Valeuutiset?

As part of my ongoing struggle to learn Finnish, I have now and then tried reading various books suomeksi. One of these I recently took a stab at (once again) is “The Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf” by the legendary 19^th century naturalist and conservation evangelist John Muir. It’s the account of his walk from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867, just after the Civil War.

One passage I ran across about a man he encountered along the way struck me as surprising resonate to today:

Matkasin muutaman mailin vanhan tennesseeläismaanviljelijän kanssa, joka oli hyvin kiihtynyt juuri kuulemistaan uutisista. ”Kolme kuningaskuntaa, Englanti, Irlanti ja Venäjä, on julistaneet sodan Yhdysvalloille. Voi, se on kamalaa, kamalaa”, hän sanoi. ”Taas on sota alkamassa, ja vielä näin äkkiä oman ison tappelumme jälkeen. No, ei kai sille mitään voi, enkä mä voi muuta sanoa kuin eläköön Amerikka, mutta parempi olisi, jos mitään kärhämää ei tulisi.”

”Mutta oletko varma, että uutiset pitävät paikkansa?”, minä kysyin. ”Kyllä vaan”, hän vastasi, ”sillä mä ja muutama naapuri oltiin kaupassa eilen illalla, ja Jim Smith, joka osaa lukea, luki tän jutun sanomalehdestä.”

I traveled a few miles with an old Tennessee farmer who was very excited about news he had just heard. “Three kingdoms, England, Ireland and Russia, have declared war on the United States. Oh, it is horrible, horrible,” he said. “Again, war is coming, and yet so soon after our own big fight. Well, I don’t suppose anything can be done about it. The only thing I can say is hooray for America, but it would be better if there were no squabbles.”

“But are you sure that the news is correct?”, I asked. “Sure,” he answered. “Me and a few neighbors were at the store yesterday evening, and Jim Smith, who can read, read the story from the newspaper.”

Needless to say, no such war had been declared. Ireland? Really?

In today’s environment -- where reality itself seems to be in dispute at every turn and what you think really happens in the world will depend on which media you consume -- the farmer’s falling for a 19^th century version of fake news somehow feels familiar.

From this you might be tempted to think Muir's account shows that, in this regard, there’s nothing new under the American sun. But, still, you can’t blame an illiterate farmer for trusting his friend Jim’s recitation of an erroneous newspaper story. It’s not as if he could Google “Ireland declares war”!

Today’s Americans, with so many ways to receive and double-check the news, have no such excuse for falling for stories that are demonstrably false (like Trump's claim that at least 3 million illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in the US election, depriving him of a popular-vote victory), while at the same time crying “fake!” every time they encounter legitimate news (such as Russia’s election meddling) that goes against their politics. 

But that doesn't stop many from doing it anyway. 

Agent Provocateur

I got a notice in the mail some time ago that read:

”Varaamasi aineisto on noudettavissa valitsemastasi kirjastosta alla mainittuun päivään asti.”

Considering how long I’ve lived here in Finland, I can’t take any special pride in simply comprehending this short passage (though I do just a little bit – take pride, that is). I fully understood the meaning, even without resorting to a dictionary.

“Your reserved material can be picked up at your chosen library until the date mentioned below.”

Looking a bit more carefully at the text, however, I realized that despite understanding the gist of the sentence well enough, two words were in forms that were totally unknown to me.

Varaamasi and valitsemastasi were close enough to the root words (varata “to reserve” and valita “to choose”) that the basic meaning was obvious. But why was there a ”-ma-” inserted in each? Why did those two letters transform the words into “reserved” and “chosen”? It was an unexpected mystery.

You would think that after all my years of studying Finnish, off and on, I would have run across (or at least noticed) every possible quirk of grammar that Finnish has to throw at me. Apparently not.

To discover what exactly was this part of speech I’d been missing all this time, I started browsing through my favorite Finnish grammar book of the moment, Suomen kielioppia ulkomaalaisille, by Leila White. I can highly recommend it.

And there it was. A little gem of grammar I never knew existed – the agenttipartisiippi (agent participle). It turns out it’s very commonly used. Now that I know what it is, I see it everywhere. It haunts me.

