From: holman@elo.helsinki.fi (Eugene Holman) Subject: Re: SV: Finland - Eastern or Northern Europe? Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 14:09:53 +0300 Organization: University of Helsinki Path: nntp.hut.fi!newsfeed1.funet.fi!news.helsinki.fi!holman Lines: 213 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: eng9.pc.helsinki.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.4.0 Xref: nntp.hut.fi soc.culture.nordic:152789 In article <37505523.197454970@nntp3.site1.csi.com>, BigD@eithernet.com wrote: > On Fri, 28 May 1999 23:27:08 +0300, holman@elo.helsinki.fi (Eugene > Holman) wrote: > > ::As long as it's a matter of simple, informal conversation it's no problem. > ::Many Swedes and Finns do indeed prefer to use English, a language foreign > ::but familiar to both parties in the discourse, for this purpose. When it > ::gets down to drawing up a contract, pleading a case in court, or even just > ::exchanging messages that are part of the local culture, but quite foreign > ::to English speakers, English just doesn't have the resources. > > Understand, I'm not a chauvinist because it is my native tongue > but........."doesn't have the resources"? According to The Story of > English, when Itlalian pilots land Italian planes in Italy, they use > English to talk to the control tower. Yes, because it was agreed on long ago that English is the international language of aviation. Even Soviet pilots used English when communicating with the ground control when flying in the USSR. In a high-risk field such as aviation, use of a single language has been regarded as providing an additional safety factor. There is nothing inherently superior about English that would make it more suitable to this role than any other language. > > English has a much larger vocabulary than most languages because it > has liberally and unself-consciously borrowed from every language with > which it has had contact. Many other languages behave in the same manner. The story about English having such a large vocabulary is a semi-truth. On the one hand, English has, as you said, borrowed (= 'purloined' would be more appropriate) words from virtually every language with which it has interacted), in addition to which it has appropriated the entire inventory of morphemes and word-building elements from ancient Greek and Latin as its own resource. That does not mean that the average English speaker would understand classical language-based words such as 'ecdysiast', 'defenestrate', or 'haplosemic'. > "Sputnik" and "billabong" are both used in > English and understood. The Russian word "sputnik" has entered most of the world's languages, the Finnish version is sputnikki, the Japanese version suputsuniki. The word "billabong", in turn, is a citation loan from an Australian language which can be taken into most languages if the text in question deals with specific features of Australian culture. The fact that English-speaking teenagers have to devote such great efforts to vocabulary building when they are preparing for college entrance examinations shows that accessibility to the full resources of the English vocabulary is not everyman's right. Finnish has a *much* larger vocabulary than English, if by vocabulary you mean 'number of distinct and understandable words'. This tremendous vocabulary is more accessible to the average Finnish speaker, who needs no special training to understand it, than words like 'billabong' or 'haplosemic' are to the average English speaker without an academic education or other specialized interests. 1. Finnish morphology works in such a way that most of the words that occur in sentences contain several morphemes: talo 'house' talossa 'in the house' taloissa 'on the houses' talossani 'in my house' taloissani 'in my housese' talokin 'a house, too' talokaan 'a house, neither' talonikin 'my house, too' talossanikin 'in my house, too' taloissanikaan 'in my houses, neither' talossanikinko 'in my house, too?' taloissanikaanko 'in my houses, neither?' For every noun 2 * 15 * 6 * 5 * 2 = 1800 forms are available for every adjective 2 * 15 * 5 * 2 = 300 forms are available For every verb more than 10,000 forms are available 2. Finnish morphology allows new nouns and verbs to be created as needed rakennan 'I build' rakennat 'you (sg.) build' rakensin 'I built' rakensit 'you (sg.) built' rakentanen 'I might build' rakentanet 'you (sg.) might build' rakentaakseni 'in order that I might build' rakentaaksesi 'in order that you (sg.) might build' rakentamaisillani 'I was just about to start building' rakentamaisillasi 'you (sg.) were just about to start building' rakentamissani 'in the things that I have built' rakentamissasi 'in the things that you (sg.) have built' rakentamistanikinko 'from out of the things that I have built, too?' rakentamistasikinko 'from out of the things that you (sg.) have built, too?' rakennutan 'I will have somebody