Sunny Breaks

For many many years professional raconteurs have known that adding the odd foreign word to conversation keeps things interesting. And sometimes there’s things out there that we just don’t have words for in English. The Wordsters have traditionally reached for French (or at a stretch, German) but I’m here to tell you that it’s a hackish and cliched move.

Why not dazzle your peers with a little Finnish? Like “kalsarikännit”, which according to Cybbis et. al. at brainal meltown—our experts in East Scandinavia, “Kal is pronounced cal in the word musical. Sa like in bonsai. Ri like in Ritz. Kän like Can in Canada. Ni(t) like in nitpick.”
The rough english equivalent is ‘underweardrunk’ and, “means drinking in home, alone, usually performed by men. May include watching sport from tv or other pitiful activities”.
Priceless!

comments:
Jon
url: the spork
date: 2003-10-14-16-31
Why, that’s wunderbar. I need to immediatly make friends with strange finnish people that seem to have nothing to do with their time except dream up words to spring on unsuspecting foreigners .. =). That and shovel snow from off their roofs.

name: yak sox
date: 2003-10-14-22-47
I thought they kept the snow on the roof for insulation.