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?
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento