Old Finnish Words from my Great-Grandmother...

[anne_]

Hello

Hopefully someone somewhere can help me. My great-grandmother was a Finn and bits and pieces of her Finnish have remained in our vocabulary through the generations. Spoken only, of course, and now that I would like to know what the words we've always been saying look like, I have had no luck finding them anywhere! My modern Finnish friends have told me that the words are rather archaic and they don't know how to spell them either. If anyone has an old grandma they can ask, please let me know!!

The two words I am most looking for are: (excuse the horrible misspellings--that's why I'm here!)

kikki??? this has been used in my family to mean breasts, but it's a baby talk way of saying it. my greatgrandmother also had a song that mentioned them that was kind of like "head shoulders knees and toes" only with kikkis... anyone know the real word and the proper spelling?

budakafeli??? dustpan. i suspect that this might be a word borrowed from those damn swedes. anyone recognize it?

kiitos!

[Hank W.]

Well, 'kikki' is baby-talk allright.... area between the legs... and that 'budakafeli' must be Fingelska or something. Unless its some Närpes dialect. Could be old Helsinki Slang for that matter... kahveli/kaffeli is a fork usually

[EP]

budakafeli???

Pöytäkihveli??? I remember that. It was used in western Finland, and it does come from those damn Swedes. The latter part. A small "rikkalapio" that one uses brushing the bread crumbs from the table.

[Hank W.]

Aahh.. especially if you say "buur(di)" for table, like in "buurtyyki".
That was a new one, I've only heard of "rikkakihveli", couldn't imagine one would be kept on the table. buurkiffeli

[Anders]

So I guess the 'buur(di)' comes from the swedish word 'bord' = 'table'.

[Hank W.]

Stikkaa fönari boseen, mun klabit frysaa!

[sinikala]

Aahh.. especially if you say "buur(di)" for table, like in "buurtyyki".
That was a new one, I've only heard of "rikkakihveli", couldn't imagine one would be kept on the table. buurkiffeli

Very old fashioned and for use only on the table... I've only seen one, once in an old hotel used by a waiter cleaning the breakfast tables.

linky

It's the same idea as a dust pan, but is called a crumb tray or crumber in english... here's another

[llewellyn]

budakafeli??? dustpan. i suspect that this might be a word borrowed from those damn swedes. anyone recognize it?

kiitos!

That must be "putukihveli"! Used at least in the Southern Ostrobothnian dialect, sounds like it originates from Swedish but I don't really know.

Other similar words: nestuuki, tikkelpäri, ankkastukki...

[anne_]

You guys have been immensely helpful! Thank you so much! You can always count on the Finns...It's their sisu!