Moo..

There is an old saying the French use to describe most non-french speaking their language "Vous parlez le français comme une vache espagnole" which means: "You speak French like a Spanish Cow". I have heard this once or 400 times in my life. I speak French well enough to offend an entire country. And when it comes to the French, merely being NOT French offends them. Of course I am half French (thanks Dad) so I am only 1/2 as despised. That is until they find out exactly how poorly I speak French (again Thanks Dad) and then it is even worse. Having a French papa should mean that I speak French well. Right? Wrong.

Anywho..there is a point to this. I was writing an email in Finnish this morning requesting information about something. The sentence I was writing referenced "in the mornings". Example "I like to exercise in the morning". Finnish makes you pluralize it (don't even get me started on the difference between partative, plural and plural partative..it will give you a headache) so it comes out "in the mornings" meaning every morning or some mornings.

Simple examples are the best I can give you. If you want something happens 1 time (today or tomorrow) there is a specific way to write it by conjugating the word. The same goes for something that happens many times or during specific time frames (like weekends or in the mornings). There are many many rules in Finnish, and to give you all the permiations of this would hurt MY brain and ruin the fun.

So this is what happened:

I wanted to ask "Does it fit if we could come in the mornings?"

I wrote: Sopiiko jos voisimme tulla ammuisin?

Spelling counts folks. By missing one "a" and adding an "m", what I actually wrote was: "Does it fit if we could come I would moo?"

Apparently I speak Finnish like a cow too! Moooooooooooo

for your edification:

aamuisin - in the mornings
ammuisin - I would MOOO