# Any dopers out there who speak Finnish or know someone who does?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 17, 2001, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998 "2001-11-17T22:59:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pezwookiee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pezwookiee)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2001, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/1 "2001-11-17T22:59:02Z")
Hey Dopers. I’m entering a couple of short films into a Finnish film festival and I need the translation of the titles. I know that the titles won’t have the same literal meaning, but a literal translation is good enough for me right now.
The titles are:
“Mama Had a Baby and Her Head Popped Off.”
“The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog”
“The Little Cowboy in My Ear”
Any help translating the titles into Finnish would be appreciated. Thanks!
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [November 17, 2001, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/2 "2001-11-17T23:37:03Z")
I don’t know Finnish, but look for lots of uses of the letter “k”.
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/3 "2001-11-18T00:06:03Z")
Mama Had a Baby and Her Head Popped Off
äiti edessä omistaa vauva ja hänelle opastaa hypätä pois
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/4 "2001-11-18T00:14:27Z")
Note the last post was a clumsy word for word transfer from an online English-Finnish dictionary and is guaranteed to be way off base.
Where’s a Finn when you need one!"
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### Author:  [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/5 "2001-11-18T00:19:22Z")
Since Finnish grammar and spelling and English grammar and spelling are about as far apart as any two European languages that I can think of (and I think languages written in Cyrillic are closer), you definitely need a native Finn to help you out.
Finnish has many more cases and tenses than English.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/6 "2001-11-18T00:20:33Z")
IANF, but I’ll take a shot at it! I do not guarantee correct Finnish!
“Mama Had a Baby and Her Head Popped Off.”
_Äidillä oli pienokainen ja päänsä eroti_
“The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog”
_Nopea ruskea kettu hypää laiskan koiran yli_
“The Little Cowboy in My Ear”
_Pieni ratsastava karjapaimen korvassani_
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/7 "2001-11-18T00:34:21Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by astro \*
> \*\*Mama Had a Baby and Her Head Popped Off
>
> äiti edessä omistaa vauva ja hänelle opastaa hypätä pois \*\*
While I was carefully looking up details of Finnish grammar (took me a long time), others jumped in ahead of me with erroneous information.
**astro** , the way to say “have, had” in Finnish is to use the adessive case with the verb ‘to be’. So you can’t use äiti in the nominative case, it has to be äidillä. And ‘was’ is _oli_. Edessä means ‘in front of’; not useful here. Omistaa is the infinitive ‘to possess’, but we need a past tense indicative here.
There are various words for ‘baby’; I chose pienokainen, but vauva would also work and I nearly used it.
Hänelle means ‘to him, to her’. You need the possessive ‘her’ here, which is the suffix -nsä.
Opastaa is the verb ‘to guide’; won’t work here. Where’s the word for ‘head’ (pää)?
Hypätä is the verb ‘to jump’ (the same verb I had the quick brown fox doing, you’ll notice). The past tense is hypää.
I admit that the idiomatic phrase “popped off” is not easy to put into another language. I chose the verb eroti, which means literally ‘became detached’. Pois does mean ‘off’; I’m not sure if you could use it after eroti so I left it out.
This example shows that if you just take words out of a dictionary without paying attention to the intricate grammar, you’ll go drastically wrong.
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### Author:  [@mancunian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mancunian)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/8 "2001-11-18T00:44:39Z")
[sup] wiseguy, who me? [/sup]
I think the F1 driver Mika Hakkinen speaks Finnish, as do all of Helsinki, and heck, the rest of Finland 😃
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### Author:  [@PhiloVance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhiloVance)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/9 "2001-11-18T01:38:16Z")
I know one poster on this board [Damhna, by name](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=6588) who lives in Helsinki. I imagine he speaks it, but I believe he’s Irish originally, not sure. Heck, he’s been all over the world. I actually first met him on another board (a techie one).
Good Luck.
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### Author:  [@pezwookiee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pezwookiee)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/10 "2001-11-18T08:48:15Z")
Wow! I honestly didn’t expect this many responses to my post so quickly. You guys are the best.
If I get into this Finnish film festival and win anything, I’ll be sure to include you guys in my thank you speech.
