Sinuhe 2011

[onkko]

I checked my authoritative reference, Nykysuomen Etymologinen Sanakirja....which I paid about €65 for at Akateeminen kirjakauppa and keep forgetting I have on my bookshelf...

All these words are actually related to kyllä and according to this reference the ancient meaning was along the lines of "enough"...and this word is a good solid Finno Ugric word ...the related languages all have similar forms, though I didn't check that they are used the same way as kyllä. But it seems in modern Finland the Germanic version is the more common word....

And while I'm thinking about it, onkko, your English is improving rapidly and continually.... I don't know how you guys can do it... Finnish continues to be quite a struggle for me....

I do believe if you and etymologia says so but its buried by centuries so to mere speaker, like me, those are two different thinks

Thank you but dont compare yourself to me, im bombarded daily by english language. Move to rural finland + look mainly finnish/"non english subtitled in finnish" programs + read finnish wiki etc and youll see how fast your finnish will improve

[Rob A.]

I do believe if you and etymologia says so but its buried by centuries so to mere speaker, like me, those are two different thinks

....though you probably have a far deeper knowledge of your native language than you might think....all the things you have read and heard over the years.....

But, of course, a person has to be sufficiently interested to think about it.... And in Finland there are, from what I can tell, plenty of those kind of people....that's why you have things like the Nykysuomen etymologien sanakirja and the Iso suomen kielioppi....

I find this stuff fascinating....languages tend to be created originally for day to day utilitarian purposes....yet there are always people over the eons who "have a way with words", who polish, embellish and enrich the language down through the centuries....and often there may be just a few who really affect a language.... English has Shakespeare, French has Montaigne, Italian has Boccaccio, etc....

Now a question to anyone who is interested: Who has had the biggest influence in turning Finnish into a literary language???? .....I can think of Agricola, but is there a subsequent writer who really stands out??? Well before Väinö Linna who is 20th century. Though maybe not as far back as Shakespeare....or, even more impressive, as far back as Boccaccio...I think in the days of Boccaccio only a few Orthodox priests were scratching Finnic sentiments in Cyrillic script onto birchbark....

Thank you but dont compare yourself to me, im bombarded daily by english language. Move to rural finland + look mainly finnish/"non english subtitled in finnish" programs + read finnish wiki etc and youll see how fast your finnish will improve

Impressive nevertheless....though I guess you must also, on some level, have enough interest in English...... for most of my life I've been bombarded by Chinese...originally Cantonese, now both Mandarin and Cantonese.......and about all I know is how to count to four and when the "question word" ...mah is being used....

[jahasjahas]

Now a question to anyone who is interested: Who has had the biggest influence in turning Finnish into a literary language???? .....I can think of Agricola, but is there a subsequent writer who really stands out??? Well before Väinö Linna who is 20th century. Though maybe not as far back as Shakespeare....or, even more impressive, as far back as Boccaccio...I think in the days of Boccaccio only a few Orthodox priests were scratching Finnic sentiments in Cyrillic script onto birchbark....

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_kirjallisuus

Unfortunately there wasn't much literature written in Finnish until the 19th century. There was even a ban on publishing anything except religious and business texts in Finnish between 1850 and 1860 (as a preventive measure against nationalistic and rebellious sentiments; see the European Revolutions of 1848 for some context).

But for some obvious names: Elias Lönnrot (Kalevala), Aleksis Kivi (Seitsemän veljestä; generally considered the first novel in Finnish), Juhani Aho, Eino Leino, Paavo Cajander (the first major translator of Shakespeare into Finnish; his translations are still used for Shakespeare quotes, kinda like how English-speakers are most familiar with the KJV for Bible quotes). And naturally their contemporaries who wrote in Swedish in Finland were translated into Finnish: J.L. Runeberg, Zacharias (Sakari) Topelius, etc.

The first Finnish translator of Shakespeare has been almost forgotten, sadly. Jaakko Fredrik Lagervall "translated"/adapted Macbeth into "Ruunulinna", a play set in Finnish Karelia. It is well known to historians that the events of Macbeth didn't happen in Scotland - but they did in Karelia! See Oliko Macbeth suomalainen? 180 vuotta Shakespearea suomeksi

[jahasjahas]

Haha, I should've read the Macbeth link properly before finishing my message. There's some hilarious stuff there.

1) August Ahlqvist (who was a great Finno-Ugric linguist, but is nowadays mostly remembered for completely crushing Seitsemän veljestä in his critique - some claim that Ahlqvist's critique was a factor in Kivi's premature death) wrote in the 1860s that Finnish wasn't advanced enough for translating Shakespeare.

"The vocabulary of our language for many of these high/elegant/majestic things that this poet describes is still unstable and unformed, and our Maiden Language still walks clumsily and staggers in these new poetic dresses. And I doubt whether the works of Shakespeare can ever be made to sound like they sound in, for example, Swedish. The nature of the Finnish language is completely different from that of the Germanic languages."

