Something Typical

[Alelou]

Cool! Thank you, Bookworm. I saved the link for after the garden is in.

And thank you too, Asso. I doubt anyone will agree it's actually greater when it comes to this story, but I felt the need to do it anyway.

[JadziaKathryn]

This house is also very typical for Finland. After the second world war there was a huge shortage of houses, because we had lost land and had to move 400000 people from the lost areas and build homes for them and also houses had been destroyed during the war. So they desinged this easy to build house called "rintamamiestalo". My grandparents were one of those who had to leave their home and move from the lost area. They were given little land from that river bank and the desing and instructions how to build "rintamamiestalo" was free to everyone. So my grandpa cut the trees from the land he was given and carved timber from those trees and build the house for his family made a sauna and a small barn and started to farm his little land.

Easy to build, sure, but it doesn't look easy to say! That's a very wonderful story, though, about your grandfather. And we can see from the pictures that it turned out well for him!

[Bookworm]

First, bookworm, having a country with no natural disasters is great, not boring.

Second, maybe Finland doesn't have castles and things like that, but its Nature is its main monument. Such beauty...

Third, I adore Finnish, it sounds so complicated I remember when a Finnish writer came to our High School to talk about his (your) country and talked a little in Finnish and everybody was like "ohhh.... that's so cool..."

Yes I know it's great to have no natural disasters and I feel very sad for everyone who has had to suffer from such a disaster. I guess saying boring is my way to deal with all those scary things, because I would so much like to see other places and travel, but if I start to think how scary many things and places really are and about what could happen and how great it is here, I would never leave home.

I guess Finnish is very complicated to others because it's so different. I guess hardest would be to learn how to make words, because those are combined from different bits.
An example. "rintamamiestalo" is combined from three words "front" "man" "house" so it's frontmanhouse.
Then if I'd like to say in finnish "My grandparents lived in a frontmanhouse" I'd say "Isovanhempani asuivat rintamamiestalossa." The word for grandparents is isovanhemmat, but when I want to say that they are my grandparents I have to add a bit to the word so it becomes isovanhempani. Also I have added -ssa to the rintamamiestalossa to say in frontmanhouse.

[JadziaKathryn]

I guess Finnish is very complicated to others because it's so different. I guess hardest would be to learn how to make words, because those are combined from different bits.
An example. "rintamamiestalo" is combined from three words "front" "man" "house" so it's frontmanhouse.
Then if I'd like to say in finnish "My grandparents lived in a frontmanhouse" I'd say "Isovanhempani asuivat rintamamiestalossa." The word for grandparents is isovanhemmat, but when I want to say that they are my grandparents I have to add a bit to the word so it becomes isovanhempani. Also I have added -ssa to the rintamamiestalossa to say in frontmanhouse.

[Escriba]

I guess Finnish is very complicated to others because it's so different. I guess hardest would be to learn how to make words, because those are combined from different bits.
An example. "rintamamiestalo" is combined from three words "front" "man" "house" so it's frontmanhouse.
Then if I'd like to say in finnish "My grandparents lived in a frontmanhouse" I'd say "Isovanhempani asuivat rintamamiestalossa." The word for grandparents is isovanhemmat, but when I want to say that they are my grandparents I have to add a bit to the word so it becomes isovanhempani. Also I have added -ssa to the rintamamiestalossa to say in frontmanhouse.

Yeah, I understand. It's a little like German or Basque, languages that make composed words. In Basque we have the tricky part in verbs (that's what people who's learning it say.) If in English you say "I say" (and it doesn't change in present tense,) in Basque it depends on if you say something (nik esaten dut) or if something it's said to you (niri esaten zait) or if you say something to somebody (nik esaten dizut.) it's not the same "the ball has fallen" (pelota erori da) than "the ball has fallen to me" (pelota erori zait.) But I think it's simpler than Finnish.

By the way, it sounds cool still

[Lady Rainbow]

First, bookworm, having a country with no natural disasters is great, not boring.

Second, maybe Finland doesn't have castles and things like that, but its Nature is its main monument. Such beauty...

Third, I adore Finnish, it sounds so complicated I remember when a Finnish writer came to our High School to talk about his (your) country and talked a little in Finnish and everybody was like "ohhh.... that's so cool..."

Yes I know it's great to have no natural disasters and I feel very sad for everyone who has had to suffer from such a disaster. I guess saying boring is my way to deal with all those scary things, because I would so much like to see other places and travel, but if I start to think how scary many things and places really are and about what could happen and how great it is here, I would never leave home.

I guess Finnish is very complicated to others because it's so different. I guess hardest would be to learn how to make words, because those are combined from different bits.
An example. "rintamamiestalo" is combined from three words "front" "man" "house" so it's frontmanhouse.
Then if I'd like to say in finnish "My grandparents lived in a frontmanhouse" I'd say "Isovanhempani asuivat rintamamiestalossa." The word for grandparents is isovanhemmat, but when I want to say that they are my grandparents I have to add a bit to the word so it becomes isovanhempani. Also I have added -ssa to the rintamamiestalossa to say in frontmanhouse.

Finland is BEAUTIFUL! I'd love to go up there some day!

And your language sounds pretty complicated, but I guess anyone who listened to you would know EXACTLY what/who you were talking about. (i.e. my grandparents as opposed to your grandparents and in the house as opposed to over the house.).

[Alelou]

So where does Basque come from? It sounds kinda Germanic rather than Romance but that doesn't make sense with the geography. Or is it like the Bretagne region of France which has connections to Celtic culture? (Not that I really know what the hell I'm talking about.)

