Arian Community in Nordic Countries

[dark_knight]

I am an amateur theologist and (unofficial) lay preacher from Finland.
I look forward hearing from Arians, non-trinitarians and prospect from not only Finland but Baltic countries and Scandinavia.

[Knut]

I am an amateur theologist and (unofficial) lay preacher from Finland.
I look forward hearing from Arians, non-trinitarians and prospect from not only Finland but Baltic countries and Scandinavia.

Would Unitarians do? There are some in all Nordic countries. In Finland you find http://www.netlife.fi/~nl02067/uu/

[Postulare42]

Side note to the Finlas Brethren: I am seeking someone who might direct me to resources for online study of the Saami language. My search has produced only meagre results.

[Hermes]

Side note to the Finlas Brethren: I am seeking someone who might direct me to resources for online study of the Saami language. My search has produced only meagre results.

I don't know much since I'm not sure if I've even heard it spoken (it's incredibly rare and mostly in the north) but looking through Google there's some in Finnish. But in English...

But how about this?
http://home.earthlink.net/~arran4/siida/sami-language.htm

Found it in the Wikipedia article here which has more links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_languages

[Postulare42]

Thank you very much, Hermes!

I seems, I have a reason to add Finnish to the top of my list for languages to learn. I want to add Saami to expand upon my knowledge of Hungarian/Magyar.

Thank you, again, for the link. It will surely get me started. For me, the sound of the tongue, and the taste of the language in the mouth are of primary importance in my ability to learn a language at all.

Blessings upon you and your house.

[Knut]

Thank you very much, Hermes!

I seems, I have a reason to add Finnish to the top of my list for languages to learn. I want to add Saami to expand upon my knowledge of Hungarian/Magyar.



Why do you want to add Sámi to expand upon your knowlegde to Hungarian? I know these languages are related and the intonation is quite similar but really, why? To expand knowledge of Hungarian I would suggest Hungarian.

This coming from a Norwegian familiar with Sámi and now trying to learn Hungarian.

Yours, Knut.

[Postulare42]

Knut,

Since I was 15yo, I have selected a different language each year. During the year I study that language with a goal of learning 2500 nouns verbs adjectives and adverbs in that tongue. I do not include numbers, articles, pronouns, prepositions or conjunctions....memorising those at the outset. I place a $300 budget for the project each year.

(It's not that difficult, really. Less than 10 words per day)

With the advent of the internet, languages that were excluded for budgetary reasons may now be included.

Saami is in the same lingustic family as Hungarian...virtually an orphan tongue as far as suviving antecedents is concerned. Of course, not nearly as "orphan" as Basque, which I added about 10 years ago.

This is just a hobby of mine, related to my interest in "Ham Radio".

NB: Hungarian was added in 1986

Knut, Krisztus lenni veled és családod. :innocent:

Kanskje Jesus være med du. Kanskje han guide du i retning av du burde følge. Kanskje Gott være i din hjertet , sinn og aksjonene. Kanskje du har Hans Fred.

[Knut]

Knut,

Since I was 15yo, I have selected a different language each year. During the year I study that language with a goal of learning 2500 nouns verbs adjectives and adverbs in that tongue. I do not include numbers, articles, pronouns, prepositions or conjunctions....memorising those at the outset. I place a $300 budget for the project each year.

(It's not that difficult, really. Less than 10 words per day)

With the advent of the internet, languages that were excluded for budgetary reasons may now be included.

Saami is in the same lingustic family as Hungarian...virtually an orphan tongue as far as suviving antecedents is concerned. Of course, not nearly as "orphan" as Basque, which I added about 10 years ago.

This is just a hobby of mine, related to my interest in "Ham Radio".

NB: Hungarian was added in 1986

Knut, Krisztus lenni veled és családod. :innocent:

Kanskje Jesus være med du. Kanskje han guide du i retning av du burde følge. Kanskje Gott være i din hjertet , sinn og aksjonene. Kanskje du har Hans Fred.

