no, it's the second part which is in subjunctive. Eh? I wish I could just memorize that and be done with it, but it doesn't make sense to me. Kiser says that of course 'I'm going to tell you", it's the condition, 'her coming', which is uncertain. You can't be sure it will happen, it's in the future.
But then how can Spanish express anything in the future without the subjunctive? Future could carry a certain amount of doubt along with it inherently, but why would this inherent room for possibility and change be implied in some usages, but not others? I would use it for everything or nothing, according to that line of thinking, but then, I didn't invent the language.
"Voy a decirte, tan pronto como ella venga."
So they should both be in subjunctive. Or neither one should be. But if you're going by degrees of subjectivity, a rather subjective matter in of itself, then I would still, incorrectly, choose to make the first part subjunctive and the second part indicative.
Even with all the hazy 'whys' of the subjunctive aside, even looking at this one isolated construction, I have to ask - How can something that depends on something 'subjective' be objective? If it depends on something that is uncertain, how can it be certain? How can the indicative rely upon the subjunctive?
I think I'll ask Altadonna about this tomorrow. For now I'm just speculating. For Spanish, fortunately, I have the luxury of asking my elders. :D Norwegian is another matter entirely.
Skulle. Bør. Burde.
Should. Should. Should.
Which one is which? At first I thought it was the only tangle in the mercifully similar to English modal system. I was wrong. It only opened the door, and wasn't itself resolved in the process! Books skirt the subject as if it were of no importance. Evan wouldn't give me a decent answer, and neither would Svein. Lene gave it her best shot, and I was content with her explanation for a while. Then, the more I thought about it, I couldn't think of any situation under her system in which I would be able to use Skulle. And, as Skulle is a word, there must therefore be a flaw in the system as I understood it.
So finally I found this way too linguistic and scholarly artical, online, about all the Norwegian modal verbs and their being "Epistemic vs. Non Epistemic, Quotative vs. Assertive vs. Probabilitive vs. Speculative, Partly Dynamic Deontic - Partly Epistemic, Dynamic vs. Deontic, Compulsative vs. Colitive vs. Intentive vs. Abilitive, Necessitive vs. Appropriative vs. Possibilitive, and Directive vs. Hortative vs. Permissive"
Yeah, it makes me want to die inside. But it actually goes fairly slowly, actually provides enough information to crack it's own code. And I firmly believe that if I give it a little time, go at it with a clear, unhurried mind, throw at it all of my pitiful self taught linguistic background and knowledge of Latin roots, and try to use my common sense, I will come out of it understanding Skulle, Bør, Burde, and the rest, and even learn some useful new words in the process.
Forget memorizing dates, formulas, or vocabulary lists. THIS is learning.
July 29, 2007
Summer is Ending
I was just on Stephanie's lovely blog, and it rehashed all the things we'd said during our walk in Queenie on Friday. Summer's Ending... And it's going to leave us as Seniors. And when the year that is now beginning ends - and it surely will - it will leave us as adults. Gone are the days when I could fall into a period of my life and trust it to hold for a while, as I settled in. Even the phases of my life may be going to fast.
When the last summer of childhood ends, where does that leave you?
* No more family camping trips
* No more long, long mosquito nights
* No more hopeless summer goals
* No more promises that vanish in the heat
* No more Harry Potter
* No more Pirates of the Caribbean
Then again, this summer has hardly been a summer. I've worked... changed diapers and shelved books and baked brownies in exchange for green slips of paper that smell like a thousand human hands. I've studied... Latin at Starbucks, early in the morning, Finnish at the pool, in a moldy, shady corner, Chinese at night, struggling to twist my mind around tones.
It's not as if there haven't been benefits - I'm 2,000 dollars the richer, have brushed up on the Latin basics, learned to make a few funny sounds, and gotten a head start for Finnish, after all - but I'm not ready for summer to end.
