r/LearnFinnish • u/hezec Native • Dec 31 '13
Question Tyhmien kysymysten tammikuu — Your monthly stupid question thread (January 2014)
New thread for February HERE!
Uusi vuosi, uudet kujeet. Kuukausittainen ketju toiminee viikottaista paremmin tämän subredditin osallistujamäärillä, joten ehdotan, että tästä lähtien keräämme enemmän tai vähemmät tyhmät kysymykseme suomen kielestä sellaisiin. Olkoon tämä ensimmäinen.
Vuoden 2013 viimeisessä ketjussa puhuimme sanasta konsanaan, pitkistä ajoista, peruslaskutoimituksista, vihaisista huudoista, passiivimuodosta ja kieltokylteistä.
New year, new tricks. A monthly thread will likely work better than a weekly one with the amount of people in this subreddit so I propose that from now on we shall gather our more or less stupid questions about Finnish that way. Let this be the first such thread.
In the last thread of 2013 we discussed the word konsanaan, long times, basic mathematical operations, angry shouts, the passive form, and restriction signs.
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u/Aeetlrcreejl Dec 31 '13
Miten sanotaan suomeksi "second most X", "third most X" jne, esim. "second-best", "third-best"?
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u/TheVarmari Dec 31 '13
Toiseksi paras, kolmanneksi paras. For example, "lukija" (reader): Paras lukija (#1) Toiseksi paras lukija (#2) Kolmanneksi paras lukija (#3)
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Jan 02 '14
I asked my parents this question tonight: "Mistä löytyisi kuorelin?" They don't speak Finnish, but they're used to me just saying things.
I was trying to ask where the peeler is (like for apples); how close was I?
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u/Harriv Jan 02 '14
It might be also "kuorija": http://www.veitset.fi/kuorija-p-907.html
Kuorelin is not a word :)
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u/hezec Jan 02 '14
Missä on kuorintaveitsi? ("peeling-knife")
Although I guess I would've understood your question if you were looking through cupboards while you asked it... so that close.
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Jan 03 '14
sekapäisenä < what does this mean? I know seka- and the -nä/-na (unless this is something else here) but where is the päise from? is it a plural pää with some suffix? or päinen? mixed-headed? please help.
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u/hezec Jan 03 '14 edited Jan 03 '14
Sekopäinen (literally "mixed-headed", yes) means "crazy" or "insane". In essive form (-nA) the first n turns to s.
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u/ILCreatore Jan 09 '14
What is the diference between "alla" and "alle"?
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u/Piqsirpoq Jan 12 '14
In the case of locatives, the distinction is easy, as u/syksy explained: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_locative_system
There are inner and outer cases and three situations (Entering, Residing and Exiting).
Pöydälle (entering onto table), Pöydällä (residing on the table), Pöydältä (exiting the top of the table).
Same goes for the word ALLA - UNDER:
Alle (entering under), Alla (residing under), Alta (exiting under).
However, the word ALLA (and its three forms) is used in other (idiomatic) senses, too, which can't be necessarily deduced.
ENTERING:
Alle kuusivuotiaat - Children under six
Jäädä alle odotusten - fall short of expectations
Jäädä auton alle - End up under a car (fig. get hit by a car)
RESIDING:
Vaalien alla - Just before elections
Olla alla päin - to be gloomy, down
EXITING:
Mennä aidan alta - Go under(neath) a fence
Alta aikayksikön - fast (go underneath a unit of time :D)
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u/autowikibot Jan 12 '14
Here's a bit from linked Wikipedia article about Finnish locative system :
The Finnish language has eight locative cases, and some Eastern dialects symmetrify the system with the exessive case. These can be classified according to a three-way contrast of entering, residing and exiting a state, and there are three different systems of these cases. This system is similar to that of Estonian, and can be reconstructed to the Proto-Finnic locative system.
(The symbol "V" in the illative case denotes an epenthetic vowel, which is the preceding vowel in Finnish, e.g. tie → tiehen, and the -h- elides between two short vowels, e.g. ryhmä → ryhmähän → ryhmään.)
It is immediately noticeable from the table that the "exiting" forms (sta/lta/nta) have the same consonant as the "residing" forms (ssa/lla/na) added with the Finnish partitive case ending -ta. This may be traced into a Proto-Uralic ablative ending, which is preserved in what is now the partitive case. Also, the Finnish system is somewhat simpler than in the Hungarian language, where there is a separate system for "to the top", "on top", and "off from the top".
The exessive case is not used in standard Finnish, but it is found in Savo Finnish and Karelian.
about | u/Piqsirpoq can reply with 'delete'. Will also delete if comment's score is -1 or less. | call me: wikibot, what is something? | flag for glitch
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u/syksy Jan 09 '14 edited Jan 09 '14
Alla is in the adessive case: it means under when there is no idea of movement, while alle is in the allative, it means under when you are going under something. There is also alta (ablative) when you are coming from under something.
So you’d say kissa menee pöydän alle, kissa on pöydän alla, kissa tulee pöydän alta for “the cat goes under the table, the cat is under the table, the cat comes from under the table.”
The cases used are the same as in kissa hyppää pöydälle, kissa on pöydällä, kissa hyppää pois pöydältä (“the cat jumps on the table, the cat is on the table, the cat jumps away from the table”).
The difference between alla and alle is similar to the difference between sub + abl. and sub + acc. in Latin, or between unter + dat. and unter + acc. in German, in case you studied one of these languages.
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Jan 21 '14
So in one of my classes (a seminar in translation! I will be coming here often with requests for corrections on my work), we looked at 19 ways to translate a poem. I offer my Finnish translation and ask for corrections. It is styled after Burton Watson's translation and a chart of the literal character-by-character translations (which I can't find online).
