I
published 21 blogs during the year 2014. My blogs were in
Finnish 9 times, in Swedish 7 times, in English 3 times, once and
very briefly in Chinese. In the beginning of the year, I published
one of my poems in several languages as a blog (Jan. 2).
Below,
I will present the main themes of the blogs, mention their respective
titles, translate the titles into English if necessary, indicate the
language used in the blog and give the date of its publishing.
1.
Topical themes
In
2014, we saw many armed conflicts and real acts of war. I reacted
against Russia's occupation of Krim in the blog Orosmoln i öster
(Threatening clouds in the East, Swedish, Apr. 1) but emphasized that
we must not demonize Russians even if we dislike the aggressive
politics of Putin.
Laddade
repliker kring Ostpolitik (Charged rejoinders on Ostpolitik,
Swedish, Apr. 12) is my letter to the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs
Posten, where I oppose the idea that Sweden should join the NATO,
the topic of a heated debate in Sweden. It would increase remarkably
the military tension in our part of the world. I dare to advocate
civil resistance against potential aggressors pointing out that it
can be made efficient and effective, if it is planned and prepared
well in beforehand.
In
Fred så in i Norden (Peace in Nordic countries - that's for
sure, Swedish, June 8), I discuss the celebration in regard to the
fact that Sweden has not been involved in a war since 1814. I point
out that Norway and Finland have been engaged in wars during this
period of time. Therefore, it is not accurate to maintain as some
Swedes occasionally do that there have not been any acts of war in
the Nordic countries during the past 200 years.
In
the blog Si vis pacem, para mentes (If you want peace, prepare
human minds (for it), Finnish, Oct. 23), I allude to the Latin
proverb "If you want peace, prepare for war". I maintain
that we have to give diplomacy more than a few chances, and consider
using other means than the military ones such as the non-violent
civil resistance to meet a potential aggressor. For information on
civil resistance, see www.civilresistance.net
In
Revolution,
Pеволюция, Rivoluzione
(Swedish, Nov. 7), I discuss the
Soviet Communism and Marxism. The parades on the Red Square on the
day of the October Revolution on November 7 are long gone as is the
Soviet communism.
I
feel sympathy with the social change movement that Danilo Dolci
devoted his life to in Sicily. In the blog, I publish my translation
into Swedish of his poem "Rivoluzione" the first stanza of
which goes in English as follows: "The one who gets scared when
he hears the word "revolution" has perhaps not understood."
The
blog Pacifism (English, Nov. 10) recollects the beginning of
the First World War 1914. In the blog, I discuss pacifism and civil
resistance, and commemorate Arndt Pekurinen, a Finnish
pacifist who was executed on the battlefront Nov. 5, 1941, in the war
between Finland and Soviet Russia, when he refused to take a weapon
into his hand.
2.
Finnish and Sweden Finnish issues
In
Näkymätön matkalaukku (Invisible suitcase, Finnish, Jan.
18) I recollect my first years in Sweden in the beginning of the
80's. Then, I spoke Swedish with my "broken (Finnish) accent"
as I still do, and certain notions such as "sisu" (Finnish
for persistance) were then dear to me as they still are.
So, I keep hold of the suitcase that I grew up with.
In
Finskhetens kärna (The gist of Finnishness, Swedish, Sept.
7), I discuss the Finnish "success story", a country that
went through four wars and other kind crises during the 20th century
but in 2012 was ranked as the best country in the world in a number
of respects such as school education, dynamism of business life,
freedom of press, least corruption, and in general, the least failed
country out of the 175 countries ranked. See
http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2013-sortable.
Vad
har Finland att tacka Sverige för (What has Finland to thank
Sweden for? Swedish, Dec. 13) discusses the influence Sweden had on
the conditions of living in Finland during the over 600 years when
the area we now call Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom. Finnish
historians have different positions in regard to this influence. I
think that the influence was extensive in terms of judicial system,
government, church, fending off the threat of Russia etc. Due to this
long coexistence with Sweden, Finland came to be part of the Western
and not the Eastern Europe. But note that Finns were subjects of the
Swedish king; together with Swedes and other peoples of the kingdom
they built up what we may call "the Swedish heritage".
Especially in terms of their history and social conditions of living,
Sweden and Finland are interwoven with one another to the degree that
one could speak of "two Swedens". Note, however, that Sweden is still a kingdom while Finland turned out to be a republic. Every autumn the Swedish and Finnish
athletes meet in the track and field event called "Finnkamp"
in Swedish (lit. Finnbattle). As a Finn, I would like to point out that Sweden
is the second least failed country in the world (cf. above). See
http://finland.fi/History for a "crash course" in history
of Finland.
3.
Human tragedies
We
shall not forget. 我们应永远不会忘记
1989
年
6
月大屠杀。
Tiān'ānmén
Guǎngchǎng, June 4, 1989. The blog was published on June 2.
In
Nine eleven, Chile... ajatuksia (Nine eleven, Chile... some
thoughts, Finnish, Sept. 11) I talk over the evil that violence,
wars, terrorism... bring with them. I insist that we have to learn to
solve our political, national and other such problems peacefully.
Civil resistance has shown its usefulness many times and in many
places such as in the Baltic countries when they got liberated from
the Soviet occupation in the early 90's.
4.
Linguistic issues
I
am a linguist, and interested in linguistic phenomena. In Hur
använder man kropp på finska (How do we use the body in
Finnish, Swedish, March 9), I discuss words and phrases that we use
in Finnish to talk about body in physical and metaphorical sense.
In
Onko tietoa eli miten ymmärtäminen tapahtuu (appr. To
understand, how does it go? Finnish, March 21), I deal with the
process of mutual understanding in spoken interactions. Among many
other factors, interlocutors' shared world knowledge, and their
Vorverstehen (German, pre-understanding or unarticulated premises)
seem to play a central role in these interactions.
