...ever heard of this?"Some cultures don't swear at all. The Japanese, Malayans, and most Polynesians and American Indians do not have native swear words. The Finns, lacking the sort of words you need to describe your feelings when you stub your toe getting up to answer a wrong number at 2:00 a.m., rather oddly adopted the word, ravintolassa. It means 'in the restaurant."
Ravintolassa - A Finnish swear word?
Ravintolassa - A Finnish swear word?
My sister is taking a class on the history of the English language. She is currently on the chapter about swear words. In her text book, it said this...
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Hank W.
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I can send your sister a cassette full of native expletives such as "go stuff your head in the behind of the horse" if she wants to countermand the textbook. The usage of "ravintolassa" is totally 
- but as kids we learned skirting terms (like saying shoot, or heck) such as 'Junalautoja saatavana Perkiön asemalta' (train-boards available from Perkiö station) that skirts all the most common biblical swearwords used when you hit your toe. Also, you can say 'Voihan Vitalis' (Vitalis is anti-frost cream), or 'Helveetti, eli siis Sveitsiläinen' (Helvetian, in other words a Swiss), so I wouldn't say Finnish doesn't have this kind of euphemistic terms and that somewhere someone might use 'ravintolassa' but its like ... duh!
Malaysina I know if you say 'old lady' in plural it means something nasty, but telling someone to "go ski into the bog" is about as quaint.
- but as kids we learned skirting terms (like saying shoot, or heck) such as 'Junalautoja saatavana Perkiön asemalta' (train-boards available from Perkiö station) that skirts all the most common biblical swearwords used when you hit your toe. Also, you can say 'Voihan Vitalis' (Vitalis is anti-frost cream), or 'Helveetti, eli siis Sveitsiläinen' (Helvetian, in other words a Swiss), so I wouldn't say Finnish doesn't have this kind of euphemistic terms and that somewhere someone might use 'ravintolassa' but its like ... duh!Malaysina I know if you say 'old lady' in plural it means something nasty, but telling someone to "go ski into the bog" is about as quaint.
Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
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Hank W.
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You know; boring day, some doofus around; same thing as with those 60 minutes reporters - the guy is horsemanuring straightfaced - and they take it all hook, line & sinkeranja wrote:I'd like to know his/her sources!
Not a new habit, you know the cartographers were foreigners so we get names like 'Ompahanvaanlampi' (Justanotherpond) and 'Homeperseensuo' (Moldyarsebog) and a lot more the upper you get...Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
Yah,.. after reading this idiotic text I came to think "this author must have dealt with a person from Savo"Hank W. wrote:You know; boring day, some doofus around; same thing as with those 60 minutes reporters - the guy is horsemanuring straightfaced - and they take it all hook, line & sinkeranja wrote:I'd like to know his/her sources!
"Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives."
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-- Sue Murphy
Re: Ravintolassa - A Finnish swear word?
That is so wrong. One of my best friends is a linguist who specialises in Native American languages and he laughed at the suggestion that they have no swear words. They got plenty. In fact, I don't know that there is a language that doesn't have some sort of expletive. And the idea that Finns don't have swearwords is, well, that's just funny.Phil wrote:My sister is taking a class on the history of the English language. She is currently on the chapter about swear words. In her text book, it said this...
...ever heard of this?"Some cultures don't swear at all. The Japanese, Malayans, and most Polynesians and American Indians do not have native swear words. The Finns, lacking the sort of words you need to describe your feelings when you stub your toe getting up to answer a wrong number at 2:00 a.m., rather oddly adopted the word, ravintolassa. It means 'in the restaurant."
What book is this? I'll set a few linguists on the editor/publisher :)
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MinnaRaisanen
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MinnaRaisanen wrote:Are you kidding me!?!? Even the babies here swear....
It was actually one of the first things I noticed here (since swear words are the first words that you tend to learn in a language (maybe an idea for a PhD project??)
).I was sitting in the bus home with the missus and behind us was a group of opgeschoten jongeren (so to say), and it was as bad as in any other country. A swear word every other word of the sentence, the whole 'conversation' long. At that point I'd learned about 5-6 new swear words
Ravintolassa wasn't one of them, though
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MinnaRaisanen
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MinnaRaisanen wrote:All I know is that when I tried ONCE to swear as a kid, my mom filled my mouth with white pepper and that pretty much ended that little habit right there...
HAHAHAHAHA
Brilliant! I have to remember that.
I can imagine it's a lot more effective than telling your kid to wash its mouth with soap, which it'll never do.
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MinnaRaisanen
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Hank W.
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Well, there is a magazine dedicated to this particular linguistic aspect; they do a lot of studies on it as they do depend on localities and culture a lot. Those who can google find Maledicta of Reinhold Aman. It would make the textbook writers' socks twirl...
Then again for all the underaged kids - you do that don't come here with all that white pepper in your mouth ya hear!
Then again for all the underaged kids - you do that don't come here with all that white pepper in your mouth ya hear!
Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
This might be the reason why ravintolassa ended up in the list over bad words, sort of a prank. If someone calls you 2 o'clock in the night it's always nice to be able to answer something funny like e.g. Ravintolassa or "the kings bathroom, how can I help you?" can be used.
I ripped out my mobile phone battery saturday night 'cause I was to tired to listen on my drunk friends.
I ripped out my mobile phone battery saturday night 'cause I was to tired to listen on my drunk friends.
"Snowboarding is an Art form. The rider is the artist and his board his tool. Together they make art worth die for."
Wow, he's publishing again :)Hank W. wrote:Well, there is a magazine dedicated to this particular linguistic aspect; they do a lot of studies on it as they do depend on localities and culture a lot. Those who can google find Maledicta of Reinhold Aman. It would make the textbook writers' socks twirl...
Then again for all the underaged kids - you do that don't come here with all that white pepper in your mouth ya hear!
And there is always the alternative Finnish dictionary :)
http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Finnish.html