Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Learn and discuss the Finnish language with Finn's and foreigners alike
cssc
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:15 pm

Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by cssc » Mon Jun 22, 2015 5:23 am

'I hold on with 2 fingers'. Is that right? I mean there's nothing that can be put in the partative here with pitää, right?



Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

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Jukka Aho
Posts: 5237
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2007 1:46 am
Location: Espoo, Finland

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by Jukka Aho » Mon Jun 22, 2015 5:03 pm

cssc wrote:'I hold on with 2 fingers'. Is that right? I mean there's nothing that can be put in the partative here with pitää, right?
Pidän (sitä/siitä) kahdella sormella (kiinni.)

Pidän kielekkeen reunasta kiinni enää vain kahdella sormella.
znark

cssc
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:15 pm

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by cssc » Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:29 am

OK, so the holding on is more important than what I'm holding with so that's why the adessive? Or is that just how you form the verb 'to hold on"? Is 'with' understood then? I suppose, in the context. Could you break these sentences down for me, PLEASE?? And I have no idea what 'kiini' means. My something??
reuna- not really sure that applies to holding a swing chain :?: .
Please & thank you. :ohno:

cssc
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:15 pm

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by cssc » Tue Jun 23, 2015 8:55 am

OK- I do get that. So if I have a sentence like "I hold on with all my strength" is that 'Pidan kaikella minulla vahvuudella(ni)' ?? Or is it still 'minun'? Or is that completely wrong?
What about "He took a shortcut". Or does he have to get/travel there by a shortcut for 'oikotie' to be in the adessive? Yes, I realize Finns probably don't say they "take" a shortcut. Any other examples you can think of would be helpful.
Thank you so very much.

007
Posts: 632
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:01 pm

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by 007 » Tue Jun 23, 2015 11:34 am

cssc wrote:OK, so the holding on is more important than what I'm holding with so that's why the adessive? Or is that just how you form the verb 'to hold on"? Is 'with' understood then? I suppose, in the context. Could you break these sentences down for me, PLEASE?? And I have no idea what 'kiini' means. My something??
reuna- not really sure that applies to holding a swing chain :?: .
Please & thank you. :ohno:
There's this verb rection in Finnish language where certain verbs take certain endings (cases). Pitää, nautia, tykätä etc are a few examples.

Reuna is 'edge'.... I think you should use dictionary for vocabularies :)
Kielekkeen -> genetiivi form of kieleke (ok i googled...it's a ledge)
Last edited by 007 on Tue Jun 23, 2015 12:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“Go where you are celebrated – not tolerated."
"Aina, kun opit uuden sanan, opettele samalla sen monikko!"

007
Posts: 632
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:01 pm

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by 007 » Tue Jun 23, 2015 12:06 pm

Ok...so while i was trying to find the right term, you managed to post it already. :)
“Go where you are celebrated – not tolerated."
"Aina, kun opit uuden sanan, opettele samalla sen monikko!"

AldenG
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Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:11 am

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by AldenG » Tue Jun 23, 2015 3:42 pm

It's not "with all my" anything. It's "kaikin voimin."

You just can't translate words. It's never going to work for you that way, no matter how long and hard you practice. You need to change your learning strategy.

Instead you have to learn the phrases and phrase structures from which thoughts in Finnish are built and learn how to assemble complete thoughts and sentences from them. That's hard enough in itself. Translating sentences from a language unlike Finnish into reasonable Finnish is even harder. It's an advanced topic, not a place to start. First learn Finnish, THEN learn to translate to or from it. That may not be unique to Finnish, but it's much more true about English-to-Finnish than it is about for instance English-to-Swedish.

