MetaFilter posts tagged with finnish

Kontiovaara: "Long time no see, long time no hear, so call me Helen Keller."

Free word order! — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:57:41 -0800

Meet detective Kyösti Pöysti from Pasila, a cult tv-series that relies on tight, absurd and idiosyncratic language and depressing the suspects until they give up. Now there are fan-made subtitles to introduce this gem to the english misspelling world. Reetta Ruusu, The Orphant Dogs, For and against, Key player and lots more in related videos. Notice that the subtitles have their own idiosyncrasies going on: dummy = pacifier.

"This is the person we have to work with on our next album artwork"

joseph conrad is fully awesome — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:51:50 -0800

"How did the contact with Keane come about? / Completely randomly. A friend of the band's, bought one of my prints from a mutual friend's shop. The band saw the print in his house and said 'this is the person we have to work with on our next album artwork'." Sanna Annukka (previously on MeFi) discusses how she came to illustrate Keane's album, Under the Iron Sea, and singles, the artwork of which is playful, lonely, and folklore-like in feel. A blogger shares her visit to the Playful New Finnish Design Shipping Container, part of Meatpacking District Design Week, held May 15-18, 2009 in New York. The industrial container displayed Annukka's latest work, a Kaneleen kutsu pattern for Marimekko. It is based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala (previously).

Paavo Haavikko (1931-2008)

misteraitch — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:28:14 -0800

Paavo Haavikko, one of Finland's (and Europe's) foremost poets, died earlier this week. As well as poetry, his seventy or so published works included essays, novels, plays for the stage, radio & TV, and opera libretti. (via) Unfortunately there is not a whole lot of Haavikko's poetry in English on-line. Besides the page of translations by Richard Sieburth linked above, there are a few snippets here and a few more translations here [.doc]. Haavikko's was a memorably aphoristic style, informed by a sceptical, pessimistic outlook: 'Every house has many builders, and is never finished.' 'Real delicacies are raw: oysters, salmon, and power.' 'When the tyrant is young. Everyone waits / for him to come to his senses. / Old. For him to die.' 'Don’t reminisce, / the dead / reminisce about the dead: / the flowers of Autumn, / snow-chilled, / about the flowers of Spring.' 'This is a world that will, in any case, be destroyed at some time. / Working for its destruction seems pointless. / It is impossible to save. Between these two facts, life must be lived...' 'In this cruel world it’s useless even to beg / not to be born again.' .

Cleanup in aisle... ummm... oh, pretty much all of them.

miss lynnster — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:58:11 -0800

Finnish supermarket dominoes. (6 1/2 minute SLYT post)

Woe is me, my life hard-fated!

klangklangston — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:03:54 -0800

Anglo-Finnish artist Sanna Annukka's vibrant, flat design work (especially her Icons series) got me curious about her, well, iconography.

She mentioned The Kalevala previously, the Finnish national epic poem (in Finnish here), a tale of creation and heroism that arguably spurred the Finns to independence from the Russians.

Like so much else epic and awesome, it spawned a '70s prog band, with three albums.

Plans for simple plywood boats

LobsterMitten — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:19:03 -0800

Hannu's Boatyard is a site by a Finnish guy who offers free plans for two dozen simple plywood boats you can build, along with photos illustrating the build process of each. He also describes basic woodbending technique and some of the design process, in a pleasing writing style that makes me want to get off the internet and make things. My favorites: Portuguese style dinghy; tiny stubby halfpea; round, Welsh-style coracle -- if you click on no other link today, click on the coracle link and scroll down at least to the black and white photo.

There's no need to be unhappy in Finland!

miss lynnster — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:04:47 -0800

I'ts fun to stay at the... N-M-K-Y!

Today Is a Good Day To Vote

fandango_matt — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:35:00 -0800

Jyrki Kasvi is a member of the Finnish parliament from the Uusimaa constituency. He represents the Green League and his campaign website can be viewed in English, Swedish, or Klingon.

I could probably fake fluency in Bengali

borkingchikapa — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:05:54 -0800

I never realized how great Wikipedia was for quick-and-dirty guides to languages. For example, did you know that Esperanto uses affixes to cut the number of adjectives one must learn in half? Or that Finnish has fifteen noun cases, including six locative declensions? Or that Vedic Sanskrit was tonal? How about that Cherokee verbs each have 21,262 inflected forms? I could play with this forever.