Yesterday, I asked a Finn: "How do you say camera in Finnish? Is it elokuvakone
[film machine]?". The Finn looked at me with a smile and answered: "Err, no... it's kamera!"
Sometimes, I make Finnish just a little harder work than it actually is!
Related Posts : Anecdote,
Mini-post,
Words
"Elokuva" does in fact mean film, but just the movie kind. Film, the one you put in old cameras, is actually pretty boring in Finnish: "filmi".*
ReplyDeleteThe word "elokuva" itself is a combination of two words, "elo" and "kuva" (i.e. "living picture")
And film as a biological membrane is called "kalvo".
* A lot of Finnish words are just like the English/European counterpart, but with a letter I at the end.
For example
bus - bussi
mail, post - posti
floppy disk, diskette - disketti
We put the extra I in there because in the Finnish language it's more natural to pronounce words with a vowel as the last word. A case in point would be foreign brand names, which we also sometimes pronounce with an extra I, like Ford - "foordi" or Opel - "ooppeli".
I'm not sure if you'll see this comment as this post is ove two years old but I just think it's cool that you have a blog about Finland. :)