Drive Vol. 7: NORWAY (part 2)
Simple concept: pictures taken from a car.
Continuing with the Drive series in West Norway, right here in the beginning I have a photo that deserves some explanation:
If you interpreted the picture correctly, yes, that is a truck with a trailer speeding past us – just another day in Norway. Norwegians are crazy drives, often speeding past us 100 km/h on roads that definitely aren't straight, or supposed to be driven 100 km/h, but at this sight I had to scratch my eyes a little: "a truck?" It's like seeing your 90 year old grandma suddenly busting a few breakdance moves: not what you'd expect, but not technically impossible either.
The register plate says it's Swedish, but the driver must be Norwegian, or a very arrogant Swedish. Maybe it's their thing to get cocky about their driving skills when they see a foreign license plate: "Hah, look at this noob Finn – and they think they are good at rally!" Could be Norwegian-Swedish, too. Afterall, there's both flags on the truck. A bit of viking and bit of gay. Ha! No, I'm obviously kidding. Finns just sometimes like to call them gay, or "swedupelle" aka. Swede clown. Usually this happens when they beat us in ice hockey, otherwise we don't actually mind them. Except we still call them gay occasionally, because of their funny way of talking that we call "riikinruotsi", rikssvenska or, Sweden-Swedish. They have much more intonation compared to us Finns, we just mumble prrrrkle in the corner of the pub with a pint before us, empty look at our hand that never manages to wash the depression away down our throats. I am obviously getting slightly melodramatic and stereotypical – off topic too – but you don't obviously mind because otherwise you would've left already. "Hah, what a smart writer, not talking to the people who aren't reading him!"
Ok, cut the bullshit.
Where was I... Right, Sweden Swedish have variation in their tonality, but Finns talk Finland Swedish – it's just monotone Swedish, like Finnish, but Swedish (I guess they call it "accent"). Oh did I forgot to mention Swedish Finns? No worries, they are just Finns, Finns who talk Swedish as their mother tongue – Finland Swedish, not Sweden Swedish. I know, it's getting a bit confusing.
Anyway, the truck didn't get far, hope it was worth it getting 10 meters ahead of us. Maybe he (oops... almost got sexist) or she was just really excited to enter the world's longest road tunnel. Damnit, Finnish has at least one good thing going that it doesn't have gender pronouns – don't have to bother with that shit!
Lærdalstunnel, 24.5 kilometers long. There are even three caves with fancy lights there. I guess it's a must when it's the longest road tunnel in the world.
I will leave you now and just give you the rest of the photos, I have rambled enough.
Oh my gosh, I love your nutty sense of humor, @celestal! This really made me smile. Our drivers (even truckers) have that behavior sometimes — needing to get ahead because they just can’t stand being behind — so they are willing to risk life and limb to pass a car or two. Cool cave lights and amazing mountain photos! I’m assuming you weren’t the one driving! (But I have been known to take pictures while in command of a car, myself. Now we have a hands free law, so I’m really trying not to!)
Finnish doesn’t have gender pronouns?
Haha, thanks @jayna.
Oh, so it's some kind of trucker thing, haven't seen that in Finland though :P
Nah, I wasn't – I don't even have a license. But at least I got to compensate by being the documentarist, haha.
Nope, no genders or articles in any words. When we talk about a person in 3rd person, we say "hän". But if we want to be specific, then we obviously say "mies" (man) or "nainen" (woman). But we have 15 noun cases. And because Finnish is agglutinative, we can have fun words like epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän. That is not something anyone would say in real conversation, but it's technically a correct word.
Ha ha. I dare you to casually use that word in conversation. For extra points get it on video!
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That's some impressive photography right there! Though I guess you'd really have to suck to mess up shots of those mountains, ay? ;-) I love your discourse on the difference in Scandinavian (driving) cultures. It made me laugh.
