Insalata di riso - Rice salad

Insalata di riso

Questa è la mia versione di un piatto piuttosto diffuso, ma che di solito insiste di più sui sottaceti. Io invece ho imparato da mia mamma a preparare questa insalata con ingredienti freschi e viene molto bene: è straordinaria fredda, per le sere d'estate.

Dosi per 2 persone
100 gr. di riso
1 grossa patata
4-5 foglie d'insalata
2 pomodori
1 cipollina (eventualmente un po' d'aceto)
200 gr. di mozzarella
150 gr. di tonno sott'olio
2 uova
olio, aceto, sale

Fare bollire le uova, per renderle sode, e la patata (almeno mezz'ora); fare intanto cuocere il riso per 10/15 minuti, in acqua che deve assorbire; quindi tagliate a dadini il pomodoro e il formaggio. Tagliate finemente la cipollina e, se necessario, immergetela in una soluzione di acqua con un po' d'aceto, perché non diventi scura. Quando la patata e il riso saranno pronti, sbucciare la patata, tagliarla a dadini, quindi unire il riso, la cipollina, i pomodori, il formaggio, il tonno sminuzzato, infine le foglie d'insalata pulite e tagliate a listarelle e le uova sode. Aggiungere a discrezione olio, aceto e sale, quindi servire fredda.

 

 

 

Rice saladThis is my version of a dish rather widespread, but that usually uses pickles. But I learned from my mother to prepare this salad with fresh ingredients and it is very good: it is super if served cold, on summer evenings.Serves 2 people100 gr. rice1 large potato4-5 lettuce leaves2 tomatoes1 small onion (possibly a little of vinegar)200 gr. mozzarella150 gr. tuna 2 eggsoil, vinegar, saltBoil the eggs, and the potato (at least half an hour); meanwhile, cook the rice cook for 10-15 minutes in water that has to be absorbed; then dice the tomatoes and cheese. Finely chop the onion and, if necessary, dip it in a solution of water with a little of vinegar, so that it does not become dark. When the potato and rice are ready, peel the potatoes, cut it into cubes, then add rice, onion, tomatoes, cheese, chopped tuna, finally clean and cut into strips the lettuce leaves; add them and the boiled eggs . Add at your discretion oil, vinegar and salt, then serve cold.

Amore lontano II - Far love II

Amore lontano II

Lui guarda pensoso all'orizzonte,
ove fiocchi si arricciano di nuvole,
in un nordico turchino un po' sbiadito;
oltre la foschia, la piovigginosa nebbia,
immagina, a Sud, un paese d'oro,
dove la brezza è dolce, i colori ardenti,
e c'è lei, la sconosciuta, e le sue parole.
Parole di speranza, parole di conforto,
provenute da lontano, dal mistero
sussurrato d'una tenerezza ignota;
impossibile dire dove sia, col suo sorriso,
rifugio a una nostalgia mai ammessa.

"Dimmi dove sei e se pensi a me" direbbe,
se dar solo potesse voce ai suoi pensieri,
anche con se stesso; il limpido fruscio
dell'acqua culla il desiderio e lo rinvia,
lontano, sempre più lontano, com'eco
di carezze spente, o mai avute.
Pesante zavorra in fondo al cuore,
staziona disperata la certezza
che lei, da quel paese d'oro, vagheggiato,
mai più riaffiorerà; e ignora
che ciò che importa non si vede
agli occhi e non scompare....L'amore,
anche se invisibile, ritorna.

Far Love II

Thoughtfully he gazes towards the horizon,
where flocks of clouds get curled,
in a northern, a little faded blue;
beyond the haze, the drizzly fog,
he imagines, to the south, a golden country,
where the breeze is gentle, colors glowing,
and here is her, the stranger, and her words.
Words of hope, words of comfort,
come from a distance, from the whispered
mystery of some unknown tenderness;
impossible to say where she is, with her smile,
refuge to never told nostalgia.

"Tell me where you are and if you think of me" he'd say,
if only he could give voice to his thoughts,
also with himself; the clear water rustle
cradles desire and reverberates it away,
far, always farther, like an echo
of extinguished caresses, or those he never had.
Heavy weight down in his heart,
the desperate certainty lays
that she will never resurface
from that golden country
he longed for; and he ignores
that what matters is not seen
by eyes and does not disappears .... Love,
although invisible, returns.

