Finding my way in Finnish

New approach to vocab, day 3

2010-09-17T09:58:00.001+03:00

kamala terrible
lämpötila temperature
olohuone living room

New approach to vocab, day 2

2010-09-16T12:03:00.001+03:00

aiemmin earlier, before
tunti hour
tavara goods

The new approach to vocabulary

2010-09-15T14:19:00.002+03:00

It's been a long time since I posted here, and my Finnish hasn't progressed much at all. But today I read an article that pointed out that if you learn 3 new words in a foreign language every day, you'll have a vocabulary of over a thousand words. And in English, 70% of what is written uses just that amount of vocabulary. So perhaps it's time to start that in Finnish:

haalari overalls
ikä age (how old you are)
juttu thing

Alko

2009-07-01T14:21:00.003+03:00

Until the eighties the only places to get alcohol in Finland were illegal distillers and homebrewers, pharmacies (for rubbing alcohol), and the state owned and run liquor stores called "Alko". Then supermarkets were licensed for selling beer (kalja or olut), cider (sideri) and a popular Finnish drink that consists of gin and fizzy grape fruit juice, called a long drink (lonkero). All these drinks are sold in 2.7% and 4.7% alcohol by volume. These are given the strength categorisations of I and III, and you can see these Roman numerals on the can (tölkki) or bottle (pullo).

If you want stronger category A beer, at 5.2% ABV, or wine or spirits, you still need to go to an Alko. These stores have opening times similar to the post office, although I've been told that the austerity of them has diminished a lot since the eighties. A typical Alko will stock wine (viini), grain spirits (viina), and liquer (likööri) from various countries. You can get Australian red wine (Australialainen punaviini), white wine (valkoviini), champagne (samppanja), along with an intriguing collection of liquers and wines that are peculiar to Finland:

tyrniviini - sea buckthorn wine. About 18% alcohol, made from an orange berry that is popular for its high vitamin C content and not much else. The wine is drinkable, but only just.

lakkalikööri - cloudberry liquer. If you have to drink an orange alcoholic drink, this is the one to go for. The cloudberry is a rarity that looks like an orange blackberry, and grows in Nordic swamps.

koskenkorva - the most popular brand of Finnish clear white spirits, made from fermented distilled barley. It tastes a lot like vodka, and is often referred to as kossu.

salmari - the short name for salmiakki kossu. Ground up ammonium chloride sweets are disolved in koskenkorva to produce a drink that tastes like cough medicine, and is consumed in large quantities in Finnish bars.

terva snapsi - schnaps made with pine tar. Tastes as though someone spilt a bottle of kossu on the road during a hot summer's day and managed to scrape most of it back into the bottle.

After you've consumed your drinks, the empties are to be returned to the bottle return point (pullopalautus) in order to reclaim the deposit (pantti). This is quite a substantial amound: cans are worth 15 cents, and large soft drink bottles are worth 40 cents. Machines with bar code readers and an intriguing collection of conveyor belts scan the bottles and print out a receipt (kuitti) that can be traded in at an Alko or supermarket till for cash.

Or more beer.

Me, mine, you, yours

2009-05-22T09:27:00.005+03:00

We've covered "you" (sinä) and "I" (minä) before, and noted the fact that when they're the subject, you usually don't include them in the sentence unless you're emphasising the fact that it's you or me you're talking about:

olen - I am
olet - you are
minä olen - it's me, I am
sinä olet - it's you, you are

Now, just as nouns can be altered using cases to indicate that something is "in the house" using the inessive (talossa), or you are going into the house using the illative (taloon), or something belongs to the house using the genative (talon), sinä and minä can be changed using cases too. However, some subtle differences come into play.

First here is the genative - if something is mine or yours, the ending changes to -un:

se on minun - it is mine
se on sinun - it is yours
minun auto on punäinen - my car is red
sinun kirja on kiinnostava - your book is interesting

A trickier case is the partative. We've already discussed the many meanings it can take. The main meaning is to indicate "some" or "part of" when it is used as part of the object of the sentence. In fact it is the most common case for words that are the object of the sentence. Strangely enough, it is used in the following sentences:

rakastan sinua - I love you
rakastatko minua - do you love me?