Of course, I know the Finns aren't considered Scandinavian, and whether they are some far-out finno-ugric relatives of us Hungarians is up to debate. At least whenever I heard Finnish spoken I never understood a single word. Turkish sounded to be much closer. However, there seems to be a couple of things we have in common: no genders, not even gender pronouns, and those fun agglutinative nouns. As for noun cases, we only have three, but on the other hand we have 18 case particles, or suffixes to decline nouns (instead of prepositions).
Thanks! Impressive views certainly help for making a good photo :P
The thing to keep in mind is that languages can have their own relations and then people's genetical relationship their own relationship. Because while Finnish definitely is a Finno-Ugric as a language, the Finnish people are genetically very similar to Scandinavians, although some component in (some) Finnish people's genome can be traced back to East, to the Ural mountain or Siberia. Could be that some Hungarians' can be too. But like you said, Finnish and Hungarian have similar things going on on a grammatical level for why they can be traced to the same origin. Though because Hungarian migrated so far from the Ural mountains, the vocabulary is very different because of language contact with other languages, I imagine. Mostly the similarities with Finnish lay in some ancient words that were used during hunter-gather era.
I couldn't understand Hungarian either when I heard it :D
Oh certainly, talking about genetics opens up a whole new can of worms. After all, each individual has their own genetic makeup, which could come from anywhere. In only a couple generations those genetic traits become part of their surrounding region. And although this happens in each region, it doesn't happen uniformly.
As for Hungarians, what I like to point out, are the roughly 1000 years preceding the last 1000 years of living in the Carpathian basin. During that time they were living a nomadic culture, along with Turkic peoples, in the plains north of the Caspian and Black seas. So while they may be originally Finno-Ugric, they are certainly Turkic as well. One thing doesn't exclude the other.
As for the Finnish language, I've had a couple of experiences where I heard a song (in some place far away from Hungary) that sounded like I should understand it. Upon closer listening, I still couldn't manage to grasp one singe word, but the intonation of the whole just had such a familiar ring to it. Of course I wrote it down, and eventually got the song myself... in fact, I'm listening to it right now, and still I keep having the same feeling. The group is called Loituma, maybe you know them.
How's the debate going regards the relatedness to Basque, would you say?
There is such a debate? And I thought everyone agreed that no one is related to the Basque language, period!
Though I did hear about certain extreme cases, where a linguist came up with a weird theory of pointing out similarities between Basque, some tiny language in the Caucasus mountains, and a third, equally minor one in the Himalayas.
You really use your time to take some great pictures
Nothing much to do while sitting in a car and enjoying the views. More time is actually spent editing them.
OMG BEAUTIFUL NORWAY!! <3
The reflections on the water so beautiful!!!!
Also where are the burnt churches hehehe
Yeaaah, everything is amazing just by sitting in a car!
Muahahaahaaaaa 🤣
Loved Ari Vatanen & Juha Kankkunen in Paris-Dakar!
What a Väinämöinen (with songs/blogs and kantele) you are on your travels! Having a dig at the poor tiny Swedes (I failed to learn chess from a rather height-challenged Swede with very dark hair: and I always had the stereotype in mind that they were tall and blond; but that must be you dazzling Finns!)
The linguist here happens to know that you Finns speak a “dialect” of Swedish.
Very progressive language with its gender pronoun neutrality: maybe kidding aside, it does help emancipation if a language doesn't force the divide to come into every noun so obviously (I presume in your dictionary the nouns still retain gender?).
There are lots of blond people in Northern Europe, but it's not the only phenotype. Haha, I might be blond, but slightly below average (in Finland) in height at 175 cm, hair gives +1-5 cm pseudo-height though.
Nope, Finnish doesn't include articles or gender in words whatsoever (I think it's the same in other Finno-Ugric languages) – much more practical when talking about a person in 3rd person, we can just say "hän" if the person is unknown. Obviously, if we want to be specific with the gender then way say "mies" (man) or "nainen" (woman).
Beautiful shots from the road! Glad to hear my country isn't the only one where the professionals seem to be some of the worst drivers. :)
Thanks, mate! You're from the States?
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You are welcome. :) Yep, the western US, Central Oregon to be exact.
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