2) Lagervall's translation of "Or have we eaten on the insane root / That takes the reason prisoner?"

Olenko mieleni myönnynnä
Tai hulluheiniä syönnynnä?

It sounds like Martti Mielikäinen, the "Savonian mökki neighbor" in Kummeli, reading Shakespeare.

[Rob A.]

Haha, I should've read the Macbeth link properly before finishing my message. There's some hilarious stuff there.

1) August Ahlqvist (who was a great Finno-Ugric linguist, but is nowadays mostly remembered for completely crushing Seitsemän veljestä in his critique - some claim that Ahlqvist's critique was a factor in Kivi's premature death) wrote in the 1860s that Finnish wasn't advanced enough for translating Shakespeare.

"The vocabulary of our language for many of these high/elegant/majestic things that this poet describes is still unstable and unformed, and our Maiden Language still walks clumsily and staggers in these new poetic dresses. And I doubt whether the works of Shakespeare can ever be made to sound like they sound in, for example, Swedish. The nature of the Finnish language is completely different from that of the Germanic languages."

2) Lagervall's translation of "Or have we eaten on the insane root / That takes the reason prisoner?"

Olenko mieleni myönnynnä
Tai hulluheiniä syönnynnä?

It sounds like Martti Mielikäinen, the "Savonian mökki neighbor" in Kummeli, reading Shakespeare.

I'll have to watch the youtube later at home, but as to the comments from long ago of Ahlqvist, it seems the Finnish language has had to endure a lot of this sort of negativity through the centuries... including this type of 19th century intellectual snobbery...

I think that any language can be "stretched" to cover similar linguistic ground...it's a function of human intellect, but it requires those unusually gifted "wordsmiths" who come along relatively infrequently..... Obviously languages with large numbers of speakers will tend to produce more of these wordsmiths than the "smaller" languages... and, of course, most of us, during a lifetime, have no hope at all of fully understanding any more than a few other languages.

Ahlqvist is probably more "scientific" than "artistic" in his views....and while languages may at a basic level be quite functional; the flavour, subtlety and colour come from the "artists".

But some of us know better now...probably the legacy of those "Germanic" existentialist philosophers....

[Rob A.]

I've been going through some of the previous posts on this and I thought I would pick out a few bite sized chunks for clarification....

In the second paragraph:

Sillä mitä kaikkina aikoina on kirjoitettu, se on kirjoitettu joko jumalien tähden tai
ihmisten tähden. ....I think a smooth English translation for this would be:

"What has always been written has been written either for the sake of the gods or for the sake of humans."

Would a correct, though less literary version like this be acceptable:

Mitä on kirjoitettu aina, joko jumalien tähden tai
ihmisten tähden kirjoitettiin..

Anything grammatical wrong or maybe misleading with this sentence???

And in the third paragraph this line is intresting and lead me into some other material:

Valheen ympärillä parveilevat näet ihmiset kuin kärpäset hunajakakun kimpussa....

Literally this is "To a lie swarm, you see, humans like flies (swarm) around a honeycake..."

at the moment the phrase that intrests me is:

Valheen ympärillä.

Wiktionary has a bit of a discussion on the usage of ympärillä...

Following the wiktionary examples have I got the folowing meanings or senses right?

Maan ympäri...."around the world".... Or does this suggest a funny connotation?
Maalla ympärillä... "around the world"...in the sense of orbiting the Earth in a space craft...
Maalle ympärille... "around the world"...but a future sense... say an asteroid passing partially around the Earth at some future time...
and finally
Ympäri Maata...."around the world" in the sense of something all over the surface of the Earth...... like maybe plastic waste is scattered all over the Earth?

[Pursuivant]

Well it is plain "around something"... The literary men swarming around a lie, or bees around a honeycake... Or thinking of Kaptah, scarabs around dung...

[jahasjahas]

Huraa!

I've been going through some of the previous posts on this and I thought I would pick out a few bite sized chunks for clarification....

In the second paragraph:

Sillä mitä kaikkina aikoina on kirjoitettu, se on kirjoitettu joko jumalien tähden tai
ihmisten tähden. ....I think a smooth English translation for this would be:

"What has always been written has been written either for the sake of the gods or for the sake of humans."

Would a correct, though less literary version like this be acceptable:

Mitä on kirjoitettu aina, joko jumalien tähden tai
ihmisten tähden kirjoitettiin..

Anything grammatical wrong or maybe misleading with this sentence???

I think there's a difference between "kaikkina aikoina" and "aina". Maybe "everything that has ever been written, through the ages" would capture the intended meaning. Your mileage may vary whether that's the same thing as "always" or not.

