20 Things about Spoken Finnish

As many of you probably know, last wednesday Finland celebrated 100 years of independence.

Plenty of "100 things why Finland is awesome" types of lists appeared all over the internet and they inspired me to make this trivia bits of spoken Finnish. At first I wanted to list 100 things, but I soon realized that it was too many in too short amount of time, so I will just give you 20. Some of these are subjective and all of them are meant to make you smile.

1. We refer to people as ”it” and pets as ”he/she” very often.

2. The verb ”viruttaa” means different things in the East and in the West. This is a neverending battle between me and my western friends. In the east viruttaa is to stretch, but in the west it's to rinse. Strange.

3. The word ”bileet”, a party is always a plural in Finnish.

4. There's a metal band that uses the Savo region dialect for their lyrics. They're called Verjnuarmu and they're awesome.

5. Noniin./Noni./No niin. An expression that can mean basically anything between ”Great!” to ”Now you really messed up.” The meaning is delivered in intonation and tone of voice.

6. There's no word for ”please”, neither in spoken nor written language.

7. Kids, cover your eyes for this one. You can combine all the curses you know for a legit sentence to express your anger.

8. Rääppiäiset, that's when you invite someone to eat leftovers from a party such as graduation party.

9. The phrase ”minä rakastan sinua” (I love you) is only used sarcastically.

10. ”Olet rakas” (you're beloved) is somewhat acceptable though.

11. We have mastered the art of minimal words in communication. In introductions, it's often totally acceptable to shake hands, state your name and say ”moi”.

12. When we want to express holiday wishes (usually Christmas or Midsummer), we say ”Hyvää joulua/juhannusta, jos ei ennen sitä nähdä!” (Merry Christmas/Happy Midsummer, unless we meet before that!)

13. To soften orders, we use either the conditional or ”would you like to” -structure, even if there's little choice. For example: Would you like to take the trash out?Veisitkö/Haluisitko viedä roskat?

14. Grammar isn't too strict.

15. Kalsarikännit. Drinking at home in your underwear without any intention of going out. For some reason, kännit, drunkeness is often plural.

16. ”Onneks olkoon!” is an appropriate phrase for wishing almost anything from happy birthday to congratulations on someone's wedding.

17. You probably know the phrase ”mitä kuuluu?” (how are you?), I hope you also know that Finns will answer the question with brutal honesty.

18. According to the Institute for the Languages of Finland (kotus), there are more than 30 different dialects.

19. We are more likely to drop the pronouns in written language than in spoken language.

20. Juupaseipäs. The kind of arguments that you have with the people closest to you that consists of yes and no. Usually these arguments are about very insignificant topics.

There you go. I hope you had fun reading these and that you learned something new. :)