the debasement of language

[perlmonger]

/me reads the words "absurdeja ideoita" on a Finnish webshite and despairs. The addition of loan words to a language for new ideas is fair enough, I suppose, but here are two words that have perfectly good Finnish equivalents.

Bah.

Comments

[lproven.livejournal.com]

You speak Finnish?!

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

sure he does. His mother is Finnish. I thought you knew ..

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Had nottaclue.

Interesting language - really deeply weird and difficult...

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

As a language, it's a damned sight simpler and more logical (and, most important, consistent) than English :)

/\/\ac exaggerates slightly; I don't actually speak it any more, and never did fluently, but I can understand it reasonably well when written or spoken. I dare say it wouldn't take me long to pick it up properly if I lived there though, as the fundamentals were hardwired into me as a child.

[tanais.livejournal.com]

I would want to learn Finnish simply to read the entire Finn Family Moomintroll set of books in their original language. Apparently Puffin re-translated The Exploits of Moominpapa and it came out very different. I like that about language -- it reminds me that all that we describe is merely a compromise...

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

Tove Janson had Swedish (or the bastardised variant thereof spoken in Finland) as her first language; the Moomin books were, I think, written so and only translated into Finnish.