“epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän” The Finns steal all the letters, leave some for us will you XD
We’re probably almost as bad as the Welsh and the Icelandic are. Compound words for the win! So here’s a few more oddities I’ll share, just because I can.
Words and phrases that just look funny to anyone
Hääyöaie - hää+yö+aie, “wedding-night-intent”, most vowels in a Finnish word compared to complete word length. Another version is hääyöaieuutinen, “wedding-night-intent-news” if you were to… tell someone the news that you intend to have a wedding night? There’s no logic, it just sounds funny.
Lämpimämpi - lämmin+mpi, “warmer”, the word is bent according to the use of the comparative suffix -mpi, and in this case becomes a dumb chant of itself.
Alavilla mailla hallanvaaraa - “Flatlands can expect a danger of night-frost”, can be heard in a weather forecast, once voted to be the most beautiful Finnish sentence.
Vesihiisi sihisi hississä - “A water-spirit was hissing in an elevator”, a common tongue-twister.
Words that change meanings weirdly with a suffix
Hypätä - to jump / Hypellä - to casually keep jumping, just as an example
Tappaa - to kill / Tapella - to fight/brawl/argue/fistfight, but grammatically “to casually keep killing”
Hakata - to hit, to hammer, to chop / Hakkailla - to casually keep hitting/hammering/chopping (with a slightly different suffix), but in folk use and old euphemisms it means “to flirt”.
Nauraa - to laugh / Naureskella - to keep laughing, but in common use “to mock” or “to sneer at”.
Kuusi palaa - thanks to the nature of how words are formed in Finnish, in this case kuusi can either mean “the number six”, “your moon”, “a spruce tree” or “six of [insert people, animals, objects]” while palaa can mean “to burn”, “to return” or “an amount of pieces”.
So the sentence can either read as “your moon is burning/returning” or “the number six is burning/returning”, “the spruce is returning/on fire” or “the six of them are burning/returning” or just “six pieces” (of cake, of a puzzle…).
With a bit of a stretch, if there was a conversation started by “what are you eating?” and the person somehow owned a moon, reply “kuusi palaa” could even translate to “a piece of your moon”.
Vihdoin vihdoin vihdoin - “Finally I whisked myself with a vihta”, in any order you wish to think of it. Vihdoin means “finally” but it also means to “vihtoa” in first person past tense, which is a verb made from the tool “vihta”, a birch-twig sauna thing.
Haavat - either “aspen trees” or “wounds”. Word conjugations for haapa (aspen) and haava (wound) look similar in plural form.
Verbs for having fun in different ways
For being such a stoic country, Finns actually have a lot of words for laughing! Most are onomatopoetic, as in many languages, so maybe they can give a hint to the pronunciation of some Finnish vowels.
Nauraa - to laugh
Hekottaa - to laugh in a wide, loud, airy manner
Hihittää - to giggle, maybe like when someone is hiding a crush
Kikattaa - to giggle, but sounds a bit different, more open and child-like
Käkättää - to cackle (not to be confused with kakattaa, “to feel like pooping”)
Räkättää - to cackle harder, louder
Höhöttää - to laugh in a neighing, snorting, low way
Hohottaa - to laugh in a wide, low, loud way
Hirnua - to laugh very loudly and nasally, also to neigh (like horses do)
Hymistä - to hum, can also be to hum in a laughing/smiling way
Hykertää - to chuckle, to laugh to themselves, to laugh in a humming way
Kihertää - something between a chuckle and a giggle
Tyrskähtää - to burst out a snorting laugh
Tirskahtaa - to burst out a giggle
Tirskua - to keep making those poorly restrained giggles
Pärskähtää - to snort (also used for horses etc)
Ulvoa (naurusta) - to howl with laughter (also used for dogs, wind etc.)
Tikahtua (nauruun) - to be overcome with, to nearly choke, to lose voice over laughing, but in a good way
By adding the -ella/-ellä suffix “to casually keep doing”, you can easily make them into softer, more side-note verbs that you can do under your breath or while talking, like kikatella “to keep giggling”, hekotella “to keep laughing loudly and airily”, hykerrellä “to keep chuckling”.
snowghoul
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
dededos
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
2087
