Whats your greatest difficulty? Understanding or Speaking

[cors187]

And again im glad that i dont need to learn finnish, its @#$% up language

Your just trying to make me feel better aren't you

[Sami-Is-Boss]

I find understanding much more difficult, because spoken Finnish isn't really anything like the Finnish you have to learn in the early stages. Speaking is easy enough to talk your way around, but when it gets to the stage when I'll be expected to actually use proper grammar and not just guess an ending, speaking will probably become more difficult again.

[Rob A.]

And for foreigners, ben z is our "people who have odd names and are in politics and no one can pronounce it".

One of the downsides of living in a homogeneous society.... I think most somewhat aware people in Canada would have little trouble with that name... maybe a slightly mangled version....and I think it would be quickly recognized...I think correctly, as a Polish Jewish name.... That's multiculturalism for you.... Right onkko?!?...

But that's an English transliteration of the name....not Finnish.... and Finnish transliterations can really throw an English speaker for a loop...

The other week I encountered this in the Helsingin Sanomat:

....jo­ka rä­jäh­ti tu­li­pal­lo­na Ura­lin alueel­la si­jait­se­van Tšel­ja­bins­kin kau­pun­gin yl­lä per­jan­tai­na. ....Tšel­ja­bins­kin...... Well...I knew it had to be a place name, but it took awhile ....In English it gets written as "Chelyabinsk"..... But I suppose there are worse examples than this one....

But this also brings up the question of why a Finnish politician living in Finland would use an English transliteration of his name??? Appealing to a broader demographic?? Less confusion all around if he is traveling internationally?? Maybe I'm missing something??

[Jukka Aho]

But this also brings up the question of why a Finnish politician living in Finland would use an English transliteration of his name??? Appealing to a broader demographic?? Less confusion all around if he is traveling internationally?? Maybe I'm missing something??

If you’re still referring to Ben Zyskowicz, Polish language, just like Finnish, is written in the Latin script — albeit with some diacritics on some letters — so transliteration does not enter the picture. (After all, transliteration is, by definition, “the conversion of a text from one script to another”. The scripts are the same, so going by this definition, there’s nothing to transliterate to or from, between Polish and Finnish. And the same goes for Polish and English, of course.)

At most, a naive writer not knowing how to produce Polish letters would drop the Polish diacritics and fall back to the plain Latin letters. (There’s really no excuse for “not knowing” such things any more, though. If confronted with such situation, you can easily find all the information in the world about the various ways of producing foreign letters simply by doing a quick Google search — so “not knowing” how to use the correct letters is plain lazy assness, then. But I digress...)

Of course, local laws and regulations (or practical considerations pertaining to public databases and registries) may stipulate some limits to how one writes one’s name for official ID purposes — e.g., when granted a residence permit or citizenship and being officially registered in the system. For example, I don’t think you can get your name in the Population Register Centre’s database spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet... or Chinese characters, for that matter. (In such cases, transliteration is a necessity.) And even those Polish diacritics might prove problematic for the current government databases. Then again, I recall reading that the EU has put forward a decree which will force the member countries to upgrade their registers and databases in such way that, in the future, all EU citizens will be able to register in any other EU member state using the exact same spelling they normally use in their (EU) country of origin.

In practice, this means those old national databases (which may sometimes be quite limited in the set of “legal” characters they allow; being old and dated and expensive to upgrade) will, in time, get a Unicode facelift. I don’t know what they’re going to do with the non-Latin scripts such as Greek though... or maybe they will allow both a non-Latin form of the name and a Latinized version as alternative forms, in different fields. Driver’s licences issued in Greece do seem to spell the names both in Greek and Latin letters already.

[cors187]

I think you over killed on the reply.
For a public figure, it may have gained greater popularity in adapting his name ever so slightly.

Ben Zyskowicz is really easy for english speakers.When i look at Rob A remarks(naive is not perceived), i dont see anything wrong with the proposal.Obviously the guy didnt change it and now there must be a few Finnish jokes about it.

And the same goes for Polish and English, of course.)

The whole history of western societies is based on making your name more comfortable to the general population , thereby not standing out as the immigrant and being afforded a name that people can identify with,regardless of what the characters consist of,cheers

[cors187]

This is the absurdity that is the finnish language and the cause and effect of generations.

Zyskowicz is renowned for being the Finnish politician with the most difficult name to spell. In 2002, Ilta-Sanomat reported that only 16.6% of Finns knew how to correctly spell his name.[4] In 2011 he was elected as the acting speaker of the Finnish parliament. Despite spelling instructions for his name being sent by text message to elected members of parliament, two voting ballots were disqualified for misspelling his name.[5]

Good call Rob A!

[jahasjahas]

(Could a mod separate this into a new thread?)

