Dumb question, but isn’t there a danger of rocks exploding if they are hot and suddenly come in contact with cold water?
The volcanic rocks used in commercial setups are pretty safe, but are probably used to save on shipping costs for the manufacture.
While there are lots of strong opinions on the matter finding granite rocks without cracks is the trick. For some people it is a big part of hikes to rivers to find a good sauna rocks, sometimes finding one as a keepsake or a memory is important. Really not that different from looking for a good skipping stone when walking along a river.
The flakes you get and the cracking from using wet river rocks is about the same, we use to try and find the green colored ones which were porous to make campfires a bit more exciting when camping as kids. I am sure one of the burn scars I have is from one of those flying flakes but it is way down on the list of risks of injury to be honest if you choose a good rock without cracks.
Just choose a dense and rough granite rock about the size of a potato without visible cracks. It may be good if you know what sulfur and asbestos looks like if you move past granite though.
Sow - seeds, or sow - female pig?
s-ough-na like the pig.
We had one growing up, but seldom used it. We’d have half the neighborhood in there after a day of sledding and snowball fights. But otherwise it just took up space.
I just can’t take the heat. I can’t take super-hot showers or hotubs for more than a few minutes, either. I get dizzy. But I have occasionally wished for one to sit in just until my face gets a good sweat on. It’s really hard to get those pores cleaned out, but a good sweat will do it. I’ll bet Finns never have blackheads.
More help on how to say “sauna” here is a link to the times in a video when this native speaker is saying the alphabet.
a: Pronouncing the Finnish alphabet: individual letter sounds | KatChats - YouTube
u: Pronouncing the Finnish alphabet: individual letter sounds | KatChats - YouTube
But it is a diphthong and not a sequence of two vowels. Just roll the sound of the first vowel gradually into the sound of the second one.
⟨au⟩ in the International Phonetic Alphabet notation.
In English diphthongs are treated as separate phonemes but shouldn’t be in Finnish. While I am child like (with a northern hick accent) in my Finnish I have been told that French diphthongs are a similar concept and I am betting that holds true with most other romance languages that have real diphthongs. There are some odd opening forms fairly unique to Finnish but this isn’t one of those.
The English closing diphthong or /aʊ/ as in the pig “SOW” will get you close, but if you look at the second link you really need to end up a bit more open with the tongue a bit farther back. But Finns will understand you and uppers will not sneer with the “SOW” version.
No one probably cares, but I wanted to try to communicate the difference.
TBH, I’ll probably just continue to say “saw-na” like an ignorant prole, but at least now I’ll KNOW my error!