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Decade of the Pasty Cam on this day ^{Printed on Recycled Internet}

Along with the beauty of the U.P. and Lake Superior, there are also elements of danger. How old were the two freshmen at NMU when they drowned in Lake Superior?

18

Good morning! In barn reflections, is that barn somewhere on the water on the Chassell side? I could swear I saw that on my Keweenaw Star tour last year.

Love Dan's pictures yet again, and Joyce's makes me jealous!!!

Forgot to tell my hubby "Happy Birthday"! Hope you have a wonderful day!!!

Happy Birthday Ron, hope you have a great day!

UC


Alright all you fellow Finns, what does "PAHA POLKA" mean? I don't know so Im asking you experts.

Bad polka or bad dance?????

Uncle Chuck (Unclechuck):
"Alright all you fellow Finns, what does "PAHA POLKA" mean?"

As you've written it, "PAHA POLKA" means nothing in Finnish.

But if you correct the spelling, "paha poika" = "bad boy"!

FR- Got this Finn blue T-shirt for my birthday and that's how it was spelled, thanks for the definition!

FR- Nope you were right, I read the shirt wrong, thanks again.

Well sheesh FRNash, we already knew that about Uncle Chuck...... J

Just in case you were wondering about pronunciation:

In Finnish, the single consonants "p" and "k" are "soft" consonants (as opposed to the double consonants "pp" and "kk", which are "hard" consonants), so to an untrained ear, "paha poika" would sound like something close to "baha boiga". Not quite, though, as the soft consonants still retain a "plosive" charcter, not as soft as the English "b" and "g" sounds. And remember, in Finnish, the primary accent (emphasis) is always on the first syllable, so it sounds like you're spittin' the words out!

Capt. Paul (Eclogite):
"Well sheesh FRNash, we already knew that about Uncle Chuck"
Score one fer da Cap'n! <grin>

...or it could be a mispelling of "paha polkka" -- bad polka.

So exactly how do you pronouce 'pannukaku' (sp) the yummy pancake at the Suomi Cafe...

Uncle Chuck, if the shirt fits...... :)

Mrs. Olea, our next door neighbor when I lived in Hubbell used to call me "braha boika" my spelling as I thought it sounded. I always thought I was one of her favorites, maybe not.

Carole (Carole):
"So exactly how do you pronouce 'pannukaku' (sp) the yummy pancake at the Suomi Cafe..."

That would be spelled pannukakku, approximately pan•nu•kak•ku, it's a soft but still plosive "P", not as soft as an English "b"; you must also break the syllables between the double consonants, which emphasizes the harder character of those double consonants.

The leading single "k" in the kak syllable is a bit softer as well, with a subtle, almost "g"-ish sound. To an untrained ear it might sound close to "bun•nu•guck•ku", although not quite.

Compare to Google Translate: Pancake = Pannukakku (click on the Listen button) (The voice sounds a bit artificial, though.)

Michael Du Long (Mikie):
"Mrs. Olea, our next door neighbor when I lived in Hubbell used to call me "braha boika" my spelling as I thought it sounded."

That's really quite close, Mikie, although I'm not sure why there would be even the slightest hint of an "r" sound there, as in "bra•ha".

Remember, the Finns also trill their "r", so an "r" there would be quite distinctive!

Listen to the sound of the two "r" in Google Translate: Mr. (Herra) Porridge = Herra Puuro (click on the Listen button) (The voice here sounds a bit more realistic. Yes, I had to 'fake it' a bit to get the "Herra" pronuniciation! <grin> )

...or as some are inclined to pronounce it: "bunny caca"

Doug, (Greenhermit), you are a piece of work! :)

Just a wee caveat: My Finnish is not necessarily the same as "pure" Finnish from "da old country, more accurately it is from the "Finglish" spoken in da UP, which just might be more relevant in this forum! <smile>

And pytavey, after many frustrating years using InterTran, I am extremely impressed of late with Google Translate. They are really doing an incredible job with English ↔ Finnish translation!

Good photos, especially the peaceful + barn reflections.

Happy Birthday Mr. Deb!! 29 today? Cheers to ya!!

Just to build on FRNash's fine explanations for pronouncing "paha poika" and "pannukakku", it could be said that Finnish is really a very simple language to speak and spell: every word is spelled exactly as it sounds, and sounds exactly as it is spelled (with only a couple of very minor exceptions). What's more, in Finnish, syllable emphasis always comes on the first syllable of a word (no exceptions). Besides this, there are significantly fewer letters of the alphabet used in spelling Finnish words than are used in English; and there are fewer sounds in Finnish too. For example, no "ch", "sh", "th", "z", the English "j", sounds exist in Finnish. What could be simpler?

OK, the simplicity actually sort of ends right there. A lot of letters common to both languages spoken with a very different sound in Finnish, and many have no real English sound equivalents at all (as FRNash explained for the Finnish non-aspirated "b", and "p"). The same goes for "t" and some letters as used in Finnish are just not in the English sound palate at all.

So, to give an exact English equivalent pronunciation for words such as "poika" and "pannukakku" is impossible - and hence, requires a lot of "extra information" in an attempt to explain it.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Deb. Hope you had a chance to eat your
favorite foods and do your favorite things with your favorite people.

Doug (Greenhermit):
"… Finnish is really a very simple language to speak and spell …"

Doug,
I couldn't have said it better.

English is really a collection of words with spelling and pronunciation rules from myriad different languages, thus it suffers from a bunch of different "rules" and perhaps even more "exceptions" for both spelling and pronunciation.

As Doug has said, with Finnish, once you learn the letters and the relatively simple pronunciation rules, that's pretty much all there's to it, with extremely few exceptions.

Finnish is interesting too in that the language has no grammatical gender, unlike Spanish and other Romance languages, for example, where every noun is either masculine or feminine, each with different spelling rules. Hmmm, no grammatical gender ... I suppose it's only a coincidence that the Finns were the first to give women the vote?

Another unique feature is that there are no articles (a, an or the) in Finnish. For example, House, a house, the house are all the same: Talo.

It's one thing to understand some of the simple spelling and pronunciation rules, and to recognize a bunch of words, even to recognize the gist of a conversation, I can do rather well at all that, but there's more.

Finnish is linguistically a synthetic language, typologically somewhere between fusional and agglutinative languages. It modifies and inflects the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence. This involves an extensive use of suffixes appended to the base word, sometimes forming some incredibly long words.

Finnish grammar is what makes my head hurt! For starters, there are fifteen cases:
1. Nominative
2. Accusative
3. Genetive
4. Essive
6. Translative
7. Inessive
8. Elative
9. Illative
10. Adessive
11. Ablative
12, Allative
13. Abessive
14. Comitative
15. Instructive

<groan>

For those who may be interested in more, the Wikipedia discussion of Finnish is really quite competent, particularly if you're a linguist! <grin>

Yep, I'm a "Bad Boy" Capt. know's, FR, ur too •••• deep for me, live on brother! I gotta work in the morning!

More importantly- Ron, How was your day? and how's the shoulder feeling these days? Hope u n Deb watch the submarine races tonight under the stars,lol!

UC

Very much a sticky (or "agglutinative" as FRNash points out) language is Finnish. Finns plaster particles and suffixes to their words as if they were some kind of linquistic post-it notes until a single word becomes a veritable verbal Seney stretch conveying a meaning that might take a dozen words to say in English.

A crazy example of extremes of agglutination in Finnish:

The official Guinness world record is Finnish:

For some reason, "paha poika" was the first Finnish phrase I learned. :-)