160 replies to this topic

[Juni Ori]

Don't want to fight you with knives, you stab too close! "Hyvää Pääsiäistä" would be correct. Again, those agglu... whatever, I'm not even trying to remember that word!

[A. J. Raffles]

Oh well. What would be causing it in this case?

[Juni Ori]

Umm... Hard one. (Especially to say why ) Well, let's put it this way: in Finnish it can't end to basic form, like Hyvä Pääsiäinen or Hyvä Joulu (correct: Hyvää Joulua). Due Pääsiäinen has -nen ending, it turns to -stä (or -sta, if it was Paasiainen... you know?), it's quite strange oddity in Finnish, but quite usual, happens to be in my surname also. Same goes, if you want to say "I hate Juni", then you need to add that -a (/ -ä) to the end. "Minä vihaan Junia". Well, that sounds a bit odd, written by me, but it's just example... Okay, actually, if you'd actually say it, you'd replace word "minä" with spoken "mä", unless you were born in somewhere East Finland, you'd say "mie". Well, I guess I'm drifting here at the moment. Back to tracks. Okay, verb "hate" is "vihata", but if you say "I hate", it's "vihaan", but if you say "you hate", it's "vihaat", if you say "they hate", it's "vihaavat". Actually there could be words "minä", "sinä" and "he" in front of those verbs, but they can be left off. Still I recommend to use them, just for clarity. But let's get to closer to the original example: "I like sunny weather" = "Minä pidän aurinkoisesta säästä". "sun" = "aurinko", "sunny" = "aurinkoinen", "weather" = "sää". But if you say "You hate bad weather" = "Sinä vihaat huonoa säätä".

Okay, I'm not good at this and under influence of legal stimulants, so I'm surprised if you get anything from that... Well, smart girl like you will get something, but don't hesitate to ask. Necessarily I can't tell why, but I can tell how.

Edit: Btw, guess how many times I was going to write in Finnish things I meant to write in English (and looks like I succeeded pretty well after all), especially in words "or"  = "tai" (and if somebody wants to know - though I guess I've already told this, yes, there's meaning also for word "kara" = "spindle" in technical meaning) and "ja" = "and".

Edited by Juni Ori, 16 April 2006 - 11:45 PM.

[Blood-Pigggy]

If anyone could fill me in, I'd love to know what's going on, since I can't figure it out from older posts or with my brain.

I don't get what this discussion is about.  

[A. J. Raffles]

Right, so what you're saying is that in Finnish, the "Easter" bit of "happy Easter" is interpreted as an accusative or dative (or something like that), so it needs a different ending?
@Piggy: I'm trying how much Finnish I can pick up by constantly pestering poor Juni with questions about how it works.

[Juni Ori]

Sweetie, seriously, too difficult words for me. Luckily there's google... After hours of careful examination and study, I have found the answer, which is: yes.

Yeah, poor me.   

Edit: Btw, can you pronounce Finnish?

Edited by Juni Ori, 16 April 2006 - 11:52 PM.

[Blood-Pigggy]

Juni Ori, on Apr 16 2006, 11:51 PM, said:

Edit: Btw, can you pronounce Finnish?

Is there anybody that can't?

[Juni Ori]

Safe bet: most of people can't. Depends a lot where you come from, but as I assume that AJ's native language is English, I wouldn't be surprised if she had very hard time learning it.

[A. J. Raffles]

Juni Ori, on Apr 16 2006, 11:51 PM, said:

Edit: Btw, can you pronounce Finnish?

Well, I have a vague notion of general rules of pronunciation. For example, if you have a double vowel in writing, it actually sounds like a double vowel, and the same goes for the consonants. And I think I also remember reading something about the main stress often being placed on the first syllable of a word, so it would be "Hyvää syntymäpäivää" (but the stress on "päi" wouldn't be as strong as the one on "syn").
Is that just about right?

Oh, and my first language is German, by the way, so I can do ä's, ö's and y's.

[Blood-Pigggy]

I thought you mean the word "Finnish"  

[A. J. Raffles]

Blood-Pigggy, on Apr 17 2006, 12:08 AM, said:

I thought you mean the word "Finnish"  

In that case he'd have had to put it in inverted commas like you did, though.

[Juni Ori]

I would had uploaded .wav as an example, but no, can't do for some reason. I'm trying to send it to you in some other way.

[Blood-Pigggy]

I wanna hear it!

[Juni Ori]

Okay, lesson continues!

I've been thinking about different words and I've taken here few more examples:
varas - varkaan / thief
paras - parhaan / best - "h" instead of "k"
sydän - sydämen / heart
teroitin -teroittimen / sharpener - took this in addition to previous, as it has suddenly to "t"s there
pakkaus - pakkauksen / packing
rakkaus - rakkauden / love - again oddity, between words differing only one letter
nälkäinen - nälkäisen / hungry
ohut - ohuen / thin

Okay, miss Raffles, I believe I could figure few more examples, but did I already convince you it ain't going to be easy? Hopefully I didn't scare you off...

[A. J. Raffles]

Talk of a random choice of words.

Hmm, sorry, but what cases are those? My guess would be they're all genitives, because of the 'n' at the end, but I'm not sure whether I'm trying to discover rules where there aren't any. Am I correct in assuming that the regular ending would be 'nen', and the irregular-seeming examples are because of historical changes (for example "teroittimen" would at one point have been something like "teroitinnen", but the consonants changed)?