Language Oddity #4: No Future in Finland's Dreaming

It might be unfair to say that that Finns are pessimists, but they definitely don't believe in the future.

Future tense that is.

That's Not My Name!

A headline in the Helsingin Sanomat last weekend was:

Halonen: “Pidän Obamasta”
[Finnish President] Halonen: “I like Obama”

There's something bizarre about this in my opinion...

Turning Japanese

In the previous post about polar questions, I mentioned a bizarre connection between Finnish and Japanese. This reminded me of an amusing story that happened to one of my Finnish friends while on holiday in Bali a few years ago.

Language Oddity #2: Polar Questions

It can be difficult to work out whether a Finn is asking a question, because they do not inflect their tone upwards at the end of interrogative sentences. Instead, the Finns have developed an ingenious trick to give a subtle clue to those-in-the-know that they are asking a question.