Linux to the rescue!

[beezlebubsbum]

Darn swedes. Is everyone enjoying the olympics? My country, Canada, sucks, but the country that I live in now, Australia, is coming third. Not bad for a country that only has 19 million people ey?

[janne_oksanen]

*kicks maccorin in the nuts*

Dagnammit Mac! You do know that suana in Swedish is not even called sauna? In Swedish it's called 'bastu' and sauna is what Finns call it. The word sauna is Finnish and we have some other very original sauna related vocabulary that I would not even be able to accurately translate into English 'cause they don't have any kind of meaning to you guys. Let's get this straight once and for all: Finns invented sauna, ok! Swedes may have Ikea and Abba but sauna is Finnish for fsck's sake. There is documented evidence that Finns have has sauna for over a 1000 years and scientists believe that the tradition is probably twise as old as the oldest documents.

So don't kid around with serious issues maccorin. For anyone who wishes to learn more about the subject I recommend going to www.sauna.fi (oh yes, even sauna has a website)

Oh and kungfuramone9 you were pretty close, it's spelled 'rautatieasema' tho. :wink:

[kungfuramone9]

Ahso. I just remember when I was trying to learn my few Finnish phrases I could never get them until my long-since-vanished buddy wrote them down. It went a little something like this:

Me: "Ok Ilkka, how do you say 'fuck it, I'll get the chainsaw'?"
Him: "sdkjfksdfljsdklfsb3iiendkdbneiw9fj2"
Me: "Write that down."

Vitut! Ma haen mootorisahan! :mrgreen:

[maccorin]

*kicks maccorin in the nuts*

Dagnammit Mac! You do know that suana in Swedish is not even called sauna? In Swedish it's called 'bastu' and sauna is what Finns call it. The word sauna is Finnish and we have some other very original sauna related vocabulary that I would not even be able to accurately translate into English 'cause they don't have any kind of meaning to you guys. Let's get this straight once and for all: Finns invented sauna, ok! Swedes may have Ikea and Abba but sauna is Finnish for fsck's sake. There is documented evidence that Finns have has sauna for over a 1000 years and scientists believe that the tradition is probably twise as old as the oldest documents.

So don't kid around with serious issues maccorin. For anyone who wishes to learn more about the subject I recommend going to www.sauna.fi (oh yes, even sauna has a website)

Oh and kungfuramone9 you were pretty close, it's spelled 'rautatieasema' tho. :wink:

told ya they are mad :lol:

[janne_oksanen]

Me: "Ok Ilkka, how do you say 'fuck it, I'll get the chainsaw'?"
Him: "sdkjfksdfljsdklfsb3iiendkdbneiw9fj2"
Me: "Write that down."

Actually good thing about Finnish is that it is spelled exactly the way it's pronounced once you know the alphabet. That is why Spelling Bee seems a bit funny to us because even the first graders can spell any given word in Finnish just by hearing it.

Vitut! Ma haen mootorisahan!

*ROTFLMAO*

OMG, you have no idea how funny that looks/sounds. And you almost spelled it right too. (correct way == moottorisahan, with double 't')

That is just like my bandmates learning German and Italian and stuff like that. They ask for key phrases like:
-I can eat kilograms of cheese
-Marko has an enormous horn
-My father was a famnous scent dog from Dusseldorf
-But Mr. Detective. Who scred the goals against Turkey
-We must go to Holmenkollen (==a ski jump tower in Norway)

[beezlebubsbum]

Hahaha... My Father Has A Last Name It's Chexcdoiedjfnsaldoemdfdfs....

[kungfuramone9]

Exactly!

While I have the utmost respect for people who are conversant in more than one language, and am currently working pretty hard to try to pick up French myself, it's also a hell of a lot of fun to learn dumb random phrases. Lemme see here...

Das ist nicht meine schlong!
Naisia ilman vaateita! (Again, I'll defer to Janne, but last I knew that meant "women without clothing" in Finnish.)
Et op! Druple!

The funny thing is that when I was around the cadre of international students a few years ago I found Dutch to be the *most* incomprehensible language around. As in, it was possible to learn Finnish or Japanese phrases phonetically, but I couldn't even _say_ anything in Dutch.

Tres bizzare.

[Fatal Error]

Do it while you are young!

If your going to learn a language start young. I stepped off a plane in El Salvador, wife, two daughters 3 and 6. The country was in the middle of a situation (local term for local war) and we spoke 0 Spanish. At 37 I had a tough time. Thank God the Latin Americans are such nice people, had that been the usOFa I don't think I would have made it.

PS. One daughter speaks 4 and the other 3 languages, my 17 yearold son has 3.
They learned from living in the language, expats.

[beezlebubsbum]

Wow, might as well start them early!