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| "Tervetuloa to Rome." |
My youngest brother and I skype just about every weekend. Of all the people that I left behind when I moved to Finland, he's definitely among those I miss most. I often find myself wishing on Sunday mornings that he and I could hang around Mom's place in our pajamas, drinking coffee and lavishing attention on Riley.
Every once in a while, I'll teach him a word or two of Finnish. You know which word (American) English speakers have a hell of a time pronouncing if they're unfamiliar with it? "Tervetuloa." The tendency seems to be to place the stress on the penultimate syllable as if it were Italian. It can take a few listenings before one is able to wrap his or her mouth around it properly. After a few tries, though, my brother was pronouncing "tervetuloa" quite well.
When we talked last Saturday, he said he had mentioned "tervetuloa" to a friend of his who works as a translator in New York. Reportedly, this guy is fluent in Russian, Mandarin, Arabic, as well as several other languages. Talk about your kielipää.
Anyway, apparently his take on Finnish was this: "Oh, I hate it. It makes no sense!"
Well, I had a few feelings upon hearing this. The first and most visceral was pride. I'm learning this language. I'm enjoying it. I love it, even. The second was a desire to defend Finnish, since it's actually quite a logical language. It's just that its logic is usually unfamiliar terrain for anyone other than Estonians, Sami people, etc.
I mention it since many of you are also in the process of learning Finnish. If a true polyglot finds this language impenetrable, then you ought to feel some amount of pride in what you've managed to learn. His opinion is, of course, sure to be subjective, and I think that there must be plenty of people in his line of work who absolutely love Finnish. Still, it's sort of a pat on the back, isn't it?
I'm certainly going to take that as a pat on the back! ;)
ReplyDeleteI've heard a lot of people who do really well at other languages make similar comments. I think the issue with Finnish is, as you say, that it's just so unfamiliar - every single word must be memorized from scratch - whereas English, Swedish, French, Italian etc. at least feel a bit similar (and even share words that are almost the same). You're right, though, that it is a lot more logical than people first realize. There are rules. There are just an awful lot of rules :)
There are rules for just about everything, which is nice in one sense and maddening in another. You usually have the means to figure out what's correct, but there's a seemingly impossible amount of info to keep in your head.
DeleteThat said, I'm sure it'll one day be automatic. Or, at least, that's what I choose to believe!
Ah...I can understand your defense stance upon hearing that comment. It's really interesting that he said that considering how crazy Mandarin, Russian, and Arabic can be with the non-Latin alphabets and pronunciation. I'd have assumed that he'd thought that Finnish was more logical 'coz after all, at least the writing and pronunciation are simpler than those three languages. Oh well...I agree, though, let's just consider it a pat on the back instead ha ha...
ReplyDeleteThat was what surprised me about his reaction to Finnish; he speaks a wealth of different kinds of languages, many of which are completely unrelated and have different alphabets and the like, and yet he STILL finds Finnish too difficult to bother with. Again, I'm sure it has a lot to do with his personal interests, but it definitely made me feel a bit proud to have come even as far as I have with it. :)
DeleteI am with you on this. I am fluent in English, French and German and can get by in Dutch and Spanish, but my progress in Finnish has been ridiculously slow. No doubt my ageing grey cells have something to do with it, but my slow progress is also because Finnish is quite different from the other languages I know. There's a real logic to Finnish, but as Spock might say, "it's logic, but not as we know it".
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am really enjoying learning Finnish, even if I am still pretty inept at it!
Tervetolua bolognese to you all! ;-)
Try pronouncing it "tervetuLOa." It always gives me a laugh!
DeleteIt always gives me a chuckle, too, when people ask me if I've "picked up" Finnish yet, as if I must already know it by way of osmosis.
If I recall correctly, I read from your blog that you have a tutor. How often do you study? I'm sure part of the problem is also that you don't have 5 or 6 hours out of every day in which to learn Finnish!
The important difference with regard to the other languages you listed is that Finnish isn't a useful language or even a particularly cool one. The only things that would make Finnish cool are 1) the person being some sort of slightly out there hardcore fan of something related (Finnish bands, Lord of the Rings, etc.) and 2) it's fairly obscure and considered difficult.
ReplyDeleteThat only brings in the fringe groups, not the mainstream.
Anyway, do you think the boundaries of word meanings are shifted more in Finnish when comparing you native language to other foreign languages? Or am I imagining things perceiving there often being almost a 45 degree shift?