Constant reference to corresponding English sentences will slow down your learning by a lot, as will constantly trying to translate English sentences into Finnish. You want the Finnish words and phrases to take on independent meanings to you as quickly as possible. You'll know you're starting to get there when you no longer wonder, "But how can I know what something means in Finnish without knowing the word(s) for it in my own language?" If I have to translate a Swedish or Finnish word to English, I often have to stop and think, because their "meaning" for me is not much connected to word in English, and the true meaning is anyway often not "in" the word but in the combination of words in which it appears. Animals and objects (or pictures of them), and interjections, are often the first place you can start knowing things "Finnish-first." Somehow it took me years to get around to looking up the English word for "hauki." It just never seemed important; the mental image was more impressive than any word, and I had never known what a "pike" looked like anyway.

Imagine trying to learn music by translating English phrases to musical phrases. Are you starting to see what I mean? It will take a while to fully grasp it.
Last edited by AldenG on Tue Jun 23, 2015 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
As he persisted, I was obliged to tootle him gently at first and then, seeing no improvement, to trumpet him vigorously with my horn.

AldenG
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Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:11 am

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by AldenG » Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:08 pm

I.e. don't start with a bunch of English phrases and try to learn how to say them in Finnish.

Instead start with a bunch of Finnish words, phrases, and sentences about various subjects: opinions, feelings, physical sensations, lengths of time, when things will happen, traveling, shopping, etc. Study and practice those, practice modifying and substituting, etc. That will actually teach you useful bits and reflexes. It's not a quick way to knowing all your favorite English expressions in Finnish - but there is no such quick way. And many of your neat ways of saying something in English don't even have a corresponding piece in Finnish. So just focus on learning the real pieces, and eventually you'll be able to say and understand many good things.

There is no neat universe of underlying precise ideas, each of which has a correct way to say that particular thing in every language. The "underlying reality" actually varies quite a bit between different languages. The language in which you think determines the way you think the physical world and abstract world and everything within them are "inherently" (*snicker*) organized.

If you want to say and understand things in Finnish, you'd best learn to forget how English organizes the world and learn to think in Finnish. That only requires practice, reflex, and absnfoning the habit of trsndlation.
Last edited by AldenG on Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
As he persisted, I was obliged to tootle him gently at first and then, seeing no improvement, to trumpet him vigorously with my horn.

AldenG
Posts: 3353
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:11 am

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by AldenG » Tue Jun 23, 2015 4:14 pm

My furthermucking-it-up Samsung doesn't let me move the caret to the later lines of posts over a certain length to fix spelling and such. Afanbon all hop go trnsltn nad creektin ye who perchance a Samson.
As he persisted, I was obliged to tootle him gently at first and then, seeing no improvement, to trumpet him vigorously with my horn.

Jukka Aho
Posts: 5237
Joined: Fri Apr 06, 2007 1:46 am
Location: Espoo, Finland

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by Jukka Aho » Tue Jun 23, 2015 5:40 pm

AldenG wrote:My furthermucking-it-up Samsung doesn't let me move the caret to the later lines of posts over a certain length to fix spelling and such. Afanbon all hop go trnsltn nad creektin ye who perchance a Samson.
If this "Samsung" is an Android phone, try installing Hacker's keyboard - an alternative virtual keyboard you can use as an input method and switch on and off at will. It's got those fancy arrow keys, special keys (such as Ctrl and all), function keys, Page Up / Page Down, etc. just like a PC. Excellent if you ever need to fire up a terminal on your phone and connect to a remote computer via SSH. (The five-row layout option, I mean. Check out the screenshots.) Should help navigating those text entry boxes unless it is a deeper problem with the widget. In that latter case, you might want to look into updating the software on your phone - if there's an update available from the manufacturer - or maybe try another browser (Chrome, Firefox, Opera).

Coincidentally, I just "rooted" a Samsung phone the other day and installed an unofficial Android build on it. Almost everything is better now. Lean and mean bare Android install with no Samsung "Touchwiz" garbage, no forced preinstalled apps you never use, a newer release of Android than supported by the manufacturer on that phone, ability to install apps on an SD card, preserving the precious internal flash storage space which was too small for, well, really anything... etc.
znark

AldenG
Posts: 3353
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:11 am

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by AldenG » Tue Jun 23, 2015 9:01 pm

Jukka Aho wrote: If this "Samsung" is an Android phone, try installing Hacker's keyboard - an alternative virtual keyboard
Will definitely check this out soon. I looked for something like that a year ago but didn't find.

