(no subject)

[floranna]

I am bored and feeling like wanting to share something about myself, without knowing exactly what. So, please ask me anything in this entry, no matter how personal, philosophical, mundane or private and I shall answer it.

Please ask.

Comments

[lady529.livejournal.com]

X D X D I don't think anyone ever really stops learning their own language. And especially not when it's Finnish.

I'll wager your Swedish is still loads better than my puny attempts at Finnish. There aren't that many situations in life where knowing 'ei saa peittää' is crucial X D I am trying to learn a tiny bit though, because I already speak Swedish and Danish, and I'm working on Russian, and I understand Icelandic, so that sort of just leaves Finnish as a neighbouring language that I don't speak at all. Other than telling people to not cover things. And saying please. I think you told me how to say please in Finnish (ole kiltti), actually. Would be nice to be able to learn a tiny bit.

The Lady 529

[floranna.livejournal.com]

My swedish skills are basically: Jag hatar svenska. Ja är tjugoett år gammal. And that's it. I can't even mangle myself through one conversation. ^^'

[lady529.livejournal.com]

X D

That is officially the best set of Swedish skills ever X D

So you in Swedish and me in Finnish = weirdest vocabulary ever. Oh, oh, I remember one more word, but I may not get the spelling right: sähkölämittimen! Like it helps..

The Lady 529

[floranna.livejournal.com]

Actually it's sähkölämmittimen. XDD

[lady529.livejournal.com]

Aargh, missed a double m! X D I saw it some 15 years ago on one of those Nordic languages instruction leaflets (guess what for), and it's the only thing I remember from the Finnish part. Sähkölämmittimen. Sähkölämmittimen.

New favourite word <3

The Lady 529

[floranna.livejournal.com]

Do you know what it means? Electric heater's.

Yes, as in genetive. =D

[lady529.livejournal.com]

I hoped it meant electric heater, I was very much unaware of the genitive X D Why would the title for a product have a genitive? It was just that, no other words before it or after it or anything..

What is electric heater without the genitive?

The Lady 529

[floranna.livejournal.com]

Sähkölämmitin.

As a part of sentence like: Sähkölämmittimen akku on... ("Electric heater's battery is...") It makes sense, but if it was a lone word... I dunno. SHould have to see it. ^^'

[lady529.livejournal.com]

Ah, Sähkölämmitin. Get it. Next time I decide to post-it everything (I do this sometimes for fun. Yes I am a social oddity) I will tag the first electric heater I see with Sähkölämmitin.

Yeah, I really thought it was a nominative, because in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian it just said 'Panelovn/Panelugn' (Electric heater) where the Finnish said Sähkölämmittimen. I'm thinking whoever did that thing were not Finnish, and used whatever they used before Google Translate came to be..

Question: Am I right in thinking Finnish has no articles? I know Russian has no articles, but some people think Norwegian has no definite article because it becomes part of the word (ei åme - åma/åmen = a caterpillar - the caterpillar), and I know Finnish do that thing where it all becomes one word..

The Lady 529

Edited because there's no such language as 'Russiah'

[floranna.livejournal.com]

No, we have no articles. And now we have separate words like at, in and so on, and they are generally put at the end of the word. Here is more of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_grammar

[lady529.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I wasn't wrong when I thought both 'dog' and 'the dog' was koira (I keep remembering more and more random Finnish words tonight!), like how both are собака in Russian : )

And I am now probably going to be reading that page all night <3 I have an unnatural fascination for grammatical systems. There's a reason I was the only German student in any of my six German classes who actually liked German grammar. German grammar's a walk in the park though, Finnish has five locatives and all that part as well. At least I know what a locative is even though we don't have it anymore..

The Lady 529

[floranna.livejournal.com]

And this is what I always find funny:

istua "to sit down" (istun "I sit down")
istahtaa "to sit down for a while"
istahdan "I'll sit down for a while"
istahtaisin "I would sit down for a while"
istahtaisinko "should I sit down for a while?"
istahtaisinkohan "I wonder if I should sit down for a while"

[lady529.livejournal.com]

Yes! This is probably my favourite thing about how the Finnish language works! : D Put something else in, and it changes the whole word, plus one word with loads of things put into it equals a whole sentence in pretty much every single other language. Brilliant <3

Is the 'ko' bit by any chance related to it being a question rather than a statement?

The Lady 529

[floranna.livejournal.com]

And this:
hypätä "to jump", hyppiä "to be jumping", hypeksiä "to be jumping wantonly", hypäyttää "to make someone jump once", hyppyyttää "to make someone jump repeatedly" (or "to boss someone around"), hyppyytyttää "to make someone to cause a third person to jump repeatedly", hyppyytellä "to, without aim, make someone jump repeatedly", hypähtää "to jump suddenly" (in anticausative meaning), hypellä "to jump around repeatedly", hypiskellä "to be jumping repeatedly and wantonly", hyppimättä "without jumping", hyppelemättä "without jumping around".

[lady529.livejournal.com]

Right, new favourite word here: hyppyytellä. Hypiskellä is also brilliant. I am going to end up actually trying to learn this stuff, just because I think it's absolutely fascinating.

We only do that thing where we put it all together with nouns and some adjectives. I sort of understand a little bit of how it works in Finnish, but yeah. Massive difference between our 'overdampskipsmotorreimmekanismeoljereparasjonsproblemløysar' (means 'Over steam boat motor strap mechanism oil reparational problem solver' and is entirely grammatically correct. It's also not the longest one we have) and your 'juoksentelisinkohan'. Yours are all complete sentences, ours are only nouns. Basically like in German when nouns do that. I think we used to have a bit more of it ages ago though, but that left when the locative and dative and all that left. Remnants here and there in some spoken dialects, but that's it.

The Lady 529