The thought immediately sprung to my mind that this would be impossible in her native language!
Yes folks, it's time for me to have another dig at the ridiculous length of Finnish words...
I have already mentioned that the Finnish language allows words to be concatenated virtually endlessly to create giant word formations. I have also explained that Finnish has 15 cases, which are appended to words to create even bigger words.
But actually, it doesn't stop there. Oh no, because Finns have a whole raft of things they can add at the end of words to make their words longer still.
There is the suffix “-ko”, which turns a sentence into a question. There are suffixes to indicate possession (“-ni” = my, “-si” = your, “-nsa” = his/her/their, etc.). The suffix “-kin” means “also” or “as well”, while “-kaan” means “not either” or “neither”. If you put “-ton” at the end of a word, it means there isn't any of that word, the equivalent of the “-less” ending in English. The ending “-ja” often denotes a person who does something, e.g. opettaa (“to teach”) leads to opettaja (“teacher”). The ending “-la” can be used a place, so “ravintola” (restaurant) is a place of nourishment (“ravinto”). The suffix “-lainen” describes someone from a place, e.g. “englantilainen” is an Englishman or Englishwoman...
And the list goes on... and on... and on...
So put all that together, and you have bizarre words like:
luotaanpäästämättömydestäänsäkään
a somewhat theoretical word, which means roughly “despite even of his/her tendency of not letting go”, which I have seen explained as follows:
luota
from
luotaan
from him
päästä
to be let
päästämätön
that does not let
luotaanpäästämätön
one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him
luotaanpäästämättömyys
one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömydestä
regarding-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömyydestään
regarding-his-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömydestäänsä
of-regarding-his-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömydestäänsäkään
despite-of-regarding-his-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
from
luotaan
from him
päästä
to be let
päästämätön
that does not let
luotaanpäästämätön
one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him
luotaanpäästämättömyys
one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömydestä
regarding-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömyydestään
regarding-his-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömydestäänsä
of-regarding-his-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
luotaanpäästämättömydestäänsäkään
despite-of-regarding-his-one-who-does-not-let-get-away-from-him-ness
Is it any surprise that Finnish never became the international lingua franca? Try writing good copy for an international audience with word formations like that!
"luotaanpäästämättömydestäänsäkään"
ReplyDeleteYou are missing one y. It's "luotaanpäästämättömyYdestäänsäkään".