As
we then look at what country the visitors represented, we note that
the top ten nationalities stand for 4848 or 62% of all page views.
The largest group was Russian (27.6%) followed by Ukrainians (26.5%),
Finns (15.3%), Swedes (14.5%), U.S.-Americans (7.1%), Frenchmen
(4.6%), Germans (2.7%), Dutchmen (0,8%), Poles (0.7%) and Malaysians
(0.06%). People in Asia, Australia, Middle East, Africa and Latin
America are very seldom among the visitors to this blog site. So,
there is work to do, if I want to reach the global niveau.
Communication between visitors and me has been almost non-existent.
So, this blog site has not found a larger readership as yet.
Blogs
On
Feb. 24, I published a blog in Swedish. The title is in English A
former pacifist and a steady pacifist. I
comment on a short article on pacifism written by a journalist of the
local newspaper Göteborgs Posten. The journalist has previously
supported the pacifist alternative but is no longer convinced of its
meaningfulness given the many conflicts raging in our world of so
many armed conflicts. I suggest that in addition to various peaceful
ways of resolving problems between nations such as diplomacy, we
should consider non-violent resistance to see where and to what
extent it is a realistic alternative to military means to solve
various conflicts.
In
the blog "Sanoista – osa 1" (On words – part 1),
inserted on March 23, I discuss the concept of word, and
in the blog "Sanoista – osa 2", inserted on April 3, I
deal with the development of Finnish vocabulary. Word is a
unit, whose status differs from one language to the next.There are
lexical units that we call content words such as house,
and lexical units that we call functional words and use in the
company of content words such as in and
my. Then, there are
affixes that are parts of words. Finnish is a language which has a
rich system of affixes. So, for instance, while in English we say in
three word long phrase in my house,
in Finnish, we express this phrase with one word talossani
(house – talo, in
– affix: ssa, my –
affix: ni).
I also discuss the notion of
word as a mental and
poetic unit. See the end of the first blog where I have put the poem
Parole (Italian,
"Words") written by Umberto Saba.
The
blog Fryysifinska-teesejä
(Theses
on Finnish spoken in Sweden)1
that I published on
April 6
in my blog site, focuses on the variety of the Finnish language we
speak in Sweden. We may call this variety "Sweden Finnish".
We are often worried about the grammar, or more specifically,
features that differ from the standard Finnish. People worried about
the grammar think that Sweden Finnish traits in our spoken language
such as Swedish influenced pronunciation, for instance, show that the
person in question does not know the Finnish language properly.
In
the blog, I contend that the spoken language is our mother tongue,
and not the standard language. The spoken language and its grammar
are constantly changing, and even more so, when it is used in close
contact with Swedish, the language of the majority. We who use
Finnish in Sweden, should have a sound and realistic attitude to the
languages we use, and not be too worried, let alone, afraid of the
differences that emerge in our Sweden Finnish as compared with the
standard Finnish.
On
June 19, I put the blog Hybridiä
kaikki tyynni... vai onko?
("Hybrid
all together... or is it?") into the blog site. First, I discuss
the semantics of the word. The straightforward description of this
notion is that it is "a thing made by combining two different
elements". The emphasis is on the adjective "different".
We can find examples of hybrid things in biology, e.g. a mule
is a hybrid offspring of a male donkey
and a female horse.
The word television
is hybrid, since it is composed of the Greek word telos
('far'
or 'operating over distance') and Latin visio
('sight').
Hybrids and the process of hybridization are very general things or
phenomena, which is something I pinpoint in the blog. They stand in
contrast with what we think is unblended and pure, purity being a
feature that in some ideologies such as nationalism has been taken
for a paragon to be sought for and maintained. The blog was published
in a Finnish newspaper Kaleva.
In
2016 the Ukrainian singer Jamala won the Eurovision Song Contest
with her song 1944,
which dealt with the forcible
deportation
of the Crimean Tatars
from Crimea ordered by Joseph Stalin.
It is needless to retell their grim destiny here. I picked up this
theme and inserted it into the blog site on August 9, because
newspaper articles and social media discussed it widely and heatedly
during 2016 and because I found a sober and well-informed article on
this topic in the Russian newspaper Novaja Gazeta (49/May 11/2016)
written by Leonid Mlehin. The title was "Не смейте
скрывать, кто вы есть" (Nje smejte skryvat',
kto vy jest' – Do not be afraid to tell, who you are). I made it
into Krimin
tataarit eivät alistuneet
("The Crimean Tatars
did not give in").
On
October 5, I felt it necessary to discuss the situation in the
Eastern part of Ukraine,
where Russia is involved in a military coup causing enormous social
squalor and dangerous political tension. A translating programme
helped me to put the blog in Ukrainian and in this manner to show
my sympathy with Ukrainians. The title of the blog is a question,
whether Russians want to have a war. Their great poet Yevgeny
Yevtushenko says in his poem:"Yes, we can fight / But
we do not want / Soldiers to die in combat again / On our saddened
land..." I suppose the Russians do not want war but in spite of
this their armed forces are involved in the armed campaign on the
Ukrainian soil.
The
blog "Mitt Finland som jag minns det" (My Finland as I
remember it) is a lecture I gave in an occasion that the Gothenburg
city arranged for senior citizens. I put the text into the blog site
on Nov. 1, 2016. In the lecture, I narrated how I grew up in Helsinki
in the 50's. Then, the country was still repairing and restructuring
what the three wars in 1939 – 1945 had devastated. Finns were
poorer than Swedes as Finland's GNP was 60% of the Swedish GNP.
