MEANING:
Compound noun: Farmer.
DERIVED FROM:
Viljelijä by itself also means farmer. Maan is the genitive form of maa, meaning “earth,” so it means “farmer of the earth.”
Viljellä is a verb meaning “to cultivate,” “to farm,” or “to till.” By adding the -jä ending it becomes an “agent noun” describing one who performs the action.
Another related word is vilja, a noun meaning “grain” or “cereal.”
hidaste -
MEANING:
Noun: Road block, speed bump, retard, brake.
Hidaste appears in our example sign in the partitive plural, hidasteita. (See hidaste declined here.) In our example, hidasteita means “speedbumps.”
DERIVED FROM:
Hidaste comes from hidas, an adjective meaning “slow.”
From hidas, also comes hidastaa, a verb which means “to slow down,” formed from hidas plus the suffix -staa.
Hidastus is a noun which comes from hidastaa plus the suffix -us which means “slowing” or “slowdown.”
isäntä -
MEANING:
Noun: Master, host, man of the house, head of the household, boss, etc.
DERIVED FROM:
Isäntä finds its root in isä, which means “father.”
A related verb is isännöidä, which means “to host” or “to manage.”
EXTRA CREDIT:
The female equivalent of isäntä is emäntä, which means “mistress,” “housewife” or “hostess.” Emäntä comes from emä, an archaic word for “mother,” which still means “mother” in the sense of “mother of an animal.”
kuljetus -
MEANING:
Noun: Transport, ride, delivery, shipping.
(In our example sign, leveä means “wide” or “broad” so the whole sign is similar to a “wide load” sign in English.)
DERIVED FROM:
Kuljetus comes from the verb kuljettaa (type 1), which means to transport, carry, convey or drive. (See kuljettaa conjugated here.) Kuljetus uses the deverbal suffix -us to create a noun describing an action or event.
EXTRA CREDIT:
Two other words formed from the verb kuljettaa are the nouns kuljettaja, which adds the suffix -ja to create an “agent noun” meaning “driver,” and kuljettaminen, which adds the suffix -minen to create the verbal noun “transportation” or the English gerund “driving.”
The nouns kuljetus and kuljettaminen are similar in meaning. Sometimes the word ending in -us is the thing which is created by performing the action of the verb stem and the word ending in -minen as the process of doing the action, but there are many exceptions to this.
A similar situation exists with the verb pakata (“to pack”) in creating the -us noun pakkaus (“package”) and the -minen noun pakkaaminen (“packaging”).
Native speakers or more advanced learners than I are encourage to comment on further rules of distinction of meaning between the two.
aakkoset -
MEANING:
Noun: Alphabet.
DERIVED FROM:
Plural of aakkonen, which means letter. See aakkonen declined here.
EXTRA CREDIT:
A lesser used synonym for aakkoset is aakkosto, a collective noun constructed from aakkonen (“letter”) plus the suffix -sto, which means “collection of.” Aakkosto, therefore, means literally “a collection of letters” or the alphabet!
MEANING:
Verb: To crash.
Kolaroida appears in this headline from Helsingin Sanomat in the 3rd person plural, kolaroivat.
In the phrase “taksi ja pikkubussi kolaroivat Helsingissä” a taxi (taksi) and a minibus (pikkubussi) crash (kolaroivat) in Helsinki (Helsingissä.) Helsinki appears in the inessive case so it takes the preposition “in” in English.
EXTRA CREDIT:
Kolme loukkaantui means “three injured.”
Kolme is a cardinal number which means “three.”
Loukkaantui is a verb, the 3rd person singular imperfect (past) of loukkaantua, which means “to be hurt,” or “to be injured.” (See loukkaantui conjugated here.)
It’s important to note that loukkaantui appears in the singular. This is because when a cardinal number is used to express a quantity of people or objects, the corresponding verb will also be singular. Ihmistä (in this case meaning “people”) is implied. Ihmistä is the partitive singular of ihminen, which means “person” or “human being.“ If it appeared, ihmistä would be in the partitive singular because that case must be used with all numbers greater than 1 and 0.
sallia -
MEANING:
Verb: To let, to allow, to permit.
In our example, sallia appears in its passive past participle form, sallittu, and means “is permitted.” (See sallia conjugated here.)
EXTRA CREDIT:
On our example sign, tupakointi means “smoking” and vain means “only.”
Merkityssä paikassa means “in marked places” or “in indicated places.” Both words, merkitys and paikka appear in the inessive so we add the English preposition “in.”
The whole sign reads, “Smoking permitted only in marked places.”
