Chat with Finns in Finnish

[kalmisto]

Korpik35

When you know the word "pakana" ( pagan ) it should be easy for you to memorize the words "takana" ( behind) and "lakana" ( bed sheet )

Listen to this song ! : http://www.mikseri.net/artists/rumien-m ... 05/141785/

The chorus goes :
Jumalan takana on musta lakana ( Behind God there is a black bed sheet )
Lakanan takana on herra saatana ( Behind the bed sheet there is the Lord Satan )

Jumala = God
Jumalan takana = behind God

[Rob A.]

Korpik35

When you know the word "pakana" ( pagan ) it should be easy for you to memorize the words "takana" ( behind) and "lakana" ( bed sheet )

Listen to this song ! : http://www.mikseri.net/artists/rumien-m ... 05/141785/

The chorus goes :
Jumalan takana on musta lakana ( Behind God there is a black bed sheet )
Lakanan takana on herra saatana ( Behind the bed sheet there is the Lord Satan )

Jumala = God
Jumalan takana = behind God

Nice....Playing around with song lyrics is a fun way to learn the language....though sometimes the word order and choice can be more "poetic" than in everyday language...

I've been pulling lyrics out of the song, "Sika", and it's kind of fun.....

Isoveli veistänsä terottaa
Ja luistansa porsaan erottaa....

....here we have two examples of the illative [Edit: actually the case is the elative...sorry]..with third person singular possessive endings.... I also learned that the partitive singular for veitsi is veistä....for some reason I didn't realize that a "t" is dropped when the partitive ending "tä" is added... I'm still not sure why this happens...???..wiki says it's a rare declension type...

....and porsas becomes porsaan in the accusative...a reminder about the "vieras" type declension....

....and finally that terottaa is a colloquial form of teroittaa

There are other "fun" lyrics in there....

Sika, ja setä vertä juo.....

and Ihmnen on sitä mitä hän syö... in this case mitä is a relative prnoun carrying the meaning in English of "which"....

I've also been practicing with the lyrics to Joulupikki matkaan jo käy......

[sammy]

sometimes the word order and choice can be more "poetic" than in everyday language...

...but sometimes they're just sickeningly awful

Exhibit A



Want more? How about this "translation" of I Treni di Tozeur



(Here's the original Italian song... beats me why they didn't translate it as treenitossut, at least that would have sounded a bit closer to the original!)

[kalmisto]

The chorus goes :
Jumalan takana on musta lakana ( Behind God there is a black bed sheet )
Lakanan takana on herra saatana ( Behind the bed sheet there is the Lord Satan

I think that the chorus would be better like this :

Jumalan takana on musta lakana ( Behind God there is a black bed sheet )
Lakanan takana on Vanha Pakana ( Behind the bed sheet there is The Old Pagan )

I do not think that I have ever seen Satan referred to as Vanha Pakana but why not ?

[Jukka Aho]

Playing around with song lyrics is a fun way to learn the language....though sometimes the word order and choice can be more "poetic" than in everyday language...

Song lyrics can be great practice material for a number of reasons.

For one thing, lyrics, at their best, are compact little stories examining the human condition and being able to evoke certain kind of emotions, memories or visions. It’s interesting to study how people express intimate ideas or describe strong feelings (love, hate, compassion, sarcasm, nostalgia, aggression, melancholy, whatever) or universal “human experiences” in another language and what kind of expressions or analogies (culturally bound or not) they employ for that. If you’re able to decipher the meaning of the verses, lyrics are also sort of “instant gratification” type material: you don’t need to wade through 500 pages of text to get something out of them... “getting” a couple of lines is enough!

For another thing, song lyrics demonstrate the versatility of the language and can introduce you to the colloquial forms of various words... as well as colloquial expressions: the actual “living language” people speak. Of course, lyrics are not 100% colloquial speech – or not always colloquial at all – but the colloquial element is usually a more common feature of song lyrics than other forms of text.

And of course, if you find a song you like music-wise, knowing what the text is all about can add yet another dimension to it... or disappoint you. :)

The difficult part about lyrics is they sometimes rely quite heavily on cultural context and reference to it in various ways which someone living outside the country (or the “cultural sphere”) can’t really understand or appreciate unless explained.

[Korpik35]

I didn't had the curiosity to find "pakana"
Now i'm at the beginning of the beginning , just learning a few vocabulary and trying to find the grammar basics
When i'll be more confident to finnish, i'll work with songs