The accusative case is related, but rather than meaning "some of", it means "all of". If you want to tell someone to meet you, you want them to meet all of you (I know, you want them to love all of you too, but that's just an irregularity in the Finnish language), so you would say:

tapa minut - meet me
haluan sinut - I want you (all of you - to help out, for example)

With that last one you have to be careful, because if you said:

haluan sinua - I want you

it would actually mean "I want some of you" - which would carry the strong connotation of wanting to go to bed with the person. However, the following mistake:

rakastan sinut - I love all of you

althought technically incorrect, has a very poetic (and passionate) ring to it.

Conjugating verbs - type A

2009-01-24T12:28:00.003+02:00

There are six types of verbs, which are all conjugated slightly differently. Fortunately the difference is slight. We've already conjugated one of the few irregular verbs - to be (olla), and from that you'll notice that the endings are all pretty much the same. It's just the construction of the verb stem that is different.

The first regular type of verb that we'll conjugate consists of the verb ending in a vowel followed by a or ä. Examples are puhua (to speak) and kompastua (to trip, or to stumble). We'll now conjugate to speak in the present tense:

minä puhun - I speak
sinä puhut - you speak
hän/se puhuu - he/she/it speaks
me puhumme - we speak
te puhutte - you (plural or polite) speak
he/ne puhuvat - they (people/objects or animals) speak

From this you can see that the verb stem is made by losing the last -a or -ä, and adding -n, -t, doubling the stem vowel ending, -mme, -tte or -vat/vät.

Similarly for "to trip", for which the verb stem is kompastu-:

kompastun
kompastut
kompastuu
kompastumme
kompastutte
kompastuvat

And that's that.

Vocab list 3

2009-01-24T12:21:00.002+02:00

täysinäinen - full
pituus - length
huomata - to notice
kaukainen - remote
varoittaa - to warn
leuka - jaw
siansaksa - gibberish, jargon (literally - pig German)
todellinen - actual
puhua - to speak
säännöllinen - regular

Vocab list 2

2009-01-17T09:49:00.002+02:00

thick, fat - paksu
thin - ohut
ruler (measuring device) - viivotin
scissors - sakset
herbs - yrtit
to invite - kutsua
dry - kuiva
end - loppu
choice, variety, selection - valinta
a cough - yksä

So, so, so, so

2009-01-15T19:39:00.005+02:00

I had a query the other day about niin, siis, näin and noin - what they mean and when to use them.

The last two are easy:

näin - "like this", as in tee näin - "do it like this"
noin - "like that", as in älä tee noin - "don't do it like that"

This and that in the above sentences refer to location and proximity - the "this" and "that" mean that the thing to do or example to follow are close by and some distance away (typically out of reach) respectively.

siis - so, therefore, accordingly
For example, ajattelen, siis olen. - "I think, so I am". The word siis is used in a sentence with a conclusion.

niin - so
For example, olen niin väsynyt - "I am so tired". In this case "so" means "extremely" or "very. It can also mean an affirmative yes: niin on - "so it is."

Finally, there is an expression that uses niin but has a different meaning:
no niin - well then, all righty, now then, so then, okay

No niin, this post is finished.

Adjectives to adverbs

2009-01-14T09:50:00.002+02:00

A fox (kettu) may be quick (nopea), but he runs quick-ly (nopea-sti). In English an adjective is often changed into an adverb by adding -ly. In Finnish the same is done by adding -sti to the end of the adjective in question. Note that vowel and consonant gradation still apply, so you'll find d's turning into t's, a's changing into e's, and so on.

fast, quick - nopea
quickly - nopeasti

hard, strong - kova
strongly - kovasti

easy - helppo
easily - helposti

The last example shows consonant gradation - on adding -sti one of the p's disappears. I never said Finnish would be easily learnt!

