160 replies to this topic

[A. J. Raffles]

Juni Ori, on Apr 21 2006, 11:13 PM, said:

Umm... Now I quite didn't understand, how so "would be expressed through an entire phrase"?

Phrase as in "several words that don't quite form a clause yet". Thay may be an inaccurate definition, though...

[Stebbi]

Juni Ori, on Apr 21 2006, 05:59 PM, said:

Whoops, I got one typo there that I missed in the original one! Chilli should be chili.

But same in english:

Quote

PERKELE!!! PERKELE!!!.

Quite close, I think.

yeah i wrote that of the chili ketchup

[A. J. Raffles]

Well, whoever translated that obviously didn't do his job properly, then.

[Juni Ori]

Raffles, did you find those sites useful I dug up? And about translations, you can read every now and then so poor work here, that even A.J. could do better at the moment! I don't know whom they pay, but my guess is he/she must be Samoan native, who hasn't ever read any other language! Worst is movie and serie subtitles...

[A. J. Raffles]

Sort of. They're not too systematic and use far too many tables for my liking, but I suppose the most important information is in there, provided I look in the right place. But so far it seems fairly logical for the most part...

[Juni Ori]

Great, I'll make up some phrases for you to translate and let's see how well you've progressed.

[A. J. Raffles]

OK, but be nice and start with something easy and non-irregular.

[Juni Ori]

I'll be tender...

Okay, miss Raffles, now it is the moment of truth, have you read your homework, learned anything and did you understand what you've learned? And most of all: can you adapt what you've learned in practice? Notice that I want direct translations, how stupid they might ever sound in Finn's ears, but if you in addition come up with actualy saying, you'll get bonus points! Exercises are in no particular order, varying mindlessly in difficulty, though trying to keep them relatively easy.

Translate following questions and answers:
Exercise 1: "How expensive that necklace was, that you are wearing?" "It costed me 113 euros."
Exercise 2: "How tall Juni is?" "Juni is one ninetysomething."
Exercise 3: "What time is it?" "It's fifteen past eleven."

Try to understand the question and answer in Finnish (I tried to think of as harmless questions as possible):
Exercise 4: "Kuinka monta sisarusta sinulla on?"
Exercise 5: "Mistä maasta olet kotoisin?"
Exercise 6: "Mitä mieltä olet suomen kielestä?"

And Grande Finale, try to make up something, in Finnish of course:
Exercise 7: "Tell me what you know of Finland?"

No one is expecting you to be perfect and small errors are easily understandable. Of course I will tell where you went wrong and tell you how real Finn would say things. But now, let's wait and see... And if you find some exercises too difficult, I'm truly sorry, it isn't quite easy to estimate how difficult they are, when you've spoken Finnish for 28 years.

[Aristharus]

This will be interesting. Now there's one more Finn judging your skills.

I work at a school that only teaches Finnish to immigrants, by the way. Looks like the method of teaching has been a little different in this case, though. I really wait to see what Raffles has learned like this over the internet.

[Juni Ori]

Hey, I bet she won't be offended if you help me teach her. You know, I suck big time in this and since

Quote

I work at a school that only teaches Finnish to immigrants, by the way.

then I bet you know even some techniques to teach her! I'm having second thoughts about these exercises, that they may be too difficult. But hey, she's very smart and talented in languages, not to forget her excellent working morale to achieve her goals, so she may just surprise big time! I'm counting on you, miss Raffles!

[Aristharus]

I don't teach there, though, so I might not be that much of help, but I can try.

I thought the exercises were pretty hard, too, but it's difficult to make relatively easy translation exercises like that on the level I at least think Raffles is. Then again, as she can take her time with those and can use a dictionary with any harder words, she really might surprise us.

We'll see. I wish you luck, Raffles.

[A. J. Raffles]

I just got back after four hours in the library, so I've still got semantic change on my brain... I'll have a bash at those sentences later, though.
Oh, and I'll have to use a dictionary, I'm afraid. My range of vocabulary is still considerably more limited than that of a retarded Finnish toddler, obviously.

[Juni Ori]

Well, I was supposing you need to. Vocabulary takes time and now we've been concentrating to your grammar. And use all those sources you have, I thought it was better to put you actually use Finnish, instead of discussing how and what and when and why? Soon I'll be using here and there (simple) Finnish phrases to get you used to the language. And I'm expecting you to use Finnish (in this thread, of course) in the same way!

[A. J. Raffles]

Hmm, sorry, Juni, but if you don't mind, I think I'd like to do one thing at a time. Different tenses and moods, irregular verbs, word order for questions, various types of pronouns AND having to look up every single word in an amazingly unhelpful online dictionary is a bit too much even for me. I'm not that clever, you know. Not to mention that disorganised Wikipedia article repeatedly tells me 'olla' is irregular (well, no prizes for guessing that), but it never mentions the actual forms. Argh! And I know nothing about word order, so I'd have to be extremely lucky to hit on the correct one.
OK, here's the best I can do for the first half of 1) with the aforementioned limitations:

"Miten kallis [insert imperfect of 'olla' here - 'ollai'???] tuo kaulapanta minkä sinä [insert present progressive form of 'kantaa' here - my guess would be 'kantaamat', but again, both the Wikipedia article and the so-called dictionary are hardly any help]?" - "Se [insert imperfect of a verb which may or may not be 'maksaa' - 'maksai'??] [insert inflected form of personal pronoun, but I don't know which one it takes, so my guess would be ablative - 'minulta'???] [ick, numbers, and I haven't got a clue which case it should be either, so I'm guessing accusative - 'sataviisitoista'?] [random form of 'euro' (assuming that's the word); my guess would be partitive because of the numbers thing - 'euroa'??]."

Gah! I'm pathetic...

[Aristharus]

Actually finnish has hardly any rules about word order. You can mix words in almost any way and it'll only sound more poetic or something, but it's very hard to make the sentence wrong that way.

Well, there are mistakes in it (surprised?) but given the way you have been teached and the difficulty of the sentence, I'm surprised you got anything right. No, it's not that bad as I made it sound, sorry. It's very good in some places. I'm sure Juni will go through it in a more detailed manner, so I won't bother to do it (at least yet) and I actually even have some work to do at the moment.
(Yes, I've been at work the whole day...)

EDIT: Ok, I'll have to say some points about it. "Miten kallis" is correct. The olla-verb is extremely hard, and the form you're looking for is "on". "Kaulapanta" is a leash, but pretty close. Kaulakoru would be a necklace. Finnish doesn't have a good word for wear, actually. Kantaa is more like carry, but a pretty good one, still. Most Finns would say that in some different form (like "..joka sinulla on kaulallasi" = "..which you have around your neck") So that was very difficult.

The form of "maksaa" you looked for is "maksoi", so very close also. The right form, but you didn't know the a changes into an o, and how could you have..? "Minulta" (from me) is understandble, but I'd use "minulle" (to me).

Oh, I was about to say the end was correct, but I just noticed that the number was wrong. Sataviisitoista is 115. 113 would be satakolmetoista. The form is correct, though. If the price would be 115, it would be "Se maksoi minulle sataviisitoista euroa."


Yet another edit:
Some forms of the verb olla:

to be = olla
I am = Minä olen
You are = Sinä olet
He/She(/It) is = Hän(/Se) on
We are = Me olemme (easy, eh? )
You are (plural) = Te olette
They are = He ovat

Edited by Aristharus, 24 April 2006 - 04:45 PM.