Syskovits (or whatever) would just sound silly. I think Zyskowicz has benefited from having a memorable name and a funny moustache. People don't need to know how to spell his name to vote for him.

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I believe "you should change your name to blend in" might not be a popular opinion in contemporary Jewish culture.

[cors187]

(Could a mod separate this into a new thread?)

Are you predicting something?

[Rob A.]

But this also brings up the question of why a Finnish politician living in Finland would use an English transliteration of his name??? Appealing to a broader demographic?? Less confusion all around if he is traveling internationally?? Maybe I'm missing something??

If you’re still referring to Ben Zyskowicz, Polish language, just like Finnish, is written in the Latin script — albeit with some diacritics on some letters — so transliteration does not enter the picture. (After all, transliteration is, by definition, “the conversion of a text from one script to another”. The scripts are the same, so going by this definition, there’s nothing to transliterate to or from, between Polish and Finnish. And the same goes for Polish and English, of course.)

At most, a naive writer not knowing how to produce Polish letters would drop the Polish diacritics and fall back to the plain Latin letters. (There’s really no excuse for “not knowing” such things any more, though. If confronted with such situation, you can easily find all the information in the world about the various ways of producing foreign letters simply by doing a quick Google search — so “not knowing” how to use the correct letters is plain lazy assness, then. But I digress...)

Of course, local laws and regulations (or practical considerations pertaining to public databases and registries) may stipulate some limits to how one writes one’s name for official ID purposes — e.g., when granted a residence permit or citizenship and being officially registered in the system. For example, I don’t think you can get your name in the Population Register Centre’s database spelled in the Cyrillic alphabet... or Chinese characters, for that matter. (In such cases, transliteration is a necessity.) And even those Polish diacritics might prove problematic for the current government databases. Then again, I recall reading that the EU has put forward a decree which will force the member countries to upgrade their registers and databases in such way that, in the future, all EU citizens will be able to register in any other EU member state using the exact same spelling they normally use in their (EU) country of origin.

In practice, this means those old national databases (which may sometimes be quite limited in the set of “legal” characters they allow; being old and dated and expensive to upgrade) will, in time, get a Unicode facelift. I don’t know what they’re going to do with the non-Latin scripts such as Greek though... or maybe they will allow both a non-Latin form of the name and a Latinized version as alternative forms, in different fields. Driver’s licences issued in Greece do seem to spell the names both in Greek and Latin letters already.

Thanks Jukka...a bit sloppy on my part. Between English and Finnish, you would for the most part be "transcribing" and to be precise "orthographic transcription" ....all explained in wikipedia. ....I suppose if I apply a bit of good old "Finnish tetrapyloctomy", then dealing with the ö and the ä would be "phonetic transcription"....

And in Finnish [...and English], Tšel­ja­bins­ki, would be a transliteration from the Cyrillic orthography.... I suppose we in the Latin alphabet countries should be grateful Russian immigrants don't insist on the Cyrillic version of their names..... Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын.....

[Jukka Aho]

Between English and Finnish, you would for the most part be "transcribing" and to be precise "orthographic transcription" ....all explained in wikipedia. ....I suppose if I apply a bit of good old "Finnish tetrapyloctomy", then dealing with the ö and the ä would be "phonetic transcription"....

As always with standards, the best thing about them is there are so many to choose from. As far as romanizing Russian texts and names goes, it’s SFS 4900 for ordinary Finnish texts (such as newspapers), ISO 9 for scientific papers.

Some other languages written in the Latin script, such as Latvian, do have a tradition of replacing even foreign proper names written in the Latin script with their phonetically transcribed forms: for instance, Michael Jackson becomes Maikls Džeksons, and the transcribed form is used when referring to him in the papers. (The -s is the nominative case marker... or at least one of them. There’s also this Džordžs V. Bušs guy, you might have heard of him.) However, this is not customary or expected in Finnish texts: readers would find phonetically transcribed names distracting and unnecessary. (Well, hilarious, too.)

I guess if Mr. Zyskowicz wanted to change his last name to make the spelling problems go away, a mere phonetic modification/simplifaction would not do much to his current name: it would still be a not-too-common, meaningless string of letters to most Finns. A more “Finnish” way to solve the problem — if we want to see it as a problem in the first place — would be inventing and taking on a novel family name, based on a recognizable Finnish word or composed of such. (A family name with a meaning, that is. Maybe the meaning could be based on the original Polish family name, if it has any.) This approach would aid memorization, spelling, and pronunciation.

For example, there are people whose last name is Tulikoura. Tuli means “fire”, koura means “a (large, rough, strong, gripping-capable) hand/palm”. A person with such name — conjuring up images of a rather big-handed, iron-fisted person with painfully powerful grip and handshakes, flames shooting out of them — must enjoy instant recognition, and there isn’t much chance for a native to “forget” the spelling as its just a couple of ordinary, well-known Finnish words strung together as a compound.