One new language each year is impressive. But what I really wanted to know was why you want to add Sámi to expand upon your knowledge of Hungarian. And more, if you really mean you want to add Sámi to expand knowlegde of Hungarian what kind of Sámi: South Sámi, ume, pite, lule, north Sámi, enare, skolte, kildin or ter?

What you say seems to me that it would be good to add Swedish to expand upon ones knowledge of Norwegian. On a high qualified academical level it may be a good thing to do but seriously, it is not wise if you want to learn Norwegian.

So why? Are you doing language on a doctoral level?

I'm curious.

By the way, would Norwegian be one of your languages added or are you using an Internet translator when you write "Kanskje Jesus være med du. Kanskje han guide du i retning av du burde følge. Kanskje Gott være i din hjertet , sinn og aksjonene. Kanskje du har Hans Fred." The sentences are intelligible but rather strange (and there is one German word used).

[Postulare42]

I guess I have been unclear.

My wish to add Saami is to expand upon the language family.

Year before last I worked upon Tuvan. Why? The only answer to that is "Why not?" "Why" questions are non-productive. Were you to rephrase that as, "What interests you about...?" I might be able to answer. Or, "What do you want to do with it?"

My Norsk is more than 10 years old. I'm not surprised that it's not very intelligible. You see, I don't bother much with the grammar of the languanges I memorise from. So, it's hardly doctoral. A child learns words, and picks up grammar, etc. along the way. I'll never be able to play kennings with you, but I can usually tell when one is in play.

My interest in "Lappish" stems from 1) it's relationship to Magyar/Hungarian; 2) That culture has an aural tradition of sagas and legend that reaches far into antiquity...further than the Norse sagas, eddas and myths. Old men who know and sing these tales by heart...with no young people to pass them on. (I certainly hope that someone is getting these completely recorded as a global heritage treasure).

To answer your question about translation programs...yes, I do use them, but not in the way you might think.

First, I test the program or translator site. I have a collection of simple and complex sentences that I use for this purpose. I input a simple sentence in English to be translated into whichever language. I then input the site/program's response back into it for translation back into English. The results are sometimes quite amusing. Of course, homonyms give the programs the greatest difficulties, but semantics can produce hilarious results. Doing this back and forth quickly leads to gibberish. Another amusing test, is to use archaic sentence structures. The results are both funny and enlightening. Also amusing is to feed the translations from one site/program into another, and back. These sites are horrible ! :jlol:

My main use of the programs is to (sometimes) provide grammatical guidance for what I compose from my memorised list. Frequently, this has comic results, too.

I have 5 primary languages of which I consider 3 to be "milk-tongues". The rest are amusements that all trade upon two skills . . . a musical ear and the ability to memorise.

I presume that the sole word auf Deutsch was "Gott". That's simply because I couldn't remember the Norsk for "God". The blessings were (bad) translations from sentences one of my Great Aunt's always included in her letters.

Intelligibility, grammar and syntax were always intended to be picked-up and refined aurally in the native country of the language. Sadly, my health deteriorated before my time, and will never happen.

Does it offend you, somehow, that I have my hobby? If so, I'm sorry, but it IS mine. If it offends you, I will not include you . . . but I will not stop.

Many years ago, decades in fact, I counted words at parties, social situations and common business interactions. I discovered that barring numbers, articles, conjunctions, pronouns and prepositions, most people go through their days using less than a 3000 word vocabulary conversationally. In most situations, after brief refamiliarisation (and occasional dictionary) I can understand fairly well what is going on around me even if, like a child, I can only phrase my own sentences poorly. It's the way I learned my "milk-tongues", especially in an environment where ,"Children are supposed to be seen, but not heard".

May your studies progress. :-)

[Knut]

I presume that the sole word auf Deutsch was "Gott". That's simply because I couldn't remember the Norsk for "God". The blessings were (bad) translations from sentences one of my Great Aunt's always included in her letters.



