5 ms·
Finn here. There are countless memes about oddities of our language. The one I like the most is "kuusi palaa". It can mean; the spruce is on fire the spr
by hpaavola 8y ago
Finn here. There are countless memes about oddities of our language. The one I like the most is "kuusi palaa". It can mean;
the spruce is on fire
the spruce returns
the number six is on fire
the number six returns
six of them are on fire
six of them return
your moon is on fire
your moon returns
six pieces
Good luck for all implementing NLP :)
- arka2147483647 8y agoThis is a specificially constructed corner case, not a general finnish thing: - kuu = moon - kuusi = spruce - palaa = returns - pala = piece From those you can see how one can intrepent the compound word (with or without suffix) however you wish. Eg: - kuu+si = your moon (where 'si' is the suffix which means 'your') - pala+a = pieces (where 'a' suffix is the plural)
- Whatitat90 8y agoI wonder what oddities lie in Linus Torvalds' "perkeleen vittupää" (https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/13/132 https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/13/132).
- stevekemp 8y agoI like the "dog example" too, which highlights the different forms/cases: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/72936-english-swedish-german-and-finnish-decline-dog/ https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/72936-english-swedish-g... I'm a recent immigrant to Finland, and while the regular grammar makes some things simple, the cases and suffixes are enough to drive me crazy! The simple things are easy to handle if you're reading a textbook, but remembering them in real-time when speaking is very hard.
- BerislavLopac 8y agoNo wonder Tolkien used it as a basis for Elvish.
- uasm 8y ago> "kuusi palaa" Can we get a bit more detail here? Are those variations on pronunciation? How does a native Finn able to infer the correct meaning?
- gorbachev 8y agoNo, there is no variation on pronunciation. They sound exactly the same when spoken. The only way to infer what's meant is from context.
- simonh 8y agoMy favourite homophone example is a 92 character poem in Chinese[0], where every syllable is a slight variation on Shi. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_... Interestingly when I showed the actual text to my wife, who is Chinese, she didn't understand what was funny about it until I asked her to read it to me, when she burst out laughing. That's when I found out she doesn't sub-vocalise, where I do all the time.
- apendleton 8y agoThese aren't really homophones though, right? Because they differ in tone?
- yorwba 8y agoThere are only 4 different tones, so by the pigeonhole principle there must be lots of homophones. On the other hand, most of the characters used to be pronounced differently when they were still commonly used as individual words, so the poem only works because it mixes modern pronunciation with classical grammar.
- emilfihlman 8y agoFinnish is pronounced extremely regularly. The way it's written is the way it's pronounced (in almost all cases).
- appsonify 8y agoOr counting in Finnish :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuNs1v_jtfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuNs1v_jtfs