The Voynich Ninja

(15-09-2020, 08:44 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(14-09-2020, 01:30 PM)Scarecrow Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(05-08-2020, 08:04 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.f89r2 has daiin thrice in a row.

I just red few articles from a great Finnish philosopher, and found two sentences that come close to this. Maybe it can give food for thoughts.
"Ajattelun ajattelun ajattelu" and "ajatuksen ajatuksen ajatus"

Those two are prefect and regular, albeit funny, Finnish language sentences.
Meaning freely translated something like "thinking thinking of thinking" and "thought of thought of a thought".
It is possible same pattern to generate many other three or possibly even four word constructs.

Just for the interest.

Quote:Could you explain the grammar, morphology, and syntax of these sentences in more detail, please? I have studied some Finnish as well as Uralic linguistics, so I think (the thought of thinking) that I will be able to follow your explanations.

Well, I can try to give you some details but please bear with me, me and the Finnish grammar are very very far friends,and I sincerely do not remember that much of it. But let's give it a try. Always happy to help anyone who studies Finnish and Uralic languages".
My common man explanation is this:

Root noun is "Ajatus" -> "a thought"
Accusative of "Ajatus" is "Ajatuksen", and also "ajatus"
Genetive of "Ajatus" is also "Ajatuksen"

"Ajatuksen"(Acc) "Ajatuksen" (Gen) "Ajatus" (Acc)

Noun is "Ajattelu"
Genetive is "Ajattelun"
Accusative is "Ajattelun" and "Ajattelu"

"Ajattelun (acc) ajattelun (gen) ajattelu (acc)"

So it is practically kind of a game of genetive + accusative I guess.

A more common way to say that would be "Ajattelen miten ajattelua ajatellaan", but I would not have the same "feeling"

Quote:Finnish is well known for its alliteration, most famously in the Kalevala (e.g., "aivoni ajattelevi"), but even in the predilection of Finnish parents for naming their children alliteratively: One family tree in a Finnish textbook includes such sets of siblings as Aada, Atte, Aaro; Ella, Eetu, Elina; Liisa, Lassi; and Jaakko, Jorma. (It even extends this pattern to a couple married couples, Hannu & Helena and Jorma & Janita, but I hope this is not an actual factor in Finnish mate selection!)

Alliteration is very common indeed, and it is all about style and simplicity, to make it easier to remember. That's why they use alliteration also in marketing.
I believe alliteration is not an actual factor for coupling, but for baby names it is, as it is still quite common to give baby a name that starts with the same letters as the family name: Tiina Tikkanen, Hannu Hanhi, Lauri Laukkanen.

(16-09-2020, 09:13 AM)Scarecrow Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, I can try to give you some details but please bear with me, me and the Finnish grammar are very very far friends,and I sincerely do not remember that much of it. But let's give it a try. Always happy to help anyone who studies Finnish and Uralic languages".
My common man explanation is this:

Root noun is "Ajatus" -> "a thought"
Accusative of "Ajatus" is "Ajatuksen", and also "ajatus"
Genetive of "Ajatus" is also "Ajatuksen"

"Ajatuksen"(Acc) "Ajatuksen" (Gen) "Ajatus" (Acc)

Noun is "Ajattelu"
Genetive is "Ajattelun"
Accusative is "Ajattelun" and "Ajattelu"

"Ajattelun (acc) ajattelun (gen) ajattelu (acc)"

So it is practically kind of a game of genetive + accusative I guess.

A more common way to say that would be "Ajattelen miten ajattelua ajatellaan", but I would not have the same "feeling"

Kiitos paljon! The last sentence I understand as something along the lines of "I am thinking of how the thought is being thought."

The other constructions are more complicated because the "accusative case" in Finnish is a beast. In reality we are talking about the direct object of a verb, and it may take several different endings depending on what seem like rather complex rules to the learner. I found this interesting web page with a "flow chart" of all the rules to check to choose the correct ending for a direct object in Finnish:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

So with that in mind, the first accusative word in each of your examples is the case at the very end of the flow chart, with none of the exceptional rules applying, so it is identical to the genitive case. The final accusative word in each of your examples falls under one of the "object is in nominative" rules in the flow chart.

I would be curious to know, can you give the entire sentences from which these phrases are taken? In particular, what was the verb that the first "ajatuksen" and "ajattelun" are direct objects of? Or are these intended to be completely independent sentences on their own? If so, I might rather interpret both of the first two words of each example as genitive case forms, since I know that Finnish and Uralic languages love to string together sequences of consecutive genitive forms in noun phrases.

