正文翻譯
Why do so many people mistake Finland as a Scandinavian country?
評論翻譯
Peter
Lots of answers have said why this is an easy mistake to make.
There are two more interesting questions:
First, is it a mistake at all?
Not really. Scandinavia, in English, has multiple meanings. It always includes Norway and Sweden. It frequently includes Denmark. It sometimes includes Iceland, the Aland Islands, and the Faroe
Islands, and it sometimes includes Finland.
In Scandinavia itself, the term seems to mostly be used for peoples who share a related set of languages. Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are quite close. Icelandic is pretty different. Finnish is utterly different - not at all related.
很多答案都說明了為什麼這是一個很容易犯的錯誤。還有兩個更有趣的問題:
首先，這個說法完全錯誤嗎?不見得。斯堪地那維亞在英語中有多種含義。它一定包括挪威和瑞典。通常也包括丹麥、奧蘭群島、法羅群島，有時還包括芬蘭。
第二，為什麼這是一個錯誤(如果是的話)
在斯堪的那維亞半島，這個詞似乎主要是用來形容那些擁有一套相關語言的民族。丹麥語、瑞典語和挪威語很接近。冰島語很不一樣。芬蘭語則完全不同——跟它們完全沒有關係。
Kenneth Childers
Finland is bilingual, with 6% of Finns speaking Swedish as a first language. I have a friendly colleague here in Fort Wayne who’s from Finland. She agrees with me that a case can be made that Finland is a part of Scandinavia because of the large [though of course minoritarian] presence of native Swedish speakers.
芬蘭是雙語國家，6%的芬蘭人將瑞典語作為第一語言。我在韋恩堡這裡有個很友好的同事，他來自芬蘭。她同意我的觀點，認為芬蘭是斯堪地那維亞半島的一部分，因為以瑞典語為母語的人很多(儘管當然是小比例)。
Mats Andersson
Because in the English-speaking world, they often use 「Scandinavian」 where we would use 「Nordic」. The terms are interchangeable to many speakers of English, and many won’t even have heard the term 「Nordic」.
And the reason why we have the term 「Nordic」, as separate from 「Scandinavian」, is that in almost any aspect you care to mention that is relevant in an everyday discussion, like social, cultural, economical, or political issues, Finland is pretty much indistinguishable from the Scandinavian countries, even from the inside.
因為在英語國家，他們經常用"斯堪地那維亞"而我們用"北歐"。對於許多講英語的人來說，這兩個詞是可以互換的，很多人甚至都沒聽說過「北歐」這個詞。為什麼我們用「北歐人」這個詞區別於「斯堪地那維亞人」，是因為在幾乎所有你想提到的日常討論相關的方面，比如社會、文化、經濟或政治問題，芬蘭與斯堪地那維亞半島國家幾乎沒有什麼區別，即使從內部來看也是如此，但是芬蘭對非北歐人來說「顯然不是斯堪地那維亞」。語言幾乎是唯一的區別，很少有芬蘭人說北歐語言。(我有時甚至在Quora上收到一些問題，似乎認為瑞典語和芬蘭語在某種程度上是相似的。)
People who think so do actually not make a very serious mistake. From an international perspective, it is actually understandable that many people more or less count Finland as a Scandinavian country.
Finland is in most regards similar to the three Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. When it comes to such matters as how society on a whole works and how people live their daily life.
Another, less important, difference is that there are som aspects of traditional Finnish folklore culture that Scandinavians think it is a bit hard to relate to.
From an outside perspective, theese differences between the three Scandinavian countries and Finland are in most cases not very important.
To illustrate this, I would like to compare this to another region in Europe.
I would say that Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary are typical Central European countries. (There are other Central European countries as well, but let’s stay with theese four right now).
The people in Poland, Czechia and Slovakia are speaking Slavic languages, that at least to some degree are mutually intelligble. The people in Hungary is speaking a very different Fenno-Ugric language.
Since I neither speak any Slavic language, nor a Fenno-Ugric language, I don’t consider this difference to be of main importance.