Vocab list 1

2009-01-10T10:52:00.004+02:00

The key to learning a language is to have a large vocabulary. As a result my resolution for 2009 is to learn ten new words a week. Here is the first list:

abbey - luostari
banknote - seteli
to study - opiskella
soon - pian
lip - huuli
to fix or to mend - korjata
glove - hansikas, although most Finns now use the word hanska
at once - heti
bitter - kitkerä or katkera. The latter is more useful, because it means bitter in taste, or bitter in emotion. The former just refers to taste.
blanket -peitto

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T12:01:00.003+02:00

Christmas is called joulu in Finnish (derived from Yule), and as in the rest of the western world occurs in December - joulukuu (literally yule-moon). As there is usually snow (lunta) in Finland at Christmas, they don't wish for a white Christmas. Instead they hope that they won't have a black Christmas (musta joulu).

When you wish someone a merry Christmas, you say hyvää joulua - "good Christmas"! The phrase is in the partive, hence the ä and a on the ends of the words.

In Finland the presents (lahjat) are opened on Christmas Eve. Santa Clause (joulupukki - yule goat) travels down from Rovaniemi, and knocks on the door to deliver the gifts.

Another more serious Finnish tradition is to visit the cemetary (hautamaa) to place a candle (kyntillä) on the graves of deceased relatives.

To be able to

2008-09-26T11:36:00.002+02:00

There are two verbs in Finnish that mean "to be able to" - osata and voida. Osata means to have the knowledge to allow you to do something (for example tie your shoelaces), and voida means to have the power to do something (for example lift a certain weight). Here is how you conjugate them:

minä osaan
sinä osaat
hän osaa
me osaamme
te osaatte
he osaavat

minä voin
sinä voit
hän voi
me voimme
te voitte
he voivat

Vocab list - autumn

2008-09-15T15:08:00.003+02:00

We are well into autumn here in Finland, and the forest is full of mushrooms. Collecting and preparing wild mushrooms is a popular pastime in Finland, so here are some useful words:

syksy - autumn
sieni - mushroom
kantarelli - chanterelle mushroom (a yellow mushroom with a delicate almost apricot-like flavour)
herkutatti - cep, or porcini mushroom (a large nutty flavoured mushroom that looks like a bread roll on a thick stalk)
suppilovahvero - yellowfoot mushroom (similar to the chanterelle, but thinner and not as flavourful)
korvasieni - false morel (a weird fungus that looks like a twisted brown turban-like growth)
rousku - milk cap mushroom (flat mushrooms that exude a milk-like substance when cut)

These lead to an interesting verb in Finnish, and one that I think is unique to the language:

ryöpätä - to boil mushrooms in order to make them edible.

The korvasieni and many of the rousku contain poisons that are rendered inert by boiling and throwing the water away, and so the Finns have a specific verb that means this. In fact, Finland is the only country in the EU that is allowed to prepare these poisonous mushrooms for public consumption and sale (mainly because there would be no way of stopping the Finns - it's part of their culture).

The Elative case

2008-07-21T10:27:00.002+03:00

The elative case is the "from" or "out of" case and is formed by adding -sta or -stä to the end of a word. You use it to say where you are from - for example

Olen Helsingistä - I am from Helsinki
Hän on Englannista - He/she is from England
Menet talosta - You come from the house
Se on tietokoneesta - It is from the computer

There are a few things to note:
1) the "k" in Helsinki turns into a "g" when you add a suffix to it. This is one of the consonant gradation rules that I allude to now and again. It's the same for other words ending in -nki. For example Finnish for town is kaupunki, so "I am from a town" is olen kaupungista.
2) Finnish for England is Englanti, but the "t" changes to an "n" when the suffix is added. This is another consonant gradation rule.
3) The word for computer is tietokone - from tieto, which means "information" and kone, which means "machine". An extra -e- is added; this is known as reverse consonant gradation.

So, this started as a post about the elative case, and turned into an introduction about gradation instead. In fairness, the elative case is simple and it's only gradation that makes it complicated.

So now, if you look back at the previous post, you should understand why the word mistä means "from where". It's like the word mitä (what) in the elative case - literally "from out of what":

mistä sinä tulet? - from out of what you come?
tulen Cambridgista. - I come from out of Cambridge

What? Where? Why?

2008-07-02T10:42:00.003+03:00

Time for some very useful words, all beginning with the letter M. The first is mitä, which means "what". However, it's what in an indefinite sense - if you didn't hear what someone said, or if you're asking what is going on you use mitä. For example, the verb for "to happen" is tapahtua, so "what's happening" is mitä tapahtuu.

