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Advanced swearing in Finnish

#896. Keskiviikko, 19. tammikuuta 2005 klo 14.20 | Jani

Atten­tion: Because of my recently imple­men­ted paren­tal cont­rol plu­gin, some of the Fin­nish words on this page may appear as cen­so­red (replaced by aste­risks). You can turn this fea­ture off to reveal those words by selec­ting Avaa lap­si­lukko from among the links at the bot­tom of this page. Since you’re here you pro­bably do want to do this, otherwise this post doesn’t make much sense.

My second puff towards But­tUgly today comes in the form of a sequel: I thought we could take a a look at some color­ful ways of using the expres­sions in JJ’s list of Use­ful words in Fin­nish#


The pos­ses­sive form. A power­ful, yet easy way to enhance the effect of your magic word is using a pos­ses­sive form as a pair for the word in its basic form. Examples:

  • per­ke­leen per­kele — the devil’s devil

  • vitun vittu — vagina’s vagina

  • Saa­ta­nan Saa­tana — Satan’s satan

Note, that alt­hough the form sug­gests a strange rela­tions­hip between the two words (e.g. as if Satan had a satan of his own, or a vagina had a vagina), no one using these actually means it; the form is pro­bably just used because saying the same word twice sounds pretty stu­pid, and still you wish to express that your irri­ta­ted­ness is best desci­bed by, say, per­kele to the second power.

Using vittu as a sen­tence. Vittu has become such a gene­ric expres­sion of fee­ling the vitu­tus (as discus­sed by J-Ko) that a need has risen to use anot­her power­ful word as the actual swear word in accom­pany of this one, sentence-like word. Per­haps for some subconscious, lin­guis­tic rea­sons, Saa­tana seems to go par­ticu­larly well with this: #

  • Vittu, Saa­tana!

To con­vey the full mea­ning of this expres­sion, it would pro­bably have to be trans­la­ted somet­hing like this: For fuck’s sake, I am fee­ling ext­re­mely frustra­ted and irri­ta­ted, if not comple­tely pis­sed off! As you can see, intense emo­tions and rich nuances are easily expres­sed using com­pact sen­tences of the Fin­nish language.

How to express somet­hing sucks. The actual word suck which is imeä, really isn’t used that much, since most Fin­nish spea­kers only associate it with somet­hing vacuum clea­ners do (as well as somet­hing else, which you are free to associate from vacuum clea­ners your­self). A very simi­lar expres­sion in mea­ning we do have, howe­ver, and that is olla per­seestä which is to emerge from ass#

  • tämä on per­seestä — this emer­ged from ass (this sucks)

  • proge on per­seestä — progres­sive rock emer­ged from ass (progres­sive rock sucks)

  • se jätkä on ihan per­seestä — the guy defi­ni­tely emer­ged from ass (the guy sucks ass)

N.b.: ass in this con­text does not refer to the ani­mal, but the part of human anatomy.

See also (and react to, if you know the answer) pni pon­de­ring why finns use six­teen (kuus­toista) and the swe­des seven­teen (sjut­ton) in a swea­ring con­text. #

24.1. 10:54 Lisä­sin lin­kin skru­buun.
3.4.2006 14:33 Muo­toi­lin WP:lle. Nyky­ai­kais­tin tyy­liä.
21.8.2007 16:52 Nyky­ai­kais­tin tek­nii­koita. Lisä­sin huo­mau­tuk­sen lapsilukosta.