Kintsugi

Kintsugi

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of piecing together vases by a golden or silver thread: an art which shows a philosophical background too. The Japanese, in fact, appreciate a lot what is old, scarred, broken: it emanates the scent of deeper life. In this tale, which I sent to a literary competition on February, I connect kintsugi with the subject of ageing: this is particularly worthy of attention in our era, when we are often tempted to reduce everything, even weak human beings, to trash.

Biopsies, blood tests, chemotherapy, vomit; and then, radiotherapy, hormones, nausea, bleeding; and again, bones aches, weakening muscles, impaired sight, collapsing skin. And the solitude of days elapsing in a lonely, pale, hospital room, staring at the ceiling; dejection, grey depression, even despair, exploding suddenly in his heart; or the fear of ache, even more dreadful than ache itself. All of this had become his daily routine since the day when his specialist, with grey, watery eyes, had stared at him and spelled, in a hardly audible voice:

- Carlo, it's prostate cancer. With metastasis in your bones. You might have one year left, more or less.

Since then, he didn't recognize his existence anymore: Carlo, riding a motorcycle and enjoying gymnastics and Nordic walking; Carlo steadily frequenting movies, museums, the theater, libraries, and increasing his collection of history books. He was 67, but still thirsty of life and youth: and now he had almost forgotten how he was just two months before. Years long, in spite of ageing, he had almost persuaded himself that he remained strong, lively, young; and now, he had apparently lost all of his energy, his impassioned zest for life. In the hospital, he lay on his bed, absent-mindedly, just waiting for the next treatment and fit of nausea; at home, he unusually sat round-shouldered in his wonderful, but now dusty, library, full of superb volumes. A relic among relics.

And yet, in spite of this harassing depression, sometimes he still felt a desperate craving for life: when he gazed at the orange-reddish stripes of light expanding over the horizon, just minutes before darkness fell definitively on the rocks of his Liguria, he longed for wedging dozens of activities, one more frantic than the other, in those ephemeral twelve months. But lately, he found no more strength for this. He just lay inertly in his arm-chair. Feeling his face always more wrinkled.

Suddenly, he discovered himself lonely too. Since some years he was divorced - an adventure with a pretty woman, two decades, perhaps, younger than him, had resulted in the brutal collapse of his evanescent marriage; a marriage looking like an empty shell since so much time that he didn't remember when it had started to vanish. His wife had left and built again a life of hers elsewhere, determinedly and aggressively as usual; and the relationship with the younger lover, which had filled him with so much enthusiasm and exuberance at first - well, it dissolved too. Now Edda, his former wife, routinely visited him, with the achromatic solicitude of a governess; as for his grand-children, almost teenagers (Francesco was hardly 15, Martina 10), he had even less to share with them than with his own son, Enzo, often away for work. When he tried to talk with them, they weren't impolite, no, but distracted: their look wandered far away, outside of the window, towards the light of the afternoon; and he felt unable to reach them and their lively daydreaming. Unable to reach that light.

When he experienced some relief thanks to chemotherapy, failing to piece together his schedule again, Carlo found some distraction just on his sleepless nights, in scrolling websites on the Internet: websites dedicated to his, maybe whilom interests - antiques, books, art. He had no time anymore for books, they were too long to read: websites were more synthetic and focused. He passed unnumbered, silent hours before the screen, unable to detach his eyes from it: lest the night, now friendly, could suddenly clutch him with a hostile grip. Sometimes he didn't understand what he read, but those exquisite images - precious books, colorful ceramics, paintings blurred by the patina of time - diverted his thoughts towards a more pleasurable reverie.

In a chat about restoration he had got acquainted with a Japanese lady, Midori, an expert on kintsugi: the art of piecing together broken vases by a thin thread of gold. She still lived in Nagasaki and, since she was only 4, she was a survivor, a hibakusha, of the nuclear explosion: not seldom, she shyly hint to the crushing consequences of it, still lingering on her life like a poisonous cloud. But she enormously loved her job, whose adepts were becoming increasingly rare: and by email she explained techniques, showed him pictures of her tiny masterworks. She had sent him a photo of herself too: a gentle, smiling lady, simply elegant in her traditional kimono, with her hands joined as if she were born to bow.

