OT-speach-intonation:
In terms of Sweden, Finland, UK I was just thinking
of the way one speaks, based on how certain
patterns, sounds, etc depend on body movements,
tension, relaxed,etc,etc..
For example happy, open, upwards movements,
jumping of joy, compared to sad, closed, downward
movements, or angry, very tense, agressive or
fearfull.
All partly measured when a vocoder measures the
vocal tract and send the lengths and diameters to
the receiving part, ending with the "lip function"
(but not the nose)
My UK joke is that some UK-english sound like one would
be in the worst part of a barn (or pig-XX whatever it
is)
One closes the nose (to avoid the stench) and avoids
taking deep breaths, which affects the speach :-)
(as well as the one one speaks to)
And women who try to use a slightly higher pitch to be
sure they sound feminine, the opposite for macho men.
In terms of US my favorite is Tom Brokaw, who talks like
a dog barking, his whole body is lifted half an inch
on most explosive consonants.
---
In no way have their been any brutal suppression between
Sweden and Finland, although we tried to change their (our)
governing king a couple of times when Sweden-Finland
was severely mismanaged.
The final divorce came when Finland had been the
place to fight repeated wars between Sweden and
Russia, back and forth, and finnish realpolitics
came to the conclusion that the way to peace was
to be an autonomous part of then Tzar Russia in
1809 (when Russia additionally was a progressive, liberal
nation, at least St Petersburg).
This worked well until Russia "got scared", started to
"clamp down", demand more control, etc end of 1800, then
WW1, russian revolution and Finland managed to get and keep
independency (through WW2).
Btw, the independency was "won" without a war, Lenin had
enough internal problems but the finnish border
some miles outside St Petersburg was a clear problem
for the future. ("fixed" in WW2, the border was moved,
but luckily not to outside Stockholm)
--
That is, I would be suprised if any finn cannot understand
any finnish spoken in Finland, but at the turn of the
century "Finland" included more different dialects, even
closely related but separate languages to the east, the
russian border (almost 10% of population refugees during, after WW2)
Compare estonian which it is somewhat possible to read
for a finn with only some practice, but difficult to
understand when spoken.
Some of the eastern dialects, languages have barely survived
until now without basic education, radio,TV in that particular dialect-language.
(Finland is active in mapping, preserving languages, having
managed a bi-(tri-)lingual finnish-swedish(6%) system,
including the saame(0.x%) spoken in the north)
Radio,TV tend to produces the "standard" language so it
seems possible that starting from local dialects at the turn
of the century might be "enough"?? interesting.
Finnish TV has run documentaries on finnish emmigrants
to USA, as you wrote, mostly to the north, lumber and
mining, small scale farming.
One interesting linguistical thing is that their finnish
uses english grammatics and words "literally translated"
into finnish words which might have the same meaning.
Specific finnish "sounds", like the hard r, has changed to
the smoother american,etc.
But I wouldn't trust that "not one word"??
In the regions from where the immigration started, east and
north where farming was barely possible end of 1800, most
have one or two "america cousins".
After maybe the 20-30s the immigration dwindled as local
conditions improved. (another wave to sweden in the 60s
when "old style" family farming wasn't possible anymore)
That is, Finland has been industrialized, de-ruralized
faster than any other nation, 70% of population in
(small family scale) agricultur at the start of the
century, now only 8%.
This,IMO, gives a good understanding of what China, Russia,
etc,etc are going through, need for managing large changes,
balancing land reforms, property rigths, industrialization,
education, etc, etc.. ("free markets" and the basic right
to have at least 1-2 generations of time to go from
labor intensive manual farming to mechanised and
hopefully not directly into industrial unemployment)
Ilmarinen |