Your "less literary" version sounds a bit strange. Why break the symmetry between "on kirjoitettu -- on kirjoitettu"? (It's usually pretty confusing to switch tenses in the middle of a text.) Why move the "kirjoitettiin" into a very, let's say, poetic position at the end of the sentence?

If we disregard the problematic kaikkina aikoina / aina, I'd say a simpler version would be "Se mikä/mitä on kirjoitettu, on kirjoitettu joko jumalien tai ihmisten tähden."

And in the third paragraph this line is intresting and lead me into some other material:

Valheen ympärillä parveilevat näet ihmiset kuin kärpäset hunajakakun kimpussa....

Literally this is "To a lie swarm, you see, humans like flies (swarm) around a honeycake..."

Is there are reason you have the humans swarm "to", while the flies swarm "around", while the original has "ympärillä" for the humans (and implicitly for the flies too, I guess)?

Maan ympäri...."around the world".... Or does this suggest a funny connotation?
Maalla ympärillä... "around the world"...in the sense of orbiting the Earth in a space craft...
Maalle ympärille... "around the world"...but a future sense... say an asteroid passing partially around the Earth at some future time...
and finally
Ympäri Maata...."around the world" in the sense of something all over the surface of the Earth...... like maybe plastic waste is scattered all over the Earth?

First of all, your examples should be "maan ympäri", "maan ympärillä", "maan ympärille" and "ympäri maata".

I think both "Maan/maapallon ympäri" and "Maan/maapallon ympärillä" would suggest something orbiting the planet. Or mayby the atmosphere could be said to be "maapallon ympärillä". Then "ympärille" would just be "into around the Earth", if such a combination of prepositions were possible. Compare "istun talon katolla" and "kiipeän talon katolle" - I don't think you should mix the concept of "future" here.

"Ympäri maata" should be spelled with a non-capital m, and it would mean "around/across the country". I guess "maan ympäri" and "ympäri maan" would mean the same thing. (There's an annoying Eppu Normaali song that goes "mä kierrän ympäri maan, mä kierrän ympäri maan..." which seems to mean traveling to different countries, since it mentions the Bahamas.)

And a round-the-world trip would be "matka maailman ympäri".

[AldenG]

In the second paragraph:

Sillä mitä kaikkina aikoina on kirjoitettu, se on kirjoitettu joko jumalien tähden tai
ihmisten tähden. ....I think a smooth English translation for this would be:

"What has always been written has been written either for the sake of the gods or for the sake of humans."

I'm not sure what you may think the sillä is doing in there, as you've dropped it from your translation. But it's not working in any way together with mitä. It's a conjunction here, and here I would translate it as "for," as in:

(keeping in mind that kaikkina aikoina is most literally "in all times/ages")
(you have to intuit whether a particular usage means "in" or "at")
"For what has been written throughout the ages has been written..." (most literal)
or
"For all that has been written throughout the ages has been written..." (my preference)
or
"For that which has been written throughout the ages has been written..."

Or you could go with "throughout all ages" or "down through the ages" or "across all times," though that sounds shakier in English.

How soon do we know that sillä is being used as a conjunction? Almost immediately, because the beginning of the sentence is a funny place for it otherwise. If the next word were "ei" or a verb (3rd person, like voi or menee) or a noun in the same case (sillä miehellä on kiire), we'd have to look a little farther. If it had a comma after it, we would know immediately that it was NOT being used as a conjunction. But when it doesn't connect in any usual fashion to the next word, you know right away how it's being used.

The beginning of the sentence is an abbreviated version of either "Sillä se, mitä kaikkina aikoina on kirjoittettu" or "Sillä kaikki, mitä kaikkina aikoina on kirjoitettu," to which my third option above most closely corresponds. But of course in a real translation we go with what works best in English, not necessarily what follows the original most literally. Now rather than calling the beginning of the sentence an abbreviation, you can say he rearranged the sentence to move 'se' into a separate clause immediately after so that he could elaborate on it.

Kaikkina aikoina is not everyday speech. It's maybe not as exotic as these translations, but as jahasjahas' similar translation of it implies, Waltari is (here as throughout the book) beginning to establish Sinuhe's perspective that not much changes and life and civilization repeat themselves over and over again in different places and periods of time.

[AldenG]

It's possible to overthink the "case endings" (sort of case endings) with highly defective postpositions like ympäri. As always they're governed by the verb and rather than trying to translate the motion (or lack of it) implied by the local case, just treat it as "around." It's not a hyper-specified kind of around, it's just the form that goes with parveilevat. As Pursuivant and jahasjahas note, there is no 'to' involved here. Kasan ympärillä simply means around a pile -- of whatever your imagination suggests.

Of course you could still say that people 'flock to a lie' instead of saying that they 'swarm around it' if you like that better. It's less literal and thus arguably less "correct," but it's more evocative. I think it's the better choice. But translation isn't engineering. It's easy to have opinions but they're rarely provable.

