Suomi - Muisje

[Muisje]

Uhm, hei. I'm not structurally learning any Finnish right now nor will I be in the near future, I don't have time for that So don't expect me to post here much or to write diary entries or anything for now (I don't really get much further than an olen-Muisje-asun-Hollannissa kind of thing anyway ), but I do sometimes have questions so I just thought it would be useful to have a thread of my own. First questions:

1) In questions, does it make a difference whether you put the subject before or after the verb? Like Missä rautatieasema on vs. Missä on rautatieasema? (I'm not talking about yes-no questions obviously) My book uses both but doesn't explain anything. Is it a matter of stress or definiteness or simply the length of the subject (as in, number of words or syllables)?

2) The second question is about the song Lumiel posted in the UL song contest - Maailman toisella puolella. The title makes sense: gen - adess - adess, 'on the world's second half'. Got it. But then in the song it goes Isä olen täällä maailman toisella puolen. Why puolen? What's the difference? Is it because of täällä? What case is it in, anyway, genitive? And why is toisella still adessive? I'm confused.

3) I have this magazine thingy from Lapin yliopisto and it has a little poem in the middle, which is cool because I can understand almost all of it (at least, I think I do ). But the last two lines don't make any sense to me. At all. It goes like this:
maalattiin talo tosi tosi punaiseksi
kaikki on uutta vanhaa uutta
mutta mistä tietää
onko syksy vaiko kevät
onko matka turhan pitkä
vai aika meille liian lyhyt
onko aivan pakko päättää
mie taian jäähä tähän

painted house really really red
everything is new old new
but how can you know (where-from to know)
is it fall or is it spring
is it a too long journey
or time too short for us
...something about deciding and a spell?

[Varislintu]

Hiya, Muisje ! Nice that you're learning a bit of Finnish, even if not as a major focus .

1) In questions, does it make a difference whether you put the subject before or after the verb? Like Missä rautatieasema on vs. Missä on rautatieasema? (I'm not talking about yes-no questions obviously) My book uses both but doesn't explain anything. Is it a matter of stress or definiteness or simply the length of the subject (as in, number of words or syllables)?

This particular case of word order change makes only a little bit of difference -- not enough to really change any meaning. In these types of questions, the normal way to order the words is subject-verb. Making it verb-subject kind of underlines the subject, lifts it out of the question stucture to be mentioned on its own, sort of. I really can't explain what effect is achieved by this, it's so subtle , but in short, it's nothing you need worry about too much as they're both correct and understandable.

2) The second question is about the song Lumiel posted in the UL song contest - Maailman toisella puolella. The title makes sense: gen - adess - adess, 'on the world's second half'. Got it. But then in the song it goes Isä olen täällä maailman toisella puolen. Why puolen? What's the difference? Is it because of täällä? What case is it in, anyway, genitive? And why is toisella still adessive? I'm confused.

This one has a short answer: it's song language . Kind of archaic and poetic. Someone else might be able to explain exactly why it is like that.

3) I have this magazine thingy from Lapin yliopisto and it has a little poem in the middle, which is cool because I can understand almost all of it (at least, I think I do ). But the last two lines don't make any sense to me. At all. It goes like this:
maalattiin talo tosi tosi punaiseksi
kaikki on uutta vanhaa uutta
mutta mistä tietää
onko syksy vaiko kevät
onko matka turhan pitkä
vai aika meille liian lyhyt
onko aivan pakko päättää
mie taian jäähä tähän

painted house really really red
everything is new old new
but how can you know (where-from to know)
is it fall or is it spring
is it a too long journey
or time too short for us
...something about deciding and a spell?

The last line is spelt in spoken Finnish, which might have thrown you off the track, so to say.

Onko aivan pakko päättää ("Does one really have to decide")
Mie (=minä) taian (=taidan) jäähä (=jäädä) tähän ("I think I'll stay right here")

[Muisje]

This particular case of word order change makes only a little bit of difference -- not enough to really change any meaning. In these types of questions, the normal way to order the words is subject-verb. Making it verb-subject kind of underlines the subject, lifts it out of the question stucture to be mentioned on its own, sort of. I really can't explain what effect is achieved by this, it's so subtle , but in short, it's nothing you need worry about too much as they're both correct and understandable.

