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).

The Elative case

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?

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

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...