Venus Flytrap

« Fnar! Fnar! Beware my terrifying kirkkovene! »

For those who love languages, studying them is always a rich source of amusement as well as insight to how other cultures think and regard themselves. Slang and euphemism are at the forefront of popular culture which often have meanings that you can understand even without a firm grasp of the language, but defy even the fluent or the native speaker when it comes to translating them into another language while keeping the same meaning. In this gap between meaning and translation, comedy reigns supreme.

Since today is 'National Women's Day' in Finland and we are celebrating 100 years of women having the right to vote, I'll pick one particularly amusing euphemism for the female anatomy that really doesn't translate; kirkkovene. Kirkkovene, when literally translated, means 'church boat' which is a wooden boat along the lines of a rowing scull for eight with oars. OK, so then you start to think, well, what does a cooter have to do with a boat full of pious, rowing guys on their way to church? It doesn't seem like it has a lot to do with gettin' to know a lady much, much more intimately than, say, reading the bible together.

Right, so at this point I ask Jarkko where the connection between a rowboat and a hootchie might be so he gets out a piece of paper and draws a picture that looks like a Keith Haring sketch of a happy coffee bean, looks up at me and says, 'get it?' He saw a coy allusion to a woman's naughty bits and I saw something more like a carnivorous tropical plant with an appetite for flies:

I sure hope my pookie doesn't look like that. Of course, I haven't really spent much quality time staring at it contemplating what it reminds me of. This might explain why Finnish guys seem to complain about not getting laid very often as, damn, I wouldn't get near something that looked like that either as it might chomp my dick off. That wouldn't be much fun, would it? Maybe Finnish guys could think less about wooden boats and more about flowers like Georgia O'Keeffe did to evoke the same image. Boats are supposed to be phallic. :)

Soft, pastel coloured petals suggest an inviting and friendly entity instead of the gnashing teeth of the venus kirkkovene flytrap unlesss, of course, you're into that sort of thing. :)

Pure linguistic comedy gold.