How words take on lives of their own
February 12th, 2015 Posted by irina Language, My Story No Comment yetI don’t remember when kaunis became beautiful; all I know is that it didn’t start out that way.
“How do you say beautiful in Finnish?”
“Kaunis”
“Cow-ou-nis? Seriously? It sounds like cow.”
And there it was. My first reaction to the word beautiful in Finnish: it sounds like cow.