Finnish from Afar Blog

A headline in the Helsingin Sanomat last weekend was: Halonen: “Pidän Obamasta” [Finnish President] Halonen: “I like Obama” There's ...

As if Finnish words were not long enough as it is, Finns have developed endless strategies to pad them out. Chief amongst these are those r...

It's Valentine's Day, the day of romance and love. Have you written a poem or sent a card to your loved one or to your secret fancy?...

In the previous post about polar questions , I mentioned a bizarre connection between Finnish and Japanese. This reminded me of an amusing s...

It can be difficult to work out whether a Finn is asking a question, because they do not inflect their tone upwards at the end of interrogat...

No home should be without a “kolmivaihevaihtovirtakilowattituntimittari”. Obviously. More to the point though, what an impressive word! At...

Last week, I saw a Finnish movie (with English subtitles, of course) called “Miesten Vuoro” (“Men’s Turn”). This is a pretty steamy movie fe...

In life, the gap between success and failure, winning and losing is often a small one. But for Finns, that gap is tiny.

This week, a Finnish co-worker of mine pointed out a bizarre coincidence between Finnish and English, involving cats.