160 replies to this topic

[Juni Ori]

A. J. Raffles, on Mar 28 2006, 06:47 AM, said:

I'd love to learn a whole bunch of new languages (including Icelandic, Finnish, Russian, Hungarian, Armenian and Ancient Greek, in no particular order), but I highly doubt I'll ever have time for that, which is a bit of a shame.

I was aware of your interest of Finnish, but I can't recall ever hearing the motive. After all, there's only something like 7-8 million people speaking Finnish and it belongs to quite small Fenno-Ugrian language group, as does Hungarian, Estonian and couple of other very small languages also. Same goes with Icelandic: belongs to relatively small sub-group of Germanic languages and it has even less people speaking it. Norwegian, Swedish or Danish would be much more understandable. So... why? And how many speak Armenian?

[A. J. Raffles]

Juni Ori, on Mar 30 2006, 05:25 PM, said:

I was aware of your interest of Finnish, but I can't recall ever hearing the motive. After all, there's only something like 7-8 million people speaking Finnish and it belongs to quite small Fenno-Ugrian language group, as does Hungarian, Estonian and couple of other very small languages also. Same goes with Icelandic: belongs to relatively small sub-group of Germanic languages and it has even less people speaking it. Norwegian, Swedish or Danish would be much more understandable. So... why? And how many speak Armenian?

Fair enough, but why would you only want to learn languages that are spoken by lots of people? Small languages broaden your mind. Although, come to think of it, Mandarin ought to be on the list as well (the only sentence I know is some weird proverb meaning something like "if you go for a walk after lunch every day, you'll live to be 101 years old" - in an atrocious accent)...
Seriously, though, I just happen to like languages. I'm interested in how they work, and I think small languages in particular are fascinating. Finnish is by far the wackiest language I've ever encountered - there's nothing like it, really. Knowing it wouldn't have any practical use whatsoever for me, I suppose, and it's highly unlikely I'd ever get a chance to practise it, but I'd like to learn it anyway, just for the fun of it. Armenian is also an amazing language. They've even got an alphabet of their own, which is part of an ancient culture that we barely know anything about in this part of Europe, and one of the reasons for that is that the language is too little known. There are lots of great writers who wrote in Hungarian, and I'd like to be able to read their books. Hungarian also does that crazy agglutinating(?) thingy which Finnish does as well, I think. None of the languages I know work that way. And Icelandic I'd like to learn because it's the Scandinavian language I had to skip completely (except for an introductory course on Old Icelandic, but that doesn't really count) because I didn't have much time. Which is a shame, since there's quite a few interesting Icelandic writers as well and not all of them have been translated.

Does that make sense?

[Juni Ori]

A. J. Raffles, on Mar 30 2006, 07:56 PM, said:

Fair enough, but why would you only want to learn languages that are spoken by lots of people? Small languages broaden your mind.

Hungarian also does that crazy agglutinating(?) thingy which Finnish does as well, I think.

Does that make sense?

As far as I've understood, Finnish and Hungarian are quite similar, except for vocabulary, but I don't have a clue, what you mean by agglutinating thingy... And yes, it makes sense.

Puffin, about why Denmark is usually included to Scandinavia, is very obvious: cultural and linguistic unity. Icelandic belongs to Scandinavian Languages, even though it is so far away. First known settlers of Iceland were Norse. As well as many other small islands in cold north. If we're talking about Scandinavian Peninsula, you're very correct. Scandinavian Languages and Scandinavia, not to mention Scandinavian Unity  in general are totally different thing, as even Finland is easily understood to be part of Scandinavia as it belongs to Scandinavian Unity, northern paradise.

[A. J. Raffles]

Juni Ori, on Apr 1 2006, 11:48 AM, said:

As far as I've understood, Finnish and Hungarian are quite similar, except for vocabulary, but I don't have a clue, what you mean by agglutinating thingy... And yes, it makes sense.

Hmm, I've heard they're about as similar as German and Russian - not very, that is. Estonian is closer to Finnish, I believe.
Agglutiniwhatever means adding lots of morphemes at the end of a word in order to express a bunch of things. It's a bit hard to describe.

[Juni Ori]

Well, Finnish and Estonian are close relatives, but they have the same structure and have a lot of similarities to Hungarian. Anyway, they are part of Fenno-Ugrian languages.

I kind of figured out that agguwhateva. It's true. They can be pain in the *** to somebody who isn't used to them. Unfortunately I'm no pro, so I'm not going to give you many examples, but here's couple:
Juni - Junin (Juni's) - Juninkin (also Juni's) - Juninkaan (not even Juni's)
juo (drink, drinks) - juoda (drink) - juomaan (to drink) - juomassa (at drinking)
Juni juo paljon (Juni drinks a lot)
Surprising examples?

[A. J. Raffles]

Yes, that's what I meant. Oh, and it really is called 'agglutination', by the way.

If you were to say (this is a purely hypothetical case, of course ) "Juni doesn't drink much", could you do it through agglutinating as well, or would you need another word for the 'not', just like in any other boring language?

[Juni Ori]

Yes, you would need word "ei" there, but it affects the ending of verb:
Juni ei juo paljoa.
Terrible thought btw...

[A. J. Raffles]

Hmm, that should be 'object', right? Because the verb should be "ei juo"...

[Juni Ori]

Ouch, of course, what on earth I was thinking? My bad. And "juoda" is the basic form and "ei" is the negative and not part of the verb. Or so I've understood. I could easily be wrong, though.

[A. J. Raffles]

What I meant was that "ei juo" functions as the main verb of the sentence. Although it's probably just "juo", because "ei" is a negative particle-thingy or whatever you call it. It's basically the same as "ikke" in Norwegian, right?

[Juni Ori]

Yes.

[Juni Ori]

A. J. Raffles, on Apr 1 2006, 01:42 PM, said:

Agglutiniwhatever means adding lots of morphemes at the end of a word in order to express a bunch of things.

You know, I thought you yesterday and I just had to dig this Finnish monsterword and share it with you:

Quote

epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän

It's a one single word, grammatically 100% correct, but totally useless. It's accepted to Guinnes World Records, but there's even longer, 103 letters:

Quote

kumarreksituteskenteleentuvaisehkollaismaisekkuudellisenneskenteluttelemattomamm
uuksissansakkaankopahan

To be honest, I don't have a clue what that means...
And, off the aggluwhatevar, longest compound (by Guinness WR) in it's basic form:

Quote

lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas

Still serious about learning Finnish or did I scare you enough?

[A. J. Raffles]

Nice. So what are the individual morphemes, then?

[Juni Ori]

Quote

epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän

Basic form would be "epäjärjestelmällisyys" (unmethodicalness) and to be honest, my brains start hurting if I even try to understand that word, not to mention consider splitting that word into parts.

[A. J. Raffles]

Uh, right... So methodicalness would be what? Päjärjestelmällisyys??