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by regandersong 315 days ago
After living in Finland a few years we got a dog, so I was often holding a big bone in my hand and saying the Finnish word for it, "luu". Something felt so correct and ancient about it, like luu is - and could only ever have been - the word that means the concept of a bone. I looked it up and luu is Proto-Finno-Ugric, and one of the oldest words to stick around in the Finnish language.

I have great respect for that first person to shake mammoth bone in another person's face saying "luu". They nailed it.

1 comments

The other “uu” words in Finnish feel ancient too. When Finnish children are asked to come up with rhymes, these are often the ones they suggest:

luu = bone

kuu = Moon

suu = mouth

muu = other

You can practically imagine the apes in the first act of the movie “2001” coming up with these words to describe their environment.

(The monolith could be a “muu muu”, the Other Other, to distinguish it from the basic “muu” of the other tribe.)

Belonging here: puu = tree