Yeah, Finnish certainly isn't widely spoken, and even those who do speak it often have a good command of English. In that sense, no, it's probably not a high priority for him to learn it. But what struck me was his apparent disdain for Finnish, as if he had a passing familiarity with it and had decided it was an awful language.
DeletePersonally, I think Finnish is very cool, but I certainly have more reason to learn it than simply being interested in it. Also, my interest in it is no doubt partly a result of living here and having some tangible connections to the language. Still, I love studying it.
I'm not sure I understand your question. If you're asking if I think specific English words don't always translate directly to their Finnish counterparts, the answer is yes. I usually find that Finnish has a lot of verbs that, in English, translate to the verb "to be" and then an adjective. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is the verb "iloita." Obviously, in English you have to use some form of the verb "to be" and then tack the adjective "happy" or "glad" on the end. It may seem like a small difference, but I think it changes the meaning a lot. Using "iloita" makes happiness more active: an act rather than a state of being. But, to be fair, I don't know if I'm qualified to comment on those nuances quite yet.
Sorry if that was an answer to a question you didn't ask!
You can translate "iloita" as rejoice.
DeleteI don't think I expressed myself clearly enough. If you think of certain words in English and in French, for example, they are for the most part equal in meaning and what ever is left over that isn't covered can be seen as to "spill over" to be covered by another word. It is as if the meanings were slightly shifted or rotated versions of each other.
With English and Finnish, I find the effect more pronounced. I can't think of an example just now, but I feel as if I have sometimes stumbled on words that translate to different words depending on context, even though the sort of underlying meaning is shared between the languages and doesn't even change between the contexts. It seems as though half of the main usage of a word is translated as one word and the other half as another and I'm not talking about conventions or avoiding clumsy language, but a situation where it would simply be wrong to use the other word.
Come to think of it, "iloita" and rejoice might just be such a pair. Technically, they mean exactly the same thing. Yet, I can't see myself using rejoice in all cases where iloita is appropriate. Is the English version just too lofty or is it also something else?
Then again using rejoice with an object translates to something else entirely.
Do you see this or is it just me?
Funny, I started to write about "rejoice" but stopped for fear of going off on a tangent. In retrospect, that was dumb, because you're right, they do share a dictionary definition.
Delete"Rejoice," however, comes with a ton of connotations not necessarily reflected in its definition that make it sort of unusable in an everyday context. As you suspected, it is quite lofty and formal (perhaps even a little archaic), and it is most commonly used in a biblical context. As a result, it has come to mean something more than mere "gladness" or "happiness." There is something revelatory and godly about "rejoicing." The word "rejoice" is often paired with the word "glad" in English versions of the Bible ("Rejoice and be exceedingly glad," etc.), which I think was a way in which to augment the sort of mundanity of "gladness." And I can't really imagine saying, for example, "I rejoiced when I heard the news," or "I'm rejoicing in my move to Finland." I doubt I'd (personally) even use it in poetry.
Given my own interpretation of the word, I think it is an example of what you're suggesting. My understanding of "iloita" is that it's a bit more formal than "olla iloinen," but that it's still viable for everyday usage?
Come to think of it, I have noticed this more with Finnish than when I was studying French and German, but I have gotten quite a bit further with Finnish than either of those two languages. Is "osata"/"tietää"/"tuntea" vs. "to know" another example of what you mean? Their dictionary definitions are slightly different, and yet they do overlap. You can say, "I know it," "I know him," and "I know (how to speak) Finnish." Yet if you want to accurately translate those examples into Finnish, you would say, "Tiedän sen," "Tunnen hänet," and "Osaan (puhua) suomea."
Yup. Iloita is more formal. How about "gladden"? I mean, it's archaic but other than that?
DeleteOsata/tietää/tuntea might be another example, although I'm not sure it works in the other direction. Is tietää used in such a way that "know" does not apply? "Tämä tietää sotaa"? I was sort of trying to describe a fairly symmetric match-mismatch situation where the translation fails equally in both directions but both words share the same basic meaning. I'm sure it is easier to find words that are simply supersets or subsets of each other.
Maybe tuntea and "feel"? There's "tuntea"="know" and "I feel that"="mielestäni". Nah, that doesn't work. Maybe we shouldn't be thinking of verbs, but I still can't think of anything.
BTW, you can say "tiedän hänet/hänestä" to mean "know of him".
Ha, I hadn't thought of "gladden." It is archaic, but I definitely think the meaning is closer to the spirit of "iloita."