After reading the explanation in White’s book, I realized my initial interpretation was slightly off the mark. Instead of “your reserved material”, varaamasi aineisto strictly speaking translates to “material reserved by you”. But, you get the idea.

An agenttipartisiippi is a word, formed from a verb, that modifies something (an object) by indicating an action performed on that object by an "agent". Though that sounds complicated, it does have its uses. It allows you to concisely pack a bit more information into a few words.

In the common Finnish expression (well, not really), lentävä sika, the word lentävä ("flying") modifies sika ("pig"). This is an example of the preesenspartisiippi (present participle), not the agenttipartisiippi, but we'll get there eventually. 

All we can derive from this phrase is that the sika is flying. As far as we know, the pig is simply flying under its own power. Well, why not?

But if we want to paint a slightly more realistic picture, where pigs don’t actually have wings, and talk instead about what (the object) the pig is flying, we can employ the agenttipartisiipi.

For “to fly”, that would be lentämä, which is formed by taking the third-person present plural of lentää (lentävät) and replacing the “‑vät” with “‑mä”. The “agent” doing the flying, in this case a pig, takes the genitive form, sian.

In my letter from the library, the “agent” – which would be me, since I’m the one who reserved the material – is indicated simply by the possessive suffix “‑si” in varaamasi. This allows you to dispense with using a separate word (sinun, in this case) for the agent. Damn simple stuff!

Returning to my flying pig example, all we have to do now is specify what the pig is flying, for example, a jet (or suihkukone). Putting it all together, we get sian lentämä suihkukone, “a jet flown by a pig”.

Another whimsical example would be prinssin suutelema sammakko (“a frog kissed by a prince”), and a much, much more serious one would be ihmiskunnan aiheuttama ilmastonmuutos (“climate change caused by humans”).

To be sure, there’s a certain economy in using the agent participle, though you can also get the same idea across by just saying “a jet, which a pig flies” (suihkukone, jota sika lentää).

That would surely be the easiest approach for struggling Finnish speakers such as myself, especially considering that the day I actually learn to use the agenttipartisiippi in speech – and not just recognize it when I see it – is the day that frogs, kissed by princes or not, will surely fly (Katso, prinssin suutelema sammakko lentää!).

Maybe even alongside pigs, with or without jets. 

A lentävä sika, if I've ever seen one.
Credit: Azu Toth

The Small Difference One Little Letter Can Make

To improve my Finnish language comprehension, I’ve been gradually reading through one of my kid’s old lukio (high school) textbooks in history. This sluggish task is made easier by the fact that, in general terms, I already know most of the subject matter. It does help.

So, I was initially a bit confused when I ran across the following sentence about developments in Cuba and the fates of political dissidents (“toisinajattelijat”) there:

Kuubalaisia toisinajattelijoita tuomittiin 2003 pitkiin vankeusrangaistuksiin yhteistyöstä Yhdysvaltojen kanssa.

I understood the individual words well enough and the overall meaning of the sentence, at least the first part. What tripped me up was the word for “cooperation” (yhteistyö). You very often see this word used in the sense of “in cooperation” (yhteistyössä). (The inessive suffix –ssä denotes “in”.)

My first thought was to take that as the meaning for the word in this instance, in which case, the sentence would translate to:

Cuban dissidents were sentenced in 2003 to long prison terms in cooperation with the US.

What? “…in cooperation with the US”? That certainly sounded odd. When did that happen?

After a more careful re-reading of the sentence, I realized my mistake. The word is actually yhteistyöstä, not yhteistyössä, as any idiot could plainly see. 

Unlike -ssä, the –stä suffix, which is used in the elative case, denotes “from” or “about” something, or in this case “for” something. 

The correct translation...

Cuban dissidents were sentenced in 2003 to long prison terms for cooperation with the US.

...makes much more sense.

A tricky language, this Finnish, when a single-letter substitution – buried in a 12-letter word – can turn the meaning of a sentence topsy-turvy.

