Finnophile writing about Finland, Finnish and the Finns, despite being fairly unqualified to do so
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Monday, 7 March 2011
Mini-Post: Cameras
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!
"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".*
The 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. :)
"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. :)