Popular noval in Finland?

[AldenG]

Would you please tell me, what are the popular novels in Finland in recent 2 years?
And what is the language difficulty level, how many vocabulary do you estimate if a Finnish learner what to read?
I found lots of pocket novel books in bookshop, but I want to know what young people are reading.

Also it's worth considering reading popular English books translated into Finnish. (Or vice versa, if you can find them.) That gives you a variety of possible reading strategies. You can read a few pages in English first, then in Finnish. Or do Finnish, English, Finnish. (Or your own first language instead of English, if possible.) Or you can go sentence by sentence.

It's not perfect, because translations sometimes change metaphors or replace a popular expression in one language with one that literally means something quite different in the other. But it's much easier, I think, and probably more instructive, than simply looking up Finnish words one at a time in the dictionary. It gets you more quickly to thinking in groups of words, I think. If you know more or less what a paragraph is going to say, it's often easier to figure out how the words are saying it. And if you would understand most of a sentence but not all of the words in it, you can more easily figure those words out from context when you have a text to compare before or after the Finnish.

[Rob A.]

Harju is a geological formulation, a glacially deposited ridge or crest of sorts (I think), and pää is the end of the ridge. So the family name Harjunpää, as so often in Finnish names, refers to a feature of the landscape.

Yes, indeed...harju="esker".....long, winding ridges formed by glaciation...the meltwater channels under the glacier.... Many lakes are formed as a result of eskers. Canada ...and, of course, Finland, are full of eskers. I remember a rather prominent esker south of Ottawa, that I drove over and around regularly when I was working there....

And, for those who are interested, I was surprised to find this 76-page paper on that very esker...full of drawings maps, etc., ...prepared by the Geological Survey of Canada...

http://www.waste.rendev.ca/Vars%20Winch ... es2007.pdf

Joensuu is a similar name, coming from joki + suu, the mouth of the river (and the name of a Finnish city). Joensuu made his first career as a Finnish cop, so you can draw your own conclusions about the name of the character.

And Joensuu....is a Finnish name I encountered early when I started learning the language....and I remember thinking that it somehow seemed too "soft" looking to be a Finnish word. But I just passively accepted it as it was...until one day I looked at this word "analytically"... I then realized this word displayed several things about the language...consonant gradation, vowel lowering ...("i" changing to "e"), compound words....and the typical pattern of place names coming from geographic features.... "River's Mouth"....sounds rather bland in its English form...

And the lake there has lots of eskers...and I suppose some of the features will be glacial moraines, rather than eskers....easily seen in Google Earth....

[onkko]

Finnish name

Offtopic but i found nice when i found that here is road called "pärinkummuntie", i know that ones who needed/build that road are Bergs (what is local name since manmemory). Berg, atleast in here, is pronounced Päri

[Rob A.]

Finnish name

Offtopic but i found nice when i found that here is road called "pärinkummuntie", i know that ones who needed/build that road are Bergs (what is local name since manmemory). Berg, atleast in here, is pronounced Päri

So "Berg's Hummock Road" ???

[onkko]

Finnish name

Offtopic but i found nice when i found that here is road called "pärinkummuntie", i know that ones who needed/build that road are Bergs (what is local name since manmemory). Berg, atleast in here, is pronounced Päri

So "Berg's Hummock Road" ???

Yep, thats if hummock means kumpu (kumpu is also used in hautakumpu and similar so its small thing you can relatively ease shovel yourself, dunno if hummock is same)