Kielipää (On the Finnish language)

The most Finnish snippet of the entire Finnish-English dictionary:

If you're unsure why cupboards are so Finnish, please review the last entry.

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The topic of language appears frequently in my blogs, because bewilderment is my most reliable muse.  As soon as I understand what people are saying, I realize that all we humans are essentially kindred, and there's nothing funny about that.  I have already composed authoritative guides to Russian (in two parts) and English, but Finnish stands out in two significant aspects - it's crazy, and I don't understand any of it.  But general dogsbody that I am,

I'm spending the summer and the next few years trying to figure it out.  I don't know much yet.  But between you the reader and me, I'm the foremost authority on both Finnish and the larger Finno-Ugric language family, so you can trust everything written below.  An exception is made, of course, for my Finnish professor, to whom I apologize in advance.

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Finnish is one of few European languages that is not a European language.  That is to say, Finnish is not of the Indo-European language family, which includes such favorites as the Romance languages, the Germanic languages, the Slavic languages, the Indo-Iranian languages, and most other languages spoken in the area between Nepal and my apartment in Berkeley, CA.  Finnish is an outlier - it belongs to the Finno-Ugric family.  It relates closely to Estonian, and less closely to Hungarian, Saami, and an array of northern Siberian languages.  Linguists have not established any connection between the Indo-European and the Finno-Ugric families.  

This last point is an important one - historical linguistics can reach back maybe 10,000 years, but not much further, before languages change beyond recognition.  This means that the Finns' linguistic ancestors said 'moi moi' to our Anglophone linguistic ancestors at least 10,000 years ago, but possibly as long as 60,000-125,000 years ago during the first successful migration of humans out of Africa.  I'm more inclined towards the latter view, because it makes my story more dramatic.  The truth is that it's impossible to know - it's a mystery of prehistory.  However long ago it was, the Finns and the Indo-European speakers would not meet again until the first Winter Olympics in 1924.

In practical terms, this means I can't buy a cabbage roll without an intensive summer course.  At the moment, I've taken a year's worth of Finnish, and I'm at the awkward transitional stage where I can ask questions, but I never understand the answers.  This is endlessly frustrating, but to make it less stressful I've turned it into a game: I ask the Finn a question, and then while he or she answers, I nod, and act like I'm easily following them.  I'll say  'yes' and 'good' in Finnish, and when they start to pause, I'll pretend to start asking a follow-up question, like "but where..." or "and if..." in the hope that they'll continue.  I'll keep a totally straight face, and see how long I can keep them going.  And then at the end when they finally stop, I'll say "I didn't understand anything."  Gets 'em every time.

Eventually the game will become unnecessary, because I'll begin to understand what's being said.  I've already passed one significant milestone.  Because of the small Swedish-speaking minority, both Finnish and Swedish are official languages in Finland.  As such, all street signs are posted in Finnish and in Swedish.  When I arrived, I found myself only trying to read the Swedish, as if it were just funny-English, because my odds were better that way.  Now I read both, and try to combine them into something that makes sense.

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Finnish looks like this and sounds like this (or to a Finn, this.  Give it a minute to load).

Finnish is what's called a synthetic language, which means that the Finns can smash words together wheneverthehell they want, to the point where dictionaries are just an inside joke played on foreigners by Finnish publishers.  For example, when I went to the bank to get some Euros, the teller asked me for my henkilöllisyystodistus.  It's pronounced just like it looks.  As it turns out, my henkilöllisyystodistus is Finnish for my personidentitycertificate.  Henki is breath or spirit.  Henkilö is a person.  Henkilöllisyys is a person's identity.  Henkilöllisyystodistus is a personidentitycertificate.

Another interesting quality shared by all Finno-Ugric languages is called consonant gradation.  I should say, interesting for you, but it makes me want to cry.  Certain consonants, depending on the word's role in the sentence, can morph into other consonants or disappear completely.  This overlaps and mingles with a famously large number of grammatical cases - fifteen in all, though counts vary - which I have explained in my guide to Russian and don't want to talk about right now.  But these, too, change the word dramatically, by adding a specific case-ending (which itself causes the consonants to morph in other parts of the word.)  There are also strong regional dialects, such that anything I learn here in Turku will rendered useless by the bus ride to Oulu in July.

All that said, Finnish has certain saving graces, and there may be reason to hope.  First of all, henkilöllisyystodistus really is pronounced just like it looks.  Every Finnish word has its stress on the first syllable, and every letter has only one possible pronunciation.  As such, after a few lessons in Finnish 101, anybody can read Finnish aloud, even if they won't know what they've read for several years.  The synthetic nature of the language, in theory, will pay off in the end, because I have to learn fewer words and roots to broaden my vocabulary - if I know the root for "together" and the word for "work," it's easy to remember the word for togetherwork.  That is to say, for "cooperation."

