Letter writing

[Hasufeld]

Hei,

I want to write a fairly detailed letter to some friends in Finland, but I'm unsure on the etiquette, for example:

- How to say, 'Dear..' and 'To..'
- The equivalent of 'yours sincerely, faithfully' and 'with respects'
- positioning of your address, theirs, date etc on the letter

Also I can't figure out how to say 'How are you both', I can can say 'how are you' and 'both' separately but I can't put them together properly..

[Hasufeld]

Can noone tell me how to say those things?

[ILuvEire]

Well, I can't. Sorry man.

[Steisi]

Hei,

I want to write a fairly detailed letter to some friends in Finland, but I'm unsure on the etiquette, for example:

- How to say, 'Dear..' and 'To..'
- The equivalent of 'yours sincerely, faithfully' and 'with respects'
- positioning of your address, theirs, date etc on the letter

Also I can't figure out how to say 'How are you both', I can can say 'how are you' and 'both' separately but I can't put them together properly..

Well, I'll give it a shot, but it made me laugh a bit because the idea of Finns being so polite in a letter is quite absurd

Just how formal do you want to be? If they're your friends, you can simply write 'Hei'. Hei goes for anyone from your friend to... for example, an otherwise unknown person at university (eg a student advisor), when writing to KELA to ask about stuff... I've only seen things like "Hyvä X" and "Arvoisa X" in extremely formal letters such as to members of consulates and in some letters from a company to its customers (in which case the most common is Hyvä asiakkaamme - Dear customer).

You can also use 'to' by adding the suffix -lle to most names. I'm not sure what their names are so I can't tell you how to form them with regards to consonant gradation.

Summary: I'd use hei. Or the -lle case.

Yours sincerely/yours faithfully is best expressed with '(Ystävällisin) terveisin'. It means "with (friendly) greetings". For some reason I find 'terveisiä' a bit more friendly, since 'ystävällisin terveisin' is usually what you get from people you don't know too well who have to be polite to you (sometimes to the extreme of Yst. terv. ).

Summary: terveisiä to close friends, ystävällisin terveisin to others. In very informal messages you can also write t. Your name. (t = terveisin).

The latter I'm not sure about. Finns have mostly used e-mail with me. I just dug out a bank statement and it has

BANK NAME ...................................................... STUFF ABOUT ME AND MY ACCOUNT
BANK ADDRESS

MY NAME
MY ADDRESS

But I'm not sure if it's like that just because my account details are at the top.. just looked at a letter from the post office and it did the same

[Varislintu]

I agree with Stacy's points:

- "Hei [receiver]" is a good neutral greeting. For something very formal use "Hyvä/Arvoisa [receiver]".

- Letters and e-mails are almost always ended with the word "terveisin" (or "terveisiä"). You can add any appropriate adjective to it, like "kesäisin terveisin" (summery greetings) or "ystävällisin terveisin" (friendly greetings). Note that there's a comma between these and your name.

- positioning of your address, theirs, date etc on the letter

You can put the date and place in the upper right corner of the letter. The receiver's address is placed at the right lower corner of the envelope, and the sender's address can be placed at the left upper corner of the envelope.

Also I can't figure out how to say 'How are you both', I can can say 'how are you' and 'both' separately but I can't put them together properly..

Hmm, the problem here is how to translate "how are you". As a literal question it would be "Kuinka te molemmat/kummatkin voitte?" or "Mitä teille molemmille/kummallekin kuuluu?", as a general greeting it could be "Toivottavasti voitte molemmat/kumpikin hyvin".

[nighean-neonach]

Yours sincerely/yours faithfully is best expressed with '(Ystävällisin) terveisin'. It means "with (friendly) greetings"

Hey, that looks like it is the same word as Saami "dearvvuodan"

[Steisi]

Yeah, and to think we also greet with the word dearvva 'terve'

[Hasufeld]

Thanks everyone, I'll get to writing a draft..