cathrynm: suomi/日本語

[cathrynm]

That SuomiPop channel is quite nice. It is all Finnish, I'm hearing no English music on it, and it has just the right combination of talk and music to be interesting and not tedius or baffling.

For TV, I really like these guys here, Riku and Tunna. To me, they fit my internal stereotype of Finnish men, resilliant, completely fearless, obsessed with alcohol. Do they pick this up from Finnish military service? Maybe Finns get the survival training without the actual war -- so they avoid the paranoia that Americans suffer from. Their first series, the Finnish Madventures is on Youtube. The first few years are in Finnish, but they tragically switch to English in later seasons. They have a new show, which for me is a bit of a listening comprehension challenge. I do what I can. I'm not sure what it is, but with TV I can always tell what's good -- even if I don't understand.

[cathrynm]

Tonight, I've been watching this one with my VPN, which on the weekend wasn't able to stream katsomo.fi, but today it's working great. Maybe they fixed it, or maybe the server is overloaded on weekends? I don't know, now it's streaming perfect. This is one of those Police reality shows except in Finland, and it's all very natural and conversational, and it has Finnish subtitles too. I saw a bit go by where it just switched to Swedish for one call. Maybe Finnish people can just understand that? I don't know.

https://www.katsomo.fi/sarja/-112-33011107

[tiia]

I saw a bit go by where it just switched to Swedish for one call. Maybe Finnish people can just understand that? I don't know.

Haven't seen the show, but as every Finn learns Swedish in school, because Swedish is the official second language, they proabably expect someone to understand a few sentences of Swedish. However, most Finns I know say that they don't really speak Swedish.

[cathrynm]

I was in an online chatroom (for Japanese language learners) with mixed Finns and Sweedish people, and the Finns were using their high-school Swedish as a joke. For some reason this made everyone weirdly uncomfortable. Maybe a feeling comparable to using your US-learned high-school Spanish at a Mexican restaurant?

[cathrynm]

Oh and now I'm back to my yearly tradition -- working on these Japanese word jumble puzzles. This has been a JLPT standard the last 6-7 years or so.　I post this one because it's making me crazy.

母が日本へくる　＿＿＿　＿＿＿＿　____＿　＿＿＿　大好きな食品が数々送られてきた。
1.とともに　2.との　3.兄からの　4.知らせ

I think I'm going ２、４、１、３、-- thought it took me like 15 minutes to get that guess, and I'm not sure if it's right. Hmph. And have to go to bed now so I can go to work tomorrow.

[vonPeterhof]

母が日本へくる　＿＿＿　＿＿＿＿　____＿　＿＿＿　大好きな食品が数々送られてきた。
1.とともに　2.との　3.兄からの　4.知らせ

I think I'm going ２、４、１、３、-- thought it took me like 15 minutes to get that guess, and I'm not sure if it's right.

I think it should be ２、３、４、１, mainly because 兄からの大好きな食品 would sound a bit weird. For one, even though I've never seen this expressed as a grammatical rule, I've noticed that noun constructs ending with の generally go right in front of the noun they modify, even if that means separating that noun from an adjective and making it ambiguous as to which noun the adjective refers to (I suspect that this is the reason why Japanese-made English tends to prefer phrases constructed like "dear my friend" to "my dear friend"). The other reason why I think it's weird is that Xからの seems to imply that the following noun is something that gets sent by definition (知らせ, 手紙, 包み, etc.). With a word like 食品 I think the more common structure would be something like 大好きな食品が数々兄から送られてきた. On the other hand, having 兄からの come between との and 知らせ isn't as weird, since との and 兄からの are both の-constructs.

[cathrynm]

Oh, okay, I think that makes sense. Yeah I thought the stuff was coming from the ani? I'm not really sure. Confess, I have very little feel for what sounds good, but maybe it is true that no + i-adj + noun is strange?

[cathrynm]

So much smoke in California. Was thinking of this, specifically the bit here, she's doing laundry with the fire just over the hill.

[vonPeterhof]

I love how the cover image for that trailer kind of gives away an important plot twist..

[cathrynm]

秒速５センチメートル, the complete movie is on youtube. I suppose everyone with any interest in Japanese language at all has seen this already, right? Guess it'll be taken down soon, but whatever, it's there now. One of the ones I can watch multiple times anyway.