build, I will contract' rakennutin 'I contracted' rakennuttaakseni 'in order that I might contract' rakennuttamissanikin 'in the things that I have contracted, too' rakennututan 'I will have somebody have somebody build, I will subcontract' rakennututtamissanikinko 'in the things which I have had subcontracted, too?' rakennutututan 'I will have somebody have somebody have somebody build, I will sub-subcontract' heitän 'I throw', heittänen 'I might throw', heittämissäni 'in the things I have thrown' heitätän 'I have somebody throw'. heitättäisin 'I should have somebody throw', heitättämittäni 'without the things which I have had thrown', heitättömätön 'never having had something thrown', heitättämättömyys 'the quality of never having had something thrown' heittyä 'I am thrown' heittäytyä 'I throw myself' heittäytätän 'I will have myself thrown' heittelen 'I throw frequently' heittelehdin 'I am being frequently and suddenly thrown around' etc. For every root dozens or even hundreds of derivatives are available, and each of these can have hundreds or even thousands of distinct forms. 3. Finnish allows nouns to be freely compounded: luku 'reading' lukulaite 'reading device' lukulaiteteline 'stand for holding a reading device' lukulaitetelinesuoja 'protector for a stand for holding a reading device' 4. Finnish numbers are always written as one word: viisitutuhattaseitsemänsataakolmekymmentäviisi 'five thousand seven hundred thirty five' And they are inflected in all fifteen cases, as well as in the singular and plural: viidelletuhannelleseitsemällesadallekolmellekymmenelleviidelle 'to/for five thousand seven hundred and thirty-five (sg.)' viisilletuhansilleseitsemillesadoilleklmillekymmenilleviisille 'to/for five thousand seven hundred an dthirty five (pl.)' When would these words be used? Olen laittanut eväät viidelletuhannelleseitsemällesadallekolmellekymmenelleviidelle näläiselle opiskelijalle, nyt menen tupakalle. = 'I prepared food for five thousand seven hundred and thirty-five hungry students, now I'm going for a smoke.' Olemme jo tehneet varaukset niille viisilletuhansilleseitsemillesadoilleklmillekymmenilleviisille häille, joita tilastojen mukaan vietetään näissä tiloissa seuraavan vuosikymmenen aikana. = We have already made reservations for the five thousand seven hundred and thirty-five weddings which will be celebrated on these premises during the course of the next decade. (Finnish nouns like häät 'wedding', läksiäiset 'farewll ceremony', sakset 'scissors', juomingit 'drinking orgy' only occur in the plural and require all qualifying wordd to be in the plural form.) 5. Finally, Finnish, like English, borrows liberally from other languages: vokkipannu = wok wokata = 'to stir fry' wokkaan = 'I stir fry' wokkaisin = 'I should stir fry' wokkaamiini = 'into the things which I have stir fried' presidentti = 'president' and of course these words can assume all of the forms allowed by Finnish morphology: presidentillemme = 'to our presdient' presidentistämmekinkö = 'about our president, too?' presidentittömyys = 'the quality of not having a presdident, presidentlessness' presidentittömyydestäänkäänkö = 'about their not having a president, either?' > No, the real reason must be something else. As you can see from the above, the myth about English having so many words than other languages is at most a half-truth. The problem with using English as a serious interlanguage in Scandinavia is, just as I said, lack of resources. This is not so much a matter of not having enough words as it is of not having the right words or of having the right words bearing the wrong cultural baggage. Consider the modifications that English had to undergo before it could serve as an adequate means of expression for Americans or Australians. The natural environment was different, situations were different, and words either had to be borrowed (wigwam, squaw, succotash; boomerang, kangeroo) or their meanings had to be modified - creek, robin, walnut, public school, and many other English words designate different things in British and American English. We can translate the Scandinavian terms like allemänsrätt/jokamiehenoikeus into English as 'everyman's right' (a term which I used above in its proper English meaning), or dygn/vuorokausi = 'a 24-hour period', but the translations lack the cultural baggage and associations which the Swedish and Finnish have and thus are inadequate. In a different way, Scandinavian words like and ärtsoppa/hernekeitto = 'pea soup', smultron/metsämansikka = 'wild strawberry', strömming/silakka = 'Baltic herring' just have a different emotional and cultural content than their English equivalents: they look the same, but they have diferent connotations and are not really appropriate. Anybody who has mastered a foreign language beyond the degree needed to exchange simple pleasantries knows what I am talking about. -- Regards, Eugene Holman