A Finnish Language Blog

Pitäjänmäki > Pitsku

Malminkartano > Maltsu

Pukinmäki > Puksu

Myyrmäki > Myrtsi

Martinlaakso > Martsari

and then sometimes the shortened version is the Swedish translation but made sound Finnish

Kauniainen > Grankulla > Grani

Kauklahti > Köklax > Kökkeli

Idk who needs it but I thought I might share some free online resources that I found helpful for other broke overwhelmed learners.

Updated 2025/06/08

I'm pinning this for now since I keep adding new resources.

Please do know that adults can have itkupotkuraivarit, too.

Kalsarikännit (Pantsdrunk) is missing here. Means to drink alone at home in your underwear only.

Anyway!

In your recent post about Riihimäki, you started it with, "Mulla ei oo"

I am *pretty* sure that in kirjakieli that would be "Minulla ei ole".

So. This is probably a silly question. But. Does "Minulla on" similarly become "Mulla oon" or "Mulla on"?

Also... Any tips for recognizing shortened/informal forms of formal phrases?

Anyway. I've taken enough of your time.

Kiitos!

One of my friends teaches finnish to immigrants for a living, and she can attest that her students are frequently frustrated by the way that spoken finnish and written finnish are completely different dialects, if not downright two different languages. Also fun fact, one of the most distinct ways that different finnish dialects can be identified is what word they have for "minä/sinä". The "mä" you have heard is mainly southern finnish dialects, in some regions people say "mää", "mie" etc, there's surely ones I haven't even heard of.

You're correct that in your assessment, "mulla ei oo" does indeed mean "minulla ei ole", and "minulla on" is indeed "mulla on". I have no idea how to help with recognising shortened informal forms, but one thing that I only consciously observed after someone asked me "soitatko jotain soitinta?" ("do you play an instrument?"), and it caught me off-guard because it never occurred to me that the grammatically correct written way to shorten "do I/do you/etc" questions is completely different from the spoken finnish.

For example, a question of "are you - ?" is written in kirkakieli as "oletko sinä - ?", but since the -ko suffix already clarifies who is being addressed, the word "sinä" is almost redundant. So to ask "oletko sinä tulossa?" (Are you coming?), a character in a book or a play would say "oletko tulossa?" but in spoken finnish, the "you" word used in that dialect is just glued to the end of the verb. So someone who says "sä" says it as "oletsä tulossa?" - which itself shortens to "ooksä" - and someone who uses "sie" asks "oletsie tulossa?" - shortening to "ootsie/ooksie tulossa?"

Speaking finnish is like learning to draw - trying to aim for perfect photorealism isn't necessary to be understood, you can pretty much draw stick figures and it's good enough if people will understand what you're trying to depict. If you've heard someone say that a non-native speaker can never really learn to speak truly flawless finnish, don't be discouraged by that. Finnish is more like japanese than french when it comes to foreign learners - people are impressed that you make an effort at all.

I've met people who have lived in Finland for decades, whose adult children are fluent bilinguals, and you can tell that someone's lived here for 30 years by the way they make more advanced and nuanced mild grammar mistakes.

The period of Old Book Finnish (Vanha kirjasuomi) lasts from the mid-16th century up until mid to late 18th century. It is a clerical language, and later a language of some countryside official papers. Those who wrote and read in the everyday did it mainly in Latin, German, Swedish and Russian, depending on the time period (in order from the middle ages to the modern era). Once Lutheran sermons and common schooling spread in the 17th century, monolingual country Finnish-speakers begin to write and read as well - more or less only what they had to know for church confirmation. (Stuff like the ABCs, Finnish Paternoster and creed, some cathechism and psalms, your own name...)

What actually counts as formal standardised book Finnish is a 19th century invention with no direct spoken match. Speaking is not what it was ever made for, and it's very, VERY recent in the scope of European languages. Instead of trying to understand it through Central and Western european or Slavic orthographic histories, something like Albanian (Shqip) or Estonian writing is a much better comparison; they were similar imperial peripheries under many subsequent, overlapping empires.

The standard of written Finnish has not gone through as much organic development as written English or Swedish, nor is it based on any one prestige dialect. It was made to be a hybrid of pre-existing, long-developed and very varied dialects. Written Finnish is not some old base for spoken dialects, rather it's a retroactive umbrella to bring them close enough for mutual written understanding and record-keeping.

