Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 September 1

= September 1 =

Percentage calculation
I recently wrote this text in the article Espoo:

Espoo has an area of 528 square kilometres (203.9 sq mi)—312 square kilometres (120.5 sq mi) (59%) of land and 216 square kilometres (83.4 sq mi) (41%) of water, of which 37% of the area is sea water and a bit over 3% is inland water.

The last bit (starting from ", of which") means that the area of Espoo which is water is made up of sea water and inland water, and 37 plus a bit over 3 equals 41. It does not mean that 37% of Espoo's water area is sea water and a bit over 3% is inland water, as that would leave 59% unaccounted for. In Finnish there is the word prosenttiyksikkö (literally "percentage unit") which allows for simple addition and subtraction of percentages instead of doing percentage calculation of percentages, but how is this handled in English? J I P &#124; Talk 20:15, 1 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Percentage point? (Note MOS:PERCENT, and that convert is your friend). I recommend swapping things round a bit for clarity, and doing some maths to split the water portion, rather than the total area, into sea- and fresh-water: perhaps Espoo has an area of 528 km2 of which 59 percent (312 km2) is land and 41 percent (216 km2) is water, with the latter being approximately 90 percent sea water and 10 percent inland water. Bazza (talk) 09:01, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Nah, that's too much verbiage. Just get rid of the of which and start a new sentence instead. ... of water. 37% of the area is sea water and a bit over 3% is inland water. Card Zero  (talk) 15:57, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Sadly, WP:MOSNUM asks us to "avoid starting a sentence with a figure" by rewording the sentence. --174.95.81.219 (talk) 19:52, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Huh, so it does. Under MOS:NUMNOTES, specifically. I'm not convinced a semicolon belongs there (or in the MOS example), so it would have to be written out as Thirty-seven percent I guess. Card Zero  (talk) 22:24, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * "Sea water makes up 37%..." --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 22:28, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. Card Zero  (talk) 22:31, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I have updated the corresponding section in the article Espoo. J I P  &#124; Talk 00:23, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Now about that next sentence ... I think the perhaps should be moved to before lush. Otherwise I'm struggling to understand its meaning. Card Zero  (talk) 00:35, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Hmm. The original Finnish sentence I translated this from was: Etelä-Espoon saaristo- ja rantavyöhyke muuttuu rehevien jokiseutujen ja Keski-Espoon pelto- ja kulttuuriaukeiden pohjoispuolella järvisyydeltään runsaaksi ja jylhäksi maastoksi. I will try to translate this in a bit more drtail. "To the north of the lush river areas and the fields in central Espoo, the archipelagal and coastal zone in southern Espoo changes into lake-filled and rocky terrain." Does this make more sense? J I P  &#124; Talk 00:47, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I figured: the lush river areas and fields. The article has just wandered into the wrong place somehow, which makes a kind of garden path sentence. If you want more detail about how I was parsing it wrongly: The archipelagal and coastal zone in southern Espoo changes to the north of lush river areas [into something unspecified] and the fields in central Espoo [also change] into lake-filled and rocky terrain. Card Zero  (talk) 01:30, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, it does, which led to the ramble I suggested. Bazza (talk) 08:33, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Finnish flexibility
I'm reading a paper discussing J.R.R. Tolkien's relationship with the Finnish language, which greatly influenced his fictional languages. The paper notes that Tolkien admired the "flexibility" and "invention" of Finnish, and that he gave as an example these lines from the Kalevala:


 * Enkä lähe Inkerelle
 * Penkerelle Pänkerelle – or
 * Ihveniä ahvenia
 * Tuimenia taimenia

The paper says Tolkien notes here the uncommon flexibility within the language to allow insertions of words such as "Pänkerelle" or "Ihveniä" and "tuimenia" to merely echo or offset "Penkerelle", "ahvenia" and "taimenia". and quotes him as calling them "phonetic trills". I don't understand exactly what's being said here about the first three words being inserted "merely to echo or offset" other words. Are they just nonce nonsense words added because of their phonetics, or are they real words? Are there grammatical rules that govern such "trills", or can a Finnish speaker just add colorful nonsense words freely anywhere into their conversation? CodeTalker (talk) 22:28, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * They are not real grammatical words but instead, as you say, nonsense words added because of their phonetics. I am not aware if there are specific grammatical rules about this kind of words. J I P  &#124; Talk 22:37, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, if you as a native speaker aren't aware of any grammatical rules then I guess there aren't any. Are constructions like this used in everyday speech or writing? Would you find them in newspapers or novels? Or are they just used in poetry? And what is the "feel" of such constructions? Are they goofy and playful, like Ned Flanders's "Hi-diddly-ho, neighbor"? CodeTalker (talk) 22:46, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Constructions like these are not used in everyday speech or writing, certainly not in newspapers or novels. They are just used in poetry. This kind of construction comes across as goofy and playful, just added for the phonetics and to make the poetic verse complete. J I P  &#124; Talk 23:16, 1 September 2022 (UTC)
 * More equivalent to "Oh, tra-la-la-lally/Here down in the valley", perhaps. 97.113.27.216 (talk) 12:30, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * "Ladi-dadi, we came to party. We don't cause no trouble, we don't bother nobody"... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:25, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Of Errantry, Tolkien says "...Bilbo invented its metrical devices and was proud of them. ...[T]he names used (Derrilyn, Thellamie, Belmarie, Aerie) are mere inventions in the Elvish style, and are not in fact Elvish at all." Thus the supposed author hides his use of euphonious made-up words behind the pretence that they are exotic names in a foreign language, while the actual author purports to hide his own inventiveness behind the pretence of being only a translator and editor. (Quote from Preface to The Adventures of Tom Bombadil) -- Verbarson talkedits 20:08, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Enkä lähe Inkerelle,
 * penkerelle, pänkerelle;
 * ihveniä, ahvenia,
 * tuimenia, taimenia,
 * lahnoja, lohikaloja,
 * lahnoja, lohikaloja,


