This year has started out great for Finnish type designers.

http://www.typophile.com/node/67741

'grats, by the way! :-)

Woke you up, did I ? Heh.

This year has started out great for Finnish type designers.

Every year starts out great for Finnish type designers: they have so many vowels!

Not just wowels, or consonants, but both of them doubled, in one word. For example: aakkoset (in English: the alphabet). Or how about this single word: Ratsastajattarinkikinko? (in English: Even also with the hand of female horse back riders?)? Finnish grammar is just the best.

Hmm. I'm not convinced that treating most prepositions as noun cases is the ‘best’ grammatical idea anyone ever had.

Sorry, John-

I did not mean that. I just prefer my Finnish language with the complex grammar to English with a lot of words and simple grammar.

I was joking, Tomi. Anyway, Tsev has Finnish beaten in the noun case department: 64 cases!

But I finally realised why the radio news in Latin is so popular in Finland: the Finns are among the few people who would consider Latin declension rules simple. :)

Well, they are simple: you decline only in singular and plural, there is no dual :-)

Voin ehkä antaa periksi joissakin kohdissa, mutta periaatteessa minä olen oikeassa.
Figure that out (grammatically correct).

Mostly not Latin radio, but Italian; easy to pronounce. Hmm.

Any fan club yet that we all can join?

I lived in Finland a while (taught in Muurla and Salo). My favorite bit of Finnish:

"Kokoa Kokoon Koko Kokko. Koko Kokkoko? Koko Kokko."

That really is a cool language.

You are right, I should have said that Latin rules could be even more complicated instead that they are simple :-)

btw, congratulations!

@Tomi
Has anyone told you you look like James Hetfield of Metallica?

@Tomi
Has anyone told you you look like a huge badass in general?? haha

Dan, now I have a full beard, so that's moot (or 'moo' as Joe from Friends said) point.

Scott, that I've heard not nearly enough many times.

"Herra Koko, kokoo kokoon koko kokko. Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko."
"Mister Koko, build together the whole bond fire. The whole bond fire? The whole bond fire."

I just prefer my Finnish language with the complex grammar to English with a lot of words and simple grammar.

This is a military rank in the air force: "lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkovaraupseerioppilas". If compound words weren't allowed, this would rank as the longest: "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän".

It's a lovely language.