Comments on: Plagiarism of Finnish books

By: tt

tt — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:23:29 +0000

he still has it listed under his LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/in/directorwriter

By: Sirkuspelle

Sirkuspelle — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 09:37:55 +0000

@16 Finnish is a pretty exotic language. It’s closely related to Estonian and Lappish, more distantly to Mordvin and Mari spoken over in Russia, and distantly to Hungarian. Distantly means Greek is about as close to English than Finnish is to Hungarian.

Some linguists clump the Uralic languages to which Finnish belongs together with the Altaic languages, to which Turkish, Mongol, and Korean belong. (with some disupute over Japanese) Many of these languages have some form of endings added to words to form prepositional phrases and vowel harmony. (Istanbul also has umlaut pollution, even on a clear day.)

By: interglossa

interglossa — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:10:30 +0000

I wish Finnish were not so fiendishly difficult for the learner. I was able to develop a simple reading ability in Swedish and Norwegian in a few months - Finnish is of course a different language family and unrecognizable except for the loan words. - This is a great blog. I hope I visit Finland someday.

By: phone user

phone user — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:42:37 +0000

tomorrow, Finland has the chance to do a triple in the javelin contest. They also did that in 36, if I have the facts right. Ergo, Finnish javelin athletes perform best in games in fascist äh totalitarian communist regimes.

By: olavi

olavi — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:50:52 +0000

Did you know that the English translation, The Egyptian, is abridged? It seems that it was somewhat “adjusted for American audiences” during the translation. The sex and action were left intact, but for example the stylish repetition in the first chapter was cut to a minimum. And yes, this version was the number one translated best-seller in the United States until The Name of the Rose topped the charts…

Well, the abridgement doesn’t really ruin the book especially if you like your books entertaining. It just has slightly less Waltari’s wisdom of life, discussion about religion and general pessimism.

Many translations were actually made using the Swedish translation which is complete.

By: Dave the Revelator

Dave the Revelator — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:45:59 +0000

Blog name change idea:

http://www.FinlandForgot.net

By: Freeridin' Franklin

Freeridin' Franklin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:06:13 +0000

#6: Maoism had some following in Finland as well, approximately the same as libertarians now. Indeed, they score about the same on the hörhömeter. In comparison, Taistoites represented the sensible, moderate mainstream.

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maolaisuus

By: Auriga

Auriga — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:13:56 +0000

Gareth Hale does it better!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJZ8NEEw5Jo&feature=related§

By: Freeridin' Franklin

Freeridin' Franklin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:36:29 +0000

Finnish success or the lack of it notwithstanding, this celebration of totalitarianism bears such a resemblance to 1936 that I can’t really bring myself to watching it.

By: Jonas G

Jonas G — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:48:40 +0000

So far, we’re very slightly ahead of the predictions in terms of our performance in this Olympics (and we haven’t go to javelin yet). But yes, Donkey has the right focus. The Swedes are doing horribly. It makes the Swedish newspapers that more entertaining to read as I doubt there is a country on earth that are such bad losers.

Let’s also not forgot, in terms of all time olympic medals per capita, only the Liechtensteiners and Norwegians beat us. Right, I will end the friendly sporting nationalism there.

By: donkey

donkey — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:13:37 +0000

What? Finland is ahead of Sweden in the medal standings (and you know that’s all we care about) whereas Americans are taking a beating from the Chinese with 26 vs. 45 gold medals. Getting humiliated by commies again, man that must be hard!

And then those Jamaicans, so fast, so fast…

By: Punter

Punter — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:32:45 +0000

#4 The reason the coverage of The Olympic Games is missing from the blog is because with Finland’s performance in these Games being what it is it is probably better to just pretend they’re not happening.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:49:17 +0000

If only more people spoke Finnish?

That’ll be interesting.

By: Perttu

Perttu — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:19:01 +0000

Phil, you should do a comparison between Chinese and Finnish communism. Do you know about these?

By: Freeridin' Franklin

Freeridin' Franklin — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:49:00 +0000

#4: There’s no point in doing free PR for the Chinese communist party.