 * (The correct spelling and punctuation above are important for this question.) I'm not a linguist and my mother tongue is not Finnish, but i've lived in Finland for decades and have noticed that what Tolkien refers to as "flexibility" and "invention" are very much alive as playfulness and inventiveness that are very typical of everyday Finnish speech and therefore also occur sometimes in good novels and more often in poetry. I can't think of any real examples right now, and neither can my Finnish wife, because these are almost always nonce words. A possible example is someone referring to a dog /koira that lounges /lies around / löhötä all the time as a "varsinainen ("real") loira". The interesting thing is that people usually don't ask what is meant and either guess the implied meaning or assume that it's just a variant they haven't heard before. People almost never say "that's not a word" in Finnish in any situation (and especially not in this kind of obvious metaphorical usage), which is proof that such spontaneous change of a phoneme or entire syllable is a normal characteristic of Finnish. Examples of words that were created in this way and are often heard and (two of which) only recently entered dictionaries are ötökkä / öttiäinen /öttimöttiäinen from itikka /bug /insect. Many English words have only one syllable and changing the first phoneme often produces a word that already exists, so calling a dog a log produces a different metaphor. Even though some such creations such as gog or zog perhaps don't exist, they probably wouldn't be recognized as nonce variants referring to some characteristic of the dog (f.ex. zooming, gagging, always gone or going somewhere) because the word has so few phonemes. The closest thing i can think of in English is calling a party a starty to refer to or joke about, for example, the slow feeling at the beginning or to a party organized to kick off an event. I just thought of real Finnish examples: the nonce combinations löhnöttää and röhötä of the verbs löhötä and röhnöttää to stress the degree of couch-potatoness of a dog or person. There is playfulness here, but not really humor; people may of course laugh, but such words are usually improvised, not deliberately created, and they are understood and accepted (or at least not criticized or labeled as not existing) despite being used only once. In any case, what Tolkien is referring to and the Kalevala examples and all my examples are comprehensible variants of existing words, not nonsense words, which of course also exist in Finnish. --Espoo (talk) 08:41, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * So, it's somewhat similar to French verlan, perhaps (where femme becomes meuf and arabe becomes beur, as common examples), although maybe it's more transparent, whereas verlan is more of a cant. Or Pig Latin? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:34, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * No, it's essentially the opposite of verlan and Pig Latin because these use transformations based on rules whereas the Finnish changes are spontaneous, improvised and usually based on playful replacement of a single phoneme or syllable with a different one that makes the word sound funny or more expressive or that makes a different but often similar word/meaning come to mind. The closest i can think of is saying something like "il rinfle toute la nuit" instead of ronfle, but that's in fact more onomatopoetic than playful or suggestive or expressive. --Espoo (talk) 17:17, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * A better example might be, "il rinfle ronfle toute la nuit". --Lambiam 10:26, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * A better example like in the Kalevala, yes, but i'm trying to describe the more general and widespread playfulness and inventiveness one hears regularly in spoken Finnish. For example the nonce combinations löhnöttää and röhötä of the verbs löhötä and röhnöttää to stress the degree of couch-potatoness of a dog or person. In spoken Finnish, the juxtaposition of common and changed forms is quite rare and goofy, as explained by JIP above. Therefore only rinfle alone is a better example in French. --Espoo (talk) 21:11, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * So, is it an eggcorn, then? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:12, 6 September 2022 (UTC)
 * An eggcorn involves someone misinterpreting what they hear, like when someone hears pass mustard instead of pass muster. The Finnish examples are not about interpretation but about playing with the sounds. --Lambiam 10:57, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * In the Kalevala examples, yes, but the examples heard in spoken Finnish very often imply another meaning or at least exhibit expressiveness or affectiveness. The Finnish etymological dictionary (Häkkinen) calls ötökkä an affektiivisävyinen variant of itikka. --Espoo (talk) 21:26, 7 September 2022 (UTC)