DeleteYeah, I'm having trouble coming up with words where that sort of symmetrical translation failure exists.
Something that comes to mind (and still confuses me) is the difference between "tölkki" and "purkki," and I think my trouble with it stems from neither word translating neatly to English. There are some things which I know to be definitively one or the other (for instance, a jar of some kind is probably a purkki whereas a can of beer is a tölkki). Yet what would you call a carton of milk? I've heard both "purkki" and "tölkki" used. To add to my confusion, they're both translated as "can" in the dictionaries I use.
In my class, we spent an assignment or two guessing which word to use in which context, so I take it they're not interchangeable. Still, it seems to me that a "can" might be either a "tölkki" or a "purkki," and the same goes for "carton," "container," etc.
I'm not sure if the failure here is exactly symmetrical, but I do think it goes in both directions. I could just be misunderstanding "tölkki" and "purkki," though.
I should have replied earlier, but as I was about to you had your umm.. distraction, so it didn't seem right burden you with this sort of thing. (To converse is to expect a conversation.) Then I sort of forgot.
DeleteI looked up the meanings and how people use the words purkki and tölkki (google, etc.). It would seem there is huge variation but that when you add it all up and squint, they essentially equal in meaning, which is also what the dictionary says.
That said, I consider purkki close to Swedish meaning of burk i.e. to me it is an inflexible vessel, a jar, with a lid. Tölkki, to me, means a vessel with flexible sides used mainly to store liquids.
So, I would say lasipurkki, peltipurkki but alumiinitölkki, pahvitölkki. I consider beers and milk* to be in tölkki and yoghurt, jam, beans and tuna in purkki. This would differ from the word tölkkiherneet some people like to use. I consider them to be in purkki even though one could consider the container essentially identical to a beer can. (You'll notice that as far as "my" logic goes, they're not: Beer cans have an opening, not something I would consider to be a lid, and a can of the peas is a lot sturdier vessel.)
*) I would use maitopurkki but either for a tin can (does one exist?) or one of those 2 dl plastic containers (think cans of yoghurt but taller) that they used to have in schools. Come to think of it, I might go with purkkimaito for that quite likely fictional tin can of milk, because there might be an actual difference in the milk itself. I think it would also more strongly stress the difference to the default form of "a milk" (as an item), which I would consider to be carton.
Then again I wonder if there are almost different words purkki. Some people use maitopurkki for a carton of milk. Could it be that they mean it as a sloppy, colloquial, everyday catch-all term? So that if they were to write it down in a not-completely-informal context they wouldn't use it?
Anyway, this is a good example of what I was getting at. The translations seem obvious and direct but the languages work by different logic, although I'm not sure there's any logic on the Finnish side in this case.
No problem. And "distraction" or no, it's certainly no burden.
DeleteThe flexible vs. inflexible +/- lid thing clarifies it. In English, the logic has more to do with the material of which a given container is made. Shape factors in somewhat, too, further confusing an effort to translate English to Finnish and vice versa. For instance a carton is typically cardboard, whereas a can is almost always cylindrical and made of metal. It seems like the Finnish logic is based largely around shape, contents, degree of flexibility, and a bit of subjective judgment. It's clear that neither language has terribly hard and fast rules on the subject, though. It seems like knowing which word to use in either language is just one of the privileges that native fluency affords.
As far as "purkki" being used also as a general word meaning "container," I can see that as well. Could it be that purkki is a "stronger" word than is "tölkki", so that when some vessel doesn't fit neatly into a category, "purkki" wins? I haven't seen it used in a way that would support this theory, but it might explain why some people use "purkki" unthinkingly in colloquial speech to mean "milk carton."
Thank you for the clarification. Sorry if I chose a boring example of "translation failure!" Actually, I'm surprised and interested to know just how weird and subjective these words are in both languages.
Please don't just simply accept my personal feelings on when to use which word. Ask around how others use those words. Especially those you have to live around. I would very much like to hear what you find.
DeleteI won't. You are, however, the only person to offer an explanation. I've asked several people, and they sometimes don't even know which is which in specific instances. I suppose when they're asked to think about it, it's hard for them to determine. I'll keep asking and observing, though, and report back if I discover anything interesting.
DeleteI simply thought about the words. To be fair to the others, I bastardised the scientific method: I thought about how I used the words (and "researched" the stuff I told you earlier) and found common the simplest denominators that sounded right. Based on that I generalized the rules and then tried to find counterexamples like tölkkiherne and maitopurkki and found those to sound a bit off to me.
