Sorry to bother you with this kind of fennocentric stuff, but as we Finns are notoriously obsessed by the constant wondering about how the Others see us, I just couldn’t help it. Forgive me, if I recall correctly we have discussed on this forum about the various languages of Europe and the facts that the Finnish language among the Sami and the Bask languages are the only non-Indo-European languages still spoken in Europe (thus pre-dating the indo-European languages), also that the Sami and the Finnish are synthetic languages making the latter two closer to the languages such as the Navajo than any contemporary European language. I do not know if I gave proper examples last time but just gaze these two pictures and tell me isn’t the Finnish language both insanely difficult and utterly ludicrous? (btw. the first picture shows how an analytic language differs from a synthetic one).
I agree with ted. The first one is more like a puzzling demonstration of the linguistic syntax. The words make no sense in either language. The second one is far funnier and also more accurate. Every single word is an actual and rather commonly used word; for example “koiratamme” = “without our dog”, “koirittamme” “without our dogs” and “koirinensakokaan” = “even with their dogs” and so on. Makes me wonder how I could ever learn so entirely different language like English, and then again Sami and Estonian (latter being officially more like a Finnish dialect) sound so incomprehensible to me, even as they should be so much “easier” to learn and have so many familiar words (with entirely different meanings)… The 137 rescued souls from MS Estonia when it sunk in Finnish waters in 28 September 1994 might disagree. Especially, as their first mayday was broadcasted in Estonian, only to been responded by a Finnish first mate asking “are you broadcasting SOS?” in Finnish. After that they used language that was neither Finnish nor Estonian but more vestigial, a rudimentary fenno and managed to start the rescue effort. Nowadays, no worries mate, the grand majority of the Finns do speak English so calling for help should be no problem, as long as you remember that in the EU the distress dial is 112 and not 911…
Oh! I didn't mean to be offensive It's that over here, when you call the 911, the operator starts with delaying questions like "are you alone?", "can you call someone of help?" etc.. Have you read Asterix & Obelix? There was an issue with them trying to comunicate with a Finn warband I think. Only the two dogs (the one from Obelix and the Finn dog) managed to understand each other. One of the most hilarious and cute gags.
And I shouldn’t have been so defensive. I have had to dial the 112 only once in my life, so I cannot say for sure, but in my experience they tend to make a fuzz about alcohol. Some ten years ago I and a couple of my friends were spending a rather boring Tuesday evening in our local heavy metal bar. One of my friends started to lisp after only six pints and lost most of his motorics. I and another friend decided to help the poor lad out of the bar and in to a taxi, because he was no longer enjoying the evening. As soon as we got him out of the bar he collapsed and pretty much lost all consciousness. At that point I dialed the 112 because I knew he was type 1 diabetic and hell no would he pass out from only six beers. It took me over five minutes to convince the emergency official that no my friend was not just drunk, he is a diabetic and yes he had been drinking but we fear that he is going into a hypoglycemic shock, or something. After ten minutes the paramedics showed up and as we helped them to lift the poor lad into the ambulance, they said to us, that no they are not going to take our friend anywhere. But after the second they did some quick blood test (?) they slammed the ambulance door shut right in front of my face mumbling something as encouraging as “family members only” and speeded of with all the sirens and lights on. The next time I heard from my friend was three days later when he called me and asked: “Guess who just got out from the ICU?” A long story short: if you have to dial 112 in Finland say nothing considering alcohol and when asked deny everything. I LOVE those comics. Perhaps you are referring to the Astérix et les Normands? It has been ages since I have read that, but it is my favorite. Although, the “Normands” are described as pretty generic Northmen, so I cannot say for sure from which northern tribe they are. The use of their own “magic potion” could refer to the potion the berserks ingested but more likely it refers to a strong type of clear alcohol (kinda vodka), viina, that the Finns prefer. The funniest thing in that comic I have found is actually the diet of the norman leader: he is always eating something with cream sauce, the final dish being cream with cream sauce. That is something very Finnish. I have eaten hare, deer, reindeer, moose and brown bear with cream sauce. I am no chef but I would hazard the guess that the cream sauce is used to smooth the otherwise so strong flavor of the game (?) Nevertheless, the best dish I have ever tasted was Eurasian Black Grouse breast wrapped in bacon and baked three hours in low temp oven in cream sauce! The second best was a cheese burger with buffalo steak.