The word for "what" refering to something tangible is mikä. So if you're holding up a strange object in a Finnish shop and asking what it is, you would say mikä se on - "what is it".

Missä means "where". If you want to say "where are you", use missä olet.

Mistä means "from where" - with the verb tulla (to come) you can ask the question "where do you come from", namely mistä sinä tulet.

And finally, miksi means "why". If you have a small child who speaks Finnish you'll hear this word a lot, in which case it's useful to know the word koska - which means "because".

Counting

2008-06-25T22:07:00.003+03:00

It's time to learn to count in Finnish. The words for Finnish numbers are very different from the ones in other European languages, and unlike English, the Finnish number system is a true decimal system. The only one that seems to have a link to English is the word for zero, or null - nolla. Here are the rest:

yksi - one
kaksi - two
kolme - three
neljä - four
viisi - five
kuusi - six (it also means fir tree, strangely enough)
seitsemän - seven
kahdeksan - eight
yhdeksän - nine
kymmenen - ten

To get eleven, twelve, thirteen and so on, add the word toistä to the number - yksitoistä, kaksitoistä, kolmetoistä...

The partive¹ for ten, kymmenä, is added after each number to make twenty, thirty, forty, and so on: twenty is kaksikymmentä, and thirty is kolmekymmentä, for example. And twenty-one is kaksikymmentäyksi.

We'll stop in the hundreds - one hundred is sata, and one hundred and one is satayksi. So one hundred and ninety nine would be sataykdeksänkymmentäyhdeksän.

You'll notice that numbers get rather long. The Finns have noticed this too, so it's rare for them to use the full name for each number. Instead, when counting a Finn would say, "Yks, kaks, kol, nel, viis, kuus", dropping the endings of the numbers. After all, they're patient, but not that patient.

Midsummer

2008-06-24T13:37:00.002+03:00

The most important festival in Finland after Christmas is the midsummer festival, which is called juhannus. The Finns decamp en masse to the countryside, typically to their mökki, a summer cabin in the forest, often by a lake. Juhannus is spent cooking food on the barbecue, taking a dip in a lake and having sauna. The kokko, or bonfire, is lit at midnight on midsummer. Sometimes some of the single women present will head off to find seven different types of wild flower - these are placed under the pillow, and supposedly the woman will then dream of her future husband.

In the sauna the most important thing is löyly - the steam that carries the heat from the stove stones to the sauna bathers. However, the word is also used to describe the feeling or spirit of the sauna. The stove is called a kiuas, and the highest bench you sit on is the laude. All these terms apply only to the sauna, and are really only rough translations.

Finally, if you want to cause an argument in a sauna, ask for the name of the birch switches that sauna bathers use to (gently) beat the back, arms and legs, to improve blood circulation and gain benefit from the antiseptic properties of the birch leaf sap on them. Some Finns call them vihta, and others call them vasta. You can almost guarantee you'll have at least one from each camp in the sauna with you and they will spend then next hour or so violently disagreeing which is the correct name.

What do you do?

2008-06-09T14:48:00.003+03:00

In Finnish there is a very easy way to make a word which means "professional who does X" - take the verb "to X", and then: if the verb ends in -aa remove one "a" and add -ja, whereas if the verb ends in -a then add -aja. So, for example:

matkustaa - to travel
matkustaja - traveller, passenger

ohjata - to steer, pilot, or direct
ohjaaja - director (especially a film director)

There's an extra rule in the case above: if the verb ends in -ta, remove it and add -aja. At some point in the future we'll look at the different kinds of verb endings there are, how to construct the root from them, and then this will all make a bit more sense. In the meantime, here are some more professions:

hoitaa - to take care off
hoitaja - nurse

kirja - a book
kirjaaja - clerk, or registrar

That last one was constructed from a noun, not a verb! Finnish may be a very logical and consistent language, but even it has it's quirks. Fortunately even the exceptions can sometimes be logical.

So here is a simple short test: the verb for "to drive" is ajaa. So what is the Finnish word for a driver?

