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A comment on Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).. Parent comment

Re:Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t). by dalke on Sunday October 16, 2011 @04:33AM (#3116866)
Most say it's hard to learn. Putting that aside, I know Finnish contains many borrowed words. Take church, which in Finnish is "kirkko", Swedish is kyrka, and in Scottish English, kirk. This form almost certainly comes from the Norse "kirkja".

For a more technical term, consider "democracy", which is "demokratia". The Greek roots are obvious.

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Re:Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t). by tokenadult on Sunday October 16, 2011 @11:11AM (#3117451)
This form almost certainly comes from the Norse "kirkja".

It actually comes all the way from a Greek word that means "the Lord's," short for a term for churches that means "the assembly of the Lord" or "the house of the Lord."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=church

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Church#Etymology

(Basis of knowledge: student of Biblical Greek, native speaker of English, sporadic student of various Germanic and Ugro-Altaic languages.)

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Re:Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t). by dalke on Sunday October 16, 2011 @01:35PM (#3117773)
Certainly. But here I mean that the flow probably came through the Norse. The Scotts definitely got their term from the Norse. Since "Christianity gained a foothold in Finland during the 11th century. It was strengthened with growing Swedish influence in the 12th century and the Finnish "crusade" of Birger Jarl in the 13th century." [Wikipedia] and since the Swedes were often trading and plundering along the Finnish coast, then I strongly suspect that the current Finnish word came from the Swedish one, which comes from the same Germanic root as in English.

The only etymology I could find is: kirkko [from Germanic. Compare Estonian kirik, Karelian kirikkö, Lapland girku, Swedish kyrka] : church

A quick scan of http://www.freeweb.hu/etymological/finnish.htm shows many words of Germanic origin. I like how "kihlat" (dowry) compares to the Swedish "gisslan" (hostage).

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