Today is Finland's 100th Independence Day

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Originally Posted By: Nebroch
Originally Posted By: andyd
Much respect for Finns. Their defense against the Russians was pretty amazing. They didn't have much ammunition. They wrapped themselves up in sheets and skied into the Russians and killed them with knives.


That one went little too far, finnish infantry had clumsy Mosin-Nagant m/1891 based rifles
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They probably didn't have enough of them, but the Finns developed the outstanding Suomi KP31 submachine gun before WWII. Neglecting production cost and time issues, it may have been the finest weapon of its kind at the time...it was also quite heavy for a SMG, though. Surely the Russian SMGs that were built in the millions were more important, but the Suomi was a fine weapon.

The Finnish language has little to do with the Germanic and Slavic languages spoken by Finland's neighbors and I enjoy listening to Finnish speakers...it's easy to note that you see k a lot in Finnish words and names and it sometimes vaguely reminds me of Japanese as a result. I like to watch pesapallo matches on YouTube and it is fascinating for me to note what it takes to pronounce even a short name like Perttu Ruuska (the tt and uu are not superfluous).
 
I saw a TV show sometime back that suggested the Finnish Winter War and the Continuation War sort of started WWII in that the HUGE Soviet forces attacking Finland did so poorly against the Finns small army suggested to the Germans that the massive Red Army could be easily overrun by the Wehrmacht. Of course, many "Russian" casualties were actually Ukrainians forced to fight against the Finns.
 
Originally Posted By: Virtus_Probi

They probably didn't have enough of them, but the Finns developed the outstanding Suomi KP31 submachine gun before WWII. Neglecting production cost and time issues, it may have been the finest weapon of its kind at the time...it was also quite heavy for a SMG, though. Surely the Russian SMGs that were built in the millions were more important, but the Suomi was a fine weapon.


KP31 is a nice gun yes, I've hold one on my hands. Only 4,000 of them were manufactured before war, so it had little effect. B. However finns captured plenty of russian weaponry from destroyed russian formations, guns like DP-27 machine gun (9,000 captured).

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The Finnish language has little to do with the Germanic and Slavic languages spoken by Finland's neighbors and I enjoy listening to Finnish speakers...it's easy to note that you see k a lot in Finnish words and names and it sometimes vaguely reminds me of Japanese as a result. I like to watch pesapallo matches on YouTube and it is fascinating for me to note what it takes to pronounce even a short name like Perttu Ruuska (the tt and uu are not superfluous).


Yes it's an uralic language and it hasn't that much relatives in the world. Hungarian doesn't sound the same at all, but it is in the same group and has similarities to be seen when one digs deeper https://histdoc.net/sounds/hungary.html Pronounciation becomes easier when one figures out how words are split in to syllables, Pert - tu Ruus - ka, Tam - pe - re etc.

But how did you find pesäpallo, wasn't it quite hard to figure it out?

Originally Posted By: bmwjohn
I saw a TV show sometime back that suggested the Finnish Winter War and the Continuation War sort of started WWII in that the HUGE Soviet forces attacking Finland did so poorly against the Finns small army suggested to the Germans that the massive Red Army could be easily overrun by the Wehrmacht. Of course, many "Russian" casualties were actually Ukrainians forced to fight against the Finns.


One ukrainian division was completely annihilated in cold winter weather, 10 % of it's men survived alive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44th_Rifle_Division_(Soviet_Union)#Winter_War_(Destruction_at_the_Battle_of_Raate_Road)

If the soviets had decided to attack during summer the story might be very different..
 
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Originally Posted By: Nebroch
But how did you find pesäpallo, wasn't it quite hard to figure it out?


I can't remember how I stumbled across it online, may have been from a Wall Street Journal article/video.
It is always referred to as "Finnish Baseball" in US online sources, but it reminds me much more of slowpitch softball. I still don't completely understand the rules, but I like how important baserunning is in pesapallo (and all the headfirst slides) as well as the tactical aspects of hitting beyond just smacking the ball a long way...I believe that a long fly completely out of the field is a strike, completely unlike hitting a home run in baseball.
I would love to try playing pesapallo once, but I'm not sure how that could happen at this point. Might be too much repeated acceleration for my old joints, anyway!
 
My great grandfather emigrated from Finland to the US and settled in Saint Louis county, Minnesota, north of Duluth. There is a lake up there that retains the family name on property he settled. Both my great-grandparents came over in the 1800s. I don't know what part of Finland they came from. They had 13 kids, my grandfather was born in 1910.

My grandfather lived in a farm house with no electricity and no running water in a place where winters are brutally cold. In 1918, when the flu epidemic was killing a lot of people, the family barn was used to store dead bodies. The ground was frozen so they couldn't be buried until the spring thaw. He was 8 years old at the time. Later, he recounted that his most vivid childhood memory was seeing stacks upon stacks of bodies, including many people he knew, piled up in the barn. He was a stubborn man who liked me the best of all his grandchildren because I was the oldest boy and I carried the vowel-laden Finnish family name. I don't know much about Finland or the origins of my surname, but it would be cool to find out. My dad has a LOT of cousins, but I have never met most of them.
 
I think some people from FinnFest in the Michigan peninsula were invited to Finland for this week's celebrations by the president himself.
Mostly us Finns don't think of Finland as a grandiose country, we are proud of our history but in general Finland is fairly irrelevant haha, i was absolutely amazed when i discovered that in America there are towns with Finnish names with people who speak Finnish?? i was blown away completely, there's even a town called Oulu which is where i'm from
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That being said in Finland people such as Ari Vatanen, Juha Kankkunen, Mika Häkkinen, Henri Toivonen ( R.I.P ) , Markku Alen, etc etc are treated as gods.
Oh and a hockey match against Sweden or Russia is equivalent to the Superbowl in the U.S i'd say!
 
Originally Posted By: Virtus_Probi
Originally Posted By: Nebroch
Originally Posted By: andyd
Much respect for Finns. Their defense against the Russians was pretty amazing. They didn't have much ammunition. They wrapped themselves up in sheets and skied into the Russians and killed them with knives.


That one went little too far, finnish infantry had clumsy Mosin-Nagant m/1891 based rifles
smile.gif



They probably didn't have enough of them, but the Finns developed the outstanding Suomi KP31 submachine gun before WWII. Neglecting production cost and time issues, it may have been the finest weapon of its kind at the time...it was also quite heavy for a SMG, though. Surely the Russian SMGs that were built in the millions were more important, but the Suomi was a fine weapon.

The Finnish language has little to do with the Germanic and Slavic languages spoken by Finland's neighbors and I enjoy listening to Finnish speakers...it's easy to note that you see k a lot in Finnish words and names and it sometimes vaguely reminds me of Japanese as a result. I like to watch pesapallo matches on YouTube and it is fascinating for me to note what it takes to pronounce even a short name like Perttu Ruuska (the tt and uu are not superfluous).


How about lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, it takes me about 4 seconds to read that haha
 
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