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José Carlos writes: How to say in Finnish the following? 1. I CUT my finger with a knife. 2. She CUT my hair. 3. I CUT the paper with scissors. 4. I CUT the onions in slices. 5, I CUT the potatoes in cubes. 6. I CUT my hand with a broken glass. Hi José! Thanks for the great question! The verb you want for all of these is leikata with different forms to go with it. Let’s look at them one by one. 1. I CUT my finger with a knife. Leikata + mihin Leikkasin sormeen, where sormi ‘finger’ is in the mihin form. So literally, I cut into my finger. 2. She CUT my hair. Hän leikkasi minun hiukseni. Here, hiukset is the object of the sentence. Because hiukset ‘hair’ (as in the hair on you head) almost always goes in the plural (so literally: hairs), you have two options for the form of the obejct: the t-plural – also known as plural nominative – and the plural partitive. So without the my, the sentence would be either Hän leikkasi hiukset or Hän leikkasi hiuksia. Both are correct, but there’s a little difference: hiukset is what is known as the total object, so all the hair was cut and the action has been completed all the way to the end. The partive hiuksia means that the process is still ongoing or only partially complete. I chose hiukset, as without more context it feels more intuitively correct that the haircut would be completed, but hiuksia also works just fine! Now, we still have the my to add. In standard written Finnish, this is done with minun (my) and a possessive suffix, which goes on the singular stem of the word in the t-plural, like this: Hän leikkasi minun hiukseni. For a more informal and easier to form version, you can also just use the personal pronoun: Hän leikkasi minun hiukset. 3. I CUT the paper with scissors. Leikkasin paperia saksilla. or Leikkasin paperin saksilla. Again, the choice between paperia (partitive object) or paperin (total object) depends on what you want to say: partitive for an ongoing process and paperin for a completed action. 4. I CUT the onions in slices. Leikkasin sipulit viipaleiksi. Viipaleiksi is a form called the translative, and it’s used for all kinds of transformations, like whole onions becoming slices or students graduating and becoming Finnish teachers: Valmistuin suomen kielen opettajaksi. – I graduated as a Finnish teacher. 5. I CUT the potatoes in cubes. Leikkasin perunat kuutioiksi. 6. I CUT my hand with a broken glass. Leikkasin käteni rikkinäisellä lasilla. This would be a completely literal translation of your sentence. However, in this sentence it sounds like you were holding the piece of glass in your hand and cut your hand with it (like you did in sentence number 1), presumably by accident. If the broken glass is on a table, you pick it up and accidentally cut your hand with it, the Finnish version would be something like this: Satutin käteni rikkinäiseen lasiin. So: I hurt my hand with a broken glass.  Would you like to study with me?
One question that I get asked over and over is some form of this: How do I become fluent in Finnish? Is it even possible? I of course always answer, yes, it is! Every student that I have ever known who has put in the work and kept going has gotten there. But don't just take it from me. Lidiia Salo, Finnish learner, B2 level Finnish speaker and founder of the wonderful YKIPass community, has agreed to share her language learning journey with us in this guest post. My Finnish Language Learning Journey and |
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