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23.11.2010 00:01
Kolumni
Finnish Lesson 10: Questions
Mary Nurminen
Kirjoittajan kolumnit
In most languages you can tell when someone's asking a question just from their tone of voice when they say it. Not so in Finnish.
Finns have a habit of asking questions in the same tone as they make statements. So you have to be listening pretty hard to even know they're asking you a question. Because it can be embarrassing to not answer when someone asks you something, you should mutter "Joo" every once in awhile, just to make sure.
There are, of course, some asking-type words in Finnish: milloin, kuinka, kuka, and all of the mi-words: start with "mi" and add the regular word ending of your choice: missä, millä, mistä, mihin, miltä, mitkä.
Those are so predictable they are a bit boring though. The real fun is the -ko/kö ending thrown onto the end of a word to magically transform it into a question. Important note: this does NOT mean that you should also change your tone of voice to a questioning tone, the -ko/kö is quite enough!
But it's not only verbs you can make into questions. You can add -ko/kö to any old word to make it into a question: Kirkkoko? Kyykkäkö?
And if you want to ask whether someone wants you to do something to the whole bonfire, you get this wonderful sentence: Koko kokkoko?
You can also change the meaning of what you're asking by putting the -ko/kö on a different word in the sentence: Oletko sinä hullu? Sinäkö olet hullu? Hulluko sinä olet?
Of course, it can be hard sometimes to know where the hell to put the thing. I've often had this kind of thought process: Se isoko mies?…(no, that's not it)…Se iso mieskö?…(no, sounds dumb)…Sekö iso mies?...(still not sure but giving up and sticking with that one).
If you think of it too late, you can also just throw the -ko on at the end: Tuo iso mies...ko? Then again, if you don't feel like even using the -ko/kö, you can usually get away with that too: Ootsä? Tuutsä? Tajuutsä?
This works best in those areas of Finland where people often leave out whole parts of words, I guess just through laziness.
But there is one way to ask a question in Finland which is far and above my favorite. This is mostly because it sounds so very polite and considerate. I hear it quite often from my husband and various 15-year-old boys: Tä?
Actually if you spelled it the way it's usually said, it should be more like this: TÄ??
Mary Nurminen pähkäilee suomen kielen ja suomalaispsyyken kiemuroita.