A delicate friendship had developed; thanks to her, Carlo discovered the beauty of Japanese poetry, so concise and striking: it fitted more his urge to live.

And now, by night, many a time they shared their worries. Her memory was weakening, because of an insidious form of Alzheimer: and while he listed his ailments, depicting a life sliding imperceptibly toward a dark tunnel, she grieved her memory.

- I'll forget, Carlo...And then?

- Strange. Sometimes I'd like to forget. Everything. - He would have added: I'd like falling asleep and not awakening anymore.

- But if I forget, I won't be able to witness, above all in front of young people, nor to forgive...The art of old age is memory...and forgiving.

Her ideal of forgiving looked admirable to Carlo, and he was aware that Midori went on to bear her testimony about the bomb in front of class-rooms and a large audience, relating also her experience of forgiving, shared by her Nagasaki Christian community. But the man considered forgiving abstract, distant, like the moon: finally, he had a good American friend, Bill, a typical, warm-hearted, cheerful inhabitant of the South, met during a stage on finance: and, like many of his fellow-nationals, Bill felt no regret for the atomic bombs. Nor any worry at all for any kind of Japanese forgiving. US had done what was right for the world, full stop. In spite of his perplexity, Carlo had never dared oppose the perspective of his friend, who, after all, was a very nice man.

By the way, Carlo and Bill had heard from each other just a few months before, and he was grieving his wife, Louise, who had suddenly died of a heart attack after 38 years of marriage. Now he felt lost in their large, pretty house on the banks of a wide river, and the sunset never arrived for him sitting alone on the porch. He had started to cherish Louise's dainty belongings and to preserve them like in a small, family museum. He didn't dare leave the house anymore, even for a few hours.

Once, Carlo and Midori discussed about his library. He was reluctant to leave it to his grandson Francesco: he showed no interest in history, nor in books in general, and Carlo was afraid this wonderful collection might go damaged or dispersed. He rather planned to leave it to the local city library.

- Are you sure, Carlo? - Midori replied from the other end of the world; a slight quivering could be guessed in her lines. - Are you sure?

Just this reiterated question aroused his doubts, even if her discretion did not dare advance beyond an invisible line. A week later, Carlo made a try with his grandson:

- See? These books?...I might leave them to you.

Francesco raised his chubby, pinky cheeks towards him with a flabbergasted look:

- Meeee???

- Yes. If you want, all this can be yours. - and, from his worn leather-chair, Carlo raised his hand in a circular, showing gesture.

- Miiiine?!? Wow!!!

Francesco approached a shelf with the veneration of a pilgrim in the cell of a sanctuary: and by a finger he caressed the colored cover of a volume about World War I. It was the first one he asked to read: maybe he was just attracted by the colors of the cover, but he tried. He was discovering himself owner of an extraordinary treasure, a treasure he had too long contemplated from a distance in awe.

This was a first spark in Carlo's now restricted sky: pain and despondency were swallowing the rest. Midori went on to send him detailed pictures of her restored vases, but he was not able to fully appreciate those pieces of brown or grey pottery, encircled by golden threads, sinuous like the tentacles of a silent spider. She tried to explain to him:

- It's our philosophy, wabi-sabi, which appreciates what's broken or worn. We don't throw away what we have used for a long time: waste comes from failed relationships, even with objects...Use makes them more precious, more perfect...

Among the pictures he also noted some expensive artifacts, enveloped as well by those shining meshes.

- How can you accept that a costly piece of porcelain goes broken? It will never be the same anymore, even if you repair it...

- No, it will become more precious. When we love something, we feel compassion for it and accept it changing.

This reminded Carlo again of his friend Bill. After Louise's death, he had religiously kept even the fragments of a precious, pearly vase from Bavaria she had loved a lot. They were still stored in a drawer. When, after a terrible week of bones-aches, he felt a little better, he phoned to his friend in Georgia.

- Bill? Have you still those white pieces?

