Good day.
Which sounds absolutely ridiculous.
This is a post I've been wanting to write ever since the idea of this blog, but until now there hasn't seemed to be a good time.
Basically it will just be a list of weird or otherwise interesting things about languages (mostly Finnish and English and the translation between them) that cross my mind every now and then.
The funny thing about my use of English is, that it's partly British and partly American. This is because I've learned to speak English in the US, but they teach mostly British in school here, which you obviously know. So I guess it's not actually funny, but I just pay attention to it when I'm writing. I for example spell color, and center, and spelling them colour and centre just look really weird to me, but then on the other hand I prefer elevator over lift. No, wait, that's American too, right?
But there are those words that you spell with an s in British and a z in American (right? I'm getting a feeling I'm wrong about this...), and I usually spell them with an s, and then all the programs complain to me about misspelling.
Then there are those words like autumn and fall, that I just never know what to use. And don't even get me started on pants. I never quite know if I should say pants or trousers or something else, because I would use pants, but then again it does mean a different thing in British.
I also use "really" way too much. Way too much.
Ok, I'm writing lousy text right now, because at the same time I'm nervous about whether my internet will disappear any moment. I came home from school some time past six just to find my internet wasn't working. I fought with it for a half an hour (which is useless, since the problem is in the connection coming into the building) until it started to work, and worked just long enough for me to check facebook and e-mail, and then stopped again. And right now it finally started to work it seems to have breaks in the connection, so it's possible it's gonna just stop working any second.
One thing I don't understand about English is why you spell English with a capital letter. The language, and the nationality. I do have to admit it still doesn't beat German. I mean what is up with spelling all nouns with a capital letter?
Now I'm on the topic of spelling, I've heard that Finnish is one of the most difficult languages to learn for a foreigner. Well, that is probably true. After all, we do have words like epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäänköhän (which I once tried to translate, and failed). But there is one advantage in Finnish. The pronunciation is easy. Well, easy is maybe the wrong word. Our r is surprisingly difficult to many, and our vowels might cause problems. But once you learn how to pronounce, you will never have any doubt how to pronounce a word you see, or spell a word you hear. There is only one way to do it. One letter (except in a few very trivial cases like ng, for which I still think there should be a separate letter) is one phone, and always the same one.
At least that we have easy.
Enough about that.
A thing that was pointed out to me this fall was that there is no word for jaksaa in English. Seriously, try translating En jaksa. It's either "Not in the mood", or "I'm too tired", or "I'm too lazy", or even "It's too heavy ", or something similar, depending on the situation. Except that they are not all that similar. And yet we have one little word for it in Finnish.
Although Finnish is missing exist and ignore, which I think are brilliant words.
Oh, then some Swedish.
Why do Swedes have their own word for sauna? Everyone else calls it a sauna. Which I think is cool.
I remember a friend of mine was once reading Eureka Street (which, by the way, is an amazing book) in Finnish. It's originally a book from Northern Ireland so I asked why not read it in English, in the original language. The answer was, that even though it was possible to read in English, Finnish is still the native language. In the end you do get a little more out of it if you read it in your native language than in just a language in which you're more or less fluent.
That made me think, and even though I still mostly read in English (there's also the point that it's quite difficult to find good fantasy in Finnish), I now write in Finnish, which is probably a mistake, since like I've said earlier, Finnish people don't really read or write fantasy. But after all it is my native language. My Finnish is very likely more complex and has more depth to it than my English. So even though a lot of things sound better in English, I'm quite sure my language is better when writing in Finnish than when writing in English.
Except the Moomins. I guess they count as fantasy. I don't know what else they would be.
Of course, when translating there is always the problem with how to really make the new mean the same as the old. With a single word comes so much of the culture and the background I've heard a claim no words have exact translations in any other language. There is something different, a tiny hint of something you can't quite grasp, in the meanings of a cat and kissa. Practically they mean the same thing, but when you take a word into another culture maybe it does mean something slightly different. The only way to understand the true, full meaning of a word in a language is to have spoken the language for one's whole life, to have lived in the culture where it is spoken.
Words are the source of misunderstandings. Or so it seems after all this. Though I'm sure they are not the only source of misunderstandings.
Now I'm just confused with everything I've written. Wow...
There's just so much to languages. There's just so much to how they work, how they can be translated. So much to what words actually means.
I feel like I've just understood something new, just can't get a hold on of what it is.
Languages really are fascinating.
This somehow feels like a topic I'd like to have an actual conversation about. Let's see if I can get more than one comment (=the high score right now on any post) out of our maybe four regular-ish readers. Which of at least two actually have (or at least will have) some expertise and hopefully some insight on languages.
Let me know if this makes any sense, or if any of you had any thoughts, or if you hate everything I just wrote.
I have one more thing for you today. I think I am saying out loud what we're all (or at least most of us are) thinking.
Dude, enough with the Supernatural.
I always thought the internet is full of fanpages you can go to to spill the insides of your head about that stuff. Though I'm not that much of an internet person. Might be I'm wrong.
~matu
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