The above is the only Finnish swearword I was ever taught. i am disappointed to find out that it only means the equivalent of "damn!" considering some of the spicier swearwords on offer. The Finnish friend who taught it to me also told me that the Swedes and Norwegians have such ineffectual swearwords in their own languages that they are obliged to borrow juicier phrases from the Finns... I don't know if that's true...
Embra
-------------------- I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war.
Posts: 4495 | From: Surrey, UK | Registered: Jun 2000
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Lacka Lacka Burnin Wit
The Red and the Green Stamps
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Isn't it odd that the Finnish word for "hell" is strikingly close to the Latin word for "Swiss"?
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I'm not an expert in Finnish or drinking, but I'd say that it's very probable that there are at least 35 words for hangover. The fact is that the Finnish spoken langauge is heavily based on slang and regional dialects (much more than most other countries at least), to the point that people living in different areas will have different words for the same thing. Also, many of our spoken words are derived from Swedish, English or German, so figuring those in, the number is probably fairly high.
As a side note, who the heck submitted those insults to insults.net? Some of them are pretty bad, expecially "Äitisi nai poroja!". That phrase is in our written langauge, which as I previously mentioned, differs from our spoken language. No one would use that phrase in a conversation or argument, and frankly the whole concept is something that we Finns don't go into usually (ie, "your mother - type stuff).
Also, paskiainen is more of a general insult, and does not mean "bastard" in particular. That word would be äpärä.
- Il-Mari
-------------------- When you mix faith with science, you serve neither and weaken both.
- Richard P. Sloan and Larry VandeCreek
Posts: 1094 | From: Helsinki, Finland | Registered: Jan 2001
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Sparverius, Flying Rodent Control
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Possibly the number of words would be related to a language's ability to make compound words, as opposed to phrases. I'd bet that in English we've got a LOT more than 35 expressions for "hangover".
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Embra, we can indeed come come up with a few words and phrases for drunk! Here is a list from the BBC website.
Posts: 126 | From: Scotland | Registered: Aug 2001
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JK Will
The Red and the Green Stamps
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1 Drunk, Drunken, Drucken 2 Steaming 3 P--sed, pished 4 under the influence 5 Blue 6 intoxicated 7 tipsy 8 woozy 9 marinated 10 blootered 11 rat- --sed 12 wasted 13 munted 14 shickered (?Jewish usage) 15 crapulent 16 sozzled 17 out of his tree 18 one too many 19 sloshed
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