I haven't yet cleared the slate for the new year. Haven't cleaned my room until it shines, haven't done every last scrap of laundry, haven't forgotten everything intellectual and replaced it with sludge, haven't rp-ed, haven't gotten so lazy I sleep in til noon each day, haven't descended to the level of watching the TV, haven't started getting curious about new teachers and courses, haven't purchased school supplies and laid them out in a tidy little row, haven't started an epic length novel I'll never finish, haven't worked on a leisure reading book list...
NOTHING!
Two weeks from tomorrow lies in shadows, the beginning of a year of school that still seems far away. And beyond that... darkness.
I'm eager in a way, but I want these things to take their own good time. I'm not ready, not really, I haven't done everything I wanted to...
Been so busy looking forward that I failed to exhaust present potentials...
And now, for the first time in my life, something is ending.
When the last summer of childhood ends, where does that leave you?
* No more family camping trips
* No more long, long mosquito nights
* No more hopeless summer goals
* No more promises that vanish in the heat
* No more Harry Potter
* No more Pirates of the Caribbean
Then again, this summer has hardly been a summer. I've worked... changed diapers and shelved books and baked brownies in exchange for green slips of paper that smell like a thousand human hands. I've studied... Latin at Starbucks, early in the morning, Finnish at the pool, in a moldy, shady corner, Chinese at night, struggling to twist my mind around tones.
It's not as if there haven't been benefits - I'm 2,000 dollars the richer, have brushed up on the Latin basics, learned to make a few funny sounds, and gotten a head start for Finnish, after all - but I'm not ready for summer to end.
I haven't yet cleared the slate for the new year. Haven't cleaned my room until it shines, haven't done every last scrap of laundry, haven't forgotten everything intellectual and replaced it with sludge, haven't rp-ed, haven't gotten so lazy I sleep in til noon each day, haven't descended to the level of watching the TV, haven't started getting curious about new teachers and courses, haven't purchased school supplies and laid them out in a tidy little row, haven't started an epic length novel I'll never finish, haven't worked on a leisure reading book list...
NOTHING!
Two weeks from tomorrow lies in shadows, the beginning of a year of school that still seems far away. And beyond that... darkness.
I'm eager in a way, but I want these things to take their own good time. I'm not ready, not really, I haven't done everything I wanted to...
Been so busy looking forward that I failed to exhaust present potentials...
And now, for the first time in my life, something is ending.
July 13, 2007
Finnish Translation...
http://www.turunsanomat.fi/kulttuuri/?ts=1,3:1005:0:0,4:5:0:1:2007-07-13,104:5:472002,1:0:0:0:0:0:
Wow, I feel cool to be able to read this. Sort of. When a pencil, and a pen, and a highlighter, and a dictionary, and google image search, and some guess work. Still, It's exciting...
* - Very bad translation
____ - I have no bloody idea what this says
Other things are probably wrong, too.
Harry Potterin täytyy menettää läheisiään. Vain sitä kautta hänen on mahdollista kasvaa. Mielestäni on hienoa, että kovia kokenut ja useita läheisiään menettänyt hahmo pystyy pysymään voimakastahtoisena. Juuri sen takia Harry Potter onkin hyvä roolimalli, analysoi Harry Potter ja Feeniksin kilta -elokuvassa näyttelevä Katie Leung, 19.
Harry Potter must lose *intimates*. Only through this is growth possible. It seems to me beautiful, that having experienced so much and lost so many *intimates*, the character is able to endure intense ______. Just because of it, Harry Potter is also a good Role Model, analyzes Katie Leung, 19, actress is the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Wow, I feel cool to be able to read this. Sort of. When a pencil, and a pen, and a highlighter, and a dictionary, and google image search, and some guess work. Still, It's exciting...
* - Very bad translation
____ - I have no bloody idea what this says
Other things are probably wrong, too.
Harry Potterin täytyy menettää läheisiään. Vain sitä kautta hänen on mahdollista kasvaa. Mielestäni on hienoa, että kovia kokenut ja useita läheisiään menettänyt hahmo pystyy pysymään voimakastahtoisena. Juuri sen takia Harry Potter onkin hyvä roolimalli, analysoi Harry Potter ja Feeniksin kilta -elokuvassa näyttelevä Katie Leung, 19.
