Counting

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

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?

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

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...