"Me on pudottu rakkauteen"

[AldenG]

Heard this gem on an old Kotikatu episode.

Me on pudottu rakkauteen.

Was it just one character cracking wise or was it a fad 10-15 years ago to say that or does the expression survive today?

And what about just the "me on" part of it? How widespread is that?

[EP]

I don´t remember ever hearing that. Maybe some passing fashion?

And what about just the "me on" part of it? How widespread is that?

Well, if two people fall in love isn´t it always "me"? Or do you mean the singular "on" part?

Anyway, nowadays for young couples everything seems to be "me". They are both pregnant, it is not something for women. "Me ollaan raskaina". "Me synnytetään".

[AldenG]

Yes, I'm curious about whether on is becoming a substitute for ollaan to any extent.

[Jukka Aho]

Yes, I'm curious about whether on is becoming a substitute for ollaan to any extent.

• "me on tehty"
• "me on ajateltu"

See here as well.

[AldenG]

I guess if I reflect on it, I may have heard Lady Gray half-jokingly say something like "Nyt me on menty kyllä ohi," but only when we're visiting the interior and she's in her back-to-roots frame of mind. Or maybe I've heard others say it.

And if you come at it from there, it's not such a surprising evolution. Rather than seeing it as ollaan becoming on in a basic me construct, it's much more like the simple insertion of me into a vanilla Nyt on menty or Nyt on tehty context.

Of course there's still recombinational wit (the best kind of wit, IMO) in the original Me on pudottu rakkauteen. It's just that the elements being sliced and spliced are more than I originally noticed.

[sammy]

Me ollaan pudottu rakkauteen is just word-play or actually, an intentionally clumsy anglismi... an English-language idiom translated in Finnish. I've never heard anyone use this particular one in real life (whereas you do regularly hear stuff like "pitkässä juoksussa"... )

Mieli sinä, se ei tee järkeä kääntää ihan kaikkia ilmaisuja englannista, tekeekö se?

But as such the grammatically incorrect "me on tehty...", "me on viety...", "me on käyty..." etc is very common in spoken language.

[AldenG]

(whereas you do regularly hear stuff like "pitkässä juoksussa"... )

Do you have a sense of how recently pitkässä juoksussa has spread? That's one I don't recall hearing. But it's still playful, right? Or has it been said so long that a generation thinks it's just another Finnish idiom?

How does pitkällä tähtäimellä (på lång sikt) feel? To me it always seemed matter-of-fact, not playful, just another example of the Finnish proclivity for Swedish calquification. I never really thought about whether it was 10 or 50 or 100 years old. It didn't stand out from any of the other Swedishisms. I wonder if it ever had a grain of humor in it or was it simply natural that Finnish would borrow these expressions when it didn't already have an equally handy way of saying the same thing.

As you can imagine, Finns living for decades in America introduce all kinds of funny Americanisms into their Finnish, and often not just for fun. They start forgetting how to say things in Finnish, in ways that Swedes wouldn't forget how to say them in Swedish, because the constructions are far less parallel between Finnish and English. But of course Swedish immigrants certainly had their share of Americanisms, and Moberg had fun with that in The Emigrants. As I recall, Tuuri did a fair amount of that in Ameriikanraitti.

There is only one Finnish American I know of whom I could imagine saying something like pudottu rakkauteen without it being a deliberate joke, and even that is probably a bit over the top for her. Though now that I reflect on it, did I once quite a few years ago hear her say in her older, more formal way that "He putosivat rakkauteen."

What you often hear is mis-heard American idioms getting integrated into their English. If push comes to shove might become If push comes to shovel. (I'm not sure whether Tuuri actually used that in reference to his "foot, meet shovel" scene in Ameriikanraitti or if I only associate them.) Or I once heard, "[My doctor] had to shovel (shuffle) around some patients, but he managed to fit me in." Apparently Finnish clinics aren't the only ones with overcrowded waiting rooms.

[Jukka Aho]

Do you have a sense of how recently pitkässä juoksussa has spread? That's one I don't recall hearing. But it's still playful, right? Or has it been said so long that a generation thinks it's just another Finnish idiom?

It’s one of those idioms some people use “for real” and others despise with passion. I’d tend to think this usage (fad?) is probably more common among people in their 40s or 50s (businessmen? sports commentators?) than younger generations... not sure why, though.

[Jukka Aho]

pitkässä juoksussa

Here’s an example of such usage by none other than the current Minister of Housing, Jan Vapaavuori:

• Jan Vapaavuori: "Täysin historiallista" (last paragraph)

I’d say it leaves a “not too well-read, uneducated” impression... as if the person in question didn’t know Finnish quite well enough to use native idioms.

[Pursuivant]

I've got a few of those that make my ears bleed. My boss talks about "ongelmatiikka" and makes me want to strangulate... But instead of "pitkässä juoksussa" we should start using "poronkusemalla"... its a long run innit