Social, political and material differences were large, and
politically the country was under the constant pressure of the Soviet
Union.
The
age groups born in 1947 and 1948 are the biggest in the history of
Finland, since around 108 000 babies were born per year. The
corresponding figure for the year 2015 is 55 472. We were many
children, and we had much less toys to play with than children now
have. Our teachers were in some cases quite patriotic. Finland had
lost two wars, but maintained its independence as a democratic
country.
I
learnt from our folk school teacher that Finnishness is based on
three S, namely SISU (courage, perseverance, guts), SAUNA (i.e.
physical purity) and SIBELIUS (the most famous Finnish composer, a
representative of the Finnish culture). I added a fourth S (in
Swedish) SKOLA (school; there must be equal opportunities for every
citizen to get as high quality education as possible). I concluded my
lecture by telling that in Helsinki there had been a big
demonstration against racism and pro multicultural society. At the
end of the demonstration, people sang "Finlandia" composed
by Sibelius. I followed their example, and sang the song to my
audience.
In
November and December, I published four articles on actual issues.
Three of them were translations from Russian newspapers, and one from
a British newspaper. I chose the Russian articles not only because of
their themes, but also because they were – Russian. I felt that in
my home country's (i.e. Swedish) media far too little was heard from
Russia. I thought that there must by more than one voice telling how
Russians think. Here, I follow the pithy and short guideline Audiatur
et altera pars (Let the other
side be heard as well ). To
continue along the same line, I translated an article from the
English newspaper The Guardian written
by the world famous physicist Stephen Hawkins. See below.
The
Russian articles were the following:2
1-
An interview of Andrej Karaulov in Argumenty i Fakty
42 (Oct. 19 – 25,
2016). Title "Dajte strane 3 – 4 goda"
(Give the country 3 – 4 years). Interviewer: Olga
Šablinskaja.
My
comment: The blog has the title "Venäjän aseteknologia takaa:
Ei koskaan enää maailmansotaa" (The armaments technology of
Russia will guarantee: Never again a world war!). The title connects
to
Karaulov's statement he makes at the end of the interview to console
the interviewer for her worries concerning the arms race that the
interviewer might thinks might threaten the world peace. Karaulov
calms down:"To defence us we have... unique structures,
fantastic technology... All this means that... you and your children
will always be safe. And you are going to live in real peace and
rest. And you may light candles for those who developed such armament
that you can sleep calmly. And so may our whole country."
2-
The article (here,
in Latin orthography) "Кryм,
Тrump i sankcii" (Crimea, Trump and sanctions)
was published in Novoje Vremja on Nov. 25, 2016. It is written by
Leonid
Radzihovskij, and I inserted it into this blog site on Nov. 27, 2016.
The writer says that Putin has played his cards well in Syria without
giving in anything. In the U.S., the elected president Mr. Trump
has adopted a positive attitude to Russia. The Russian TV maintains
that Putin has won the game. It is important for him to create
positive relations with the U.S., Europe etc. The parties concerned
should diminish the amount of bad language. However, if the hostile
image Russians may have about the intentions of the West no longer
holds and crumbles, Putin will not have a picture of an enemy at his
disposal. If there is no "picture of the enemy", how can he
steer the public opinion any more? These are the two sides between
which Putin will be bound to swing.
3-
Leonid Radzihovskij's article (here, in Latin letters) in
Novoje Vremja on Nov. 2, 2016 is headed as (in Latin
orthography) "Vzatije Aleppo. Shto zadumal Putin"
(Occupation of Aleppo. What did Putin think). The Finnish title is a
direct translation from the Russian title. I inserted the Finnish
translation of the article into the blog site on Nov. 30, 2016.
Radzihovskij
describes the theater of war operations in Syria as an awful steaming
mess, where a great number of parties are fighting for their
respective causes. Kurds fight for Kurdistan. Turks fight to thwart
the Kurds' plans, and even Europeans and U.S. have been fool enough
to break their way there. Insofar as the IS is concerned, the writer
assumes that its end is in sight. It will be driven into the cave it
rose, but there will be new fanatics, since fanaticism is an
ideology, and it is difficult to kill an ideology with a bullet.
The
chaotic situation in Syria is not going to clear up. The centre of the fire
may move to another place, it may get less intense, but rebuilding
Syria into a peaceful state as it was before the war, is an
impossible task. Besides, there will be no one to enter upon that
undertaking. Syria has been part of the geopolitical game of
influence and sway between superpowers and even minor powers.
Now that Russia and the al-Assad regime have driven the rebel group
from Aleppo, Putin has flipped the U.S. on the nose, but this does
not help Syria to get out of the catastrophe.
4-
On 1 Dec.,
2016, The
Guardian published
the article
"This is the most dangerous time for our planet" written by
the world famous physicist Stephen Hawkins. I inserted it into the
blog site on 5 Dec., 2016 headed with the Finnish title "Elämme
planeettamme vaarallisinta aikaa" (We are living the most
dangerous time of our planet). The article is really worth reading;
its basic tenet which the writer backs up with hard evidence is
formulated in the head of the article "We can’t go on ignoring
inequality, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to
escape it". You will find the text through Google under
"stephen-hawking-dangerous-time-planet-inequality" The
text deserves to be discussed worldwide and translated into as many
languages as possible.
1"Fryysi
finska" is a sneer name of broken Finnish varieties in Sweden.
It derives from the Swedish words "frys" 'freeze' and
"finska" 'Finnish language'. "Frys" becomes
"fryysi" in the broken variety of Finnish.
2I
use the Latin ortography to make it easier for my Western readers.
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