keme wrote:Why is "-nen" added? Is it to distinguish a derived adjective from a compound noun, or is it just phonetic, for the speech to flow easier?
Yes, it's to distinguish an adjective. "Laji" in itself does not describe. The -nen is needed to make it an adjective type of word:
Viha (=anger)
Vihai
nen (=angry)
The difference between "-lainen" and just "-nen" is that "-lainen" also contains meaning of origin, and therefore is used for people:
Helsinki (=Helsinki, the capital of Finland)
helsinkinen (="Helsinki-ish")
helsinkiläinen (=Helsinkian, a person from Helsinki)
JunMing wrote: keme wrote:About the "-nen" question from JunMing: I don't think he meant litterally "alone", but rather if it is a suffix with a meaning of its own. (If I misread one of you, I apologise!)
I actually meant both.
At the same time whether is has a meaning of its own, and if it is a standalone word (which might be of a longer form). Now I know the answer to both answers is no.
I just want to make sure I explained clearly:
As a suffix, the "-nen" can stand alone, as it does in the above word "vihainen".
JunMing wrote:To Varislintu: I remember I read somewhere else (don't ask me where!) that you study (or studied) some Japanese, and that you are surprised by the several similitudes it shares with your native language. Could you give more details please?
Thanks again!
Well, I started studying Japanese with the understanding that it was going to be something extremely alien, with very little grammatical similarities to anything I know. But this image must have been put into my head by English speakers, because Japanese can be said to be more like Finnish than English. This doesn't mean, of course, that Finnish and Japanese are very much alike, it's just in comparison to English. Here's what makes me think this way (and I apologise for my bad linguistic vocab):
- Pronounciation is on many parts much like Finnish
- Particles in Japanese come after the word they point to, just like suffixes do in Finnish (in Finnish there are suffixes instead of particles).
- The Japanese "ka" that marks a question, is similar to the "-ko/-kö" suffix in Finnish
- The Japanese posessive particle "no" is similar to the genitive suffix "-n" in Finnish
- I've always imagined that the Japanese "yo" works a bit like the Finnish suffix "-pa/-pä". I haven't had anyone to confirm this with, though.
- Japanese seems to have quite a few expressions, where repetition of the word is used, as does Finnish (J:"mada mada"/ F:"vähä vähältä").