Now I have to jump into this conversation. And eventually I'll steer it into the direction of PROGRAMMING.
I happen to be a humanist ( =a person studying anything else from the exact sciences like physics, biochemistry, computer sciences, mathematics etc, that is, a person studying languages, history, philosophy, cultural antropology and stuff like that). I namely study the FINNISH language.
Finnish has 15 cases (arguably 16, if we count the -itse as a case, but this is a difficult one, as it doesn't have congruency as the other fifteen do).
There are six local cases: three inner (inessive -ssA, elative -stA and illative -seen(sg),-siin(pl), -hVn(sg and pl)), three outer (adessive -llA, ablative-ltA and allative -lle.
There are a few called marginal cases, like the translative(-ksI, and comitative -(i)ne.
I wont bother you people with ALL of the cases. To keep this quite short, according to F.Karlsson and T.Koskenniemi (two big guys on this field) a normal finnish word has over 2000 derived forms (apart from the 15 cases, we can have singular and plural forms, we have possessive suffices (that express english forms like mine, yours, his, etc.) for each person, we have enclytic particles (for making questions -kO, having some kind of emphasis -pA and so on). This is only the beginning for subtantives (words like car, computer, name, etc). With verbs (like fishing, coding, killing - these are infinite forms) it is even 'worse', because they have apart from their 'normal' verbal forms also nominal forms (like participles - those are at least two different, but in Finnish there are more nominal forms then just participles). When you use a nominal form of the verb you can mostly put them in any case (remember, the 15 different ones?). Don't forget the forms for the persons (I eat, you eat, he eats in Finnish is minä syön, sinä syöt, hän syö).
Before I continue, you must have noticed my use of CAPITALS every now and then in suffices (-hAn, -ssA). This is a shorthand for writing -han/-hän, -ssa/-ssä. In Finnish there is vowel harmony, they have front vowels ( ä ö and y ), neutral vowels (i and e) that behave like front vowels, and back vowels ( a o u ). Back and front vowels CANNOT be mixed in one and the same word (compounds excluded, for obvious reason), so that effects the formation of words as well.
All nice and well you people think, but what has that to do with translation and programming? Well, maybe nothing, but I know of a model that can analyse AND produce words of virtually ANY language, provided the right ruleset. The model is called Two-Level morphology (TWOL). It is first developed by T. Koskenniemi and it is probably used in a lot of spelling checkers (it's good at that, because you don't need every form of a word, the stem will do!).
I have long been trying to code the model, but I have a small problem. I really don't know how to compile rules (they are a form of regular expressions) into finite machines, because, for obvious reason, I lack the knowledge.
Once that has been done, it is partly a matter of implementing a good syntax analyser. Then you will of course have the problem of semantics and pragmatics, but when morphology and syntax are done, you have done a lot.
So if someone has interest of helping me in the finite machine compilation, it would be possible to develop something in that direction. And I would like to do that, based on Allegro (for GUI, etc. AND it would be great to have a 'natural language'-system for games, wouldn't it?!)
For TWOL there are rule systems for over a dozen languages, including English, France, Jugoslavian (or whatever language it was), Dutch, Finnish, a pre-version of Mari (I am helping in the development), etc. etc.
BTW, spoken Finnish is quite different from written Finnish. When one starts learning the language it is very annoying (believe me, it is. I started in 1995, back in the Netherlands), but once you get into it, it's no problem at all. The difference between those two is probably the reason for the translator to mistranslate...!
Rockslave, make the two days, two YEARS. It took me about to years to be able to conversate normally easy stuff (shopping, movies, home situation). Now, five year later I think I am fluent enough to participate in whatever discussion (including politics, programming, philosophy, diplomacy ( I played Diplomacy last weekend with a bunch of Finns, using Finnish as main language. I got THIRD in my FIRST game http://org.utu.fi/yhd/diplomacy . There is a link to an English summary...)
Well, Here should be enough English for you non-Finnish speakers to be content for a while...
Hei, Jätkät, menkää tsjiggaa http://www.suursuomipeli.cjb.net
Siellä ollaan keskustelemassa yhteis(t)en peli(e)n kehittämisestä. Otin vapauden ruveta kehittelemään jonkinsorttista käyttöliittymä-systeemiä. Kun on jotain valmista, laitan sen sivuilleni (http://users.utu.fi/natlet).
Uskon kyllä, että tästä jotain tulee, ellei sitten peräti jymymenystyksellin peli ;o)
SKRIIVATKAA.
BTW, my girlfriend is studying Japanese, and I have been thinking of giving it a try myself. But I have to decide what to do with my Lithuanian, Udmurt, Estonian, Danish, French and German. I have kind of being neglecting my 'skills' in those languages. And I've got a Bengali-course book home...
Well, happy coding!

and it probably doesn't make a lot sense to you either

P.S: wou... you surely are smart natlet

Porukka! Käykää nyt katsomassa

www.suursuomipeli.cjb.net

tai

groups.yahoo.com/group/suursuomipeli

Siitä homman pitäis lähteä. Eiksjvain?

NL

sinne yahoogroupsiin olen muuten tehnyt mielipidekyselyn. Siellä on muuten myös 20Mt tilaa pistää tiedostoja. Sinne vois ehkä laittaa projektiin liittyviä juttuja ?

That's what you get with good ideas

Heh, japanese grammar isn't difficult. I find it easier than english. Writing is completely different. But I still prefer japanese rather than finnish, polish, or anything that ends with -ish including spanish wink

RB

...I was always under the impression that "outsiders" find it hard to learn finnish. ...Now I´m not so sure why...

But when I compare to german, english or swedish grammar... Well, why do they have so many different rules?

nyt mä vahingossa vasta löysin tän topikin..

Moi mukulat!
Kesällä saa tehdä mitä lystää, selvä se!

Kirota! Niin moni rampa programmers... I-KIRJAIN toivoa I-KIRJAIN

ilman paikka Australia rampa kehittäminen on. kaltainen neekeri taikavoima.

(This online translator kicks soooo much ass... ever seen an English-Icelandic translation? ) http://www.julienkim.com/translate.htm

Leo: I know the feeling, it's the same in South Africa...