Harry Potter must lose *intimates*. Only through this is growth possible. It seems to me beautiful, that having experienced so much and lost so many *intimates*, the character is able to endure intense ______. Just because of it, Harry Potter is also a good Role Model, analyzes Katie Leung, 19, actress is the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
July 12, 2007
Lack of Posts...
Not many posts lately, I know... But I've been working days up to 14 hours, and when I haven't been working I've been:
A.) Asleep
B.) Eating
C.) Studying Finnish
or
D.) Emailing Liisa
A.) Asleep
B.) Eating
C.) Studying Finnish
or
D.) Emailing Liisa
July 11, 2007
June 01, 2007
May 31, 2007
May 29, 2007
Puhun Kirjakieltä...
That means, "I talk like a book". In Finnish.
Finnish studies are going well, all things considered. Now that it is summer I really want to advance! :D I've been switching off between hard grammar (consonant gradation, vowel harmony, etc), and vocabulary learning, and I think it's going pretty well.
I still find the large differences between the spoken and written language to be daunting, however, especially as all the books teach 'their own' language. :P So I can either order special 'spoken language' books, or a slang dictionary, or I can just force it out of Liisa. :P
We'll have to see. For now, Puhun Kirjakieltä...
P.S. - First original sentence! * Ymmärrän kun puhut hitaasti *
This should mean, I understand when you talk slowly. Who knows. :P
Finnish studies are going well, all things considered. Now that it is summer I really want to advance! :D I've been switching off between hard grammar (consonant gradation, vowel harmony, etc), and vocabulary learning, and I think it's going pretty well.
I still find the large differences between the spoken and written language to be daunting, however, especially as all the books teach 'their own' language. :P So I can either order special 'spoken language' books, or a slang dictionary, or I can just force it out of Liisa. :P
We'll have to see. For now, Puhun Kirjakieltä...
P.S. - First original sentence! * Ymmärrän kun puhut hitaasti *
This should mean, I understand when you talk slowly. Who knows. :P
May 11, 2007
April 27, 2007
Oikkuni
Just a few words a day, almost a secret. I cling to them and count them over and over. It is almost like a collection. Piece by piece, it is quite manageable.
My Finnish words, my little secret. A few a day. I hold them in my hand like marbles, smooth and perfect globes of polished glass. They don't come as easily as Italian or Norwegian and so they are more precious.
Each one has a story that grows in my mind to make me remember, and when a word becomes mine I am proud of it but can show it to no one, only smile in the dark of the night and whisper...
(Talvi - Winter)
(Rannikko - Coast)
(Loska - Slush)
(Sisko - Sister)
(Rakennus - Building)
(Aamu - Morning)
(Aika - Time)
(Ranne - Wrist)
(Sumu - Fog)
(Oikku - Strange Habit)
(Tuuli - Wind)
(Sorsa - Wild Duck) ....
The coast on a winter morning, filled with wind and fog.... The words arrange themselves again and again into stories and pieces of lives, as always...
I cannot claim to eat poetry or to romp with joy in the bookish dark. This is my Oikku... I collect words.
My Finnish words, my little secret. A few a day. I hold them in my hand like marbles, smooth and perfect globes of polished glass. They don't come as easily as Italian or Norwegian and so they are more precious.
Each one has a story that grows in my mind to make me remember, and when a word becomes mine I am proud of it but can show it to no one, only smile in the dark of the night and whisper...
(Talvi - Winter)
(Rannikko - Coast)
(Loska - Slush)
(Sisko - Sister)
(Rakennus - Building)
(Aamu - Morning)
(Aika - Time)
(Ranne - Wrist)
(Sumu - Fog)
(Oikku - Strange Habit)
(Tuuli - Wind)
(Sorsa - Wild Duck) ....
The coast on a winter morning, filled with wind and fog.... The words arrange themselves again and again into stories and pieces of lives, as always...
I cannot claim to eat poetry or to romp with joy in the bookish dark. This is my Oikku... I collect words.
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