Silti

[Mats Norberg]

I have been told that silti doesn't work in this sentence (edelleen was suggested instead). Is it true and if so why? And why should edelleen work better? Adverb as adverb!??

Poliisin ahkerasta työstä huolimatta rikollisia on silti paljon.

[Naava]

I don't think it's grammatically wrong, but it could be edelleen works better in the context and/or register you are using. For example, IMO dropping silti wouldn't change the meaning at all, and redundancy is usually avoided in formal registers. In speech it would be fine though.

There is also a slight difference in the meaning:

rikollisia on silti paljon = even so, there are lots of criminals / despite (something), there are lots of criminals
rikollisia on edelleen paljon = there are still many criminals / the number of criminals remains high

In practise, I might translate both silti and edelleen the same way in English, but I hope this helps to illustrate the difference a little.

[Linguaphile]

I don't think it's grammatically wrong, but it could be edelleen works better in the context and/or register you are using. For example, IMO dropping silti wouldn't change the meaning at all, and redundancy is usually avoided in formal registers. In speech it would be fine though.

There is also a slight difference in the meaning:

rikollisia on silti paljon = even so, there are lots of criminals / despite (something), there are lots of criminals
rikollisia on edelleen paljon = there are still many criminals / the number of criminals remains high

In practise, I might translate both silti and edelleen the same way in English, but I hope this helps to illustrate the difference a little.

To check whether or not I'm understanding the difference correctly: would these translations work?


Poliisin ahkerasta työstä huolimatta rikollisia on silti paljon. = Despite the hard work of the police, there are nevertheless many criminals.

silti = Estonian siiski, ikkagi, sellest hoolimata

Poliisin ahkerasta työstä huolimatta rikollisia on edelleen paljon. = Despite the hard work of the police, there are still many criminals, as before.
What about "Despite the hard work of the police, as many criminals remain as before"? The problem here is that in English it implies that it's the same number as before, while in Finnish it's just still some number that can be considered "many" (maybe the same, maybe more, maybe less, but still "many").

edelleen = Estonian edasi, ikka, veel

For nuances, I feel like the one with "edelleen" is more critical of the police's impact. It focuses more on the fact that the situation remains the way it was before (their hard work has had little impact at all), while the one with "silti" just says the number of criminals is high (maybe their hard work has helped but unfortunately it's not enough)

*in English the first one implies that it's the exact same number as before, which isn't true of Finnish.

[Naava]

To check whether or not I'm understanding the difference correctly: would these translations work?


Poliisin ahkerasta työstä huolimatta rikollisia on silti paljon. = Despite the hard work of the police, there are nevertheless many criminals.

silti = Estonian siiski, ikkagi, sellest hoolimata

Poliisin ahkerasta työstä huolimatta rikollisia on edelleen paljon. = Despite the hard work of the police, there are still many criminals, as before.

It's really hard to explain small nuances in meaning in another language because I feel all of these words are making a Venn diagram where some parts of the Finnish word overlap with some parts of an English word, which in turn overlaps with another Finnish word, which overlaps with the original word and so on...

It's a good thing you asked though! I tried to think about what the difference really is and what I could do to explain it to you guys. Let's see if this helps!

I think the core meaning of silti is
"even if A is true, B is also true": you would expect that in case of A, B would not be true, but it is - and that's what we emphasise with silti.

So, if A = "the police are working hard" is true, you would think there'd be fewer criminals, but no! B = "there are many criminals" is also true.

The problem is that huolimatta has the same function: you can show with it that both A and B are true even if you wouldn't expect it to be so. And because silti and huolimatta have the same function, you don't need to use them both in the same sentence.

Compare:
Poliisi on tehnyt töitä ahkerasti. Rikollisia on silti paljon. (The police have worked hard. Despite that, there are many criminals.)
Poliisi on tehnyt töitä ahkerasti. Siitä huolimatta rikollisia on paljon. (The police has worked hard. Despite that, there are many criminals.)

Of course huolimatta and silti aren't 100% synonymous*, which is why you can use them both at the same time in speech, but they're still so close that in text it's better to choose only one of the two.

*you could translate "rikollisia on silti paljon" as "nevertheless, there are many criminals" or "yet there are many criminals" or "but there are still many criminals". I don't think the difference is that big in English either.

What about "Despite the hard work of the police, as many criminals remain as before"? The problem here is that in English it implies that it's the same number as before, while in Finnish it's just still some number that can be considered "many" (maybe the same, maybe more, maybe less, but still "many").

Edelleen means "A used to be true, A is still true now". There used to be criminals before, and there are criminals now. It doesn't say the number is exactly the same, though. It only implies that the number of criminals is still above the threshold of what you consider to be "many"; there either hasn't been any change at all or the change isn't very significant.

If I wanted to say the number of criminals has remained exactly the same, I'd do what you did in English: explicitly state it is "as many as before". You could use that with or without edelleen:

Rikollisia on edelleen yhtä paljon/monta kuin ennenkin.
Rikollisia on yhtä paljon/monta kuin ennenkin.

With edelleen it sounds like we're talking about a longer time period; like the police had repeatedly tried to bring the number down without success. Without edelleen it sounds like we're comparing only two points of time; there were criminals, police tried to change that, it didn't work.

(And a disclaimer: everything I've said here is based on my own intuition and relatively short pondering on these words. I feel like this post needs to be peer-reviewed before I'm confident I haven't forgotten some important point or something.)