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I'm learning Finnish for my job - I need to read documents from the Finnish national archives, in order to write a dissertation about sovietfinnishrelationshistory.  To give a sense of how steep the climb is, I will conclude this post with a real life example.  While flipping through the latest issue of Meidän Suomi, I saw a bunch of crazy nonsense next to a picture of ZZ Top:

General dogsbody that I am, I decided to learn how the two were connected.  But in reading, I hit a road block.  I understood the first three words of a sentence, then this happened:

This is how many Finnish lessons begin.  Here is an experiment - let's try to figure out the meaning of sisävesiristeilylaivojen with a timer running.  It is 7:40 p.m.  

My first impression is that sisä looks like the root meaning "into" or "inside," and vesi is water.  The 'n' at the end suggests the genitive case, meaning possession or belonging, and -ojen suggests it may be the genitive plural.  The other roots are unfamiliar.  So I'll grab my dictionary.

Okay, so the root sisä does mean inside, internal, interior, domestic.  Vesi we know.  Dictionary reveals that  risteily is from the verb risteillä, "to cruise."  Thus, a vesiristeily is a water-cruise!  It is 7:47.

So far, we have an insidewaterboatcruise.  Next word is laivo or something similar.  But be careful!  Due to consonant gradation, "v" could very well have been a "p" in a different form, including in the dictionary form. In fact, because the word seems to be genitive, it's likely to be "laipo" in the dictionary.  

No, I was wrong about that - not all words morph, and the 'o' comes from the ending, not the root.  The dictionary form is laiva, a word I should have known but forgot - a ship.  It's 7:51.

So, laiva will become laivoja in the partitive plural case, from which we can deduce laivojen - genetive plural of laiva.  That part I learned in grammar class.

So finally, we have 'insidewatercruiseships,' which I think might mean 'inland cruise ships,' on the many rivers and lakes of Finland.  The next word combines 'theme' and 'night' - theme-nights. 

Alas - the theme-nights on inland cruises.  It is 7:57.  The sentence is about theme-nights in city restaurants and on inland cruises.  That took me 18 minutes.  Imagine that this had been a live conversation.  The Finn would have left already.  My legs would be sore from standing still, my head would hurt, and there'd be no guarantee that I got it right.  The sun would have moved 15 degrees sideways, my cabbage roll would have gotten warm and slimy, and without a concerted effort, it's very unlikely that I would remember the word.  This is a daily occurrence for me here in Finland.  Sometimes, there is a certain satisfaction in finally deciphering the words. But just as often, they end up meaning wrongcareerpath.

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Postscript:  While researching that last sentence, I discovered that the Finns use the same word for both "career" and "rut."

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Tervetuloa Suomeen! (Welcome to Finland)

Wanna hear a funny story?

So I get off the plane in Helsinki at midnight on Friday, and I still have to find my way to Turku, Finland's original capital and my home for the next six weeks.  The way to the baggage claim and the bus stop is clearly marked, and the bus schedule is organized so that new buses meet incoming flights more or less, even those that arrive late at night, and even when there are few passengers. My bus arrives on time, but - get this - I realize I don't have any Euros.  What a bind, right? But the driver accepts credit cards, and I get to Turku right on time.  This is convenient, because somebody from my program was meeting me at the Turku bus station, and didn't have to wait around.

No?  No good?  Alright, alright - try this one.  The next morning, I go to the student housing office with my Finnish teacher to get the key to my room.  Walk in the door, look around - it's clean, and the skylights allow for a huge range of indoor plants.  There's nobody else in the office, but my teacher presses a little button, receives a ticket with a number, and then waits for the number to appear on a little electronic sign before approaching a desk.  So I say to my teacher, "what's the deal with that?"  Right?  There's nobody there, it's perfectly clear that all three employees are available to help a customer.

So it turns out, the office does get busy sometimes, and when it isn't, they still use the machine for statistical purposes.  That is, from the read-out they can see how many customers they get, when the customers tend to come, and then the office can adjust work schedules accordingly.

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It would appear at first glance that the Finns, in their pursuit of Progress, have successfully eradicated the funny from their country.  I know that can't really be the case, but my theory is that the funny must get more concentrated the closer you get to the Russian border.  It's like the radiation - they can't stop it at customs, and they certainly can't stop the Russians from producing it.  I kept my eyes out for it the first day I was here, but all I saw everywhere were healthy people running back and forth in Finland-branded athletic clothes, on the correct side of the fresh paint on the smooth paths, avoiding the hazards marked with bright red and yellow poles, bathed in golden sunlight for the first and last four hours of each day.

