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a song can't be beautiful unless it's in a minor key
With high suicide rates, unhealthy alcohol culture (very unhealthy), winter that lasts for half a year, people that have a penchant for falling into sulking silences, national epic where a heroine is raped and then drowns herself and a hero marries his sister and... also drowns himself, Finland is kind of depressing. It would be sad, if it didn't go so hilariously overboard. ...Did I mention that it's dark here for eight months out of twelve?
So, we might only have a dozen words for snow, but I just recently realized we might have a few words too many for pain.
It all began when I heard the best spontaneous joke in my life. I thought of sharing it with the English-speaking internet. It went like this:
"Haltiat ovat kuolemattomia ja ihmiset kuolevaisia. Jos ne saa jälkeläisiä keskenään, mitä ne sitten tekee?"
("Elves are immortal, humans are mortal. So if they have children together, what happens to them?")
"Ne kituu."
("They...")
....and I blanked out. It was untranslatable. Sure, "kituu" has an approximate translation in English ("suffer"), but if I used that word, the best part of the joke would be lost. Bringing this up with my friends we realized that there are many words in Finnish for, well, HURTING in different forms, that have small nuances that get lost in translation.
Note that all of these are just verbs for "hurting" in different ways, if I were to list all the different ways of being "sick" and "being sick" it'd take the whole night. Also, these are just the ones immediately off the top of my head, disregarding all the dozens of dialectic or slang words.
(I also might be underestimating English; the only words that come to my mind are "hurt", "ache" and "smart". So with that in mind:)
Sattua "To hurt", plain and easy.
Koskea This, however, also means "to hurt". There are differences in nuance between "sattua" and "koskea", most of them regional, I think. To me "sattua" is more what you feel if you've broken your leg or something, "koskea" is what you feel when you hit your head. But they are largely interchangeable.
Särkeä "To ache", more or less. You feel it in your joints, bones, head.
Vihloa A very specific kind of pain. Think of a fork being forcefully dragged against a porcelain plate. Yeah, aching head again. Also a nasty feeling to get in your teeth (!), sometimes bones (but more rarely).
Kolottaa What happens to old people's joints in windy weather. A kind of ache, I guess. Again, a very specific kind of pain. The kind of pain that is impossible to escape.
Jomottaa A deep, dull ache that pulsates mercilessly.
Poltella Take a nettle in your bare hand and this is what you feel. (However, you can also just say "it burns".)
Pistellä "To sting". Fifty-fifty on whether it hurts or whether it's something that you just feel. Usually happens some time after an injury that has "poltella" earlier.
Kirvellä Swim in a chlorine pool for a few hours without goggles and this is how your eyes feel afterwards. Alternatively, pour some salt onto broken skin.
Actually, both of those are correct but neither as a representative of "kirvellä" sounds good enough. ...This is kind of hard to explain.
Kirpaista A short-lived but nasty sort of pain. Accidentally touching your mouth ulcer? Pulling a bandaid from your skin, sharply, when the wound underneath is still healing? Something like that.
And these two are kind of odd ones out, but I wanted to include them anyway.
Kärsiä This is easy. "To suffer". (This is also what the various ways of "being tormented" would translate into, NOT the word below.)
Kitua ...and this is where I get lost. It's a sort of suffering, but you can't go back from it anymore. If this is what you feel, you're not going to heal anymore. You're very probably not even conscious: the only thing that you can do in the future is die. More or less. But it's also something continuous.
When you "'kituuttaa' along" ("tag along" or try at least, maybe), you're not keeping up with the group at all, by the virtue of your energy shouldn't be able to, but somehow you're still moving. And to others it looks pathetic. That kind of feeling.
The best part? This word (along with its many variations) is in active use in Finland. As are all of these. Oh Finland.
(So what happens to descendants of elves, who live, and humans, who die? They "kitua".)
Any similar stories in other languages? (Or examples that I missed in Finnish.)
So, we might only have a dozen words for snow, but I just recently realized we might have a few words too many for pain.
