Hello linguisticarians! Today we focus on the most Finnish form of measurement we could find, ‘poronkusema’. In as far as a definition it means a distance of about 5 to 7 kilometres, the distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without a ‘comfort break’. ‘Poronkusema’ literally means ‘reindeer’s urine’.

Finland is the land of a thousand lakes and the midnight sun. Its dense forests, fertile mires and pristine lakes, and traditional lifestyles, have shaped the linguistic landscape of the Finnish language throughout the years, from surname conventions to everyday expressions. One instance of this ever-present connection with nature is this obsolete unit of measurement used by the Sami people to describe the distance a reindeer can travel without having to stop to urinate. It is a compound of two Finnish roots ‘poron’ meaning ‘reindeer's’ and‎ ‘kusema’ meaning ‘peed by’. At best it is an informal traditional measure of distance, and thusly is not well defined.

Another interesting example of this sort of Finnish colloquialism is ‘peninkulma’, which refers to the distance a barking dog can be heard in still air.

Traced back to the Proto-Finnic languages, ‘poron’ for ‘reindeer’, shares a root with the Latin root ‘pecus’ for ‘cow’, Now, in early times, cattle were viewed as a trading commodity, and property was often valued in terms of cattle. Therefore it is not difficult to trace this same root down another path to ‘Pecunia’ meaning ‘money’ has also given us impecunious, a word meaning "having little or no money," and ‘peculate’, a synonym for "embezzle." In ‘pecus’ you might also recognize the word peculiar, which originally meant "exclusively one's own" or "distinctive" before acquiring its current meaning of "strange."

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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