Ah, okay. I figured it would be something like that, thanks for explaining

This one has a short answer: it's song language . Kind of archaic and poetic. Someone else might be able to explain exactly why it is like that.

Hah, okay. I guess I'll just wait for someone else then (I realize it's something I shouldn't really worry about, as a learner. But as a linguistics student I want to know what exactly it is )

The last line is spelt in spoken Finnish, which might have thrown you off the track, so to say.

Onko aivan pakko päättää ("Does one really have to decide")
Mie (=minä) taian (=taidan) jäähä (=jäädä) tähän ("I think I'll stay right here")

Ooh, okay, thanks. I like it There should really be a translator spoken Finnish -> written Finnish online somewhere

I have another question, not really related to Finnish itself, but still. After copying that poem I thought it would be a good idea to try and get used to a Finnish keyboard layout (those ä's get really annoying when you have to type them with dead keys ) and I found out it's very similar to the Spanish one, so that's good. But my question is: is there any way to type [ and ] on the Finnish keyboard? Because I do that quite a lot when typing on Unilang. And I can't find them.

[Virankannos]

2) The second question is about the song Lumiel posted in the UL song contest - Maailman toisella puolella. The title makes sense: gen - adess - adess, 'on the world's second half'. Got it. But then in the song it goes Isä olen täällä maailman toisella puolen. Why puolen? What's the difference? Is it because of täällä? What case is it in, anyway, genitive? And why is toisella still adessive? I'm confused.

In my experience, these kinds of expressions are not limited to poetic language, but are quite common even in everyday speech, as a matter of fact. There's a rather small group of established adverbials, which have a structure like [pronoun/quantity word + noun]. The head of this adverbial phrase is always in partitive or instructive case, like in your example. E.g.

toisella puolen 'on the other side' - toiselta puolen 'from the other side' - toiselle puolen 'on(to) the other side'

Some other ones:
tällä puolen 'on this side' ADE - INSTR
tällä erää 'for now' - ADE - PART
missä kohtaa ~ missä kohdin 'where (exactly)' INE - PART, INE - INSTR
suuressa määrin 'greatly' INE - INSTR
tällä tavoin ~ tällä tapaa ~ tällä tavalla 'like this, in this way' ADE - INSTR, ADE - PART, ADE - ADE
samalla kertaa ~ samalla kerralla 'at the same time' ADE - PART, ADE - ADE

As you may notice, not all of them are fixed. Sometimes there exists an alternative which acts "normally" meaning, the head and the determiner agree.

[Varislintu]

Do you happen to know why they have ended up that way? Are they dialectal remnants in standard language, remnants of a different grammar from olden days, or just pretty much random inventions?

[Pietari]

1) In questions, does it make a difference whether you put the subject before or after the verb? Like Missä rautatieasema on vs. Missä on rautatieasema? (I'm not talking about yes-no questions obviously) My book uses both but doesn't explain anything. Is it a matter of stress or definiteness or simply the length of the subject (as in, number of words or syllables)?

There's a similar difference than in mandarin chinese (don't know about other languages). "Missä on rautatieasema" could be "where there is a railway station" whereas "Missä rautatieasema on" is "Where is the railway station". So the former is kind of indefinite form and the latter is definite form, although theres no clear difference and both can be used virtually in every situation.

[Muisje]

Thanks I guess word order is a common way to make some distinction between definite and indefinite in languages without articles. (and if anyone happens to know the answer to Varislintu's questions.. )

Question: what do you think of this sentence?
He panivat minut paran siivoamaan.
I didn't make it up myself, it's from an article. And I'm not gonna say anything about it because I don't want you to be biased
And what about the difference between keskellä taloa and talon keskellä?

[Varislintu]

Question: what do you think of this sentence?
He panivat minut paran siivoamaan.

It's grammatically correct .

And what about the difference between keskellä taloa and talon keskellä?

Not much difference, but you would more likely say "keskellä taloa" if you are emphasising "keskellä".

[Muisje]

Question: what do you think of this sentence?
He panivat minut paran siivoamaan.

It's grammatically correct .

Completely normal nothing even remotely strange about it? (not that I don't believe you )

[Varislintu]

Question: what do you think of this sentence?
He panivat minut paran siivoamaan.