Side note: the Finnish word for “dissident” (toisinajattelija) is a compound word literally meaning “otherwise-thinker”. I like how plain and descriptive that is. 

Return of the Burning Spruce

There’s an Internet meme that pops up every so often on my Facebook feed that illustrates so perfectly what a maddeningly weird language Finnish can be.

Although this might be an extreme example, the language here is completely normal. The two words Kuusi palaa can and do mean all these various things.

Partly this can be explained by the fact that the Finnish word kuusi is a true homonym, in which the same spelling and pronunciation are used for different words, with different meanings.

Who knows exactly why it should be that kuusi means both “six” and “spruce”? 

Perhaps in the misty recesses of time, the towering tree so abundant throughout the boreal forests of Eurasia looked like a six to the ancient proto-Finns. Chances are, it’s much more complicated than that.

While having one word do the work of two can be extremely economical for a language, it seems a bit rare in otherwise economical Finnish. Only a few common examples come to mind.

There is the case of the cucumber. The word kurkku does double duty as both “cucumber” and “throat”. Again, who knows why, though you can see a certain similarity, or even logic to it, I guess.

And it’s generally not a problem, as there is no room for confusion when someone says “Minun kurkkuuni sattuu” ("My throat hurts."), unless that someone has such an unnaturally close attachment to his or her cucumber that they can sense its real or imagined pain. I don’t know anyone like that. At least, no one who will admit to it. Or is free to wander freely among the public.

By comparison, English seems to be rife with homonyms, such as “pike” (a fish or a sharp stick), “light” (not heavy or not dark), and “crane” (a bird or a construction machine). Finnish comes close to sharing this last one with English, since kurki, the word for the long-legged bird, is also used in nostokurki, the tall machine that is used to lift all kinds of heavy stuff.

As a side note, some people can be surprisingly touchy when it comes to homonyms. Or more to the point, homophones, which are words that sound alike regardless of how they’re spelled (“dye” versus “die”). A language school in Utah reportedly fired its social media specialist last August when he posted a blog about homophones, due to concerns that it might be seen as promoting the “homo-sex-ual agenda”. As they say, only in America.

Besides the homogenous nature of homonyms, what makes the extreme multiple meanings of “Kuusi palaa” possible is the fact that the Finnish word for “moon” is kuu. And if you happen to have a planetary satellite of your very own, you could very well stake your claim to it by adding the possessive suffix “-si” to form kuusi (“my moon”). Which, of course, also means “spruce” or “six”.

As to whether your moon (or anyone’s "spruce" or "six") is burning or returning can be, well, a matter of sheer interpretation because of a quirk in the conjugation of two Finnish verbs that are distinctly different. Or, as it turns out, maybe not quite distinctly different enough.

The Finnish verb “to burn” is palaa (verb type 1), while “to return” is palata (verb type 4). 

As a verb type 1, palaa conjugates to palaa in third-person singular. (The last vowel of the root pala- is simply repeated.) No real change, not even a pesky consonant gradation. So palaa means both “to burn” and “burns”.

Meanwhile, to do the same with palata, as with any type 4 verb, you lop off the last “–a” and change the “-t-“ to an “-a-“ before adding the personal ending -- which for third-person singular doesn’t exist. So you end up with palaa (“returns”).

To confuse matters even more, a completely different Finnish word pala (“piece”), takes the partitive form of palaa when used with a number like the numeral “spruce”, no sorry, make that the numeral “six”. That’s why when talking about “six pieces” of something, you say kuusi palaa. 

The quantum mechanics of palaa 
(apparently enclosed in some kind of metaphysical blueberry)

The close similarity doesn’t end there. For fun, I was wondering how confusing it might be when using partisiipit (participles) of palaa (“burns” and “return”, not “pieces”). 

Partisiipit in Finnish are derived from the third-person plural forms of verbs, in these cases palaavat (“they return”) and palavat (“they burn”). In both words, the “–vat” is replaced with ”–va". Or maybe it's simpler to just think that the “-t“ disappears. 

In any case, you end up with palaava (returning) and palava (burning).

