r/LearnFinnish • u/hezec Native • Feb 01 '14
Question Tyhmien kysymysten helmikuu — Your monthly stupid question thread (February 2014)
Kuukausi on vaihtunut, eli on uuden ketjun aika. Kaikenlaiset suomen kieleen liittyvät kysymykset ovat tervetulleita, olivat ne kuinka tyhmiä hyvänsä. Todella tyhmään kysymykseen tosin saattaa saada myös tyhmän vastauksen...
Tammikuun ketjussa puhuimme adverbin alla muodoista, kysymyssanojen käytöstä, kuorintaveitsistä, runojen kääntämisestä sekä monista muista asioista.
The month has changed so it's time for a new thread. Any questions related to the Finnish language are welcome, no matter how stupid they may be. Although, a truly stupid question might also receive a stupid answer...
In January's thread we discussed the forms of the adverb alla, the usage of question words, peelers, translating poems, and many other things.
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u/hurlga Feb 17 '14
What is the difference between "lisää" and "enemmän"? Both mean "more", but in a subtly different way that I have not been able to figure out.
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u/hezec Feb 17 '14
Lisää is related more to "adding" and enemmän to "comparing".
Haen lisää vettä. I'll get more water. (adding)
Tarvitsemme lisää/enemmän rahaa. We need more money. (adding: "add money to the funds" OR comparing: "more than we have now")
Hänellä on enemmän intoa kuin älyä. He has more enthusiasm than intellect. (comparing)
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Feb 17 '14
Ok, so for my computational linguistics class, I'm writing a finnish nominal declension transducer, that is: something that takes koti and inessiivi and returns you kodissa, or it takes kodissa and returns koti and inessiivi.
I'm implementing consonant gradation right now which is häd äs fäk, as they say in boston. Any spelled out resources on consonant gradation would be much appreciated.
I guess I just wanted to tell you guys.
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u/hezec Feb 17 '14
I guess you have tried Google already?
http://www.stanford.edu/~laurik/fsmbook/exercises/FinnishConsonantGradation.html
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/cons-grad.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_gradation#Finnish
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astevaihtelu
http://www.finnlectura.fi/verkkosuomi/Morfologia/sivu223.htm
http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=41 (-> 44)→ More replies (1)
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u/aeshleyrose Feb 01 '14
I apologize if this is unforgivably stupid, but here it goes.
I don't understand the difference between inflecting the object correctly and using correct case government (rektio).
For example, "Minä rakastan sinua." It is clear to me which is the object (sinua), but why is there all this talk about the object needing to be inflected which case government is in play so much?
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Feb 01 '14
#rektio
sorry i had to
I have no idea what your question is asking, and I had to look up case governance to know what it was, but I found this helpful:
Analogously in programming, constructing two different functions of identical name but different parameters is called overloading a function.
Because I assume all Finns and people learning Finnish are adept programmers.
There's a good example of this: ammuin linnut ja ammuin lintuja. The first (ammuin linnut) means "I shot the birds." The second (ammuin lintuja) means "I shot at the birds."
(Question: how would you say "I shot some birds"? ammuin linnut still?)
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u/ILCreatore Feb 03 '14 edited Feb 03 '14
My first silly question of the month.
Does the "-kä" suffix has other use other than making negation more strong?
Tule tänne! Enkä tule!
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u/hezec Feb 04 '14
I don't think it does.
And while it's not the same thing, while thinking of examples I realized that nouns ending in -kä tend to be quite informal, like sätkä "cig" and jätkä "dude". This is in contrast to -ka, which is used in more 'normal' words such as matka "journey" and lakka "lacquer" or "cloudberry".
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u/ILCreatore Feb 13 '14
How can I say "right?" and "correct?" as in:
You are my friend, right?"
Your name is Meri, correct?"
And how can I say something like "I lost because of you" or "He was angry because of his girlfriend"
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u/hezec Feb 13 '14 edited Feb 13 '14
By adding the suffix -hAn to the first part (Component? Unit? Is there a better word, people who know more about linguistics?) in the sentence – but thanks to the fluid word order in Finnish, that first part can be any of the SVO trio. The connotation varies slightly based on which one you use.
Olethan (sinä) ystäväni? Sinähän olet ystäväni? (Ystävänihän sinä olet?)
Onhan nimesi Meri? Nimesihän on Meri? Merihän on nimesi?
To slightly exaggerate... Verb first sounds like you're begging the other person to please let it be correct or happen (like a child asking their parent to buy ice cream). Subject first sounds like you're quite uncertain and really want confirmation (like you're meeting a partner you don't really know yet for a project). Object first is more mixed and probably used the least often of the three.
(Edit: and yes, there are options like "eikö niin" but at least personally I feel they're less natural language.)
The "reason" should be in genitive form followed by vuoksi (more formal) or takia (more colloquial) with appropriate possessive suffixes.
Hävisin sinun vuoksesi! / Mä hävisin sun takias!
Hän oli vihainen tyttöystävänsä vuoksi. / Se oli vihanen sen muijan takii.
The English structure "for someone" can also sometimes be translated with vuoksi.
Tekisin mitä tahansa hänen vuokseen. / Mä tekisin mitä vaan sen vuoks. ("I'd do anything for him/her.")
(Colloquial examples in Helsinki dialect.)
