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Pronouns

Started by keithpenrod, December 16, 2011, 04:28:08 PM

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history_geek

Quote from: Pharaoh Cat on December 17, 2011, 11:34:41 PM
Quote from: history_geek on December 17, 2011, 07:24:53 PM
finnish is a Urlic language...

Whoa, really?  Finlland is farther away than I thought, then, if this is accurate: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Urlic


Whoops, a minor mispelling there ;D Uralic, as it were :P

However, what i found interesting was that accoarding to that source, Ukko was a homeplanet of an all-female librarians race.... :o Talk about a whole new twist, as Ukko was the name of the old Finnish Over-god who was also known as Perkele ;)

@OldGit: True, we have a good number of borrowed words, but I would suspect that at least some of them also come from our slavic neigbours, although the transaction with them has been a little, let's say, less...stable when compared to our contacts to the west.

Further more, I would like to point out that this is the so called "book language", that very few people use in their everyday life, unless in a formal reception or something. Insted we use a number of dialects, that are classified in a way by ones home area (for me it would be Keski-Pohjanmaan murre, aka Middle-Ostrobothnia diealect), though even then each town might have it's own variation or a mix of dialects, like mine is a apparently a mix of M-Ostrobothnian and South-Ostrobothnian.

In a wider use, most people use "mä" and "sä" instead of "minä" and "sinä". And from there it really starts to get weird. One example is that I might say that "Nysse tulee", "Nyt se tulee" = "Here/Now it comes/arrives". But to a person from Savo area would understand it as "Bus is comming/arriving". It's a headache as written language (thanks Agricola!), but as a spoken language it can be a ton of fun, because a word in one diealect can mean something slightly different in another. The result is sometimes a bit like the Abbot and Castello comedy act of "Who's on first?", though it usually doesn't take that long to figure out what the other means. And all of this without a drop of alcohol, ladies and getlemen ;D after a few drinks....oh dear....

And let's not forget that we also have a second official language, swedish which is another headache and a source of a lot of loanwords for us people on the western coast. A good example would be "praatata" as opposed to the swedish word "prata" and 'book finnish' "puhua".

Mitä nuo ukot sielä praataa tähän aikahan?
Mitä ne (vanhat) miehet siellä puhuvat tähän aikaan?
What are those (old) men talking [about] at this hour/time?
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C Clarke's Third Law
"Any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from a god."
Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace:
Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothése - I do not require that hypothesis[img]http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/a/4eef2cc3548cc9844a491b22ad384546.gif[/i

OldGit

#16
Fascinating insights.  Do these dialects merge into Estonian, and how close are some of them to the Sami dialects?   After that, your only large cousin is Hungarian.  Turkish is also distantly related to you, and a teacher of Japanese at SOAS told me that Japanese seems to be close to the Eastern end of the Ural-Altaic languages.

BTW when I spoke of your borrowings from Germanic, I meant that branch of Scandinavian which is now Swedish.  That word prata even turns up in Dutch and gives English prate.  Obviously puhua has no reflex at all in Germanic.

Pity I never learned any Finnish, but alas, that goes for many others.  :'(   I once had a brief affair with a Finnish girl who taught me to count up to ten, but I've forgotten even that. (We used German.)

history_geek

Quote from: OldGit on December 18, 2011, 09:34:27 AM
Fascinating insights.  Do these dialects merge into Estonian, and how close are some of them to the Sami dialects?   After that, your only large cousin is Hungarian.  Turkish is also distantly related to you, and a teacher of Japanese at SOAS told me that Japanese seems to be close to the Eastern end of the Ural-Altaic languages.

BTW when I spoke of your borrowings from Germanic, I meant that branch of Scandinavian which is now Swedish.  That word prata even turns up in Dutch and gives English prate.  Obviously puhua has no reflex at all in Germanic.

Pity I never learned any Finnish, but alas, that goes for many others.  :'(   I once had a brief affair with a Finnish girl who taught me to count up to ten, but I've forgotten even that. (We used German.)

No our dialects do not merge into estonia, as it is a language all on to it's own. Though it is undoubtetly the closest of our cousin languages, i can say from personal experience, that to most of us Finns it is at best semi-understandable, and at worst little better then gibberish. We do have a number of shared words that even have the same meaning, but there are many more that don't. An example with a humorous note was when two Finns were visiting Estonia and chanced on a dubbed Clint Eastwood movie. they basicly giggled the hole way through because of the language differences, but finally lost it compleatly as clint was standing on a buildings front, looked around and said: "Kussa on mun hopotiti?" "Where is my horse?" Firstly, "kussa" would translate to us as "missä", though it could be understood as a bit old fashioned word, much like he had asked "Where art..." in english. Secondly, "hopotiti" is not a word in finnish, we use "hevonen" instead, though the pronaunciation makes it sound comedic, let alone when said in all seriousness by a person like Eastwood xD

Anyway, the biggest similarity between our languages is the pronounciation. Other the that, we only have a few words that we understand, and I have no idea about the grammar.

Sami is it's own language as well, though as I understand it the Lapp diealect is a strong mixture of both sami and finnish. But that's pretty much it.

And yes, hungarian is another cousin language that we apparenytly also share words with, though the meanings seem to be way off. for example paska in finnish means "shit" but in hungarian I think it was a form of greeting or something along those lines. :o The part about turkish was news to me, but I've noticed the similarity in  pronaunciation in japanese, though I can't tell if we share any other linguistic similarities.

