Friday 4 February 2011

Mistä olet sinä kotoisin?


Great Eng..Brit..UK-land Isles (jne) by C.G.P. Grey via Holy Kaw and @stephenfry


One of the first things you learn in Finnish language lessons is the simple question 'Where are you from?'
What people don't always understand is that may not be as straightforward a query to answer as you might think... now all I need to do is translate the video* into Finnish. Or maybe make a t-shirt of that Venn diagram.

[suomen kielien kurssissa]

  • Opiskellija 1: Hei 
  • Opiskellija 2:  Moi
  • Missä sinä asut?
  • Asun Helsingissa. Olen asunnut suomessa noin kolme vuotta.
  • Mista olet sinä kotoisin? Oletko englantilainen?
  • Olen englannista, mutta myös iso-brittaniasta ja brittein saarista ja u.k:sta
  • Mitä!?
  • Olen britti ja englantilainen kyllä. Mutta minun passini kertoo 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'
  • Kirja vain sanoo 'maa: englanti, keili: englantia,  kansalaisuus: englantilainen - englannista...
  • Tiedän, mutta on monimutkainen maa. 
  • Sitten... oletko irlantilainen myös?
  • En ole. Ihminen voi olla irlantilainen ja iso-brittanista, mutta ei aina.
  • En ymmärrä sinun maa!
  • Määt - monikko. OK. Sinun vuoro. Mistä sinä...
  • Opettaja: Oletteko valmis seuraava harjoitus?

I wonder if there is a video to explain London, Greater London, Inner London, Central London, London Boroughs and City of London...


---
* Arguably there are still a few inaccuracies in this video. Or possibly sarcasm. See the comments on 'Holy Kaw' here.

5 comments:

Skeptigirl said...

"Mista sinä kotoisin?" is an incomplete sentence, as it lacks a subject. A for effort thou on attempting to speak Finnish. My husband just started 20 hours a week of Finnish classes this week.

emmdee said...

Languages was never my strong point - I really must sign up for more classes this year...

Anonymous said...

Sorry to rain on your parade.
It lacks a predicate.
The subject is sinä.

emmdee said...

That's one of the problems with trying to learn Finnish - I don't even know what a predicate is in English... :-(

Anonymous said...

Basically it is the main verb. Subject is the thing that does something and the doing part is the predicate.
In previous two sentences the predicates are (in the Finnish sense of the verbs only - apparently English includes the object and modifiers) is, is, does and is.
Also, check out wikipedia.