this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 57 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Kokko! Kokoo kokoon koko kokko.

Koko kokkoko?

Koko kokko, Kokko.

[–] [email protected] 73 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Kokko [a rare name]! Gather together [in a spoken language, assemble also works but kind if misses the point of the repetitiveness] the entire bonfire.

The entire bonfire?

The entire bonfire, Kokko.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (3 children)

That makes more sense to me.

It's similar to the English word play buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Yeah though I hope it’s better as the buffalo wordplay is basically the only think keeping the verb use of buffalo alive

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Yes, exactly

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I get a slightly different result from DDG translate:

Bonfire!
Assemble the whole bonfire.
The size of the bonfire?
The whole bonfire, the bonfire.

Although, it's even better with Kokko being a rare name;

Kokko!
Assemble the whole bonfire.
The size of the bonfire?
The whole bonfire, Kokko.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

"Bonfire!" works as a yell and for the ending in a poetic or lyrical style.

"The size of the bonfire" is wrong.

But we could add "Kokon koko?" to include it. Or even "Kokon koko koko?" for "The total/full size of the bonfire?" or "Koko kokon koko?" as in "The size of the whole bonfire?"

Edit for a narrative:

Kokko, kokko!

Kokko?

Kokoo kokoon koko kokko.

Koko kokkoko?

Koko kokko.

Kokon koko koko?

Kokon kokoinen kokko, Kokko.


And in English:

Kokko, the bonfire!

The bonfire?

Gather together the whole bonfire.

The whole bonfire?

The whole bonfire.

The total size of the bonfire?

A bonfire-sized bonfire, Kokko.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

My bonfire brings all the boys to the yard

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I have no Finnish, but what I hear you saying is that DuckDuckGo's translate sucks.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Check out ChatGPT or deepl if you need Finnish translated. Of course this kind of wordplay is quite difficult to get right

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

i fed the text to chatgpt and it did a very good but not quite perfect job: "Bonfire, bonfire!

Bonfire?

Gather together the entire bonfire.

The entire bonfire?

The entire bonfire.

The size of the whole bonfire?

The size of the bonfire, Bonfire."

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I'm currently trying to learn Finnish. This stresses me out.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry, this doesn't matter and we have a lot of harder stuff in the language which does matter

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh good, that’s encouraging lol

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm kidding. We appreciate everyone trying, even if they don't get possessiivisuffiksis right

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do normal people, because in your neighboring country, 50 year olds can't spell

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Sorry, are you asking how our average person handles the language?

Native Finnish speakers seem to suck at compound words and punctuation on average, old and young.

People learning Finnish differ as they seem to (someone learning please speak up) struggle with double consonants, declension (had to google that word) and how spoken language is different from written official rules. I think all of these are mostly automatic to someone with Finnish as a mother tongue.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, Finnish compound words are pain in the ass.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

It's a pet peeve of mine to see them done dirty but lately I've thought that maybe they've been written by someone dyslexic or with something else as their first language and have become more lenient.

But still...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yes, I am asking if the average person gets possessiivisuffiksis right. I suppose I wasn't as clear as I should have been. Nevertheless it seems my question was more or less answered

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Start from deciphering this

Kokoo koko kokko kokoon. Koko kokkoko kokoon? Koko kokko kokoon.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

assemble the whole bonfire. All of the bonfire? All of the bonfire.

my brain hurts

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Kuusi palaa

Guess which meaning this one is. Hint: Look at my username

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

Oh fuck, again?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I'll jump in with a classic Danish one:

Får får får? Nej, får får ikke får, får får lam.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I raise you this

Kokoo koko kokko kokoon. Koko kokkoko kokoon? Koko kokko kokoon.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Danish has a better one, arguably more ridiculous:

Bar barbar bar bar barbar bar

Naked barbarian carried naked barbarian pub

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

English has:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I remember learning danish, I hate languages

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Don't look up the word "run" in the English Dictionary.

Or attempt to read this out loud: https://ncf.idallen.com/english.html

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Are these all pronounced exactly the same way?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago

Actually yes. You can stress out some syllables to say YOUR moon is burning and such but it doesn't help a lot. Context matters

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Yep. Or maybe you could say that they have a teeny tiny difference, but it's barely noticeable if you aren't listening very closely.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Most likely not, I expect it's the same as what you can do in English, put the stress on different places in a sentence to give different meaning.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They all actually sound quite the same. Some syllables can be stressed to highlight parts of the sentences. YOUR moon vs your MOON

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Finnish people gets this imprinted from birth, other people thinks "How can this work? 🤨"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I had some Scandinavian colleagues joke with me about how their languages have these melodic intonations and we speak everything in monotone and they can't wrap their heads around it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As someone designing a programming language: this is a terrible, horrific feature of a language, that makes poetry and jokes possible.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Torilla tavataan!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

DECEARING EGG

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Me when languages have homophones/homographs 😱