Now then. This song has got helpful side-by-side translations. It sounds like a straight militaristic song, with a jaunty tune, revelling in the imagined glories of war. But when you read the words you can see it’s about the grim reality. There are enough sarcastic, and bitter lines in there to make me believe it was written by someone who knew from first hand what he was talking about. It fits well within the cultural reference points of Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon Sotilas).
What really gets me is the line about the horses being so hungry they try to eat the stable walls.
https://youtu.be/-W9m1bLbKjg
This sort of thing is in the back of my mind when I think of the Continuation War, and forms the backstory to my (rare) games in the period.
Thanks for sharing this, the lyrics give such an insight into daily life indeed. I am still bewildered by the language naively trying to make connections to the English words.
ReplyDeleteAh, trying to make connections between words in the two languages can drive you insane! I scanned through it again to find words that you might recognise once pointed out. The trouble is because of the case system and word agglutination, vaguely recognisable words get disguised. Here are the only ones I could find (minus the case endings):
ReplyDeletePatteri - battery (Finnish doesn’t natively have the B sound so B often gets replaced by P)
Heinä - hay (hei is pronounced hay - the nä is important here because ’hei’ means ’hi’, like ‘hej’ in Scandinavian)
Miini - pron. meany = mine
Viini = wine (no W sound either!)
Vitamiinipilli = Fairly obviously vitamin pill
Ryssää is slang for Russians (y is pronounced more like a U). By the way, that’s not a PC term nowadays. The proper word for a Russian is ‘venäläinen’.
Incidentally, military terms are heavily influenced by German/Swedish, so if you know words from those languages you might recognise them slightly disguised in Finnish. As well as there being no Bs or Ws, hard Gs get turned into Ks. So the German General becomes kenraali. They love adding ‘i on the end of nouns too, even proper nouns so I’m often called ‘Chrisi’ though in their heads they’d probably spell it Krissi (no Cs either 😆).
Quick question, do they have letters we don’t have? As a by the bye the solaires in the song complaining of a belly full of sand should try a kebab front the takeaway here in Cardigan. They’d have no problem with nothing coming out… lol.
ReplyDeleteHa ha! Sounds like bitter experience.
DeleteThey do have different letters that we don’t. Sort of. There’s ä and ö which make different sounds obviously to the normal a and o. They should be handled with care because you can end up in trouble if mean you tell a fellow you saw his wife but get ä and a mixed up. They even bung ä and ö after Z in the dictionary, which is bloody confusing. They also have å which they call ‘Swedish O’ because it makes a sort of O sound (not a mangled A) usually only found in Swedish proper nouns in Finland. Even more confusingly, å (O) comes before ä (like the a in cat) 😵💫
Sorry that ended up far too long an answer for a quick question.
DeleteShort version: yeah, sort of
Very instructive if somewhat difficult to get my head round. God help you trying to learn the language. To think I have problems with my French!
DeleteThere's no holiday here, from kicking out Russians...
ReplyDelete'Nuff said.
Looking at the Finnish on the top line is utterly baffling!
Don’t worry. The only Finnish phrases you need to know in case you are ever there are:
Deleteiso olut kiitos
Sinulla kauniit siniset silmät
I'm betting one of those is an order for beer? The only Russian I know is 'tva peeva pozilyista' (excuse the poor phonetic spelling) which means 'two beers please'. You had to order two at a time in case the bar ran out before you went for the next one. Mind you that was in 1975 now adays you probably need to order in threes!
DeleteOf course. It's a vital phrase in any language. A “large beer please”.
DeleteJust spotted a missing word in the second one. Should read “sinulla on kauniit siniset silmät”.