Singing fish, meet dancing frogs

[mrissa]

I'm very pleased to report that PodCastle is going to do a podcast of my short story "Väinämöinen and the Singing Fish." I've attempted to give them a brief Finnish pronunciation guide. I hope it's useful. I'm not distant enough from it to be able to tell very well, I'm afraid. It seems to bode well for PodCastle's willingness to buy stories from cultures that are not the editors' own, though, so I point that out for those of you to whom it might be relevant.

It also gave me something else that was "writing work" to do when actual writing feels like it's going through molasses at the moment. So. Timing.

Comments

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Excellent news. I fear I am in the dark when it comes to Finnish pronunciation and spelling. That in itself is a good reason for tuning in.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

This is mostly unrelated to this post (but of course related to posts like this in general, so I guess related to this post) but I finally decided to friend you so that I could read your post when they happen instead of all in one go whenever you make a smart comment on Bear or TxAnne or whomever's journal. because your journal is pretty nifty to read, and tends to make me smile, or wrinkle my forehead in sympathy, or whatever. And I thought I'd sort of introduce myself. I am annie. Hi.

(God. I am also often less rattle-y on than that, you know?)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

what, Väinämöinen is hard to pronounce? (hard to spell, i'll grant you-- i just copied and pasted. ;)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Finnish is very easy to pronounce. The stress goes in the same place in the overwhelming majority of words (and it is a stressed rather than an intoned language, so that's easier for English speakers), and none of the vowels go wandering off and turn up where you didn't expect them. (Of course, when you're dealing with Finnish, you should expect vowels more or less everywhere.) J is like y, umlauts go to the front of your mouth, stress the first syllable, and you're off to the races.

It's making any sense of the structure and content that's the problem.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hi, Annie, and welcome! If your less rattle-y on than that usually, that makes one of us. I am such a rattler on that I am unpopular in large parts of the American West. Frightening to cowboys and so on.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know, I can't really remember not knowing how to say it! But apparently not everybody's life is Like That.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

And that's why I love your posts! Because I want to write long chatty posts, and then I start writing and end up with two lines, one of which sounds surly, so I don't post at all. But you! You write chatty posts! Which don't feel full of filler!

[catherineldf.livejournal.com]

Congrats - it sounds like a great project!

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Ahem. I would say (pleasantly and politely) that you are only a rattler-on by Minnesotan standards. To be considered a rattler-on by Deep South standards you would have to embark upon a lengthy period of rattling-on training.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

The comment on vowels everywhere reminds me of hand-addressing my wedding invitations. Ben and I had this little joked setting up vowel transfusions between Ben's Finnish relatives and my German ones.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But I am a Minnesotan. So those are the standards I use.

[tacithydra.livejournal.com]

Yay! Congratulations!

[biguglymandoll.livejournal.com]

Yay indeed! Very cool, I enjoyed reading that one and I'll look forward to hearing how much of it is *really* pronounced! Congrats!

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's hard to figure out if you don't know what to do with the umlauts, but not hard once you know.

[mkhobson.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the intro for this story, and I never got the pronunciation guide! But after some time surfing the Web, I feel pretty confident that I can pronounce "Väinämöinen" correctly. Now I've got a different problem, though ... do you pronounce your last name with a hard or soft "g"?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Lingen like lingonberries. Like Ming the Merciless. Not like Lin-Jen.

[mkhobson.livejournal.com]

Ah, perfect. Ling-en the Merciless. Got it. Thank you!