Imagine that! They’re not completely identical! You can easily tell them apart! Palaava has an extra “a”, which you pronounce as if you’re having a doctor examine your throat (or kurkku, if you will), as in “ahhhh”.

No doubt, simply adding the words palava or palaava will spice up any conversation about spruces. 

You can mystify your spouse or friends or random strangers encountered in the street by solemnly intoning:

          “Palava kuusi palaa.” (”The burning spruce returns.”)

Or make the heartfelt declaration (with an extra "a") that: 

          “Palaava kuusi palaa.” (“The returning spruce burns.”)

That, of course, could also mean “The returning spruce returns”. But, then again, that would just be a silly thing to say.

Deconstructing Finnish

Now and then, as I continue trying to improve my Finnish language kyky (ability), I decide it’s high time that I actually understand the words of some of my favorite Finnish songs. For years, I’ve enjoyed some popular Finnish bands without necessarily having much of a clue what they’re singing about.  It's not a strange as it might sound.

Once when I was taking regular Finnish lessons I suggested to the teacher that we study the lyrics of Eppu Normaali sometime. Maybe she wasn’t a fan (hard to imagine), but in any case it never happened.

Another Finnish band I really like is Scandinavian Music Group, whose song “Joisin viskin ja nousisin” I can actually even sing, well, maybe at least the first few lines.

“Jos voisin joskus olla niin kuin hän, jota rakastan
 Jos voisin ajaa Norjan läpi ilman korttia.”

”If I could sometimes be like the one I love 
If I could drive through Norway without a driver’s license.”

Anyway, since I listen to this particular tune frequently, I figured it would help my Finnish comprehension to learn the rest of the song.
 
I recently downloaded the lyrics, and I’ve got to say, the wording – the construction of the language – though perfectly normal Finnish, provides some good examples of what makes Finnish such a complicated language for English speakers to learn.

To illustrate this (and show my pedantic side in all its glory), I’ve decided to “deconstruct” a couple of lines from the song, namely

”Joisin viskin ja nousisin portaissa käsilleni.
 Teille ylpeilisin mustelmillani.”

Nine words. In English, this very roughly translates to

“I would drink the whisky and raise in the stairs to my hands. 
 I would brag to you about my bruises.”

It’s not so hard to understand these lines, more or less. The passive comprehension of these nine words isn’t necessary beyond me. But, if I had to actively express the same thing, to put these words into their final form off the top of my head, from scratch so to speak, boy, that would require some mental jujitsu. Or mental sisu. Or mental something.

Here’s the breakdown of how you would form these words from their original (dictionary) forms, if you were forced to think about it and do it "by the book". (And I’m sure to get called out by sharp-eyed folks who know the subject much better than I do.)

To get joisin (I would drink), the steps are:
 

juoda ⇩	Infinitive (to drink), verb type 2
juo- ⇩	Infinitive stem – Formed by dropping -da (because it is verb type 2)
juovat ⇩	3rd person plural present-tense – Formed by adding the 3rd person plural suffix -vat
jo- ⇩	3rd person plural stem – Formed by removing –vat and then, because what’s left ends in a diphthong (-uo-), removing the first vowel “u”
joisi- ⇩	Conditional stem – Formed by adding the conditional marker -isi-
Joisin	1st personal conditional singular – Formed by adding the personal ending -n

Voila, you get joisin, “I would drink”, and after much more of this, you certainly would. In English, we would just add “I would” in front of “drink”, and be done with it.

Getting to viskin is a bit easier because viski (whiskey), since it is a foreign loan word (thank you Scotland!) it doesn’t normally get twisted all out of recognition the way many Finnish words do. Also, it helps that all of the whiskey is being drunk, apparently. 

viski ⇩

Nominative (whiskey)

viskin

Because not just some whiskey is being consumed, but every single bit of it, the accusative case is in order here. In Finnish, this is usually identical to the genitive case, which means you simply add the genitive ending -n to the nominative stem viski-. If it were only some of the whiskey being drunk, then you would instead add an –ä to form the dreaded partitive case – in which case, why not just go ahead and drink it all?

ja	This word means “and” and there’s nothing more to say about that. It never changes, thank god.