Also, if it's of any solidarity:

The earliest verified sentence in what can be counted as 'Finnish' is a single line in a 1470s German travelogue, using a purely medieval Hochdeutsch orthography, and amounts to 'I would very much like to speak in Finnish [but] I can't/won't/shan't'. (Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho somen gelen. Emÿna daÿda. Or, in something more like present day spelling, Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kielen [=kielellä], en minä taida.)

The words are said to have come from Finnish-born Maunu Tavast, then Bishop of Turku, in greeting.

En tiedä toimiiko nämä videot Suomen ulkopuolella, mutta tässä Ilta-Sanomien jutussa on murre-esimerkkejä. Yleisesti aiheesta täällä.

pahalapsi puhuu savoa

ja Rouzimary tekee sketsejä Etelä-Pohjanmaan murteella

Yle julkaisee myös lyhyitä tietoiskumaisia uutisvideoita joissa juontaja puhuu omaa murrettaan (tässä Pohjois-Pohjanmaa)

Hi!

This is interesting. I have my opinions but first I did some field research on this; I opened Areena and Spotify to check what the Finnish music and TV industries do.

It's more "Joyful on the surface even if you're rotting deep inside".

to your own road (mennä tiehensä, to buzz off)

to the wolf (mennä hukkaan, to lose something)

inside the bilberry (mennä mustikkaan, to go pick bilberries; the same form works with other berries and also mushrooms in general)

into the forest (mennä metsään, to make a mistake)

into the doorjamb (mennä pieleen, to make a mistake)

to the magpies (mennä harakoille, to be wasted)

to an ancient god (mennä jumiin, to be stuck)

into yourself (mennä itseensä, to reflect on something bad you said/did)

to become a bunch of vulvas (mennä vituiksi, to be completely unsuccessful)

onto the thighs (mennä reisille, to be completely unsuccessful)

to the havings of sex/into marriage (same root word) (mennä naimisiin, to get married)

go to behind the sauna / take someone behind the sauna (mennä saunan taakse, to kill someone)

to disappear into the air like a smoke (mennä/haihtua savuna ilmaan, to disappear, to get wasted)

to shingles (mennä päreiksi, to break completely)

to hell (mennä helvettiin, typically as a command painu helvettiin, go to hell, wish someone to get lost)

to difficult (mennä vaikeaksi, to get really uncomfortable and flustered)

up to the tree with ass first (mennä perse edellä puuhun; to do things the wrong way or in a way that they cause problems later)

to go fishing beyond the sea (mennä merta edemmäs kalaan, too big ideas, too far fetched plans, making things too complicated)

into feelings (mennä tunteisiin, to get angry)

towards an ass (mennä päin persettä, to fuck up, to fail miserably)

down the throat (mennä kurkusta alas, to use one's all wealth and fortune in alcohol)

turn into a gingerbread (mennä pipariksi, to fail)

turn into a friend (mennä kaveriksi, a dialect idiom; to help someone)

to better hunting grounds (mennä paremmille metsästysmaille, to die)

to one's own journeys (mennä matkoihinsa, to buzz off, to leave)

to the town of toilet seats (mennä päin prinkkalaa, to fail)

through where the fence is at its lowest (mennä sieltä, mistä aita on matalin; to take a short cut, a lazy effort)

you sleep away (nukkua pois)

you go forward (mennä edes; "edesmennyt")

you go away (mennä pois; "poismennyt")

and also...

you change your diocese (vaihtaa hiippakuntaa)

you throw a crank (heittää veivi)

you kick emptiness (potkaista tyhjää)

you enter the underworld (mennä manalle)

To push/grow cow parsley = puskee/kasvattaa koiranputkea

Was put on a post package to America = laitettiin Ameriikan pakettiin

Rests in moss = lepää sammaleessa

Most names in this list were checked from the official web pages of the municipalities. Blame them for any mistakes (/j)

A lot of teachers will tell you to remember some kind of rule set for these kinds of things but I wouldn't do that. Instead, I would advise you to think of them as guidelines; for example, many places that end in -joki use the allative. The most important thing to remember though is that it is not set in stone! There might be a place that uses the illative instead.

Also, remember that even native speakers get these things wrong sometimes. (I had to google an embarrassingly large amount of these just to be sure which one it was) When in doubt, think of a similar place name and use the ending. (you might or might not be correct!)

There might also be situations where the locals cannot come to a conclusion on what the "real" way is, I added some examples of that too. I've also come across situations where two different places have the exact same name but they both inflect it differently...

Here are some resources on this.

(In Finnish) It's very useful since it gives both the inflection (yellow) and what the locals are called (green)

A month from a skylark until summer half a moon from a chaffinch, a little from a white wagtail, not a day from a swallow.