I've certainly been tempted to root my phone, but it's a locked-to-ATT model and they do forced updates, so I'm worried about ending up incompatible with the network. I have Gingerbread on an S2, my wife has KitKat on an S3. KitKat looks a whole lot nicer but I actually hate many of the changes it reflects, which have favored glitz and coolness over intuitiveness. (So much intrinsic-human-factors knowledge, research, and insight has been spitcanned by a generation of developers who just want to do what feels more fun than last week's version, and they're designing to outdo each other, not to ensure that an average consumer knows how something works without having to ask.) Her phone won't even allow configuration to transfer files via USB, yet Kies Air stopped working after someforced changes in standard Java security policies, so now we both end up using 3rd-party transfer software.
As he persisted, I was obliged to tootle him gently at first and then, seeing no improvement, to trumpet him vigorously with my horn.

AldenG
Posts: 3353
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:11 am

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by AldenG » Wed Jun 24, 2015 6:05 am

The keyboard is a huge improvement but as you feared, there are other contributors to the problem. I can move the caret further down now, but I have to type a letter to scroll the insertion point into view.

And I'll have to use my stylus all the time to keep the features visible that I need.
As he persisted, I was obliged to tootle him gently at first and then, seeing no improvement, to trumpet him vigorously with my horn.

cssc
Posts: 65
Joined: Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:15 pm

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by cssc » Wed Jun 24, 2015 7:03 am

007 wrote: There's this verb rection in Finnish language where certain verbs take certain endings (cases). Pitää, nautia, tykätä etc are a few examples.
Reuna is 'edge'.... I think you should use dictionary for vocabularies :)
Kielekkeen -> genetiivi form of kieleke (ok i googled...it's a ledge)
I was aware of some of the different endings 'pitää' takes, but couldn't find this particular one in wiktionary. I did see it on a blog last night though. I just don't think of holding on with 2 fingers as 'by', not 'with' because of my English trained brain. But now that it's been explained it makes perfect sense to me.
I did look up reuna before I posted. Which is why I thought it didn't apply to my sentence.

tummasinin- I don't have $153 for that book, unfortunately. Sounds like something I would love, though.
The reason I am asking for these translations, is so that I can study Finnish with a subject that is more interesting to me. I've written a page where a lot of the words repeat, some in different forms, so I think I'll learn it pretty fast. I know English can't be translated into Finnish like that, which is why I am on here asking. I've only got a couple sentences to go, then I'll stop bugging you guys. For a while. :?

007
Posts: 632
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:01 pm

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by 007 » Wed Jun 24, 2015 10:13 am

cssc wrote: I've only got a couple sentences to go, then I'll stop bugging you guys. For a while. :?
Nah...don't stop posting here.....it's one of the reasons why I visit this forum 8) I am sure other people, learners and natives alike, find it interesting to discuss/help Finnish language related stuffs here.
“Go where you are celebrated – not tolerated."
"Aina, kun opit uuden sanan, opettele samalla sen monikko!"

007
Posts: 632
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:01 pm

Re: Mä pidän kahden sormin kans.

Post by 007 » Wed Jun 24, 2015 10:38 am

Ok... I checked wiktionary again. Here's what i have found.... (Pitää kiinni, -lla/llä)
(transitive, + elative + kiinni) To hold onto.
Minä voin pitää laukustasi kiinni.
I can hold onto your bag.


Also,

ito indicate instruments, often equivalent to English "with"
Syön veitsellä ja haarukalla.
I eat with a knife and fork.


This 'kiinni' connotes continuity....never realized that.
“Go where you are celebrated – not tolerated."
"Aina, kun opit uuden sanan, opettele samalla sen monikko!"


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