Yes, you’re right Kalailan it is Finnish. (My Finnish is terrible, but I’ll try anyway).
Well, I said it was terrible
Hauhon community; Kalailan and Eteläisten…
And the whole chapter is something about water (Vesi).
I don’t blame you. I’m possessive about my name, too…especially since I’m the only Keesa I know of. If I found my name on a Finnish site, I’d definitely want to know what they were saying…
Hehe. I only know “penguin” because one of my friends is crazy about penguins. She wanted to make her new nickname “HyperPenguin”, in Finnish, and wanted to know if I knew the Finnish word for “hyper”. (Which, of course, I didn’t.) So, she picked a different name, and I’m left with the Finnish word for penguin stuck in my head.
Yeah, i’m the only Kalailan i know too.
i tried once to sign on Aim, and when it said that the name is already taken, i had thought someone else has taken it. then i thought again, tried to enter aim with kalailan and the ussual password, and tadam! i’m in.
it turned out that i once signed on netscape. if you sign on netscape you sign on aol too.
so, eventually, i Am the only Kal.
I tried it, too. First there was Textkit, then your Finnish site, then a site that I think was Jewish, discussing blues and purples…I couldn’t follow the whole discussion.
Kalailam originaly is two words:
kala ilan. it is the name of a substitute for torquoize (spelling!!! i mean this green-blue colour…), which in early times was expensive. i am not sure what is it’s origin, but the second means “a tree” in hebrew. the first word has no meaning in hebrew, so it has to come from another language.
ka layl would work in hebrew too.
i never thought about it that way because it would require another spelling. and, besides, it does have a spare “an”…
It’s funny that you should say that you are being possessive about your name, as “Kailalan” in finnish is actually in the possessive case! The nominative would be “Kailala”. As for the long words, the secret is that compound words are strung together in Finnish: “asunto” is a word (it means “dwelling”), as is “alueiden” (the genitive plural of “alue,” “place”), etc. You’ll have a lot of difficulty deciphering Finnish with a dictionary without understanding the grammar, as on top of all the compounding (our favorite ice-cream growing up was called something along the lines of “suklaapäällysteinenananasmehujäätelöpuikko”), Finnish has 14 cases (Latin and Greek are a piece of cake, no?), so knowing what to look up in the dictionary is not intuitive.
The whole text is actually quite tedious, a list of companies and years, hardly worth translating: a list of contracts, perhaps. I think Kailala must be a place or company in this case, but I’m not sure. It also shows up in Google search results as a last name.
p.s. I’m a sucker for Finland, and couldn’t help replying. My mom is Finnish and I lived there as a child. Now I’m a classissist, and glad to say that Finland has a strong tradition in the field… I hope your curiosity is somewhat assuaged.
I’m surprised that it’s going well; I mean, the greatly complex languages tend to be replaced by peasant versions thereof. i.e French from Latin.
Or is it quite easy? Cases are quite easy to remember, 14, granted rather tricky, but they would unlock many uses of words usually rendered by different perhaps more complex structures in other languages
Not always. The more isolated a language is the more likely it is to retain filigree and lace. The Romance languages all developed as Vulgar Latin encountered a wealth of local languages. Modern English has been worn down by various Viking languages, including Norman French. Swahili, a trade language, is much simpler than any of its close cousins. Attic Greek simplified as it became a lingua franca, resulting in the Koine.
But some Native American languages are mind-bendingly complex. Cree, spoken in parts of central Canada and I think the northern US, apparently wasn’t mastered until you got to be about 10 years old! And I’m talking about basic grammar errors, not refined speaking.
Or is it quite easy? Cases are quite easy to remember, 14, granted rather tricky, but they would unlock many uses of words usually rendered by different perhaps more complex structures in other languages >
It’s not quite easy, but it’s not as hard as it sounds. Many of the cases indicate prepositional relationships. For example, “in” and “into” are represented by different cases (they get special names which I always forget).
It’s certainly hard for foreigners to master, but for a native speaker, not really. The theory is a different matter, but in practice you just pick it up as a child (I speak from experience, of course). To balance the inflexional complexity, you don’t have any prepositions, and a lack of genders also simplifies things somewhat (I sometimes find myself using “she” for “he” in English, despite the fact that I am more fluent now in English than Finnish. The Cree here in northern Saskatchewan sometimes do the same).
I’m not sure about the inevitable simplification hypothesis: linguistic comlexities must survive if they serve a purpose (n.b. the everquoted fact that the Inuit have a great number of words for snow), and perhaps a literature and cultural identity help a language stay static for longer, too. I’m sure if it were not for the printing press and an international literary culture, English would have morphed into any number of mutually incomprehensible dialects by now… We must remember that the development of the Romance languages belongs in a particular social context, and cannot be generalized too easily. Linguistics is a fascinating subject in which I can’t claim any expertise, and the intricsies of linguistic development and its connection to psychology and cultural and historical realities amazingly variable.
I haven’t considered Finnish enough in theory to really appreciate the subtleties of the language, but certainly in the case of Latin and Greek inflection opens up a whole new way of communication ideas, especially in poetry (though much of what I’ve perceived in that regard has to do with free word order, which does not apply to Finnish).
I don’t want to go off topic, but Anna, you haven’t introduced yourself. Where in Saskatchewan are you? I’m in Edmonton but spent 6 years in southern Sask.
We’d love for you to start a new thread and introduce yourself.
Airish, first of all, i shall greet you. Welcome to textkit!
indeed, this is a great day. two newcomers in the period of 24 hours!
(the hundred or thousand silent new memebers will have to forgive me for not counting them in )
secondly, i shall thank you. its nice to know i am a company. especialy when there is always a chance i am a rich one.
i noticed that you wrote Kailala instead of kalaila. i trust it matters not?
No it hardly matters. “Kailala” just sounds more Finnish, so I guess that’s what my Finnishness wanted to read. Perhaps Kalaila is not even a Finnish name, who knows. Nonetheless the grammatical points apply, as it’s endings we’re talking about.
I’m possessive about my name, too…especially since I’m the only Keesa I know of. If I found my name on a Finnish site, I’d definitely want to know what they were saying…