The shipping and restoration needed some weeks, so much more so as Midori was now working always more slowly: but after two months, an amazed Bill, opening a voluminous, brown package, marked with some incomprehensible signs, discovered, amid a large amount of white paper and styrofoam, a delicate, pearl-white piece of porcelain, embraced by an embroidery of golden and silver lines. He had never got acquainted with any Japanese: and he stared wide-eyed at the horizon, wondering how such beautiful grace could inhabit those people that his father, while in the Pacific Sea, had considered just as cruel enemies.

Bill's joyful exclamations and a sense of quiet gratitude accompanied Carlo's weakening some days long, almost letting him forget that his time was running out: and the little rest of it was always more absorbed by the vapors of morphine. In the pauses among his excruciating tortures, and dulling mist, sitting in his chair, he looked at Francesco, who now frequently attended his library and shuttled almost whimsically from a book to another: but Carlo enjoyed that sight. His grandson even witnessed some of his chats with Midori. When he interfered, telling he had to do a school research about World War the II, the gentle lady, who hid beneath her smile the dread of losing always more fragments of her memory, agreed to recount her past to him. Carlo listened, nodding quietly, while Francesco recorded Midori's narrations on some MP3 files: oddly, she explained, she had never felt compelled to capture her own voice on tape, because she had always believed in the truth gushing from lively sounds. But could that stop, at least for a little time, the inexorable dispersion of images and faces flowing away from her mind like water from a broken piece of pottery? Who knows...

        

On a quiet summer sunset, spreading a golden drape on Liguria rocky coasts, from the silence beyond the horizon Carlo, always more tired, received a Japanese poem:

Ageing means forgiving:
forgiving leaves, as they fall down,
forgiving our body, as it collapses,
forgiving nature, as it abandons us,
forgiving others, as they forget us;
forgiving everything,
because it will go on to exist
also without us...

He read her verses in silence. Fear, an unfathomable fear of anything, still inhabited him, but now he cherished her vases: while sinking in the dark tunnel at the extremity of his life, in that night of senses, he could glimpse a delicate, golden web of loving gestures spreading among continents and generations, thinly, delicately supporting him, in spite of fear and pain, and piecing together the impossible...

Il finlandese per imbranati 2

Il finlandese per imbranati 2

Caratteristiche di base del finlandese

Allora, riprendiamo la nostra riflessione...Dopo aver mangiato (chi ce l'ha ancora) un po' di cioccolata Fazer (come si fa a ordinarla su Internet? Bisogna studiare il Finlandese per farlo?).

Per il momento, tralascio la fonetica, cioè la parte della lingua relativa ai suoni e alle lettere dell'alfabeto (ma, per un Italiano, non è difficile, ci sono molte vocali e poche consonanti).
Il Finlandese è organizzato come tante altre lingue, cioè è agglutinante: per intenderci, non si tratta di una lingua che si comporta come una crema, bensì di una lingua che, come Latino, Greco, Germanico, lingue Neo-latine ecc., usa le desinenze. Le usa per i verbi e, come vedremo, le usa (e molto) per i nomi. Quindi, se avete un verbo e lo volete coniugare, dovete aggiungere la desinenza giusta, per esempio di persona, alla radice; con i nomi, o sostantivi, invece, impiegherete i celebri (e temibili) casi, la cui desinenza permette di formare i complementi indiretti senza preposizioni (non sembra, ma è molto comodo, ve lo assicuro).

• Allora, prima di tutto, in Finlandese non ci sono articoli e questa è una bella notizia: del resto, anche nelle  lingue indo-europee limitrofe (ad esempio, lingue Baltiche, come il Lituano, o slave, come il Russo e il Polacco), gli articoli non esistono. Noi Neolatini (Italiani, Francesi, Spagnoli e Portoghesi) li abbiamo derivati dal dimostrativo latino ille, illa, illud.
• Non ci sono generi: la stessa cosa pare si verifichi per le altre lingue ugro-finniche (ad esempio, l'Ungherese e l'Estone), per cui non avete né nomi femminili o maschili, né pronomi distinti, come lui e lei (come faranno per i romanzi d'amore, poi? Boh!).