I suppose we in the Latin alphabet countries should be grateful Russian immigrants don't insist on the Cyrillic version of their names..... Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын..... :wink:

I wonder if a person of Russian origin gets an automatic SFS 4900 romanization of his name when applying for an RP or citizenship in Finland or if they can pick their preferred romanization style themselves...

[Rob A.]

I think you over killed on the reply.
For a public figure, it may have gained greater popularity in adapting his name ever so slightly.

Ben Zyskowicz is really easy for english speakers.When i look at Rob A remarks(naive is not perceived), i dont see anything wrong with the proposal.Obviously the guy didnt change it and now there must be a few Finnish jokes about it.

And the same goes for Polish and English, of course.)

The whole history of western societies is based on making your name more comfortable to the general population , thereby not standing out as the immigrant and being afforded a name that people can identify with,regardless of what the characters consist of,cheers

Zyskowicz is relatively easy for most English speakers, but that doesn't mean all Polish names are going to be so easy...

Some of us will remember this tough-to-pronounce name from American politics....

Zbigniew Brzezinski

I think it is fair to say that few English speakers will even come close to getting this name right.

But before jumping to the conclusion he should have changed his name to conform to American standards it's worth reading the Wikipedia article about him. I would say that he would have great reasons to try to maintain the spelling of his name as close to the Polish original as possible....he comes from a very distinguished family in Polish history and I think, at the very least, to respect Polish culture and history, as well as his own ancestors, he would be quite reasonable in trying to retain this name in a form as close to the original as possible.

I might be talking through my hat a bit, though, as I have no idea if there have been any recent Polish language orthographic reforms or anything like that....

Nevertheless, I think if I had his name and family history, I would want to leave things just as they are...

[AldenG]

Some of us will remember this tough-to-pronounce name from American politics....

Zbigniew Brzezinski

I think it is fair to say that few English speakers will even come close to getting this name right.

That name is so hard that North Americans even have trouble linking to it...

I would have said berzh-zinski or berzha-zinski, but when I finally got to Wikipedia, it said the English pronunciation is berzinski. His daughter says Brezhinski.

[cors187]

I think you over killed on the reply.
For a public figure, it may have gained greater popularity in adapting his name ever so slightly.

Ben Zyskowicz is really easy for english speakers.When i look at Rob A remarks(naive is not perceived), i dont see anything wrong with the proposal.Obviously the guy didnt change it and now there must be a few Finnish jokes about it.

And the same goes for Polish and English, of course.)

The whole history of western societies is based on making your name more comfortable to the general population , thereby not standing out as the immigrant and being afforded a name that people can identify with,regardless of what the characters consist of,cheers

Zyskowicz is relatively easy for most English speakers, but that doesn't mean all Polish names are going to be so easy...

Some of us will remember this tough-to-pronounce name from American politics....

Zbigniew Brzezinski

I think it is fair to say that few English speakers will even come close to getting this name right.

But before jumping to the conclusion he should have changed his name to conform to American standards it's worth reading the Wikipedia article about him. I would say that he would have great reasons to try to maintain the spelling of his name as close to the Polish original as possible....he comes from a very distinguished family in Polish history and I think, at the very least, to respect Polish culture and history, as well as his own ancestors, he would be quite reasonable in trying to retain this name in a form as close to the original as possible.

I might be talking through my hat a bit, though, as I have no idea if there have been any recent Polish language orthographic reforms or anything like that....

Nevertheless, I think if I had his name and family history, I would want to leave things just as they are...

I cant discuss the constitutions of languages, i would have to study to much to reply.

I remember reading this fantastic joke through email about the constitutions of English and if we used some common sense to remove certain forced principles then the language unfolded helplessly into gibberish.
You guys ever heard of this unraveling txt joke/demonstration?
I wish i could link it.

[cors187]

who says i never bring anything to the party
http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/10/26/spelling-reform/
Spelling reform

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

Spelling Reform was a much debated issue in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. Various schemes were put forward for simplifying English spelling, which was thought to be difficult and obscure. These schemes often involved phonetic spelling, and some even went so far as proposing the creation of new alphabets. George Bernard Shaw funded one such scheme. None of these ideas came to anything – for very good reasons. This is also the period which gave rise to Esperanto, a totally artifical, invented language which nobody except enthusiasts actually speaks.

The famous short passage that follows is a satirical response to this idea attributed to the American humorist Mark Twain.

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later.

Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y and x — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

[onkko]

Well finns are partly to blame how hard Polish is write, in 30 year war hakkapeliittas stole most of vowels.