Finnish, like German, sounds pretty hard to learn. Mark Twain wrote a very funny essay called "The Awful German Language" about German grammar. (He was actually pretty good at German, apparently.) In English with the exception of those pesky irregular verbs it's pretty much how you arrange the words, not the words themselves that have to change. That seems faster to learn to me, at least when you're not very good at it and struggling to spit a sentence out.

The language I find myself absolutely clueless to learn even a single phrase in is Chinese. Intonation is everything, and I just can't hear it. You can say the same word five times for me and I'll just never get it to sink into my brain. I can't even learn how to say "Thank you." To me it sounds like shhh-shhh, but I know that's not right.

[Asso]

The linguist and author J.R.R. Tolkien considered Finnish to be a particularly beautiful language, and described his youthful discovery of Finnish as inspiring him to pursue a linguistic career ("Finding a Finnish grammar book was like entering a complete wine-cellar, filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before". Several of Tolkien's invented languages, notably Quenya, are stylistically related to Finnish.

[Lady Rainbow]

Mark Twain wrote a very funny essay called "The Awful German Language" about German grammar. (He was actually pretty good at German, apparently.) In English with the exception of those pesky irregular verbs it's pretty much how you arrange the words, not the words themselves that have to change. That seems faster to learn to me, at least when you're not very good at it and struggling to spit a sentence out.

My German professor gave me a copy of that essay when I became a language teacher. It's hilarious, but he's got a point. Try remembering "Ich musste ins Klo dort gegangen sein". All that means "I'd had to go into the bathroom."

The language I find myself absolutely clueless to learn even a single phrase in is Chinese. Intonation is everything, and I just can't hear it. You can say the same word five times for me and I'll just never get it to sink into my brain. I can't even learn how to say "Thank you." To me it sounds like shhh-shhh, but I know that's not right.

Yeah, Chinese is HARD, unless your ear's trained to it. Mandarin had 4 tones, Cantonese has 8. And it's pronounced, "shay-shay", stress on the first syllable. I tried ordering breakfast one time in Mandarin and ended up saying, "I want three eggs and a bomb." Luckily, I wasn't in an actual Chinese restaurant at the time, but my language partner nearly died laughing.

Several of Tolkien's invented languages, notably Quenya, are stylistically related to Finnish.

Yeah, Tolkien was the master of making up languages for his fantasy worlds. He's one of my favorite authors.

[Asso]

...He's one of my favorite authors.

I love him.

[Escriba]

So where does Basque come from? It sounds kinda Germanic rather than Romance but that doesn't make sense with the geography. Or is it like the Bretagne region of France which has connections to Celtic culture? (Not that I really know what the hell I'm talking about.)

Basque isn't related to any language. It's an isolated language inside Europe. More information in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language if anybody is interested. We suffer the "we're too cool and special" syndrome if you ask me.

Yeah, Chinese is HARD, unless your ear's trained to it. Mandarin had 4 tones, Cantonese has 8. And it's pronounced, "shay-shay", stress on the first syllable. I tried ordering breakfast one time in Mandarin and ended up saying, "I want three eggs and a bomb." Luckily, I wasn't in an actual Chinese restaurant at the time, but my language partner nearly died laughing.

Yeah, I've never tried Chinese for that very reason.

The linguist and author J.R.R. Tolkien considered Finnish to be a particularly beautiful language, and described his youthful discovery of Finnish as inspiring him to pursue a linguistic career ("Finding a Finnish grammar book was like entering a complete wine-cellar, filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before". Several of Tolkien's invented languages, notably Quenya, are stylistically related to Finnish.

Asso, you are my hero

*cough, cough* Aheam... Sorry... But anybody who quotes Tolkien has my eternal admiration

[Asso]

Asso, you are my hero

*cough, cough* Aheam... Sorry... But anybody who quotes Tolkien has my eternal admiration

I will try to deserve it!

[Bookworm]

After reading recent news I'm even more embarassed about using the word boring about my country.

Basque isn't related to any language. It's an isolated language inside Europe. More information in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language if anybody is interested. We suffer the "we're too cool and special" syndrome if you ask me.

That is really cool.

Basque seemed to have more incommon with Finnish that indoeuropean languages like English, French and German have.

[Lady Rainbow]

Yeah, Chinese is HARD, unless your ear's trained to it. Mandarin had 4 tones, Cantonese has 8. And it's pronounced, "shay-shay", stress on the first syllable. I tried ordering breakfast one time in Mandarin and ended up saying, "I want three eggs and a bomb." Luckily, I wasn't in an actual Chinese restaurant at the time, but my language partner nearly died laughing.

:guffaw: Yeah, I've never tried Chinese for that very reason.

The whole thing kinda reminded me of that part in Star Trek:IV when Uhura has to talk to the Klingons...using old-fashioned paper books and dictionaries because they would've noticed if she used the UT. Though...would've thought she'd known enough for an intelligent conversation.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

There are a few languages in Europe that aren't related to the big Indo-European family of German, English, French etc. Basque is one. Then there are the Finno-Ugric languages - Finnish, Estonian, Sami and also Hungarian. But I'm told Hungarian is quite different from Finnish and Estonian.

That's why they're much harder to learn for those that speak an Indo-European language. There are many similarities between Swedish and English and German, but none (almost) with Finnish. Even Russian is easier, despite the fact that they have a different alphabet.