European tropers UNITE (or don't)!

Not me, though; I'm Finnish, and we received no military assistance from the US in either World War.

In WWI, we were not involved. We were still a part of Russia but our autonomous government had managed to exclude our people from conscription into the Russian army; in fact, some volunteers from Finland went off to Germany to receive training when Germany and Russia were enemies! In 1917, after the revolution in Russia, Finland declared independence and Lenin agreed to recognise us because he couldn't afford a war to re-take the country.

In WWII, we were invaded by the USSR in 1939 and managed to beat them off almost exclusively on our own. Then, when it became apparent that they were going to invade us again, we entered a pact with Germany. We weren't technically allied to them, but in practice we were, though our forces were only involved in our part of the Eastern front. Germany sent in troops to defend us, and when the USSR eventually invaded, German troops defended the Northern half of our country while Finnish forces defended the South and invaded the USSR to create a buffer zone. When the Soviets eventually won, we had to drive the Germans out through force (but our officers warned them because they didn't want to kill the Germans when they could just as well be allowed to escape to Norway, so the actual warfare in the North was limited.)

In WWII, we were at war with the Allies, the Germans, and the USSR, but our capital was never occupied and we never ceased to be a democracy; but we lost some land to the USSR and our foreign policy was very strongly influenced by the Soviets until 1991.

...Yeah, pretty useless info-dump but maybe it's of some interest to some.

Now that I'm done writing this, I'd like - perhaps hypocritically - to propose that no further discussion of the USA's part in the World Wars is brought into this thread, as it is off-topic (and even if this thread isn't on OTC, it's still supposed to be about Europe.)

Your new avatar is nicer. I'll just ask you a little question that most Europeans could answer; if you can answer it, you're closer to being accepted into this holiest of holies, the European clique on the fora.

So: How many medals did European countries win in the World Cup last year, and which country won which medal?

edited 15th Nov '11 3:01:02 PM by BestOf

I might as well leave now. I don't watch Soccer Football.

edited 15th Nov '11 3:01:16 PM by Joesolo

Of course, I'm not really an authority on this thread, nor do I have any say in who's allowed to participate and who isn't.

(BTW: The Gold was won by Spain, who beat the Netherlands in the Final. The Bronze game was between Uruguay and Germany; Germany won, and all of the silverware went to Europe.)

Oh, and if you want to strike something, use this markup: [[strike:text]] to get text.

You're welcome.

edited 15th Nov '11 3:02:56 PM by BestOf

There we go. Thanks BTW.

Not sure what'd I do here anyway. I havn't even BEEN to Europe, though I'd like to visit Italy, England, Greece. Maybe France. Liechtenstein, just because of how small it is. Other place too, probablly. Just as soon as I have a ton of money. And learn some more Italian. (I'm limited to Hello, One, Two, go f yourself, and fried squid. That won't get me far)

edited 15th Nov '11 3:05:51 PM by Joesolo

Ahh, football, Britain's most obnoxious export.

Hi there! Really didn´t zink, I vould be ze only German around here...oh vell... EUROPE RULES!

Fear not Savato! For I am a german Troper as well! Also joined the map.

There are many German tropers; have you read through this thread (in its whole, considerable length of four pages) or is it the case that the Germans haven't shown up (possibly because they fear the word "unite"?)

edited 5th Feb '12 12:41:07 PM by BestOf

Yes, I´ve read the entire tread and didn´t find anyone from Germany. And no, we don´t fear the word "unite". Wer diesen Satz versteht, ohne einen Übersetzer zu benutzen, ist awesome!

Took me a while to figure it out, but when I got what the last bit meant (mostly guesswork,) well, I'm glad I didn't consult a translator. Ich habe Deutsch für zwei Jahre gelernt, aber heute kann ich nicht Deutsch sprechen. (I'd like to add that that's all I can say but I don't remember enough German to say even that!)

I also know some French from the two courses I took: pardonnes-moi, je suis en rétard! (I probably got that wrong.)

