Recognition patterns by character

The previous chapter explored the performance of the NA group as a whole. In this chapter the results of each individual character are studied in greater detail to further illuminate how each character was recognized, name was remembered and name was spelled. The names are in the following order; firstly Tähti, secondly Hellä and finally Teddy. The response data for each character is provided in a table for further clarity.

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Table 2a. All responses for identification task for Tähti in NA group.

Tähti

Response Frequency Percentage

Correct 4 40%

Incorrect 0 0

Wrong spelling 0 0

Wrong character 0 0

Total: 4/10 40%

As apparent in table 2a, Tähti was positively identified by 4 respondents, corresponding 40% of all responses and also being identified with most accuracy. The character plays only a minor part in the episode and is specifically named five times. No other answers were assigned to Tähti, her name was not misspelled nor was she falsely identified as another character. Six respondents left her name blank.

One possible interpretation for this is that her part is rather minor. She speaks less than ten lines and is named on five occasions, compared to the main protagonists Hellä and Teddy who are named more often and speak the majority of lines in the episode. However, her cutie mark corresponds with her name, as discussed in earlier chapters. This could improve children’s ability to associate the name to the character;

it alludes directly to the character’s appearance and is readily available as a point of reference when looking at the character, similar to names such as ‘Grumpy Smurf’ or ‘Blackbeard’.

Because ‘tähti’ is a Finnish generic word for ‘star’, it could also explain why she is recognized (her name spelled correctly) with greater accuracy than Teddy, and more frequently than Hellä, despite having only a minor part in the episode. However these are simply educated guesses, as due to time restraints I did not ask the children to explain how they came to the conclusions they did with their answers (whether extratextual cues were used) and it could be interesting to study character name recognition further by interviews or open ended questions.

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Table 2b. All responses for Hellä for identification task in NA group.

Hellä

Response Frequency Percentage

Correct 2 20%

Incorrect 1 10%

Wrong spelling 0 0

Wrong character 0 0

Total: 3/10 30%

Hellä is a main protagonist in this episode. She is named on six occasions, speaks in excess of ten lines and has a brief song towards the end of the episode. She was correctly identified by 2/10 respondents, with no misspellings, constituting only 20% of all respondents. Curiously, one respondent chose to engage in creative liberties and renamed Hellä altogether with a conventional Finnish female name, Leena.

Altogether 7 respondents left her name blank.

Although ‘hellä’ is a generic Finnish language word for kind or gentle, the name refers most actively to the character’s demeanor. Her cutie mark is a large heart surrounded by small hearts, which makes the original English name Sweetheart resonate with both her personality as well as her external appearance.

This is not as much the case with the Finnish name Hellä, which could attribute to the low recognition rate, as her name is not as readily recalled from simply perceiving the character’s appearance.

It could also be noted that perhaps the archaic word sydänkäpy could have been substituted for Sweetheart as it has been in earlier versions of My Little Pony, and the name would have corresponded with both demeanor and appearance. However, according to Kielitoimiston sanakirja, sydänkäpy is an affectionate pet name for cherished or toddler, and might not have been an appropriate translation.

It is very difficult to fathom why the wrong response, Leena, manifested. Leena is not a name of any of the characters, and it is questionable whether Hellä could be misheard as Leena multiple times throughout the episode. It could be a simple matter of not wanting to leave answers blank and answering something even when the respondent did not have the correct answer. It is also possible the respondent substituted the name with Leena from forgetting the correct name but perhaps having interpreted Hellä

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as an archaic conventional female name and making a guess at the response. The children were advised to leave responses blank when they could not remember character names.

Table 2c. All responses for Teddy in identification task for NA group.

Teddy

Response Frequency Percentage

Correct 1 10%

Incorrect 0 0

Wrong spelling 8 80%

Wrong character 0 0

Total: 9/10 90%

The spelling of Teddy could be argued, but the official Finnish DVD sleeve spelling is considered to be the correct spelling in this study. However, respondents were not shown how to spell the name, they only heard it spoken during the episode. Teddy was a primary main protagonist (or perhaps, antagonist?) in this episode. He is named by most of the characters who speak lines, altogether 25 times. In fact the very last word spoken in the episode just before the end is ‘Teddy’. The sheer number of repetitions could partially explain why he is positively identified by 9 out of 10 respondents. However, only one participant was able to spell his name correctly, with the other responses containing misspellings.

Teddy is misspelled by 8 respondents, which corresponds 89% of all positive identifications. Suggested spellings which can still be associated with the correct character without surmountable doubt include

1) Tedi (4) 2) Ted (2) 3) Dedi (1) 4) Thed (1)

The numerous misspellings could be an indication that children were unsure of how a seemingly foreign origin name should be spelled in an otherwise Finnish language text, with 50% of incorrect spellings being Tedi; very close phonetic resemblance to how most character pronounce the name. The name is also exaggerated as Ted-di with a distinctive double consonant in some lines, but this spelling did not occur in the responses.

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One of the reasons for a high ratio of misspelled answers could hypothetically be that both the letters D and Y are not typical in conventional Finnish names and can be result of an imported name (such as Swedish Daniel or Norwegian Ylva), although not always (consider Yrjö). Because the English Y is usually pronounced akin to the Finnish I, and the Finnish Y as the last letter of a name is often pronounced differently from English, confusion on the correct letter is almost inevitable in a Finnish language context.

Ted and Thed are possibly result of this language confusion, and children may have assumed the nominate name to be Ted, and that it conjugates to Ted +i (+llä , +lle) because it ends in a consonant. This is likely beyond the children’s formal Finnish grammar training, but simply a matter of inherent language knowledge. These too are understandable mistakes, though the spelling Thed is curious in the sense that Finnish language does not have a dental fricative sound equivalent to the English ⟨th⟩ (as in this or that), nor is this spelling native to the Finnish language. A possible reason for this spelling may also lie in the phonetic sounds the janitor character makes when speaking to or about Teddy.