160 replies to this topic

[Juni Ori]

"järjestelmällisyys"

epäjärjestelmällisyys - basic form
epäjärjestelmällistyttää - to make something unmethodicalness
epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyys - umm... lack of making something unmethodicalness
epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellään - umm... with someone's lack of making something unmethodicalness...
epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkään - getting really crazy... not even with someone's lack of making something unmethodicalness...
epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän - holy cow... now we're in very deep waters... well, it's like doubting is something not even wit someone's lack of making something unmethodicalness... or something...

Well, I'm not any sort of specialist, so I wasn't able to tear it into small enough parts, but hopefully that answers even somehow...

[A. J. Raffles]

Hmm, OK... So "epä" is the negative prefix? Why is it "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkään", though, and not "[whatever]kaan" as in "Juninkaan"? Because of the "dellään" bit making it a different case?

[Juni Ori]

It's quite simple, in correct (and hardly ever in spoken) Finnish you can't have "a" and "ä" in the same word. There are three groups of vowels: 1) a, o, u; 2) y, ä, ö; 3) e, i. 1st and 2nd don't mix and 3rd goes with any. Therefore it's correct to say Juninkaan and pyöränkään (pyörä = wheel, bicycle). So Juninkään or pyöränkaan would be incorrect.

Hopefully you understood.

[A. J. Raffles]

Ah, that sort of makes sense. There are two forms, then, depending on whether the noun has dark or light vowels. But what if a noun only has vowels from the third group? Would it be "Helminkaan" or "Helminkään" (or something else entirely, because I got something wrong)?

[Juni Ori]

Umm... now that I think about it, I'm quite confident that if there's only 3rd group vowels (made up groups for teaching purposes to you, btw, don't know how they should be correctly called), then they mix with 2nd group. So in your example (however quite rare name) it would be Helminkään. At least I can't think of any example where it wouldn't be so. And I prefer to think that I'm actually quite good in Finnish, after all.

One big question remains... what about foreign names etc, which may have even all group's vowels? I believe it depends on what is the last one of 1st and 2nd... I have to investigate this...

[A. J. Raffles]

No idea how rare it is; it just happened to be the only name I could think of which didn't have first or second group vowels... It was my grandmother's name, by the way.

[Juni Ori]

Do you know what it means (in Finnish that is)?

Btw, your name in Finnish could be some of the following (which came into my mind):
- Elisa, Elise, Ella, Elli, Liisa, Liisi

Heh, for some reason I thought I could think of more... Well, there's few.

[A. J. Raffles]

The dictionary says it's 'pearl'. Heh, never knew that.

[Juni Ori]

Correct. Still most Finnish names don't have particular meaning, unless we backtrack to the origins of those names. About half of them come from Finnish mythology and rest have roots in christianity.

[Juni Ori]

@Milady Raffles, the High Queen of ADOM and bla bla bla: Just to ensure your little head keeps stirred, I thought I told you about a little more about how to say something is somebody's. It's actually ridiculously easy in English compared to Finnish. Ok, I believe we used example "Junin" (Juni's). Let's make things a little more difficult. Let's take word "käsi" (hand) - "käden" (hand's). And that's just one simple example. Let's take another: "Satu" (girl's name or fairy tale) - "Sadun" (Satu's). Now that I begun to think of it, I don't actually even have a clue how many ways there are to inflect word. And I still haven't slept since yesterday morning, so no hope I'd start thinking too much. Class dismissed!

[A. J. Raffles]

Thanks. So if you wanted to say "of Juni's hand", would it be "Junin käden", "Junin käsi" or something else entirely?

[Juni Ori]

"Junin käsi." "Juni's käden" would mean "Juni's hand's".

[A. J. Raffles]

I didn't mean "Juni's hand", though. I meant "of Juni's hand" as in "the index finger of Juni's hand sports an extremely long fingernail". That would be "Junin käden" then, right?

[Juni Ori]

Exactly. I'm watching Benny Hill marathon and trying to think about other nasty things in Finnish, but somehow that nearly empty bottle of Koskenkorva isn't helping...

[A. J. Raffles]

Well, the obvious useful Finnish phrase for today would be *glances at a dictionary and decides to take a stab in the dark* "hyvää pääsiäinen"...