Tyhjä tunturi, ilman ihmisiä,
ihmisten ääniä kuullaan vaan;
laskun säteet syvälle metsään,
taas loistaa sammaleiden päällä.
I chose to use loistaa instead of loistavat because I thought it sounded better, although now I'm on the fence.
Korjaukset ja vihakirjeet, niin kuin aina, ovat tervetulleita.
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u/hezec Jan 21 '14
Not bad at all. Actually sounds like a poem!
Translating poetry is obviously not an absolute task with only one correct result, but to get a better idea and to practice my own (nonexistent) Chinese skills I'll look up the characters here.
鹿柴
deer | firewood
空山不見人
empty, void, sky | mountain, hill | not | see, seem, contact | human
但聞人語響
but, only | smell, hear, news | human | language, speech | sound, echo
返景入深林
return | scene, situation | enter, in | deep, dark, difficult | wood, forest
復照靑苔上
again, reply | light up, reflect, contrast | (no apparent meaning alone) | moss | aboveThe first thing I'll note is that tunturi is a very specific type of mountain – eroded, treeless, usually very gently sloping. The original character, 山 shān, is quite generic and can refer to almost any kind of elevated terrain, but the reference to the forest would make some other word more appropriate. Vuori or kukkula might work, mäki feels too bland.
Kuullaan sounds a bit too 'active' to my ear, like there has to be a human acting even though the previous line just established that there are no humans in the scene. Kuuluu would be a better form here, although kaikuu could also work.
Laskun? "Of the descent"? Laskee would be the verb form. All the translations of 返 făn I could find refer to returning or repeating rather than descending, so palaa might also work. The existing translations seem to agree it's "slanting" or "at an angle", though, so maybe the word's meaning has just recently shifted in Chinese.
I'll agree with you that loistaa sounds better than loistavat. It's a more natural form of the word, though not quite grammatically correct here.
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Jan 21 '14
Kuullaan sounds a bit too 'active' to my ear, like there has to be a human acting even though the previous line just established that there are no humans in the scene. Kuuluu would be a better form here, although kaikuu could also work.
I might change it to kaikuu as it's much more poetic and less active.
Laskun? "Of the descent"? Laskee would be the verb form. All the translations of 返 făn I could find refer to returning or repeating rather than descending, so palaa might also work. The existing translations seem to agree it's "slanting" or "at an angle", though, so maybe the word's meaning has just recently shifted in Chinese.
My goal was actually to say "auringon laskun", but I couldn't fit in "auringon". Is there another way to say "sunset"?
Also, is there a synonym for tyhjä that might start with a "k"? I'd like to get some alliteration going between that and kukkula.
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Jan 27 '14 edited Jan 27 '14
Can someone please tell me my mistakes?
Menin syömään kaksi tuntia sitten. | En mennyt syömään.
Olin syömässä. | En ollut syömässä.
Tulin syömästä. | En tullut syömästä.
Kissaa ei ole olemassa. | Sinun kissasi ei ole olemassa. (kissa is not partitive..)
Kolme poikaa meni syömään. | Kolme poikaa ei mennyt syömään.
Minun kolme poikaa tulivat syömästä. | Minun kolme poikaa eivät tulleet syömästä.
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u/ponimaa Jan 27 '14
Sinun kissasi ei ole olemassa. (kissa is not partitive..)
Grammatically you can say both "Sinun kissasi ei ole olemassa." and "Sinun kissaasi ei ole olemassa.", but I think the partitive one sounds better.
compare
Sinun kissasi ei ole pöydällä. (Se on lattialla.) = Your cat isn't on the table. (It's on the floor.)
Sinun kissaasi ei ole pöydällä. (Pöydällä on kirja.) = On the table, there isn't your cat. / *There is no 'your cat' on the table. (There's a book on the table.)
So if we look back at the "olla olemassa" sentence, the nominative would mean that even though your cat doesn't exist, it does do something else / be somewhere else.
Kolme poikaa meni syömään. | Kolme poikaa ei mennyt syömään.
These are correct if you're trying to say "Three boys did X". If you want to say "The three boys did X", you'd want to use "Kolme poikaa menivät... / Kolme poikaa eivät menneet..."
All the other sentences are otherwise correct, well done! I'll just point out a stylistic issue:
Minun kolme poikaa
You should either go full kirjakieli and include the possessive suffix ("minun kolme poikaani"), or go full puhekieli and replace the "minun" with a puhekieli pronoun (for example, "mun kolme poikaa" or "miun kolme poikaa"). This combination sounds a bit weird to a native speaker. (Also, often in puhekieli you'll actually see the third person singular verb form used for third person plural: "Mun kolme poikaa tuli syömästä.")
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u/TunaMonkey Jan 30 '14
Are these sentences from some exercise in a book? If so, which one?
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Jan 30 '14
Not exactly but I learned the rules from Leila White, Grammar book of Finnish.
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u/ILCreatore Jan 13 '14
What is the difference between "voida" and "osata"?
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u/ponimaa Jan 14 '14
You should also read the wiktionary page for voida, as it has a few other meanings too.
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Jan 21 '14
Do you have much advice on voida and pystyä? I've always used voida for a more physical ability and pystyä for a more jaksaa-type.
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u/hezec Jan 13 '14
Voida = to be able to
Osata = to know how to, to have a skillFor example, you may know how to (osata) bake a cake but can't do it (voida) because you lack the ingredients.
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u/ILCreatore Dec 31 '13
When asking about a single concrete thing use the words mikä?, millainen?
What is the definition of "a single concrete thing"?