This fabulous phrase appears above the title of Oma Maa. I've been wondering what it meant ever since I first noticed it. Tonight I finally got round to doing a bit of googling. I can tell you that the middle word appears to mean "gratefully" or "with thanks", but I got nowhere with the other two. However, I assume it's just a dedication rather than anything more interesting.
It was the Sibelius piano rehearsal tonight. It was an awful lot better than many of us expected it to be - either people had done some homework, or Mark inspired them, or both! It was all a bit behind the beat, but no doubt it will get better as the words become second nature. (Personally, I'm finding it VERY hard to say "yön" or "yöt" without the y, but I'll get there. At least I know how to say that one in theory - there are still a few sounds I don't think I've been told about!)
I think I need to mutter Finnish to myself for the next week and a half. (Luckily everyone already thinks I'm weird...) If you want to see the words on their own, try this Finnish wiki page. Oh, and while I was looking for that, I also found this, about a Finnish proverb. Pretty!
EDIT: I noticed that the words on that wiki page don't all correspond to our version, so here's an accurate version for you to download. (That's the alto line, but I'm sure others can edit it if they need to.) I had it by my desk at work today and found myself muttering "Raittihit talviset säät". Bits of it are starting to stick!
Some memorable moments of the rehearsal were: the Finnish language coach (I *still* haven't caught her name) illustrating how we should sing page 6 as if we were shivering in snow at -20 degrees; Mark telling us that every house in Finland has a ladder built onto the side of it so that people can easily climb onto the roof to remove snow; the fact that I sat next to Adam from the youth choir, who allowed me to grumble at him about life in general, knew who I was as soon as I told him my name, and said nice things about this blog! Oh, and best of all - the ladies got an early night! I don't think I was the only one who failed to put two and two together and work out that the men also had to rehearse The Origin of Fire tonight. Whee!
2nd EDIT: Someone at work today showed me the Man Cold clip, which amused me a lot :-)
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
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5 comments:
Hooray for you singing in Finnish! I'm currently tackling Czech and loving it - after Polish, I'll start moving north! City of Manchester are doing the library singing day too, maybe I'll see you there!
I think we've done Czech, although I'm not sure what it was for. Polish is a complete unknown to us though. (I must make a list of all the languages we can supposedly sing in...)
We're on at 3pm at the library - you?
1:30 or 2:15 - well in that case I will see you, hooray! Listening to some fabulous Szymanowsky at the moment.
Can't think how I've managed to miss the 'Man Stroke Woman' series. Brilliant!
Graham - ! must admit I haven't seen any of it, but that clip amused me enough that I may well investigate further!
Despina - look forward to seeing you at the Henry Watson. Hopefully lots of people will come to see both of us!
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