[Rob A.]

Thanks all....it is getting easier and easier...and surprisingly it's still fun learning this language...

It's possible to overthink the "case endings" (sort of case endings) with highly defective postpositions like ympäri. As always they're governed by the verb and rather than trying to translate the motion (or lack of it) implied by the local case, just treat it as "around." It's not a hyper-specified kind of around, it's just the form that goes with parveilevat. As Pursuivant and jahasjahas note, there is no 'to' involved here. Kasan ympärillä simply means around a pile -- of whatever your imagination suggests.

And here's a nonsense sentence I came up with:

Jukka käveli kassojen kasan ympärillä joka kasautuivat kassan kassan eteen.

I'm sure something is missing, but does it make some sort of sense or can someone's imagination "twist" it enough to make sense of it???

Edit: OK I won't change the above sentence, but there is at least one mistake...the verb doesn't agree...I should have used kasautui...

[onkko]

Thanks all....it is getting easier and easier...and surprisingly it's still fun learning this language...

It's possible to overthink the "case endings" (sort of case endings) with highly defective postpositions like ympäri. As always they're governed by the verb and rather than trying to translate the motion (or lack of it) implied by the local case, just treat it as "around." It's not a hyper-specified kind of around, it's just the form that goes with parveilevat. As Pursuivant and jahasjahas note, there is no 'to' involved here. Kasan ympärillä simply means around a pile -- of whatever your imagination suggests.

And here's a nonsense sentence I came up with:

Jukka käveli kassojen kasan ympärillä joka kasautuivat kassan kassan eteen.

I'm sure something is missing, but does it make some sort of sense or can someone's imagination "twist" it enough to make sense of it???

Edit: OK I won't change the above sentence, but there is at least one mistake...the verb doesn't agree...I should have used kasautui...

I could. My imagination painted cash registers swarming around The Great Register who registers all registers and Jukka just didnt understand it and looked "wtf is going on here". I blame Douglas Adams.

[Rob A.]

Thanks all....it is getting easier and easier...and surprisingly it's still fun learning this language...

It's possible to overthink the "case endings" (sort of case endings) with highly defective postpositions like ympäri. As always they're governed by the verb and rather than trying to translate the motion (or lack of it) implied by the local case, just treat it as "around." It's not a hyper-specified kind of around, it's just the form that goes with parveilevat. As Pursuivant and jahasjahas note, there is no 'to' involved here. Kasan ympärillä simply means around a pile -- of whatever your imagination suggests.

And here's a nonsense sentence I came up with:

Jukka käveli kassojen kasan ympärillä joka kasautuivat kassan kassan eteen.

I'm sure something is missing, but does it make some sort of sense or can someone's imagination "twist" it enough to make sense of it???

Edit: OK I won't change the above sentence, but there is at least one mistake...the verb doesn't agree...I should have used kasautui...

I could. My imagination painted cash registers swarming around The Great Register who registers all registers and Jukka just didnt understand it and looked "wtf is going on here". I blame Douglas Adams.

Yes...that's the idea though I didn't quite use ympäri in the correct form and I'm not sure about joka...

Jukka käveli kassojen kasan ympäri joka...

Though maybe this is correct:

Kassojen kasan ympärillä on kolme metria korkuinen piikkilanka-aita ja piikkilanka-aita ympärillä on kymmenen saksanpaimenkoiraa.

I think the second ympärillä should probably have a different case ending..maybe ympärille..??

[onkko]

Though maybe this is correct:

Kassojen kasan ympärillä on kolme metria korkuinen piikkilanka-aita ja piikkilanka-aita ympärillä on kymmenen saksanpaimenkoiraa.

I think the second ympärillä should probably have a different case ending..maybe ympärille..??

Kassojen kasan ympärillä on kolmen metrin korkuinen piikkilanka-aita (kolme metriä korkea piikkilanka-aita) ja aidan (its already told what kind of fence so no need to repeat) ympärillä on kymmenen saksanpaimenkoiraa.

I would prefer 1st translation since its more "elaborate" and "living" explanation. Thats something i think one would tell me, later is something what is written in papers.

[AldenG]

I've been waiting for someone else to comment on this so I don't lead you astray.

Maybe my ear is just off, but if I had to make such a sentence, I would have started with kassakasan ympärilla. For me there's just too much illogical "ownership" or something the way you put it. The kassat are in the heap but it's not their heap. (And what the heck do you mean with such a heap, anyway?)

I would talk about tyynykasa or kasa tyynyjä, but tyynyjen kasa rubs me the wrong way. Not that it's totally impossible but it seems an odd frame of reference. Then again nobody native has complained about it, so I'm scratching my head a little about that.

Lattialla oli kasa tyynyjä. Tämän salaperäisen kasan ympärillä hiipi kissa. Or Jukka, if you must.