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### Author:  [@TheeGrumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheeGrumpy)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/11 "2001-11-18T17:00:07Z")
My mother is Finnish, but I don’t know how I’d go about asking her this bizarre translation favor. I’m sure a first-hand response is bound to come along soon.
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### Author:  [@Kantalooppi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kantalooppi)
#### Post date: [November 18, 2001, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/12 "2001-11-18T21:37:26Z")
Krhm! Ehm! Here’s an actual, 100%, real live Finn, ready for your translatory needs with titles _guaradamnteed_ to be grammatically correct!
> [@](#):
>
> “Mama Had a Baby and Her Head Popped Off.”
“Äiti Sai Vauvan ja Hänen Päänsä Irtosi.” or “Äidillä Oli Vauva ja Hänen Päänsä Irtosi.”, depending whether you meant that she gave birth to a baby or that she simply had a baby, ie. there was a baby in her family.
> [@](#):
>
> “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog”
“Nopea Ruskea Kettu Hyppää Laiskan Koiran Yli”
> [@](#):
>
> “The Little Cowboy in My Ear”
“Pieni Cowboy Korvassani”
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### Author:  [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2001, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/13 "2001-11-19T11:08:35Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by mancunian \*
> \*\*[sup] wiseguy, who me? [/sup]
>
> I think the F1 driver Mika Hakkinen speaks Finnish, as do all of Helsinki, and heck, the rest of Finland 😃 \*\*
Not allltogether true. There is a large Swedish speaking population and I’d say that even if it’s compulsory for them to study Finnish at school you can find people who don’t understand one word of the language.
And BTW it’s H **ä** kkinen.
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### Author:  [@mancunian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mancunian)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2001, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/14 "2001-11-19T12:22:48Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Floater \*
> And BTW it’s H **ä** kkinen\*\*. \*\*
Excuse me for not having that particular character on my keyboard, it isn’t used in English.
BTW it’s a **l** together 🙂
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### Author:  [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2001, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/15 "2001-11-19T13:01:36Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Floater \*
> **Not allltogether true. There is a large Swedish speaking population and I’d say that even if it’s compulsory for them to study Finnish at school you can find people who don’t understand one word of the language.**
Yup. I was in Åland for the weekend and didn’t hear a word of Finnish spoken or even any written Finnish on signs, shops and whatnot. It’s as if the language is banned or something.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2001, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/16 "2001-11-19T14:13:04Z")
Well! Looks like Jomo came pretty close for not even knowing Finnish! 🙂
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### Author:  [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2001, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/17 "2001-11-19T15:15:44Z")
Whose head popped off? Mama’s or the baby’s? I suspect that will affect the translation. Not to mention my interest in seeing the movie 🙂
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### Author:  [@peepthis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peepthis)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2001, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/18 "2001-11-20T01:27:01Z")
This just in from my Finnish parents (though **Kantalooppi** might want to verify the results!):
> [@](#):
>
> “Mama Had a Baby and Her Head Popped Off.”
Mammalla on lapsi ja hanen paa pomppas pois
> [@](#):
>
> “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog”
Nopea ruskea kettu hyppas yli laiskan koiran.
> [@](#):
>
> “The Little Cowboy in My Ear”
Pikku paimenpoika on minun korvassa.
Shoot, I just realized I don’t know how to do the correct accents, so there are some umlauts(sp?) missing. Check out this word for “cowboy” since **Kanta** seems to have dodged the word;).
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### Author:  [@peepthis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peepthis)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2001, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/19 "2001-11-20T01:30:15Z")
In the first one, there should be umlauts over the “a” in hanen and both a’s in paa.
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### Author:  [@SnowCat66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnowCat66)
#### Post date: [November 20, 2001, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-dopers-out-there-who-speak-finnish-or-know-someone-who-does/93998/20 "2001-11-20T01:41:57Z")
Never thought I would live to see the day when somebody HERE (outside Finland and Scandinavia) needed a Finnish translation. \ Not that it matters, since you’ve already had MANY people translate it for you. Also, my grasp of Finnish is tenuous, although I am proud to say that I am a red-blooded, sauna-taking, cold river jumping, in-America living, Finn. So, basically, the entire point of my post was to gloat about being Finnish while simultaneously admitting that I couldn’t translate it for you anyway. 😃
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