Brunnen

Hardtodivide (har dtod ivide?)

If you travel on a motorway in Finland you might see a sign that says "Kuormausalue". That means a place where trucks get loaded. Assuming that you can divide the lengthy word into shorter words correctly.

Two class mates of mine in the elementary school used to walk home passing by a sign of this kind. For months, they had been wondering the meaning of "Kuormausalue". They could read, so this was not question of that. But they just couldn't get the meaning of the word. This is how they did it:

Kuorma
USA
lue

...and they got it wrong. It almost made sense (which was a coincidence). It took some time until they heard someone saying that word kuormausalue and only then could divide it properly.

Kuormaus
alue

What they had thought was that Kuormausalue had something to do with the US and reading. Kuorma means load, USA... well you know that and lue read! (a command).
"Load USA read!" didn't quite make sense but was coincidentally almost an existing word.

In the English language, there is no problem with what I call "discern a word". I previously referred to this characteristic in "Thin translations". It is difficult to read long words.
Interesting is a long word but it is not difficult to read. Onomatopoetic is a long word but it is not hard to grasp either. So what's the trick?

Words become difficult if more than two words are put together. This statement is hard to exemplify since English is a language of separate words. So I give you an artificial instance.

superball

There is no certainty this means super ball. Likewise it could really be superb all.
Finnish is full of this kind of words. The context only can help Finns to divide the "tube words" properly.

In a sense I'm disappointed to the Finnish language. I've been quite proud of it, proud of the systematic spelling and alphabet. But compounds don't offer any assistance to people. They are words Finns are assumed to know and I don't like that. Though I don't want to complain only: I do have a suggestion and I'm dreaming of it becoming reality but my chances are minimal. Like suggesting that all the nouns in English would be written with a capital letter.

If my suggestion was turned into practice, 'kuormausalue' would look this:

kuormaus'alue.

superball would look this:

super'ball.

Worse than that,

tarjousostoautomaatti would look this:

tarjous'osto'auto'maatti.

To be systematic (since grammar should always be) - and this is going to be quite dramatic, FINLAND, would be spelled this way in the future:

Suo'mi (because now, with the existing lack of rules for vowel division, SUOMI is confusing. You could say su omi or suo mi)

So here you are, Suo'mi! Enjoy the new kieli'oppi! (grammar)

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for clarification: the nuclear idea of my grammar suggestion is based on the difference in vowels beginning a word and vowels in the middle of it. You can notice the difference by saying the following words: apple, eager, east. Press your fingers against your larynx and repeat these words. You can feel a weak "snap" as the larynx opens and closes. Now, repeat the following: horse, taurus, gaia. Feel the larynx. As you can see, you cannot feel the "snap" when saying taurus because the vowels do not start the word.
This is the characteristic I'm referring to in my suggestion. If you divide "kuormausalue" as kuorma + usa + lue, you can feel a "snap" when saying 'usa'. But if you say the word correctly "kuormaus + alue", you cannot feel the 'snap' in front of u but in front of a in alue because that's where the word begins. In Finnish, this 'snap' is so important that if you say "kuorma usa lue" to a person who is native speaker of Finnish and has not been in touch with foreigners, it is very unlikely he will understand what word you're trying to say. (I mean grasping the meaning immediately).

posted by Anicko @ 9:48 AM