23 Comments
Is this reduplication derived from Hebrew "sofsof"? Or from Italian "alla fin fine" (but that has a different meaning)?
Thank you for this translation. I haven't realized it, but we have similar saying/particle in Slovak - "koniec-koncov".
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Same in Polish "w końcu koniec" :-) I believe it's common for all Slavic languages
isnt this a feature of ido...you repeat the first half of the word or something?
It's called reduplication and it's a feature of just about every language, although it's more common in some than others.
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Very, very common in Japanese. Some of the many examples that come to my mind are まだまだ madamada "still" and だめだめ damedame "you can't" "it's impossible"
I haven't seen this in Ido. I think finfine is in Ido, as well. But I don't this it is a certain feature in Ido, though
It's used in some words to add emphasis. "Being Colloquial in Esperanto" has a page on this: http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/eo/colloq/colloq140.html
I feel like this translates into English most literally as "Finally finally!" or "Actually finally!" even though the first isn't good English and the second one is awkward.
I feel like «finfine» is finally as in "at last", while plain «fine» is finally as in "lastly".