I think I should also mention that there are a number of other finnic-languages, which means that they are closely related to us, but still theit own languages. The Ingrian, Karelian, Ludic, Veps, and Votic are all related to our langauge, and there's one called Mäenkieli in northern Sweden and and Kven in Norway that are finnic and have been recogniced as indpendent languages. Google them for more information ;)

The word "puhua" is te original finnish word, while "prata" is loaned from swedish, was my point in my previous post ;) and there are many more words that we have borrowed from swedish, but also from German and English, the latter being the most recent source of loan words. For example word like "seivata" (to "save" for example in a computer game, or a soccer goalkeeper cathing the ball sucessfully from an especially close call), and a number of other small words are creeping their way into the everyday use, especially with the younger generations (though personally I "seivaan" quite often ;) ).

Aye, finnish is a bit of a hard anguage to learn or get into because of the insane grammar and the fact that rarely anyone speaks the "book language". :-\

But to  cheer you up:

Yksi - Ein - One
Kaksi - Zwei - Two
Kolme - Drei - Three
Neljä - Vier - Four
Viisi - Fünf - Five
Kuusi - Sechs - Six
Seitseman - Sieben - Seven
Kahdeksan - Acht - Eight
Yhdeksän - Neun - Nine
Kymmenen - Zehn - Ten

;)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C Clarke's Third Law
"Any sufficiently advanced alien is indistinguishable from a god."
Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace:
Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothése - I do not require that hypothesis[img]http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/a/4eef2cc3548cc9844a491b22ad384546.gif[/i

Willow

In some transgender communities, sie(zie in American) and hir are used as gender neutral personal pronouns.  You can get accustomed to them pretty quickly, but it hasn't spread.

Recusant

#19
The more recent thread on this topic seems to be unavailable, so. . .

"2015 Word of the Year is singular 'they'" | American Dialect Society

QuoteIn its 26th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted for they used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun as the Word of the Year for 2015. They was recognized by the society for its emerging use as a pronoun to refer to a known person, often as a conscious choice by a person rejecting the traditional gender binary of he and she.

Presiding at the Jan. 8 voting session were ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf of MacMurray College and Ben Zimmer, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society. Zimmer is also executive editor of Vocabulary.com and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

The use of singular they builds on centuries of usage, appearing in the work of writers such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen. In 2015, singular they was embraced by the Washington Post style guide. Bill Walsh, copy editor for the Post, described it as "the only sensible solution to English's lack of a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun."

[Continues . . .]

The list of candidates for the 2015 "Word of the Year": Nominations (PDF)
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


Magdalena

Quote from: Recusant on January 13, 2016, 12:24:26 AM

.....
........
The list of candidates for the 2015 "Word of the Year": Nominations (PDF)
^^^
:snicker:
MOST UNNECESSARY:
dadbod: flabby physique of a typical dad 

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED:
Berniementum: momentum behind the candidacy of Bernie Sanders

MOST CREATIVE:
ammosexual: someone who loves firearms in a fetishistic manner.

"I've had several "spiritual" or numinous experiences over the years, but never felt that they were the product of anything but the workings of my own mind in reaction to the universe." ~Recusant

Asmodean

Quote from: OldGit on December 17, 2011, 10:39:11 AM
2. Don't point out that ships are called she.  It's not the same phenomenon and makes us linguistic historians reach for a heavy object to throw.  ;D
Some people call their cars "she" as well. The Asmo's Dietrich the Opel, however, is a he. Mostly in protest.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Essie Mae

So far, so technical, but when I used to say to my mum,

'The nurse is due and he/she will expect you to be in the bathroom,'

the gender of the nurse was not a politcal issue, merely the correct label. I do use 'they' but it's not entirely satisfactory.  If you don't say she/he  or they, and just lazily use 'she' you get accused of gender stereotyping.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Wm Shakespeare


Brave Patato

For me this topic is quite an interesting one. I've got a friend, who is queer and uses both a female and male name and pronouns. Since it'd be really weird to change the pronoun we use to refer to them from time to time, everyone uses the female one and thus indirectly categorize them. Now, in English there's 'they, them, their, themselves', which can be used as a neutral pronoun but as far as I know there's no equivalent to this in German. So, I guess this must be a bit upsitting for my friend and other gender-nonconforming people.

Another really interesting thing is the German indefinite pronoun 'man' (strongly similar to the noun 'Mann'). Some feminists started to use 'frau' ('woman') or 'mensch' ('human'). So, there's kind of a pronoun battle going on. In fact, sometimes I read through my texts asking myself whether or not they're discriminating someone.

It's important to be aware of this matter but sometimes I get the feeling the whole thing ends up in a linguistic battle. So, while some people start complicating everything by applying 'equality-rules' a normal mortal has no ideas of, I think we should simplicate the story and thus get the whole mess sorted again - even if it's just declaring certain words/endings officially neutral.
And students should be made aware of the socio-cultural impact of language early.

Talking about Finnish btw when we complained during German classes in lower secondary school, once a teacher told us to just stop it and be happy that we wouldn't have to learn Finnish and it's 16 cases. :P Would find it kind of interesting, though.
"An atheist doesn't have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question."