• Per i sostantivi (e gli aggettivi) ci sono i casi. Le lingue ugro-finniche sembrano farne un uso industriale che va ben al di là del nostro, innocuo, Indoeuropeo (l'Indo-europeo aveva 8 casi, cioè i 6 del Latino, più Strumentale e Locativo; nelle lingue europee a volte sopravvivono, specie in quelle slave e baltiche. Quindi, il Latino aveva 6 casi, il Greco 5, l'Armeno 7, il Russo 6, varie lingue slave e il Lituano 7, il Tedesco 4 ecc.ecc.ecc.). Infatti, i casi, nelle lingue ugro-finniche, si contano a decine (il prossimo che si lamenta in classe per il Latino, lo riduco in polpette!). L'Ungherese, per esempio, ha 18 casi, l'Estone, 14 o 15 a seconda dei conti (forse perdono il conto, talora), il famoso Vepso, di cui ho riportato la bandiera, ben 24! (e poi si lamentano che si stanno estinguendo...); solo al Polo Nord, i Sami si sono prudenzialmente ridotti a 6, mentre il Moksha, parlato in Mordovia, ha ben 13 casi e il famigerato Komi, la lingua panda ancora parlata da quattro gatti nella zona di Arcangelo, ne annovera ben 27! Il nostro Finnico si ferma, più modestamente, a 15. A dire il vero, vi consolerà sapere che il Nominativo (caso del soggetto) non ha desinenza, che l'Accusativo ha di solito una nasale (come in Indoeuropeo: n ed m) e che la maggior parte dei casi copre i complementi di luogo, organizzati in maniera molto varia; comunque sono davvero tanti (sapete che nelle lingue Caucasiche, come il Georgiano, sono ancora di più? 36, 37, 38....Lo dico per consolarvi).

                                  
                                 Riecco la bandiera del popolo Vepso: hanno più casi che parlanti...

• Esiste la desinenza del plurale, che di solito, in Finnico è -t. Consolazione: il Finnico sembra avere dimenticato che, una volta, l'Ugro-finnico aveva anche il numero duale (una volta).
• Tutti questi casi hanno una conseguenza positiva però: le preposizioni sono quasi assenti (e questa è una buona notizia, perché le preposizioni possono complicare la vita, e molto: guardate all'Inglese). Ci sono però delle post-posizioni, cioè delle preposizioni usate dopo i nomi (mai notato che le preposizioni vengono prima?).
• Anche i possessivi si fanno con i suffissi. Es: kirjani, "il mio libro", da kirja, "libro" e ni, "mio". Pare anzi che il Finlandese li abbia persi progressivamente.

• I verbi, come da noi, si dividono in forme finite e infinite. I modi finiti sono indicativo, imperativo e condizionale, un po' come nelle lingue slave, che hanno dimenticato il congiuntivo (una volta, secoli fa, chissà, agli albori della Finlandia, esistevano anche i modi ottativo ed eventivo, ma preferisco non sapere che cosa fossero, anche se lo posso ben immaginare).
• Non esiste il futuro. Non dev'essere un problema di pessimismo nordico, dovuto alla  mancanza di luce, bensì dobbiamo ricordare che anche l'Indo-europeo non lo aveva: perciò, ogni lingua se l'è creato per i fatti suoi (il Tedesco con l'ausiliare werden, l'Inglese con will, il Latino ha ben due serie di suffissi diversi per crearlo a seconda delle coniugazioni, il Greco aggiungeva -s- ecc. Una Babele). Come vedete, continuiamo a trovare analogie tra Indo-europeo e Ugro-finnico.
• Esistono i verbi di negazione, cioè una forma verbale negativa, che si forma con un verbo negativo base, en, et, ei ecc., sommato al verbo da coniugare al negativo.
• In definitiva: esistono sostantivi, aggettivi, verbi, pronomi, numerali e particelle varie.
• Di solito l'ordine delle parole è Soggetto-Predicato-Oggetto (quindi a noi familiare).

Lessico di base - Saluti

Qui partiamo dalla nostra esperienza finlandese.
Kyllä: sì (vi ricordo che -y- si pronuncia "u"); però, vi ricorderete di avere sentito kylla nei negozi, invece i nostri amici dire continuamente joo, che a me ricorda il Bavarese.
Ei: no.
Moi = ciao! (sperimentato all'entrata dei negozi; moika, quando si usciva).
Terve!: salve!
Tervetuloa = questa è una parola che, come vedete, assomiglia a "salve",  ma si trovava sistematicamente scritta nelle insegne dei negozi: corrisponde al nostro "benvenuto!".
Kiitos: grazie.