In
Kielet ja bonuskielet (Languages and bonus languages, Finnish,
May 21), I put forth the idea that learning one language helps to
learn other languages. So, for instance, I am able to read German
fairly fluently, even though I have never studied the language. This
is possible because I know Swedish and English. I think that
in language teaching the linguistic bonus that we acquire when
learning a given language should be acknowledged and taken into
consideration when developing the language teaching methods. For
example, if taught properly reading proficiency in a "bonus
language" could be attained fairly easily. An instance is the Dutch
language that is lexically close to English, German, and the central
Scandinavian languages.
Katsomisen
tarkastelua (Thinking of watching, Finnish, July 21) is a
treatment of the role gaze plays in spoken interaction. I briefly
deal with the concept of 'watching', and note that 'gaze' is related
both to the watcher and to the one the gaze is directed at. In
English, we "take a look" which describes watching as a
vigorous action. In Finnish, the watcher "creates a gaze"
("luoda katse") at someone, which is also an action
but less vigorous. This topic is both semantically and from the point
of view of social interaction extremely interesting.
In
Suomen kielen vaikeudesta (On the difficulty of the Finnish
language, Finnish, Oct. 12), I deal with the question whether Finnish
is a difficult language to learn for an adult person. I point out
that the language may be difficult to learn for those whose first
language does not have as many grammatical endings as Finnish does.
The core vocabulary of the language also differs quite a lot from the
vocabulary of major languages of Europe such as English, German and French.
Since
there are tens of thousands of immigrants in Finland whose first
language is not Finnish, teachers and authorities do what they can to
make the teaching of Finnish as effective and efficient as possible.
Finnish as a second and foreign language is an established subject at
the Finnish universities and at many adult educational centres. A
variety of Finnish called "selkosuomi" (plain Finnish) has
been developed. It is lexically and grammatically simpler (in some
sense of the word) than the standard written Finnish. It is being
used on radio news and in some newspapers. Even some literature has
been published in this variety of Finnish.
In
the blog Languages in the melting pot (English, Dec. 27), I
first deal with the methods that we use when we need to have a name
for a new thing or phenomenon. Among other things, these include
methods such as borrowing the word or translating it directly. I
point out that the question of naming new things and phenomena has
always been of practical interest and even of importance for
relations between speakers of different languages.
We
now live in a world where there is an imbalance between languages
because English has become the dominant language of the wider
communication. English is the main provider of the words we need to
have to name new things and phenomena. Languages that cannot keep up
with the development will gradually lose ever more ranges of use, and
finally be without much practical use at all. However, in spite of
this dark perspective, I maintain that the dream of having one world
language will never materialize. The majority of the world's
population will never become second language speakers let alone
native speakers of the English language or any other of the so-called
big languages. Instead better translation appliances will be
developed and general multilingualism will be preserved for the
languages that are vigorous enough to survive. Cultural and
linguistic multitude should be cherished. In the last analysis, vive
la différence!
5.
Personal issues
In
the blog Tie jatkuu! Dallataan! (Finnish Dec. 3), I tell about
the times long gone when I was a scout and used to hike with my
friends in forests of the South Finland and in Lapland or "Sápmi"
as it is called in the Northern Sámi language. I have included one
of my poems in the blog that deals with these memories. I wrote the poem in the Helsinki Finnish slang, which was the language variety
we used in our youth.
Elää
- se on nyt (Finnish, Sept. 6) is a vignette from my holiday in
the countryside. I enjoyed living together with my family and doing
manual work in our summer place.Vive la vie! or as my sister
who's living in Chile wrote in her mail: Tenemos
que vivir AHORA .
6.
A few words of the readership of these blogs
From
the beginning in 2007 until now, there have been 14 926 visits to
this blog site, out of which 3 696 took place during the year 2014.
The number of blogs is 188 at the moment; 21 of them were published
in 2014.
In
regard to the visitors' nationality, the main groups have been the
following (the number after the country name indicates the total of
visits in 2014): Sweden 949, Finland 681, USA 512, France 325,
Ukraine 236, Germany 215, Poland 163, Russia 110, Malaysia 7, The
Netherlands 1.
Regrettably,
I have had no visitors from African or Latin American countries, and
in Asia these blogs have been viewed only 7 times in Malaysia. Thus,
my blogs seem to be popular in the U.S. and in the European
countries, Russia included.
In
the table below, the blogs are presented in the temporal order
beginning from Dec, 27 (= 12-27). The number before the date tells
how many times the blog has been viewed during the year.
|
|
|
20
|
12-27
|
|
|
|
12
|
12-13
|
|
|
|
5
|
12-03
|
|
|
|
16
|
11-10
|
|
|
|
20
|
11-07
|
|
|
|
15
|
10-23
|
|
|
|
9
|
10-12
|
|
|
|
5
|
09-11
|
|
|
|
16
|
09-07
|
|
|
|
13
|
09-06
|
|
|
|
8
|
07-21
|
|
|
|
10
|
06-08
|
|
|
|
11
|
06-02
|
|
|
|
37
|
05-18
|
|
|
|
70
|
04-12
|
|
|
|
11
|
04-01
|
|
|
|
12
|
03-21
|
|
|
|
37
|
03-09
|
|
|
|
19
|
01-18
|
|
|
|
39
|
01-04
|
|
|
|
13
|
01-02
|
7.
Forward!
I
will continue blogging, because it is great fun. I wish all the best
to all of my readers during the year 2015. Oikein hyvää alkanutta
vuotta teille kaikille! Ha ett riktigt bra år 2015! Mi esperas bonan
jaron al ĉiuj vi, kiuj ŝatas legi miajn blogojn!