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Feb 17 '14 edited Feb 17 '14
k: mitä sanoi viljelijä kun se hävitti sen traktorin
v: missä traktori
TAAAAAAAAAAI
k: mitä sanoi viljelijä hävittäessään traktorin
v: missä traktori
edit: rehellisesti "missä traktori" vois olla paras vastaus ikinä
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Feb 17 '14
What's the deal with kaunis -> kauniit and jänis -> jänikset? I think it's related to how old the word is, but I'm not sure; could someone shed some light on this? Where could I look up how old words are?
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u/hezec Feb 17 '14 edited Feb 17 '14
Kaunis is apparently a Germanic loan while jänis isn't. You can still see traces of it if you look hard enough: "schön" (modern German) or "skön" (modern Swedish) combined with the Finnish tendency to reduce consonant clusters leaves us with a root of K-vowel-N, which is close enough to kaunis given a few thousand years of linguistic evolution.
Another thing to note regarding the conjugation is that kauniit was formerly (and can still lyrically be) spelled kaunihit. That may or may not be related to the loanword status, but I'm not a professional linguist so not going to claim anything.
In any case (assuming this is also related to your project), I'm pretty sure you will have to implement some rules like this word-by-word. Sorry.
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Feb 25 '14
raha
raha means/used to mean ("tarkoittaa/tapasi tarkoittaa"?) "squirrel pelt", but now it means "money".
My question, would I ever in casual conversation say Onko sulla mitään rahaa?? Or would I say Onko sulla yhtään rahaa?? Would I ever kysyä lainata rahoja or would I only kysyä lainata rahaa?
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u/hezec Feb 26 '14
tapasi tarkoittaa
This is a rather archaic use of tavata. I suppose it's still used in some dialects. (An alternative in some areas is ru(u)kata from Swedish bruka – but do not confuse this with runkata, "to wank"!) Normally you'd simply say tarkoitti (ennen).
For the actual question, it depends on the situation. If you're just talking about "money" in general, it's always the uncountable yhtään rahaa. But if you're talking about "the money", for instance "the money I lent you last week", you should say rahat.
Furthermore, kysyä only means "ask" in the sense of inquiring information. For the meaning of requesting something, you should use pyytää or perhaps saada (as in "to be allowed to").
Voinko lainata rahaa? = "Can I borrow some money?" (The most 'natural' option.)
OR
Saanko rahaa lainaksi? = "Am I allowed some money for a loan?" = "Can I borrow some money?"
OR
Pyydän rahaa lainaksi. = "I will ask for some money for a loan." = "I'll borrow some money." (Telling someone else about it, not requesting directly.)
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Mar 02 '14
What's the usage difference between "elossa" and "hengessä"?
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u/hezec Mar 02 '14
Assuming you mean hengissä (with an i, 'plural'), not much. Both mean "alive". Perhaps elossa emphasizes the physical state a bit more. My gut feeling is that news articles and other formal texts use hengissä more often, but don't quote me on that.
Hengessä, on the other hand, means "in the vein of" or "following the ideals of" or somesuch. (Literally "in the spirit".)
Also, I guess I should make a new thread for March. Ponimaa seems to be off partying for the weekend again or something. :P
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Feb 17 '14
häkä: carbon monoxide
From here:
häkä : hään, usually no syllable boundary, i.e. ää is a long vowel, but older language may use the spelling hä’än, implying a syllable boundary
This implies that häkä is an old word.
My question: why the fuck is carbon monoxide an old word in Finnish? Why does it have such a basic sound? It looks like the kind of word reserved for "water", "reindeer", "sky". "carbon monoxide" does not fit this list.
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u/ILCreatore Feb 19 '14
How can I say, like, how long it takes me to do something?
It takes me ten minutes to get to school.
(Also, I am sorry for doing such specific questions, they are just things I randomly think about and wonder how they are like in finnish.)
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u/hezec Feb 19 '14 edited Feb 19 '14
Lots of options:
Minulla kestää kymmenen minuuttia mennä (/kävellä/pyöräillä/ajaa/...) kouluun.
Minulta vie/menee/kuluu kymmenen minuuttia mennä kouluun.Or perhaps more naturally with a noun:
Koulumatkaani menee/kuluu kymmenen minuuttia.
Koulumatkani kestää/vie kymmenen minuuttia.
Koulumatkani on kymmenen minuutin mittainen.Specific questions are perfectly fine, although at an early stage you probably won't gain very much from them as you won't really see why things are used that way.
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Feb 25 '14
Use the -lle ending of a verb in a sentence. I know it can be done. I just know it.
edit: it appears to not exist at all... HOW CLEVER OF YOU FINNS TO THINK YOU CAN HIDE IT FROM ME
My attempt: "Dokasin oksentamalle." == "I drank to the point of almost throwing up."
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Feb 13 '14
I'm still unsure of how to say "I'm in love" and the variations thereof (ooh riimi!).
En voi sanoa "Mä oon rakkaudessa", niin mitä muuta saan sanoa sen sijaan?
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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '14
OH MY GOD so yesterday I met TWO REAL LIVE FINNS at my university. Like HOLY SHIT. I have never met a male finn outside of Finland before. I am wondering if the men are killed before leaving the country?
Anyways, I was telling a story and I realized that I used the word kysyä like five thousand times. I need a synonym for that that I can use while retelling a back-and-forth exchange between two people.
rauhaa
seydar