Friday 31 October 2008

Where is Nathalie ? - He's visiting the supermarket...

Something nice about learning Finnish is, it helps me understand the grammar mistakes I hear from Finns around here. The most common one is the confusion between genders: in Finnish, there is no masculine or feminine, and lots of Finnish speakers, when adressing you in English, will tend to mix up both. It sounds rather weird to hear someone referring to you as a male: "Nathalie has lost his purse"... I can't help but smile every time.

Another mistake which sounds really funny is their use of the verb "to visit". In Finnish, that particular verb (käydä) also refers to going somewhere and coming back. So people here "visit" the shower, the toilet, the supermarket... And I had plenty of occasions to make fun of Mikko when he goes "visiting" the car because he forgot something there. Don't think I'm cruel, though: he never hesitates to laugh out loud every time I announce how much I 'ate him...

1 comment:

  1. Oh yeah, I hear that "he/she" mistake too. Even after years together, my Mirka still says it wrong sometimes... And what about the absence of articles "a/the" and the abundance of "some" as they very often use "joku"?...

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