Basic Finnish for tourists and travelers

Welcome to Basic Finnish for tourists and travelers.

You are welcome to Apotheker Jukeboksi's guide intended for learning meaningful Finnish you might actually use.

Vast majority of Finns will switch to English if they encounter foreigners trying to apply less than perfect Finnish. This does not mean they do not appreciate the effort to try to learn some command of Finnish and to apply it but Finns just figure out the foreigners will not bother to learn the language spoken only by some 5 mln people. Assumption of English being the highest in common language is due to desire to be hospitable towards the non-native.

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 / port / terminal

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.

While you are at the airport, port or train station we could interest you in purchasing a prepaid-data sim card from R-kioski. You will be going to the R-kioski anyways to get a (multi)day pass for the public transport system. Finland actually has a functioning public transport system.

To the sauna

Oldschool sauna. No chimney ergo smoke sauna. These are actually some of the most enjoyable saunas around. Don't worry, the hotel sauna looks like in the picture below just more lavish and luxurious.

Modern Finnish sauna, probably of a private individual

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

Depending on your choice of sauna, i.e. municipal swimming hall, country-side cabin sauna, old-school commercial sauna a few exist, hotel or restaurant's 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

Even geeks can do it.

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

• fi."puku" == en."dressing, suit"
• fi."huone" == en."room"
• fi."kalja" plural "kaljat" == en."beer" (slang) officially the word is olut but people call it kalja

Now we are ready to form some useful sentences

* fi."Missä on sauna?" == en."Where is the sauna?"

* fi."Missä on pukuhuone?" == en."Where is the dressing room?"

* fi."Missä on kaljat?" == en."Where are the beers?"

* Now we can also form the compound word fi."pukuhuonekaljat" == en."dressing room beers"

• fi."Tarvitsen" == en."I need"
• -ko or -kö question forming suffix
• fi."pyyhkeen == en."a towel"
• fi."shampoo == en."shampoo"
• fi."uima == en."of swimming"
• fi."housut == en."pants"
• fi."uimahousut" == en."swimming trunks"
• fi."uimapuvun" == en."ladies swim wear"

* "Tarvitsenko pyyhkeen?" == en."Do I need a towel?"

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, put swim wear on and hit the pool.

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

Shower room / bathing area

Vihta (Western Finland dialect) or vasta (Eastern Finland dialect) is an essential sauna culture thing. It is a bunch of birch branches tied together with a birch branch and it is used for whacking self and/or others with it. Believe it or not it actually makes the sauna even more soothing in the end-game.

• In hotel and restaurant saunas toiletries will be provided by the establishment for the traveler.

In the sauna

• fi."lisää" == en."more [of x]"
• fi."löyly", plural löylyt could be translated to "steam" but infact löyly is a far wider concept i.e. it is not only about the humidity percent. Löyly can also be used to refer to the quality of the löyly in a certain sauna.
• 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, you want more löyly you ask for:

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

• fi."Vihdo" == en."[you] whack with vihta"
• fi."lujempaa" == en."harder"

• -> fi."Vihdo lujempaa" == en."Whack me harder with your vihta."

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

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

Getting out of the sauna

• fi."mennään" == en."let's go"
• fi."uimaan" == en."to swimming"

• fi."Mennään uimaan" == en."Let's go swimming"

• fi."-lle" == en."for someone/something, to someones place"

fi."Mennään kaljalle." == en."Let's go have some beers."