Poi abbiamo una sfilza di saluti, uno per ogni parte del giorno: il più corrente, se ben ricordo, era hyvää päivää!, "buongiorno"; rammento anche che la sillaba hy con tanto di aspirazione e -u-, veniva pronunciata come se salisse dalla cantina.

• Hyvää huomenta!: buon giorno! (al mattino presto)

• Hyvää päivää!: buon giorno!

• Hyvää iltaa!: buona sera!

• Hyvää yötä!: buona notte!

• Terveisiä!: arrivederci! (Appunto)

Vi lascio con qualcosa di dolce: il video che mostra il pulla, cioè come preparare le focaccine al cardamomo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWcTVivAeoY

Poesia d'amore Love poem

Poesia d'amore

Carezzarti
è  il sogno di una vita.

Love poem

Caressing you
is one life's dream.

Finnish for dummies 1

Finnish for dummies 1

After finishing my dose of outlooks, tasks and lessons for tomorrow, I begin here a new series, "Finnish for dummies", in honor of our Finnish friends who welcomed us so friendly. Obviously, the "dummies" are not them (!), but anyone not understanding one iota of a language so different from ours and from Indo-European ones in general. I hope to continue with various posts, as long as I learn new words and forms and examine more deeply the Finnish culture: and, I confess, I burn out of curiosity. On the other hand, if we want to discuss by a little Finnish with our Nordic friends, we should better resort to DIY: I checked the prices of Finnish grammar books in a bookstore in Helsinki and they are stellar (45 euro per each volume on average). I promise to make you laugh (my posts are for dummies, so ...). Then, do we set off for adventure? Let's start!

Well, when I was in Finland, our friend and colleague Yari jokingly urged me to find the point of connection between Indo - European languages ​​(and, therefore, Italian) and Finno-Ugric ones ​​(ie Finnish). Finno-Ugric languages ​​are not a four-letters word (have you noticed that Finnish has a nasty habit of sounding like a slew of bad words in Italian?). It is a group of languages ​​mainly spoken in Eastern Europe and in the Ural steppes. In the sixteenth century, a Hungarian monk came to Finland (how did he do then ...) and grasped the many similarities between the two languages ​​(similarities on which I have some doubts, as we shall see later). From there a number of studies arose and the idea that Hungarian and Finnish, but also Estonian and other idioms, belong to this ancient family of Uralic languages ​​(along with Samoyedic ones, that, you do not know it, are widespread in Siberia).

I'm curious to know if Finno-Ugric languages ​​are related to ours: they usually say no. Yari, jokingly, encouraged me to find what I would call the "passage to the North-West" (perhaps "to the North-East") between the two linguistic groups: maybe I could become rich and famous! However, my students are aware of it, every now and then I express the pious wish of becoming rich and famous, but so far the miracle has never happened and I do not think that it will happen in the future either; however, in my opinion, there are some points of contact, but who knows why.

Eg .:
Fin. Aurinko = "sun".
Now, our aurora (lat. Aurora), "dawn", comes from an Indo-European root * ausosa (s was transformed into -r-). In fact, we have Aušros in Lithuanian: in Vilnius Aušros Vartu is the "Gate of the dawn", the one to the east (with the sanctuary of Ostra brama, which means the same thing in Polish; you'll notice that even the Polish ostra comes from the same root). Aurora, dawn, sun: these words concern the light. And it is original, ancient vocabulary, so it should not be derived from elsewhere. I wonder: is there a common root for the two groups?
Anyway, here's the map of such languages:

As you will notice, they seem survivors after an invasion: you would have the same effect if you poured some cream over a slice of bread where you have already spread Nutella. The point is that the group, however mysterious, existed before the Indo-European wave, as early as 4.000-3.000 B.C.: Indo-Europeans then came in 2.000-1.200 and .... so we had the survivors. There is a linguistic law, that the oldest linguistic phenomena remain in the periphery, which is why Finno-Ugric languages ​​reside ... among the reindeers.