Forming nousisin (I would raise) is a lot like joisin.

nousta ⇩	Infinitive (to raise), verb type 3
nous- ⇩	Infinitive stem – Formed by dropping -ta, as one does with verb type 3
nousevat ⇩	3rd person plural present tense – Formed by adding an -e- (again, typical of verb type 3) before you tack on the -vat.
nouse- ⇩	3rd person plural stem – Formed by removing the -vat (and this just after you added it).
nousisi-	Conditional stem – Formed by removing the “e” from the 3rd person plural stem before adding the conditional marker -isi-. Of course, going to the trouble of forming the 3rd person plural stem might seem totally, and perversely, useless since it’s identical to the infinitive stem we started with. But, this isn’t the case for all type 3 verbs, thanks to consonant gradation (or degradation, as I sometimes think of it). For example, in the case of ajatella (to think), the two stems in question are ajatel- and ajattel-. Spot the difference? One letter only, but in Finnish that can make a big difference.

portaissa (in the stairs) Now it gets interesting. Really.

porras ⇩	Nominative (a step)
portaat ⇩	Nominative plural (stairs) – Formed by replacing the “s” with -at (because that’s how you form nominative plural with words ending in “-as”). We’ll regret this in the next step. Also, consonant gradation comes into play, which forces the “weak” -rr- to change into the strong -rt-. Insidious, isn’t it?
portai- ⇩	Plural stem – This is weirdly formed by removing the –at that indicates plural in the nominative and instead adding the plural marker -i- used in every other case.
portaissa ⇩	Inessiivi case (in the stairs) – Add the inessiivi ending -ssa to clarify that we’re not talking about from the stairs (portailta) or on the stairs (portailla) or to the stairs (portaille). Simple.

käsilleni  (to my hands)

käsi ⇩	Nominative (hand)
käsille ⇩	Allatiivi case (to the hands) – Because käsi is an “uusi-type” word, you form the allatiivi case in plural by simply adding the -lle suffix to the basic nominative form. Normally, it’s much more complicated. For example, in the case of “foot”, the singular form, jalka is changed first to jalalle (to the foot), before finally being transformed to the plural jaloille (to the feet). To me, this is mind-boggling.
käsilleni	Possessive (to my hands) – All that’s needed is the simple act of adding the first-person singular possessive ending -ni (my).

  teille (to you)

te ⇩	Personal pronoun (you)
tei- ⇩	2nd person plural pronoun stem
teille	Allatiivi case – Again, add the allatiivi ending, -lle.

ylpeilisin (I would brag)

ylpeillä ⇩	Infinitive (to brag), verb type 3
ylpeilevät   ⇩	3rd person plural (they brag) – Formed by removing the -lä, then (as with nousta above) adding an -e- and the 3rd person plural ending -vat.
ylpeile- ⇩	Conditional stem – Again, formed by removing the 3rd person plural ending -vat.
ylpeilisin	1st person singular conditional (I would brag) – Formed by replacing -e- with –isi, and adding the 1st person singular ending -n.

mustelmillani (with my bruises)

mustelma ⇩	Nominative (bruise)
mustelmalla ⇩	Adessiivi case (by the bruise, or with the bruise) – Formed by adding the adessiivi ending –lla.
mustelmallani ⇩	Possessive (by my bruise) – Formed by adding the 1st person singular possessive ending -ni.
mustelmillani	Plural (by my bruises) – “Bruise” is changed to “bruises” by replacing the -a- in the stem with the plural marker -i-. The meaning in this context is more like “using my bruises to brag”. In English we would say “to brag about my bruises”.

 
Of course, probably no one in their right mind would go through such torturous steps when boasting about their inclination to drink whiskey and get bruised.

Luckily, native Finnish-speakers don’t have to think about it this much. If you ask most Finns why you remove the “u” from juoda when talking conditionally, they surely would have no clue. They just learn the final forms by heart. Maybe some foreigners do the same. 

I only wish I could do it that way, too (“Vain toivon, että voisin tehdä samalla tavalla”) – like the one I love.