It's grammatically correct .

Completely normal nothing even remotely strange about it? (not that I don't believe you )

Yes. Is it the "paran" that sounds strange to you? It's not the most common thing in the world to use this kind of a sentence, but it's quite correct .

[Muisje]

Yes. Is it the "paran" that sounds strange to you? It's not the most common thing in the world to use this kind of a sentence, but it's quite correct .

It's the paran (genitive) agreeing with minut (accusative). The article states it is grammatical to some people and ungrammatical to others, and it fits better into the writer's theory if it's not. But he only needs one person saying it's ungrammatical to be able to claim that Usually when a sentence is in-between, even people who accept it as grammatical agree that it's a bit 'weird', so that's why I asked. To me it doesn't sound like anything, really Using an adjective with a pronoun is a bit strange, yes, but not impossible.

[Varislintu]

Yes. Is it the "paran" that sounds strange to you? It's not the most common thing in the world to use this kind of a sentence, but it's quite correct .

It's the paran (genitive) agreeing with minut (accusative). The article states it is grammatical to some people and ungrammatical to others, and it fits better into the writer's theory if it's not. But he only needs one person saying it's ungrammatical to be able to claim that Usually when a sentence is in-between, even people who accept it as grammatical agree that it's a bit 'weird', so that's why I asked. To me it doesn't sound like anything, really Using an adjective with a pronoun is a bit strange, yes, but not impossible.

Hmm, I see. I do claim it's grammatically correct . To open it up somewhat literally, it is like:

"They made me, the poor one, clean."

Finnish doesn't have a construction like "the ADJECTIVE one" that would make an adjective into an "actor" (noun? I lack knowledge here). We just use the adjective itself, making this kind of sentence possible.

I remember a specific place where this same thing occurs also -- a song by Eppu Normaali. The lyrics go:

"Minä onneton sinun tyynyliinaasi haistelin."

It also translates pretty much as "I, the/an unhappy one, sniffed your pillow case."

I remember because it came up with another learner of Finnish .

[Muisje]

Finnish doesn't have a construction like "the ADJECTIVE one" that would make an adjective into an "actor" (noun? I lack knowledge here). We just use the adjective itself, making this kind of sentence possible.

That in itself isn't strange to me, Dutch does it too. In the article it was translated as poor me though, with paran being an actual adjective. Could that be possible? It doesn't really matter for the theory, though.

As for the keskellä thing, would you say one of them is more 'default' (if that makes sense)? And is there a difference in meaning between lähellä sydäntä and sydämen lähellä? (oh and, thanks for answering all my questions by the way )

[Varislintu]

That in itself isn't strange to me, Dutch does it too. In the article it was translated as poor me though, with paran being an actual adjective. Could that be possible? It doesn't really matter for the theory, though.

Yes, "poor me" is the less literal translation. But as it happens, I don't think the particualr word "parka" can ever be a pure adjective in Finnish. It always means "poor one", and usually is attached to the name or person like this:

Maija-parka (poor Maija)
äiti-parka (poor mother)

It's a special word.

As for the keskellä thing, would you say one of them is more 'default' (if that makes sense)?

No, both are per se equally valid and common.

And is there a difference in meaning between lähellä sydäntä and sydämen lähellä? (oh and, thanks for answering all my questions by the way )

Between these there is a difference, because "lähellä sydäntä" also has the non-literal idiomatic meaning of something that you care much about, for example animals or theater. I guess you say the same in English, close to one's heart. But when taken literally, i.e. referring to a physical location close to the heart, both are equally valid and common.

Ja ole hyvä .

[Muisje]

I hope you don't mind me throwing some more sentences from articles at you..
1) Tiedän pallon olevan lelun/lelu (which one is better)
2) Matti ei odottanut tuntia/tunnin (again, which one is better)
3) Liisa ei muistanut matkaa koko vuotta/vuoden (I think you get the idea by now )
4) Väitettiin Liisan muistaneen matkan koko vuosi (is this grammatical)

And then something else - is there a way to tell whether a word's plural partitive is -ja/jä or -ita/itä? Or am I just gonna have to memorize it? It seems to me that words that end in a long vowel (or diphtong) tend to only have -ita/-itä, but maybe I'm just imagining things.

