Naava wrote:I'm not interested in your personal life. I only needed to know how close you are and what you're trying to do before I could imagine what kind of words could be used.
I know, haven't meant it in a bad way at all :)
I spoke with one more person about it and he also came up with the same two things
"rakas" and
"kulta". By feeling, I liked "rakas" better - but he said that it's more intimate and personal since it comes from "rakkaus" - thence I think I will take the chance and start my letter with
"Kulta,". He thinks it's not that intimate and it's still very affectionate.
He also said he prefers
"kultaseni" to just
"kulta". What is the "se" in this construction? But I think the "ni" only adds closeness and makes it less appropriate.
It seems that since Finns are not usually saying such words, there aren't that many of them.
Naava wrote:Finns don't really use strong affectionate words with people they're not super close to. :? (...) I can't come up with any word that wouldn't sound corny and/or put you directly into red flag category. Sorry about that; let's hope someone else can recall a word that would suite your purposes.
You should have told me this one year ago - it would have spared me a lot of trouble :P
Naava wrote:In any case, the most common ones are kulta and rakas.
Did any other words come to your mind? Even if they are not an exact fit for the purpose, it's good to know what the language has to offer.
Naava wrote:It's sweet of you to wish to use Finnish
The language doesn't change much per se - it's more about things people are used to hearing or not. You would get the same reaction if you use a similar expression while speaking English.
In that logic, when I e-mail a person I'm supposed to be super formal with and he/she is Finnish, I most often start with "Hi [given name],". That would be completely inappropriate in any of the other languages I know except Danish; including English - but since I know how people talk to each other here, I just speak the Finnish way. I spoke with a Finnish person about it and she said she would do the same.
So I'm always super informal - I can think of one exception I've made recently and that's because I not only should be in the position of respecting that person a lot, but also she's a lot older, so since she's from a previous generation I thought things might have been different before; and I expected her to be more used to communication with internationals. Therefore I thought it would be more appropriate to use the English convention for addressing someone.
But on the contrary, I think my very old neighbour wasn't very happy when I said "olkaa hyvä" to him - like I was implying he's old?