Basic Finnish for tourists and travelers

Welcome to Basic Finnish for tourists and travelers.

Vast majority of Finns will switch to English if they encounter foreigners trying to learn Finnish. This does not mean they do not appreciate the effort to try to learn some command of Finnish.

Knowing the IPA helps greatly in this task as nearly all Finnish letters are pronounced as they are written and the IPA equivalent reads pretty much the same.

Situations:

At the airport

fi."Kiitos" is literally translatable to "a thank". This is the most common way to thank a person in Finnish.

Just talk English as "everyone" talks English here but feel free to use 'kiitos' and everyone will be impressed how well versed you are in Finnish as a foreigner.

To the sauna

You want to experience the wonderfully indescribable sooting effect of the Finnish sauna. Excellent choice dear Sir/Madame.

Depending on your choice of sauna, i.e. municipal swimming hall, country-side sauna, old-school commercial, hotel / restaurant sauna sauna or one of the new design saunas that have recently sprung up the rules are slightly different but lingo is unchanged throughout Finnish sauna culture.

Getting to the sauna

• fi."Missä?" is equivalent to the English expression en."Where?"
• fi."on" is the verb 'to be' for singular in present tense

• fi."Missä on sauna?" == en."Where is the sauna?"
• fi."Missä on pukuhuone?" == en."Where is the changing room?"

In the locker room

In private saunas there are no lockers but in many except the most ad-hoc saunas offer a lockable locker. Key is attached to a rubber ring (at the swimming hall) that is to be worn around the ankle.

This is usually the start of nudity area but sometimes people may go to the shower room with swim wear on and only there remove it to go to shower, sauna, shower and hit the pool.

• fi."päin" == en."towards, the direction of"
• "Missä päin on sauna?" == en."In which direction the sauna is?". Follow the waves.

In the sauna

• fi."lisää" == en."more"
• fi."löyly" could be translated to "steam" but infact löyly is a far wider concept i.e. it is not only about the humidity percent. In this context it means you are requesting more water thrown on stove stones. Let's learn that.
• The suffix '-ä' or '-a' (determined if there are umlauted characters present in the word body or not) forms the partitive case.

Lets put that all together:

• fi."Lisää löylyä" == en."Throw some more water on the stones."

• fi."Hyvä" == en."good" (plural "Hyvät")
• fi."Hyvät löylyt." == en."These are good löylyt"

• fi."Helvetti" == en."Hell"
• fi."liian" == en."too much"
• fi."kuuma" == en."hot"

• fi."Helvetti, liian kuuma" == en."Hell, it is too hot here."