The place of birth of the group seems to be the region around the river Volga: in fact, here are many languages ​​and, most importantly, the reconstruction of the original lexicon contains plants and animals of the area (willow, Siberian pine and larch, hedgehog etc. ). The diffusion area ranged between Urals and the Baltic and some terms seem to have been imported from Indo-European (perhaps this would explain my comparison above). However, some say that Finno-Ugric may be newer than Indo-European and coming from a different place; to make a long story short, Finno-Ugric seems to give a hard time to scholars and many of such ideas are just speculation. The most serious problem is that we have not so many written data.
                         

 

              
When you go to read the list of Finno-Ugric languages ​​other than Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian, there are some strange languages, I had never heard of. For example, there is a deluge of Sami languages ​​(those blue on the extreme north), spoken by the Sami people scattered throughout the northern coast of Scandinavia, from Norway to Finland and Russia. Such languages resemble pandas, that is they are close to extinction: the Ume Sami, spoken in the extreme north of Sweden, has about twenty speakers and so Pite Sami, located in Swedentoo. Ter Sami is the least widely spoken language in the world and is only known by two elderly Russian ladies (those exaclty discussing here in the picture above: they are training themselves...).
Even Akkala Sami, also spoken in Russia, became extinct when the last lady who knew it died, Marja Sergina, in 2003.

Then there is another group, Mordvinic (the pink-violet in the center), which brings together the languages ​​of the Russian autonomous republic of Mordovia (Erza and Moksha, respectively zone E and O); there were Mansi languages, now dead, that spread on the Volga (like Muromo, disappeared in the Middle Ages and perhaps related with Mordvinic); Komi, spoken in the homonymous Russian Republic near Archangel, written in Cyrillic and divided into Permyak and Zyriac (Zyriac, not Syriac).

                                              

Our Finnish is instead part, together with Estonian, of the Balto-Ugric group. There are also Karelian (from Karelia, you know, that region of Finland which was always wanted by Russians) and, so far, no problem; then we have the panda languages. There was the Livonian, as the name implies, spoken in Riga, Latvia; but in 2013 its last speaker died, a sprightly old man 103 years old (was he recorded?); and then, still spoken in Karelia, the Veps, and in Estonia, the Voro. There is also a last remnant of Votic, with dozens of speakers in St. Petersburg: I strongly discourage my students from asking me to count them, after I've done it in Finnish, in Veps or Voro (there is a limit to everything).

As you'll notice, I have dwelt on these unknown languages, but they are all spoken not far from Finland, and, in some way, they are connected to its culture, especially the various types of Karelian. Obviously, living in those lands covered by taiga and ice is complicated and taiga and ice must have the effect of the rocky mountains of the Caucasus, in whose valleys divided by rocks, too many idioms develop. Perhaps, in the next cultural exchange, we will have to take this into account, perhaps to help out some panda languages...

                                             The flag of Veps people (3,160 speakers, in Karelia)

Some Finnish words... on food

As it is well-known, in Finland we have never understood the meal schedule: practically we were eating all the time and well, too (which explains how my scale, after my return, showed two kilos more, partially lost, and why tonight I mostly ate salads). I give here some names of foods I learned in Finland, so you will never die of hunger:

                                         The kalakukko is a pie consisting of kala, ie fish.

Vesi = water
Vini = wine (do you see that it is our word vino?)
Leipä = bread (which appears in so many compounds, such as the already mentioned leipäjuusto, "cheese-bread")
Juusto = precisely, cheese
Kala = fish
Vihannes = vegetables (I have to register here>
Porkkana = carrot!)
Liha = meat (in fact, sianliha is the pork, naudanliha the beef).

Then I hold a special place for sweets. Surely it is easy to see what torttu is (our cake, in Italian "torta"), but also jäätelö, which (note the metathesis, ie the exchange of consonants) is nothing but our ... ice cream, "gelato". In fact, like wine, it is an Italian word (who invented the ice cream, eh?). Finally, we have sokeri (sugar), vanilja (vanilla), suklaa (chocolate). About suklaa, I have the honor to mention the Finnish chocolate, the legendary Fazer, born in 1891 (and here I am tempted to add something to my supper based on salad ...).

Finally, I should mention lakritsi, liquorice. By the way, I was given a bag of it, but I do not eat it: what about if I carry it in the classroom?