Pareto Principle in Lapland

When learning a foreign language you need to build a personal contact with all individual words and expressions. It is an interesting process. You learn to know beautiful, dull, transparent, charming, aggressive, inviting, and disgusting words. Some of the words have a special smell or a taste, some have been exported, imported, smuggled or violated, some have interesting stories to tell.

Did you know, for instance, that they were the Vikings who brought the word ´window´into the English language? The original form ´vindauga´ means wind´s eye. If you know the English word ´husband´ and then meet ´animal husbandry´, you might think it to be something very strange. The strangeness disappears immediately, if you know the basic word is the Swedish ´husbonde´ meaning farmer. That was brought to the British Isles by the Vikings as well.

Words not only tell stories. They build history as well. During my personal history I have learnt to appreciate words like ´technological advances´, ´entrepreneurial attitudes´, ´specifics´, ´characteristics´, ´enthusiasm´ and ´laboratory´. These words, and many others similar to them, play an important economic role in my life.

In the Finnish language we always emphasize the first syllable of all words. It is the normal practice and there are no exceptions to the rule. When learning English we are caught by a surprise - the same rule does not apply for all English words.

When we Finns see words like ´employability´or ´prerequisite´, we are in trouble. We recognize the meaning, but we do not know how to pronounce the word. In written language this does not matter. In normal speech, however, it is quite an irritating limitation. Additionally the native speakers of English do not simply understand you, if you decide to test the Finnish way of pronouncing words like ´employment authorities´, ´hotel´, ´development´, ´competitive´etc.

You probbaly know the Pareto principle: 20% of your intelligence is enough to solve 80% of the problems you have in life, 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your income, 20% of the clothes in your wardrobe cover 80% of the need you have, 20% of all you have learnt is needed for the work you do. Words requiring the shift of emphasis bring in 20% of my income and enjoyment. The rest - 80% - come from all other words and their innumerable combinations, spoken, read and written.

Think that I could really invent something new in the world of words and meanings. Think that I would be able to develop the invention to become a duplicable system. Think that the system would be profitably marketable. That would not only increase my personal income and enjoyment. It would also increase the enjoyment of many other people, and as far as I know what people really enjoy tends to become somehow contagious and spread around as general welfare and prosperity, which again increases creativity and economic activity.

How do I know that? I grew up in the south of Lapland. It was nothing special at that time. People just lived their normal, daily life there. Now Lapland is something special. It has a special magic that captures people and that creates general welfare in the whole region.

In the course of the years Lapland has become a marketable product. It became a marketable product when people realised that the days have a special length - in the winter without light, in the summer without darkness. It became even a better product when people realised that the autumn in Lapland has special colours. You know that every leaf, grass and straw gets its particular red, yellow or orange colour after having been kissed and bitten by the first frosts. Isn´t that something special? Just think about that happening during one night only. In the evening all the scenery is green - more or less the colour of spinach. And in the morning when you wake up, you find yourself in a special world of all flaming reds, yellows and oranges.

Of course this happens everywhere in the world where there are frosts, but what made it a tourist attraction in Lapland is that this specific natural phenomenon has a special name in our Finnish language. It is called ´ruska´.

To me the English equivalent of the concept ´autumn colours´sounds as interesting as ´morning paper´or ´evening meal´. But in Finnish we have now a specific name for clear, magical phenomenon that repeats itself every autumn, a concept that everybody knows. We have ´ruska´. And as we all know a concept can be combined with other concepts. This means, for instance, that we can have ´ruskajazz´, ´ruska fashion´, ´ruska meals´, ´ruska angst´as well as ´ruska coping´.

The only limit for making new combinations is to be found in your creativity. And, as we all know ´ruska´ has a very particular positive influence on your creative resources. Should you ever doubt that, you just need to go to Lapland in the autumn and charge your creative batteries there.

If you could choose, for instance, between ´an autumn colours love affair´and ´ruska love´, which one would you prefer? Just think about ´ruska adventures´ in Lapland, when the nights are getting longer and longer...

Wouldn´t that be worth experiencing?

Maybe, I should also remind you that the Pareto principle 20:80 does not apply above the Arctic Circle. It is quite normal that everything there becomes 100%.