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It never ceases to amaze me how much "metadata" you can pack into the Finnish language, and how it directly affects one's thinking.

As a native Swedish-speaker, I occasionally find myself thinking in Finnish when needing to look at a problem from a different angle. One's sense how things are positioned and headed changes completely when describing thing's in Finnish than in Swedish.



Funnily, I do this with Cebuano (which is much more verbose than my native English) but the code switch is super helpful to reframe context and shed idiomisms.


Literally never heard of it so for any others in the dark

Cebuano (/sɛˈbwɑːnoʊ/ seb-WAH-noh), natively called by its generic term Bisaya or Binisaya (both translated into English as Visayan, though this should not be confused with other Bisayan languages)[5] and sometimes referred to in English sources as Cebuan (/sɛˈbuːən/ seb-OO-ən), is an Austronesian language spoken in the southern Philippines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cebuano_language

.

What makes it verbose? Does it gain or lose anything by being so? (curious monolinguist is curious)


The grammar and vocabulary tend to require more syllables and letters (it uses a similar alphabet to English). So a book's printing might require 50% - 75% more pages.

But its not a universally longer language. As an example, prepositions are typically optional ('sa' being the generic preposition). So, texting from dual speakers (most Filipinos in the Philippines speak a local language, Filipino, and quite often English) mixes all three to become exceptionally compact. This intermixing from multiple domains for complete, almost fractal, symbology translates to a lot of domains. I've used code switching for system architecture and mathematical proofs approaches several times over the decades.


Translating Finnish poetry/lyrics into a more analytic language like Swedish or English is torturous. All the little helper words just feel so clunky.

And they used to say Finnish wasn't fit for poetry.


Is it, or is it that you aren't a professional poet? (no offence[1]). I imagine a poet trying to program something non-trivial and wondering how the IT guys get it just flowing off their fingers. Poetry done well takes skill, time and experience which maybe you don't have yet.

The pros do something I love and it seems like magic the way it comes out, but then, they do a very different job

   Green upon the flooded Avon shone the after-storm-wet-sky
   Quick the struggling withy branches let the leaves of Autumn fly
   And a star shone over Bristol, wonderfully far and high.

   - John Betjeman
rest at http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/people_and_places/art...

[1] maybe you are?


CS degree, work in manufacturing, interested in linguistics.

You can judge my skill here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33640260

It may not be professional, but I don't think it'll be found wanting for much.

Note, though: I said translating things from an agglutinative language with very free word order into a more analytical one with restricted word order is torturous, not that you can't write good poetry in English. Merely that the translation itself is really, really hard because of the format differences.


I'm going to be really brief here and careful also as I'm in no place to critique or even comment being a monoglot non-poet, so take this as intended... English word order and general form can be messed with and twisted perhaps more than you think, even if it will never be another language. Look at the Graves poem here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pararhyme

I can't take a better shot at what you've written in your other comment because I can't get a whole picture of what it's trying to say, it seems a rush of images rather than a scene, but as one image that makes sense (gold corrupting, I think)

   I bowed to gold, bowing to gold I grasped at the netherworld
then

   I bow low to gold, and bowing, seize the underworld
Or perhaps not. Anyway that's too much from me already. I probably deserve the coming downvote.


Well, it's got a higher vowel density than even italian, so it's fit for opera.


Finnish has long and short consonants as well as long and short vowels. I imagine that can lead to a few "grass mud horse" incidents in song.


Using both long vowels and doubled consonants freely is one of the big problems foreigners often have with Finnish.


Please no, opera sounds awful.




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