There are rows of unlocked bikes outside each building, unlocked cars in the center of the city.  The neighborhood has its own hydroelectric dam, the hydroelectric dam has a fish ladder, and the fish ladder has an informational plaque about how healthy the fish populations are.*

Downstream, more healthy people are fishing in an environmentally responsible manner, bathed in the same golden sunlight for the first and last four hours of each day.  There are no police; rules became obsolete as the Finns lost all cause to break them, and both laws and law enforcement disappeared in tandem.  At this point the street signs don't regulate anything; they just describe what life is like:

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So if you're like me, all of this raises the same question - how can anybody stand to live like this?  I think the problem is economic in nature.  It occurred to me when I noticed something peculiar at the mall, while looking for a prepaid cell phone.  The stores are varied and fully-stocked, such that one might imagine there is trade.  But when I needed help getting a phone out of the locked case, I noticed there were no salespeople.  Then I looked even closer, and realized there were no customers, either.

I think that the economy, like the country, runs so efficiently that people have been rendered superfluous.  Goods move without human mediation, as if in some sort of economic perpetual motion machine.  Flights land, buses move back and forth whether or not there are passengers, offices are empty but you take a number when you walk in, and the machine counts you for statistical purposes. And if you think about it, the machine's ultimate goal is to someday render itself unnecessary.  The Finns don't dry their dishes - they have invented a cupboard with no bottom that sits above the kitchen sink, and the dishes dry of their own accord.

Everything is working, but nobody is doing anything and nothing is happening.  It's a very peculiar place.

My first theory was that Finland had some massive influx of wealth at one point - perhaps the Nokia boom, or phenomenal worldwide sales of those cupboards - and then stopped allowing money out of the country, so that it might be passed around endlessly within Finnish borders.  But any economist would tell you that's impossible, because people drop coins where they can't reach them, or sometimes lose their wallets entirely.  

And what of the Finns themselves?  How do they cope?

It's hard to say, and this blog will hopefully uncover the truth in time.  One obstacle is that the Finns are famously silent, and will never speak without some sort of external stimulus.  For instance, if a small Finnish town doesn't attract foreign visitors, the lifeline of new words dries up and the entire population falls silent.  If it weren't for tourism in the bigger cities, the Finns would have gone completely mute when the last Russians withdrew in 1948.  I'd be learning a dead language, something like Latin, but for elves.

Now that I think about it, maybe that's how the monetary problem is resolved, too - I had 120 Euros when I got here, and now I only have 30.  Maybe the Finns know what they're doing after all.  This and other questions will be explored as the blog and the summer unfold.

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And so, Finland seems a fascinating place, even if it couldn't generate culture shock with a Finnish-made car battery.  In future entries, I plan to look in depth at the Finnish language, the city of Turku and its surroundings, the sauna, Finland's rambunctious youth, any other destination I reach, and anything else the world needs to know.  I am studying here for ten weeks or so, both in this city and in Oulu, a city in the wild Finnish North.  If you haven't subscribed by email, do so immediately. If, on the other hand, you have subscribed by email but do not want further updates, simply change your email address.

*Update - this paragraph has been challenged by many Finnish readers.  Apparently, they use fancy subtle locks so the bikes can't be ridden away, and I didn't notice them.  Still, in Berkeley those bikes would be on the back of a pickup truck in ten minutes, whether or not the wheels turn.

Yötön yö (On the midnight sun)

I'm just completing the triathlon in the jetlag Olympics.  The first event was a 12-hour, sleepless overnight flight from San Francisco to London in a middle-seat, with an 8-hour time difference and my face smashed into the reclined seat in front of me.  Like on all such flights, I spent 90% of my time deciding which position will finally bring relief - jamming my legs under the seat in front of me, or extending them into the aisle until they get nailed by the drink cart.  The remaining 10% I spent wondering if the girl next to me was sleeping or faking it.  The second event was a 14-hour Thursday, which I think started during the first event and ended somewhere between London and Helsinki.  I am writing this post during the final and most challenging event - arriving to a land where the sun rises in the North, sets in the North, and shines almost the entire night.  I don't know what time it is, and I'm not sure "time" is even a meaningful concept in describing what's happening to me.  It feels like the end of the Truman Show, like I finally worked up the courage to escape Berkeley, and Ed Harris turned on the sun in the middle of the night to try to find me.  There are Finns everywhere, and they're speaking Finnish, but how much could it possibly cost to fill a fake airplane with Finnish extras?  I certainly don't understand the language - they're probably just pretending to talk to one another, and relaying my coordinates into little Nokia microphones hidden in their blonde hair.

On the other hand, if this is the Joosef Show, at least I can expect more pageviews than I ever got on my Russia blog.  Maybe I'll even hit it big, and get comments from people other than the actress who plays my mom.

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Stay tuned, and subscribe by email (using the widget at the top right of the page), to this second edition of the extremely-small-cult classic Time Flying blog.  It took me three semesters to describe Russia in its entirety, but Finland is an awful lot smaller, and I understand even less of the language.  As such, by the end of this summer, this blog will be an exhaustive, authoritative guide to the country, so thorough that it will render senseless any further reading on the subject.  The reader can trust that everything that follows is factually accurate, entirely free of subjectivity, given appropriate weight, and recorded without irony, insight, or enjoyment on the part of the author.

Tervetuloa Suomeen - Welcome to Finland!