To be able to

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

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).