Monday 7 March 2011

Mini-Post: Cameras

Yesterday, I asked a Finn: "How do you say camera in Finnish? Is it elokuvakone [film machine]?". The Finn looked at me with a smile and answered: "Err, no... it's kamera!"

Sometimes, I make Finnish just a little harder work than it actually is!

1 comment:

  1. "Elokuva" does in fact mean film, but just the movie kind. Film, the one you put in old cameras, is actually pretty boring in Finnish: "filmi".*

    The word "elokuva" itself is a combination of two words, "elo" and "kuva" (i.e. "living picture")

    And film as a biological membrane is called "kalvo".

    * A lot of Finnish words are just like the English/European counterpart, but with a letter I at the end.

    For example

    bus - bussi
    mail, post - posti
    floppy disk, diskette - disketti

    We put the extra I in there because in the Finnish language it's more natural to pronounce words with a vowel as the last word. A case in point would be foreign brand names, which we also sometimes pronounce with an extra I, like Ford - "foordi" or Opel - "ooppeli".

    I'm not sure if you'll see this comment as this post is ove two years old but I just think it's cool that you have a blog about Finland. :)

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