Tourism is also an important issue.
Btw, finnish TV runs a BBC series of what went on in terms of Foreign Affairs around the turn
of the first century, maybe called "the son of god" (translated back and forth), have been
critized as controversial,etc..
That thing about translations is something I have a "personal feel" for, fairly tri-lingual,
constitutionally bi-lingual, and especially with something as different, non-indo-european
as finnish. But a language which has coexisted with swedish, russian,etc,etc for a lot of
generations.
(with the non-mama root of the finnish word for "mama, mother" going back to the mythical goths
and their definition of "a women who is a the mother of a child whose father has legally
recognized that child as his legally accepted, right to inherit and protection, revenge,etc child",
something like "aetha", nothing like the general soft and rounded "mamamama")
That is, a lot of funnny mis-translations, but also a lot of interesting "correct translations",
common roots,etc.
And also some not at all common roots, just regular mistakes, because the words sound alike.
The standard bilingual joke is to do a couple of translations back and forth, trying to pick the
ones which are most wrong. Only someone who can trace the result back to the origin
can laugh when he/she "gets it", the others have to try to laugh when the others laugh.
One intersting aspect is how the words,etc which have moved between swedish-finnish
might have disappeared from the original language, as well as how the meaning might
have changed, even from fairly recent text like the ones written down in 1700.
On the other hand some words which were written down around 800-1000 still have
almost the same meaning, sometimes only in the "other" language.
The BBC program additionally gets into that most fascinating thing, how "words" and "concepts" have
changed, diverged, most of the "key words" in the bible (new testament), just like words and
concepts change in both domestic and forreign affairs, almost from election to election...
Anyway, one of the more interesting suggestions now are:
- languages are "more inherited than genes", genes get mixed by 50% in a couple of minutes,
language takes at least one or two, maybe three generations.
- social concepts and traditions,etc, last much longer, more stable than both genes and language.
(especially before the invention of TV, also obligatory public education)
Ilmarinen
PS Seems like the smarter ones know recognize the need for "trans-scientific" research,
combining archeology, genes, some paternal but mostly maternal, language and especially
concepts and traditions.
Luckily some of the worst aspects of the late 1800s and early 1900s are slowly changing...
(going backwards through pure genes, pure languages, pure religions, to the basic
desinfection process of all the stuff related to all of that, good and evil)
That is, the traditional finnish concept of "evil" might change if "things go wrong", because
of imported TV programs, if nothing is done... ( in europe we should also be one of the
last existing sources of "cleanliness,purity",etc, the healthy sauna-bath, the blessed
desinfected place to give birth and to die. (desinfected by smoke from an open, breathing
(soul) fire as well as bacteria killing, almost fire temperatures)
The BBC went through some aspects of "having a bath" in those times..
(but did not touch on what to eat and not) |