(Answer: ajaja)

Vocab list - the seasons

2008-06-05T18:12:00.005+03:00

The Finnish word for the seasons is vuodenaika. Aika means 'time', and vuoden means 'of the year'. It's the word vuosi (year) in the genitive case, and due to consonant gradation the 's' in vuosi becomes a 'd' (we're going to have to formally handle this consonant gradation issue sometime soon - it's getting unavoidable). Anyway, back to the issue at hand:

Finland, like England, has four main seasons.

kevät - spring
kesä - summer (an old word for summer is suvi - it's now also common as a girl's name)
syksy - autumn
talvi - winter

However, there are two other periods that have their own names, and are considered sort-of seasons:

kelirikko - season when frost and thaw damages the road and it becomes impossible to drive to your cottage in the forest; a few weeks between winter and spring.
ruska - the few weeks between summer and autumn when the leaves change colour.

Ruska is worth experiencing. Kelirikko isn't...

Aakkoset

2008-05-29T13:18:00.004+03:00

The Finnish word for alphabet is aakkoset, which is the plural of the word aakkonen - letter, or alphabetic character. However, whereas we have 26 letters in the English alphabet, the Finns have 29 letters in theirs. They have three extra characters:

å/Å (which is called ruotsalainen å - the Swedish A)
ä/Ä
ö/Ö

You'll actually find keys for these three letters on the right-hand side of a Finnish keyboard. And this reveals an important fact about Finnish letters - the umlaut is not a diacritial modifier to the underlying letter. It is considered to be an entirely separate letter. So to a Finn ä is as different from a as, say, y is from u. As a result a Finnish dictionary (suomelainen sanakirja) has three extra chapters at the end, for words beginning with å, ä, and ö.

This can cause problems for English speakers, because in England there is no distinction between the ä sound in 'cat' and the a sound in 'car' (if you imagine 'cat' and 'car' pronounced in a BBC news presenter accent). But if you pronounce älä (don't) as ala, a Finn will hear you saying 'area' or 'space'. To them these two words do not sound similar at all.

And no matter how long you argue with them that they are pretty close together, and surely the context makes it clear that you meant "don't" and not "area", you'll never get a Finn to agree - not even grudgingly.

First Small Test

2008-05-28T13:33:00.004+03:00

Here's a test for you: the Finnish word for nose is nenä. Using the essive case and the first person posessive ending, can you produce the word that in Finnish means "as my nose"?

Answer: Counting A as 1, B as 2, and so on, the answer is 14,5,14,27,14,27,14,9

Vocab list - the family

2008-05-19T21:15:00.003+03:00

Here are some words concerning family:

perhe - family
isä - father
äiti - mother
sisko - sister
veli - brother
täti - aunt
setä - uncle
tytär - daughter
poika - son (also boy)

Interestingly, you put the words for aunt and uncle after the person's name, so Uncle Tomi would be Tomi-setä, for example.

The Adessive Case

2008-04-11T20:47:00.002+02:00

By now you've probably forgotten the names of the other cases we've studied so far, but don't worry - you don't really need to know what they are called, just how they are formed and what they mean. So lets press on with a new case: the adessive, or "on" case. If you want to say something is on somewhere, you add -lla or -llä to the end of the word. So, for example:

lattia - the floor
lattialla - on the floor

pöytä - the table
pöydällä - on the table

katu - the street
kadulla - on the street (although in English you would say "in the street")

Those last two emphasises a second thing - when adding a case ending a single letter t changes to a d. This is known as one of the consonant gradation rules, which we'll be dealing with later.

The adessive case doesn't just mean "on" though, it can mean "with the aid of" or "using". For example:

kynä - a pen
kynällä - with a pen

kone - machine
koneella - with a machine

Incidentally, a major Finnish manufacturer and exporter of elevators and escalators is called Kone - keep an eye out in shopping centers and offices and you might see some of their products in use...

Vocab list - the forest

2008-04-09T12:38:00.003+02:00

The forest is a big part of Finland - about 70% in fact. Here is a list of words to do with the forest and what you can find in it:

metsä - forest
puu - tree
sieni - mushroom
karhu - bear
peura - deer
poro - reindeer
ilves - lynx
suo - swamp
järvi - lake
lampi - pond/small lake
joki - river