DeleteMaybe they really don't see any difference.
Oh, carton is easy to understand, by the way. There's kartonki in Finnish (probably from kartong in Swedish, and definitely not to be confused with the colloquial kortonki) and looking at the etymology of the word carton... No-brainer.
Sometimes it's frustrating that with English there's centuries - hell, millennia - of etymology, history and cultural ties to be found for the words starting from the language itself as well as its close relatives all the way to Latin, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew (and probably Aramaic and so on) plus the newer influences thanks to all the exploration and conquering. With Finnish, you have a bunch of dialects some guy decided to invent a common spelling for in the 1600s and which pretty much only became meaningful in terms of written word in the 1800s and that has loan words from Swedish, Russian and German. I mean, there's no deeper, satisfying explanation to be found except with words that are derived from some other word.
Crap. I hope didn't ruin the language for you.
Yeah, I'm only really interested in learning languages with a rich etymology.
DeleteNo, nothing could ruin Finnish for me. I do love English for the depth of its etymology, and it was one of the things I wished I'd had a chance to study more in university (studying Middle English is good fun). However, as an English speaker, it's actually really cool to get to know a "purer" language that has been corrupted only insofar as Swedish, Russian, German, and (now) English have managed to insert some loan words. Finnish etymology, too, can affect declension, which sort of forces someone learning it as a foreign language to notice where words come from (at least which words are not natively Finnish, if you're doing the bare minimum of inquiry). It's therefore pretty satisfying to me in the sense that it's useful. The only complaint I have as far as Finnish etymology goes is that sometimes it's hard for me to remember vocabulary based on whatever a priori knowledge I might have -- because I don't have any. But, that's irrelevant, and I have ways of getting around it.
At least Agricola managed to get people uniformly to accept his standard. The reason I and my fellow countrymen spell everything wrong is because of some guy from my native Connecticut really liked the letter "Z" and hated the letter "U."
I think the people I asked about tölkki and purkki were probably not prepared to think about it as much as you did. I think, too, that when it comes to actually using the words, they probably do so with some degree of logic that they just can't verbalize. I'll keep trying.
I find Finnish similar to German when it comes to grammar. As you said, there are rules and if you follow them, then, just like in German, you should be able to compose sentences pretty easily. I agree with the others about the translator, but you're right, personal interest plays a big role in learning pretty much anything, including languages.
ReplyDeleteI've been living here for around a year and a half now, and finally it feels like I started getting a grip on it. Being a babysitter for three months helped me immensely, since the children were so young that they didn't speak anything else but Finnish, which forced me to use it all the time (my husband speaks excellent English, so I've been getting away with it a bit to easily at home :]). After that everything feels so much easier and I pretty much don't use English when speaking to Finnish people anymore. Yay!
All of you have all the right to be proud of yourselves, learning and successfully conquering such a peculiar language. :)
Glad you're feeling confident in your skills. It gives me hope! I too sometimes find it difficult to speak Finnish outside of class, because pretty much all the people I know here speak great English. I do occasionally force my husband to listen to my sketchy Finnish, though, in the interest of learning.
DeleteDid you ever have any crucial miscommunications with the kids you babysat, or was it usually smooth sailing?
Kuka haluaa kakkaa?!
DeleteThere were days when I mixed up words in my head, especially the ones that sound similar, like sakset and sukset, but the oldest girl just corrected me and we continued the conversation. I don't think the younger ones (5 years and 1,5y) even cared about it. :) That must be the thing that gave me the confidence to start speaking more. I'm a bit too much of a perfectionist and I wanted to speak Finnish correctly or rather not speak it at all. The children helped me to overcome this, because grammar is obviously the least important thing to them. It's them I have to thank for getting me to the next level.
DeleteReading your blog and kind of following your progress in speaking Finnish, I admire you. You speak way better than I did for the first year after moving here.
Blind Sniper: Meillä on jo kakkakoneet (koira ja kissa) kotona :)
Mmm, kissan- ja koiran- kakkakakku.
DeleteThank you, Anon. I'm also a bit of a perfectionist, and it drives me nuts when I say something that sounds completely grammatically stupid (which is often).
Speaking in class with other students sounds a bit like your experience with the kids. We're all learning, all making mistakes, and there's really no reason to feel embarrassed. The only problem with both these scenarios is that you're less likely to get helpful corrections. It's good to know talking with kids was a helpful exercise for you, though, since babysitting may well be in my future!