I understand that Hungary because of its strange language perhaps is a little bit of a dpecial case sometimes, but I percieve the historical and cultural similarities between Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hurgary to be a more important factor.
For that reason, I group them together. It may be a simplification, but a degree a simplification is sometimes necessary to be able to see and be able to understand a bigger picture, so to say.
這樣想的人實際上不算非常嚴重的錯誤。從國際的角度來看，很多人或多或少地認為芬蘭是一個斯堪地那維亞國家，這其實是可以理解的。當涉及到諸如社會整體如何運作和人們如何生活這樣的問題時，芬蘭在很多方面與瑞典、挪威和丹麥這三個斯堪地那維亞國家相似。主要的區別是，芬蘭的大多數人口說的語言與斯堪地那維亞語非常不同。另一個不太重要的區別是，芬蘭的傳統民俗文化中有一些方面是斯堪地那維亞人認為很難理解的。從外部的角度來看，這三個斯堪地那維亞國家和芬蘭之間的這些差異在大多數情況下不是很重要。為了說明這一點，我想將其與歐洲的另一個地區進行比較。我認為波蘭、捷克、斯洛伐克和匈牙利是典型的中歐國家。(也有其他中歐國家，但我們現在只談這四個國家)。波蘭、捷克和斯洛伐克的人民說的是斯拉夫語，至少在某種程度上是能相互理解的。匈牙利人說的是一種非常不同的芬尼烏戈爾語。由於我既不會說斯拉夫語，也不會說芬尼烏戈爾語語言，所以我不認為這一區別有什麼重要意義。我理解匈牙利，因為它的語言很奇怪，也許有時會有點特殊，但我認為波蘭、捷克、斯洛伐克和匈牙利之間的歷史和文化相似性是一個更重要的因素，因此，我把它們放在一起。這可能是一種簡化，但某種程度的簡化有時是必要的，可以這麼說，簡化能夠看到和理解更大的畫面。
Profile photo for Lukasz Bernas
Finland is very much Scandinavian country. They share similar culture, history and political stands.
The only difference is the language, as Finnish is unrelated to Indo-European languages.
芬蘭是一個斯堪地那維亞國家。他們有著相似的文化、歷史和政治立場。唯一不同的是語言，因為芬蘭語與印歐語系無關。
Profile photo for Pietro Del Buono
「Scadinavian People」 is an expression thar ecompasses Danes, Swedes and Nowegians.
「Scandinavian Peninsula」, however only consists of only Norway and Sweden.
Finland is a continental country that borders with the east of the Scadinavian Peninsula, like France is a continetal country that borders with the west of the Italian Peninsula, which consists of Italy, the Vatican City and San Marino.
While all Scandinavians, as above defined, speak mutually intelleggible idioms, the Finnish language is not lixed to any of the Scandinavian languages.
Rather, it is part of the Uralic language-group like Estonian, Livonic and few other languages or dialects spoken in the north of Russia (Karelian, Ludic and a few others).
In conclusion, while slipshod speakers often either say or imply that Finland is part of Scadinavia, that simply it is as true as saying that that France is part of the Italian Peninsula.
「斯卡迪納維亞人」是丹麥人、瑞典人和挪威人常用的一種說法。然而，「斯堪地那維亞半島」只包括挪威和瑞典。芬蘭是一個大陸國家，東部與斯堪地那維亞半島接壤，比如法國是一個與義大利半島西部接壤的大陸國家，而義大利半島它包括義大利、梵蒂岡城和聖馬利諾。正如上面所定義的，所有的斯堪地那維亞人都講相互理解的習語，而芬蘭語與任何斯堪地那維亞語都沒有聯繫。相反，它是烏拉爾語系的一部分，就像愛沙尼亞語和少數其他語言一樣，或者俄羅斯北部的方言(卡累利阿語、魯迪克語和其他一些方言)。總之，當粗心的說話者經常說或暗示芬蘭是斯堪地那維亞的一部分時，就像說法國是義大利半島的一部分一樣。