#wolmar schildt

[ered]

Speaking of Finnish language, did you know that before the 19th century, Finnish didn’t have words for example for science (tiede) or art (taide)?

They were made up in the 1840s by a man called Wolmar Schildt, along with jalkine (footwear), kirje (letter, as in written communication you send), sairaala (hospital), vankila (prison), päätelmä (a deduction), ympyrä (circle), neliö (square), uskonto (religion), puoliso (spouse), henkilö (person), and others.

[torillatavataan]

Popot from Swedish poppa (plural poppor).

Tossut from Swedish tossa.

Tohvelit from Swedish toffel.

Kenkulit from Finnish kenkä (shoe) + -uli (suffix forming diminutive nouns), from Proto-Finnic kenkä, possibly borrowed from pre-Germanic (s)keng-.

Jalkineet from Finnish jalka (foot from Proto-Finnic jalka, from Proto-Finno-Ugric jalka) +‎ -ine (suffix forming diminutive forms of nouns, particularly for objects or tools). Coined by Finnish physician and translator Wolmar Schildt or Finnish priest Anders Gabriel Wikman in 1842.

testi kansallisesta mielipiteestä

[homunculus-argument]

A lot of now-common finnish words are neologisms created in the 1800s. Some of them are words that were created to replace a thousand locally known words of various dialects to make the language more uniform, and some simply needed to be constructed because the concept did not exist in the finnish culture, mind or language but the growing and widening, modernising world needed new words to call new things.

It didn't cross my mind before that the finnish words for "art" and "science" rhyme and resemble each other due not only due to being created for the same necessity, but because they were coined by the same fucking guy - Wolmar Schildt, in the 1840s - in the "add a suffix to a verb to make a noun" pattern that's common in finnish.

the word tiede (science) comes from the verb tietää (to know), and the word taide (art) comes from taitaa (to know how to do, to be proficient in). So in a way, the finnish word for science literally means "the art of knowing things", and art means "the art of having a skill". And I just think that's really beautiful.