So, I combed through the thread, and saw Das Auto and Octo. Both of them are German, but it seems they didn't mention it in the thread.

edited 5th Feb '12 12:50:38 PM by BestOf

Wow...congratulations! Your knowledge of the German language is quite impressive! But you´ll never be able to figure this one out: Auch wenn es für vielle Deutsche nicht so zu seien scheint, ist die deutsche Sprache schon immer äusserest schwer zu erlernen gewesen, hauptsächlich aufgrund von drei verschiedenen Artikeln, der Großschreibung jedes Nomens, der Kommasetzung und vier Buchstaben, die es meinen Kenntnissen nach nur in der deutschen Sprache zu geben scheint, welche da wären:Ä,Ö,Ü und ß. If you can translate this, I believe a decendant of the holy Chuck Norris has been found.

edited 5th Feb '12 1:04:57 PM by Savato

No, I only got parts of that. Sorry.

As for Ü, the s-thing (double-s, basically,) and Ä and Ö, Finnish only has the last two of those. (So my keyboard has a key for Ä and one for Ö, but I have to press a different button and "u" to get "ü".)

But we also have a Swedish letter: Å (å.) It's always read as an o (as in, the vowel in "door," and the letter "o" can be read as o, u, or y in Swedish.

We have that letter in our alphabet, but it doesn't occur in our language (except if you count proper names.)

And now you know (something you'll never need!)

Yay! I love knowledge you´ll never need. Translation of the sentence above: Even though many Germans don´t seem to think so, the German language has always been hard to learn, mainly because of three different articles, the placement of commas, andfour lettersthat, as far as I know, only exist in German, which are Ä,Ö,Ü and ß. I don´t even know, what the "ß" is for, it´s used exactly like "ss" By the way, the pronounciation of the "Ü" is like the "u" in valuing.

Yeah, as I said, I took German for two years so I know how all of those letters are pronounced.

In the Scandinavian languages (as well as Finnish,) the "y" is pronounced the same as the German "ü". Ä and Ö are also pronounced the same way in German, Finnish and Swedish. I know that there are some other languages that have those letters, too. I think Turkish and Hungarian have ä, ö and ü. (I'm not sure, though.)

I didn't think German was particularly hard to learn (though it was too easy to forget since I didn't use it,) except indeed for the three families of nouns. It's a very logical language, unlike French. Don't try to study Finnish, though; the UN has classified it as the second hardest language in the world, after Mandarin.

Ah..interesting...I´ve been learning Latin for 4 years now, and in my opinion, it is quite hard, because it is rather illogical. But: ei uskaltautunut ei saanut (Google Translate )

I don't know what that's supposed to mean. If I were to translate that directly into English, it'd be "didn't dare, didn't get."

Google Translate does some pretty weird things to languages. Us English students have a game where you take the lyrics of a song that's in Finnish, Google-translate it into English, then translate that text back into Finnish and then do the whole thing again, and when we have plenty of songs like that, we make people read the lyrics and guess which song it was. It's surprisingly hard!

Yeah, we have that game too...it´s rather fun. The sentence was supposed to mean: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Another fun internet-game:Choose a random word from a dictionary. Every player googles it and as many other words as he/she likes at the same time. Who has got the least results wins. If you have 0 results, you lose.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" become "ei uskaltanut, ei saanut..."

That's why I don't recommend Google Translate to anyone. I mean, I can sorta kinda imagine how that translation would happen, but you'd have to know nothing about Finnish grammar to have it end up like that - which, of course, is exactly the problem with Google Translate. It doesn't know grammar.

edited 19th Oct '14 1:27:25 PM by BestOf

Yeah...but the results can be quite funny... [1]

Erurteilt komplett! Niemand nimmt zum Zucker für mich an!

(It`s german. So sry, Best of!)

edited 10th Feb '12 4:56:03 PM by LayLay

En keksi tähän hätään tyhmempää vitsiä kuin vastata suomeksi. (Googlen kääntäjästä tuskin on apua.)

I didn´t use any translator, but I think you wrote:\\ A cookie for the one, capable of understanding something. /You can use Google Translate)
In German: Einen Keks für den, der etwas hiervon versteht. (Du kannst den Google-Übersetzer verwenden)

I said: "I can't think of a more stupid joke at the moment than responding in Finnish. (Google Translate is unlikely to be any help.)"

Ah! My thoughts: keksi= Keks(German for cookie) vastata=verstehen(German for understand) kuin=kann(German for can) suomeski=something

Finnish isn't an Indo-European language, so thinking like that won't get you far.

That said, there's really no reason why you should try to translate Finnish; there are only 5 million of us, and our language is considered the second hardest on Earth. Definitely not worth the effort.