I might try to translate your phrases as "the thought of a thought's being thought", which is actually quite an interesting English phrase in its own right.

(16-09-2020, 01:25 PM)geoffreycaveney Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(16-09-2020, 09:13 AM)Scarecrow Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, I can try to give you some details but please bear with me, me and the Finnish grammar are very very far friends,and I sincerely do not remember that much of it. But let's give it a try. Always happy to help anyone who studies Finnish and Uralic languages".
My common man explanation is this:

Root noun is "Ajatus" -> "a thought"
Accusative of "Ajatus" is "Ajatuksen", and also "ajatus"
Genetive of "Ajatus" is also "Ajatuksen"

"Ajatuksen"(Acc) "Ajatuksen" (Gen) "Ajatus" (Acc)

Noun is "Ajattelu"
Genetive is "Ajattelun"
Accusative is "Ajattelun" and "Ajattelu"

"Ajattelun (acc) ajattelun (gen) ajattelu (acc)"

So it is practically kind of a game of genetive + accusative I guess.

A more common way to say that would be "Ajattelen miten ajattelua ajatellaan", but I would not have the same "feeling"

Kiitos paljon! The last sentence I understand as something along the lines of "I am thinking of how the thought is being thought."

The other constructions are more complicated because the "accusative case" in Finnish is a beast. In reality we are talking about the direct object of a verb, and it may take several different endings depending on what seem like rather complex rules to the learner. I found this interesting web page with a "flow chart" of all the rules to check to choose the correct ending for a direct object in Finnish:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

So with that in mind, the first accusative word in each of your examples is the case at the very end of the flow chart, with none of the exceptional rules applying, so it is identical to the genitive case. The final accusative word in each of your examples falls under one of the "object is in nominative" rules in the flow chart.

I would be curious to know, can you give the entire sentences from which these phrases are taken? In particular, what was the verb that the first "ajatuksen" and "ajattelun" are direct objects of? Or are these intended to be completely independent sentences on their own? If so, I might rather interpret both of the first two words of each example as genitive case forms, since I know that Finnish and Uralic languages love to string together sequences of consecutive genitive forms in noun phrases.

I might try to translate your phrases as "the thought of a thought's being thought", which is actually quite an interesting English phrase in its own right.

Here are the full sentences:
"Anteeksi koukeroinen ilmaisu, ja korostuskin, mutta toivoisin että lukisit tämän ajatuksen ajatuksella - tunnustellen sitä ajatuksen ajatuksen ajatusta."

"En keksi muuta ratkaisua kuin ajattelun ajattelun ajattelu. Ehkä executive-lisänään määrätietoinen päätös elää uomakipityksen ulkopuolellakin, mukaanlukien uomakipitysnautinnot."

This person has really a gift of writing and masters the Finnish language extremely well. Very expressive and enjoyable things.

I think the difficulty levels of Finnish and Korean as languages themselves are similar for learners who are familiar only with Indo-European languages, as many of us are. The U.S. State Dept. Foreign Service considers Korean a "Category 5" most difficult level of language to learn for English speakers (in the same level as Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic), while Finnish is just one of the more difficult "Category 4" languages (which include almost all non-Germanic and non-Romance languages). 

I think part of the difficulty in learning Finnish is that almost any native Finnish speaker you are likely to come into any contact with at all, almost certainly has at least a decent command of English. So it is difficult to find situations where it is actually practically necessary to use Finnish instead of English. One clever Finnish language textbook presented a classroom scenario in Finland where one student spoke English, another student was Russian and didn't speak English, and a third student was a Brazilian immigrant who spoke only Portuguese (so they couldn't even cheat by communicating in Spanish)! Very clever on the part of the textbook authors, I thought. But in actual practical reality, it will be rare to find a situation where a foreign language learner's Finnish is even remotely near the level of any educated Finn's English.

(I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to take a year of college-level classroom Finnish language instruction at Columbia University last year. But alas, this year the university cut the program along with many other rarely taught small enrollment language classes I'm sure as part of the Covid-related cutbacks taking place across higher education institutions everywhere. It's a shame. At least Duolingo has a Finnish learning program now! It's not the same as classroom instruction, but it's better than nothing.)

With Korean on the other hand, there will be numerous opportunities to practice the language with Koreans who know little or poor or no English. So that will give the learner both extra motivation and extra practice in learning the language.