It all began when I heard the best spontaneous joke in my life. I thought of sharing it with the English-speaking internet. It went like this:
"Haltiat ovat kuolemattomia ja ihmiset kuolevaisia. Jos ne saa jälkeläisiä keskenään, mitä ne sitten tekee?"
("Elves are immortal, humans are mortal. So if they have children together, what happens to them?")
"Ne kituu."
("They...")
....and I blanked out. It was untranslatable. Sure, "kituu" has an approximate translation in English ("suffer"), but if I used that word, the best part of the joke would be lost. Bringing this up with my friends we realized that there are many words in Finnish for, well, HURTING in different forms, that have small nuances that get lost in translation.
Note that all of these are just verbs for "hurting" in different ways, if I were to list all the different ways of being "sick" and "being sick" it'd take the whole night. Also, these are just the ones immediately off the top of my head, disregarding all the dozens of dialectic or slang words.
(I also might be underestimating English; the only words that come to my mind are "hurt", "ache" and "smart". So with that in mind:)
Sattua "To hurt", plain and easy.
Koskea This, however, also means "to hurt". There are differences in nuance between "sattua" and "koskea", most of them regional, I think. To me "sattua" is more what you feel if you've broken your leg or something, "koskea" is what you feel when you hit your head. But they are largely interchangeable.
Särkeä "To ache", more or less. You feel it in your joints, bones, head.
Vihloa A very specific kind of pain. Think of a fork being forcefully dragged against a porcelain plate. Yeah, aching head again. Also a nasty feeling to get in your teeth (!), sometimes bones (but more rarely).
Kolottaa What happens to old people's joints in windy weather. A kind of ache, I guess. Again, a very specific kind of pain. The kind of pain that is impossible to escape.
Jomottaa A deep, dull ache that pulsates mercilessly.
Poltella Take a nettle in your bare hand and this is what you feel. (However, you can also just say "it burns".)
Pistellä "To sting". Fifty-fifty on whether it hurts or whether it's something that you just feel. Usually happens some time after an injury that has "poltella" earlier.
Kirvellä Swim in a chlorine pool for a few hours without goggles and this is how your eyes feel afterwards. Alternatively, pour some salt onto broken skin.
Actually, both of those are correct but neither as a representative of "kirvellä" sounds good enough. ...This is kind of hard to explain.
Kirpaista A short-lived but nasty sort of pain. Accidentally touching your mouth ulcer? Pulling a bandaid from your skin, sharply, when the wound underneath is still healing? Something like that.
And these two are kind of odd ones out, but I wanted to include them anyway.
Kärsiä This is easy. "To suffer". (This is also what the various ways of "being tormented" would translate into, NOT the word below.)
Kitua ...and this is where I get lost. It's a sort of suffering, but you can't go back from it anymore. If this is what you feel, you're not going to heal anymore. You're very probably not even conscious: the only thing that you can do in the future is die. More or less. But it's also something continuous.
When you "'kituuttaa' along" ("tag along" or try at least, maybe), you're not keeping up with the group at all, by the virtue of your energy shouldn't be able to, but somehow you're still moving. And to others it looks pathetic. That kind of feeling.
The best part? This word (along with its many variations) is in active use in Finland. As are all of these. Oh Finland.
(So what happens to descendants of elves, who live, and humans, who die? They "kitua".)
Any similar stories in other languages? (Or examples that I missed in Finnish.)
no subject
I know there are other times when there's something is much more poignant or has more subtle connotations in Chinese than in the equivalent English translation, but I can't actually think of them... I'm randomly reminded also of this blog post though: http://www.iwanihana.info/2009/03/05/broken-is-beautiful/ which is an interesting discussion on the similarities/differences between Chinese and Japanese sense of aesthetics.
no subject
Which is to say, that is lovely.
...And that link reminds me, when we were watching the film The Last Emperor (dubbed in Chinese) with my Chinese group, my teacher's mother-in-law mentioned, at one point in the film, that something about it felt very un-Chinese, foreign. I can't for the life of me remember what part it was though, and now it's bothering me.