The Independent Hammock
Finnish is generally a rather expressful and rich language, able to specificly describe actions, qualities and being as such. But due to the large amount of cases, for singular and plural, there are words that, when conjugated, become something else.This one I found in an ad today:
riippumaton
Before telling what it means, let's do some cutting:
riippua (v) means 'to hang'
-ton as an ending means -less (as in 'careless')
-n in the end means 's and of sth (as Charles's, news of the day)
Now, 'riippumaton' can be understood two ways. It is an adjective and a noun.
If noun, its basic form is
riippumatto, 'a hammock'
where, again riippua (to hang) --> riippu
and matto = 'mat', thus 'carpet', 'rug'
riippumaton is the genetive (of the hammock), since to make the word easier to pronounce the double t turns into a single t: riippumatto --> riippumatton --> riippumaton.
Coincidentally, riippumaton means something else, too.
riippua = 'hang', 'ton' = less
What could that be? Does a direct translation 'hangless' ring a bell?
Guessing becomes easier when I tell you riippua means both 'hang' and 'depend'. In English, too, they are basically the same thing, right?
Thus, depend + less --> dependless, and with better English, naturelment,
independent
riippumaton, it's up to you to choose: either 'of a hammock' or 'independent'.
posted by Anicko @ 11:28 PM
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