And finally:
Valherakkaus, totako tää ois meille huomenna?
Valherakkaus, noinko sen täytyy aina sattua?
(as you can see I learn Finnish mostly through songs )
Two questions: what does tota mean here and why is -ko attached to tota and noin, rather than to the verb? Is it just being poetic or is it emphasis or is there something else going on?

[Varislintu]

I hope you don't mind me throwing some more sentences from articles at you..
1) Tiedän pallon olevan lelun/lelu (which one is better)
2) Matti ei odottanut tuntia/tunnin (again, which one is better)
3) Liisa ei muistanut matkaa koko vuotta/vuoden (I think you get the idea by now )
4) Väitettiin Liisan muistaneen matkan koko vuosi (is this grammatical)

1) Tiedän pallon olevan lelun/lelu
Lelu is better and much more usual, but I have heard lelun used in this type of construction, too.

2) Matti ei odottanut tuntia/tunnin
I feel tuntia is the only possibility here. Unless followed by "verran" (="amount"), because verran requires a genitive.

3) Liisa ei muistanut matkaa koko vuotta/vuoden (I think you get the idea by now )
As a stand-alone sentence, I think vuotta is the only possible one. But vuoden might be semi-possible in some special case/context. Vuoden is also okay if followed by "aikana" (=during), which again requires a genitive.

4) Väitettiin Liisan muistaneen matkan koko vuosi
I'd say this with vuoden, but I can imagine people saying vuosi also. If I was correcting a native's text for clarity and style, I'd suggest they use vuoden, though.

And then something else - is there a way to tell whether a word's plural partitive is -ja/jä or -ita/itä? Or am I just gonna have to memorize it? It seems to me that words that end in a long vowel (or diphtong) tend to only have -ita/-itä, but maybe I'm just imagining things.

I don't know off-hand, but I might look for an answer later.

And finally:
Valherakkaus, totako tää ois meille huomenna?
Valherakkaus, noinko sen täytyy aina sattua?
(as you can see I learn Finnish mostly through songs )
Two questions: what does tota mean here and why is -ko attached to tota and noin, rather than to the verb? Is it just being poetic or is it emphasis or is there something else going on?

Tota is the spoken language version of tuota. -ko can be attached pretty freely to words in a sentence, but that word must come first, and it changes the emphasis of the question. Here the questions mean:

Is that what this would be for us tomorrow?
Is that how it always has to hurt?

[Bondefanget]

About partitive plural, this page both explains about the use of it, and also how to form it (lots of rules). Hope that can be useful. Also I'd suggest you put that website into your bookmarks, as it's a very useful site

[Muisje]

Thank you! Both of you That website looks really good.

4) Väitettiin Liisan muistaneen matkan koko vuosi
I'd say this with vuoden, but I can imagine people saying vuosi also. If I was correcting a native's text for clarity and style, I'd suggest they use vuoden, though.

So, it's weird but not entirely impossible? How about if you say matka instead of matkan?

[Miumau]

4) Väitettiin Liisan muistaneen matkan koko vuosi
I'd say this with vuoden, but I can imagine people saying vuosi also. If I was correcting a native's text for clarity and style, I'd suggest they use vuoden, though.

So, it's weird but not entirely impossible? How about if you say matka instead of matkan?

In my opinion, anything else than "Väitettiin Liisan muistaneen matkan koko vuoden." sounds ungrammatical. Matka must definitely be in genitive, i.e. matkan. But the structure is quite complicated, so I could see people getting confused and saying vuosi instead of vuoden.

But in any case, it would be far more common to express the sentence with a subordinate clause, which is much simpler in this case.
"Väitettiin, että Liisa muisti matkan koko vuoden."

[Varislintu]

In my opinion, anything else than "Väitettiin Liisan muistaneen matkan koko vuoden." sounds ungrammatical. Matka must definitely be in genitive, i.e. matkan. But the structure is quite complicated, so I could see people getting confused and saying vuosi instead of vuoden.

But in any case, it would be far more common to express the sentence with a subordinate clause, which is much simpler in this case.
"Väitettiin, että Liisa muisti matkan koko vuoden."

Yes, what miumau said .