Short put, long lived
I'll leave you with a thought for a while.This is an imaginative letter to the Finnish Language.
Dear Suomen Kieli / Finnish Language,
Let me express that I'm deeply sorry for the choice of language in this letter to You. I admit there is a personal reason lying behind the choice, and I truly fear using the other possibility. My worry remains strong despite my previous experiences of You.
After all, that other choice, using Finnish instead of English, has not been proved to be suicidal in my social circles. Though I consider myself critical enough not to rely on personal information but on statistical data. That's where Your offspring starts getting really fatal.
I believe I was on the right track when I, years ago, had a rebellious mind fighting against the length of Your words. Naturally, that rebel targetted not only You but my conservative Finnish teachers who would not accept the cutting. They would use the red high lighter to point my errors if I ever tried to write shortly, using 'mä' instead of 'minä' or 'tv' instead of 'televisio'. I believe they saw no arising hazard in cultivating Your fatal products in a society that hardly supports the English Encyclopaedia.
Yesterday, then, I finally faced an authority thinking along my lines. Unfortunately, it was obvious he was not too worried about a small amount of toxic lexica, and expressed his doubts and visions in You, in Finnish Language. I think that didn't cause more than a possible mutation in some of his august genes. Here is his statement written down:
"Ruotsinkielinen väestönosa nauttii pidemmmästä eliniänodotteesta mahdollisesti lyhyiden sanojen ansiosta. Keskittyminen pitkiin sanoihin altistanee riskiotoille ja häiritsee keskittymistä muuhun kuin kielentuottamiseen".
I shall repeat in English:
"It's possible that the Swedish-speaking population [in Finland] has a higher life expectancy thanks to shorter words in their daily terminology. If you need to concentrate on long words, it's more likely that you will get involved in taking risks and your concentration on other things than language will be disturbed".
Look at the words You cultivate, Finnish Language! They are among the longest in the entire linguistic world! Look at the statistics and see how much higher life expentancies Swedish-speaking Finns have than Finnish-speaking Finns. You will see the difference.
I fear there is a tiny bit of truth in the statement posted. I hope there would be another explanation, since You are a beautiful language, an interesting one. But for the sake of some 5 million people, could you undergo a more rapid evolution and let the shortest ones of your grains survive? Cut the ends, the unnecessary compounds! Cut the formalities, the extra suffixes and the exploitative, endless roots! Evolve in harmony with the masters of shortages, go and learn what the SMS Language is developing.
If you wish to look for more evidence in the verbal world, listen to the communicative products of China where a syllable is a word.
In the spirit of this letter I shall finish my request along the lines.
Instead of Ystävällisesti (bye bye instead of yours sincerely),
I shall write simply, shortly put,
moi moi,
Anicko
____________________________________________________________
Brief summary:
In Finland, the healthiest people along all measures (life expectancy, healthy diet, least stress) live on the western Coast. They speak Swedish, a language of the Indo-European language family. Finnish-speaking Finns in turn suffer of cardiovascular diseases, depression and other health problems to a much higher extent. Finnish-speaking Finns also commit more suicides and die younger due to accidents.
One theory proposes that the length of words might be one reason among many. Finnish-speaking Finns need to concentrate on speaking and writing longer messages and this might (very simply put) disturb them when they should concentrate on their safety.
I was thinking about this and well, in some cases that might be true. Imagine if there is an accident and one has to shout commands to rescue people:
"Ten boys are coming, wait thirty seconds!"
...it takes some more time to say the same in Finnish:
"Kymmenen poikaa on tulossa, odottakaa kolmekymmentä sekuntia!"
...whereas in Swedish:
"Tio killar kommer, vänta trettio sekunder!"
As I said, I'll leave you with this thought for a while...
posted by Anicko @ 4:19 AM
1 Comments:
Hahahaha...
Interesting reading Anni! I think you're right, we all wish sometimes our languages were different in one way or another. Shorter words for finnish, more ease in the incorporation of new words in spanish... I'm sure native speakers of english and even swedish would have something to say about their languages, too. Another true thing: knowing more than one language does give us different perspectives; i believe each language imposes different filters in our thinking processes.
As for the theory that longer words cause shorter lives... Well, that's akin to saying that using the brain more does it. Or at least, certain areas of the brain... or the oral apparatus. Might there not be other differences between finnish and swedish speaking finns? Differences in lifestyle, perhaps, or outlook determined by cultural values? These can also be reflected in languages, i think, but not necessarily be caused by them (an unproven theory, but with many arrows pointing in that direction: look at all the different levels of deferential forms in japanese!). Or perhaps the measurements are taken wrong, biased in some way or another.
Boh!
Anyway, about your question, i don't know what happened to that video... I never got it, either. Maybe Kåre knows?
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