MEANING:
Noun: lingonberry
EXTRA CREDIT:
Puolukka (lingonberry) is a a tart berry often sweetened before eating. Lingonberry jam is quite popular in Finland, or frequently the raw fruits are simply mashed with sugar or another sweetener and served with reindeer or meatballs dishes.
The best time to pick lingonberries in Finland is from late August to early October.
MEANING:
Noun: Laptop computer, notebook, notebook computer.
DERIVED FROM:
Kannettava is an adjective that means ”portable.” Kannettava is the passive present participle of kantaa, which means ”to carry” or ”to bear.” Participles are verbal adjectives, and literally, kannettava can be thought as meaning ”carry-able.”
Tietokone means ”computer.” (Literally, ”data machine.”)
EXTRA CREDIT:
A shortened form of kannettava tietokone is just kannettava. Or colloquially, in spoken Finnish, you often hear läppäri which comes from the English word ”laptop.”
MEANING:
Noun: survival.
DERIVED FROM:
Selvitytyminen is constructed from the verb selviytyä (”to survive”) + –minen, a suffix used to form verbal nouns from verbs (similar to to the -ing ending in English.)
EXTRA CREDIT:
The movie poster is from a 2012 Spanish film called ”The Impossible” about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. For Finnish audiences the title has been adapted.
putoavia
MEANING:
Noun: falling
DERIVED FROM:
Putoavia is the partitive plural of putoava, the present participle of the verb pudota, which means ”to drop” or ”to fall (down/off)”. Putoavia in our example functions like an adjective and means ”falling.”
To make the present participle, you take the third persoformn plural of the verb, remove the -vat/-vät, and add -va/-vä.
The participle should be in the same form as the word it is connected to. In this case, it modifies esineitä, the partitive plural of esine, which means ”object.” Putoavia esineitä means ”falling objects.”
EXTRA CREDIT:
Varo is the imperative of varoa, and here means ”look out (for).” Our whole sentence, ”Varo putoavia esineitä” means ”Look out for falling objects.”
hakata polttopuut
MEANING:
Phrase: to chop firewood.
DERIVED FROM:
Hakata is a verb which has several meanings including ”to hit,” ”to hack,” ”to beat someone up,” ”to cut (a tree)” and ”to chop.”
Polttopuut is the plural of polttopuu, a compound noun that comes from poltto (”burn,” ”burning”) and puut, the nominative plural of puu (”tree,” or ”wood.”)
luulosairaus
MEANING:
Compound term: hypochondria.
DERIVED FROM:
Luulosairaus is a compound term made from luulo (“belief, especially a wrong one”) + sairaus (“illness”).
EXTRA CREDIT:
Some synonyms for luulosairaus include:
MEANING:
Compound term, adjective: Watertight, airtight, waterproof,
DERIVED FROM:
Vedenpitävä comes from veden, genitive of vesi, which means (“of water”) + pitävä, the active present participle of pitää. Pitää has many meanings, and in this case it means ”to hold.” As active present particle, a sort of verbal adjective, it means ”holding.”
So vedenpitävä literally means ”water holding.”
You can also think of vedenpitävä as coming from the phrase pitää vettä (“to hold water”) where it means both not leaking and the ability to withstand water.
EXTRA CREDIT:
In our example, suojus (derived from ”suoja” which means ”shelter”) means ”guard,” ”protection” or ”cover.” The advertisement is for a ”waterproof cover” for an iPhone.
MEANING:
Verb (type 1): To swing, to rock, to sway, to seesaw, to pitch.
Keinua means ”to swing” in the sense of what a child might do on a playground swing (”keinu”). It can also be used to describe what a boat does on a rough sea.
EXTRA CREDIT:
A related verb is keinuttaa, the causative aspect of keinua. Causative aspect verbs cause someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state. Keinuttaa means ”to rock (as in ”to move gently back and forth”). Keinuttaa would be used when talking about someone rocking a baby in a cradle.
Pikaista paranemista!
MEANING:
Phrase: Get well soon!
DERIVED FROM:
Pikaista is the partitive singular of pikainen, an adjective which means ”quick.”
Paranemista is the partitive singular of paraneminen, a noun which means ”improvement,” ”mending,” ”healing,” ”recovery” or ”recuperation.”
Literally, pikaista paranemista means ”quick recovery.” Like all wishes and greetings in Finnish, it is used in the partitive. ”Hyvää joulua,” hyvää matkaa,” ”hauskaa vappua,” etc.
EXTRA CREDIT:
You could also use the imperative, ”Parane pian!” where parane is the imperative of the (rarely used) verb parata, which means ”improve” or ”get better,” and ”pian,” is an adverb which means ”soon.”
(More commonly, the verb parantua is used to mean ”improve” or ”get better”.)
Finnish Word of the Day 