Brunnen

Noble intentions

"--And then it had gone to the seminar, taken some notes and held a similar presentation to its own group next morning. It said that the group was very motivated and that I could join them, too. Maybe I will, since it is a very good teacher and its doctoral thesis on macroeconomics is one of the best ones in Finland."

The lesson is: never translate from word to word, it might get too harsh and badly collide with the communicative culture of another language. I wanted to demonstrate how noble intentions sometimes completely crash with generally accepted customs, manners and formal etiquette. Some what I call soft philosophy will now follow.

Some languages are very formal whereas others are quite free of classifications, polite forms and various tones of politeness. One could say that Swedish is a very unformal language, whereas Japanese is most probably one of the most polite ones. English lies somewhere in between with French, Spanish, German and Russian. I don't know about Suahili and, say, Thai, but I would be interested to find out.
Finnish used to be a fairly formal language with You and you, mister and miss, sir and GOOD morning. Today, it is mostly a rather unformal language with 'you' for everyone, people just like 'Tarja' (the first name of the Finnish president Tarja Halonen), the simple 'morning' or 'moi' and -- 'it'. But are we Finns more harsh or unpolite if our language lacks forms of politeness? I say no, and defend this argument with the concept of noble intentions.

When I told a Dane that the Finnish word 'se' means 'it' and we use it in everyday discussions referring to almost everybody except maybe our president, he was shocked. To most people outside Finland, sentences such as "It[my boyfriend] is going to a concert tonight", "It [my boss] told me I would be working in Helsinki next year" - sound pretty harsh, don't they? The usage of 'It' is not even a watershed that would divide people according to their educational background: lawyers, teachers, students, politicians, everybody replaces the formal 'hän' [she AND he] with 'se=it'.

Actually, I realized some time ago that the formal "hän" for he and she might in fact be too 'foppish' nowadays. If I called my sister "hän" when talking about her to my best friends, they would certainly find it either contemptuous or funny. The only circumstances under which I would call her "hän" would be if I needed to talk about her with her teachers, employer or with the president! Sometimes you can also hear young mothers talking about their children by "hän" - but just two weeks ago I read in the local newspaper how one of the journalists complained about this "over-doting" word choice. Besides, 'hän' is phonetically a fairly unpractical word making it difficult to pronounce in very fast discussions; generally speaking, [h] requires a strong diaphragm unlike [s].

I am sure substituting "she/he" with "it" would not work in every language. Also, 'it' wouldn't be able to substitute both she and he in languages that have this division of genders. But the Finnish 'it' is a great example to defend my argument of noble intentions. Oh yes, 'it' indeed refers to both homo sapiens sapiens, lynx lynx and algae, but so far Finns haven't considered it as an insult of any kind. Why? -yes, because of good intentions.

Some time ago I got involved in a discussion about politeness in languages. When some Swedes told that they don't have a word for 'please' (in the context of "could you please open the window?"), some speakers of more 'conservative' languages were surprised. I am sure they were thinking how on Earth someone would manage to sound polite without please and other formalities. In reality, I think it is very easy to express respect, appreciation, politeness, gratitude and everything else with any vocabulary. And it is also very possible to express dislike, disgust,and to deplore,to insult and hurt BY using polite words with irony.

Noble intentions can be expressed even by saying "I want to drink a cup of coffee here" instead of "Could I please get a cup of coffee?". It is an essential part of humanity to have enough patience and understanding to understand that even a direct request like this - when politely articulated, with a smily face and humble tone - should be considered as a polite question with noble intentions.

Finns are often condemned for not remembering the correct central-european etiquette with 'You', please, thank you, and sorry. But languages vary in their capabilities to express politeness in words. Finnish relies more on tone, articulation, mien, body language and distantly related phrases that are understood to mean polite suggestions. Instead of asking "Would you like some coffee", most Finns would say "There is some coffee over here in case somebody wants to drink a cup or two".
And it is also usual to replace "Thank you for your invitation" with "Well, I haven't been to Tampere for a long time, great to get there again".

"In Rome, do as the Romans do" is a good piece of advice. Still, everybody knows that human beings have rather universal body language, at least more universal than language coding; so next time I come and say "It had bought a new skirt. It was red with stripes and checks and it said it loved it" - I just ask for peace and understanding! If you meet a foreigner who embarrases you by using rather direct, even harsh vocabulary, forgets/does not know how to be polite in your language, and makes you feel uncomfortable on the basis of her/his word choices, just look at her/him - forget about what he/she said (or didn't say) and read the face. Attitude, respect and sincerity lies between chin and forehead.

posted by Anicko @ 4:52 AM