Thank you for explaining. No I do not mind you having this hobby. I simply just not understand your approach to Sámi. Concerning the Norwegian translation you added, you say it was blessings but sad to tell you they simply turned out as questions. Not blessings at all. We do not use the word "kanskje" in the beginning of a sentence in order to give a blessing. Normally we would use the word "måtte". And the grammar made them actually difficult to understand, but the sentences were part of a church-language paradigm. And because I am a minister I suspected you intended to say blessings. Norwegians not familiar with church-language would probably not be so sure. So be careful with these internet translators whatever way you make use of them or the way you learn a language each year. Sámi is much more complicated than any of the Norwegian dialects you may learn.

[Postulare42]

One of the difficulties I have is to determine what I can say without converting my keyboard. :jlol:

Thank you. Internet translators are toys, not functional tools. My grammatical and colloquial limitations are why I don't try to compose in these languages on web boards. It is more important to me to be able to understand what I encounter, than it is for me to attempt to add what little I have to offer.

Due to your kindness, I am inspired to put more effort into Dansk/Norsk, and actually learn it to about a secondary school level. It also turns out that I have a friend who is near fluent with whom I can practise. Let's give it another try in a year . . . with a converted keyboard ?

By the way, Knut. Can you recommend a good Norwegian bible translated from the Vulgate? I try to collect one in each of my little language projects.

Thanks again.

[Knut]

By the way, Knut. Can you recommend a good Norwegian bible translated from the Vulgate? I try to collect one in each of my little language projects.



There are many good Norwegian Bible translations but not from Vulgata (unless there in this Evangelical Lutheran country should happen to be a Norwegian Catholic translated Bible somewhere :eek: :jlol: Well, in fact, I know of two Norwegian Catholic NT translated but they are no longer possible to purchase.) These days a brand new translation of the Bible is ongoing. A new NT translation to be used in the State Church was published in 2005 and we are still waiting for the new OT translation. If you are looking for a complete Bible translation the 1978-translation is in my opinion the best. So if you are looking for a Norwegian Bible translation on the Internet the 1978-translation is fine for OT and the 2005-translation for NT. (But you may also find the 1930-translation on the Internet and in print. This too is a good translation but the Norwegian used in 1930 is often out-of-date compared to contemporary Norwegian.)

But as said not from the Vulgata. If you ask an ordinary Norwegian s/he would probably not know what Vulagata is simply because this is an Evangelical Lutheran country and we don't use Vulgata at all (unless you are Catholic that is but only 20,000 are). Why do you want a Norwegian Bible translation from Vulgata? I would imagine it is rather difficult to collect Bible translations from Vulgata of each language you have learned since the age of 15. Most Bible translations would be from other Biblical texts.

[Knut]

Due to your kindness, I am inspired to put more effort into Dansk/Norsk, and actually learn it to about a secondary school level.

Well in that case you should not put much efford into dansk/norsk (Danish/Norwegian) but simply norsk (Norwegian). In Norway we have to major Norwegian languages (or dialects if you prefer). One is "nynorsk" (New Norwegian) and the other is "bokmål" - often translated as "Dano-Norse" because it far back in history is based on the language used by the government when Denmark-Norway was one country and we had one Danish governmental language with a king in Copenhagen. So if you travel 300 or 400 years back in time and apply for a job at the king's court it would probably be wise to fresh up some "dansk/norsk" :krazz:

But seriously, if you really want to learn Norwegian at a secondary school level my advise is that you learn contemporary bokmål. If you master bokmål then you also understand Danish and Swedish and most people in Denmark and Sweden would also understand you. But the strange thing is if you learn a little Norwegian and a little Danish (or Swedish) and mix these languages you end up with something often very difficult to understand. So the best thing is either to master Norwegian or Danish or Swedish. Not to mix these languages.

[Knut]

One of the difficulties I have is to determine what I can say without converting my keyboard. :jlol:


If you want to write Norwegian you do not have to convert your keyboard at all. The old way of writing å is simply aa and ø may be oe and æ is ae. No need for converting.