Hipit rautaa

[Jukka Aho]

 
Here’s a song lyrics translation exercise for the “flower power” generation:



Eppu Normaali: “Hipit rautaa”

Olen hippityttö, nelkytkaks,
enkä maailman paremmaks
ole nähnyt muuttuneen,
enkä kenenkään siitä suuttuneen.

Hippiaate valjuuntui,
mieheni kaljuuntui.
Muttei mitään muuta tilalla,
maailma on pilalla.

Poikakin vain nauraa,
kun mutsi idättelee kauraa.
”Kuule, mutsi, flower power
oli sata vuotta sitten over.”

Lapseni juo pelkkää kokista,
eikä Woodstockista
kuulla halua:
se on mennyttä kalua.

refrain:
Miks kaikki kaunis on niin naiivia
ja markkinoiden voimissa vain draivia?
Miks kaikki kaunis on vain vitsiä,
onni rihkamaa vain ja kitschiä?
Oli piiput ennen puuta, hipit rautaa,
nyt ne kaiken kauniin hautaa.
Haudalle laitan kukkasen
ja kukoistavan toivon edes sen.

Mies rakentelee leijaa,
poikani armeijaa.
”Sää ja sun maailmanrauhat,
mitäs niistä enää jauhat?”

Vasta lapsi on
ja jo illuusioton.
Mulla taas ei muuta tilalla,
maailma on pilalla.

refrain (3x)

Note the usage of English words.

The title of the song, “Hipit rautaa” and the line “Oli piiput ennen puuta, hipit rautaa” are allusions to an old Tapio Rautavaara song, “Laivat puuta, miehet rautaa” (YouTube), which tells the story of an old sailor reminiscing about days long since past. In that song, the relevant part goes:

Ennen oli miehet rautaa,
laivat oli puuta, hii-o hoi!
Puuta ovat miehet nyt ja laivat ovat rautaa,
hii-o hoi, hii-o hoi!

[Rob A.]

Thanks Jukka....a useful translation exercise for me...

Getting some practice with colloquial language...nelkytkaks ...and looks like there were a few Russian words there...armeijaa...probably from French originally...

...and interesting their pronunciation of "flower power"....I suppose it would have to be spelt something like flauö(r) pauö(r) to get the typical English pronunciation....though the "r" is kind of tough to deal with. In North American English (the General American register...which includes much of the US and Canada) ... the "r" is kind of swallowed and in "English" English...the "r" is swallowed to the point of almost disappearing... Scottish English is something else again...

[Edit: Oh yes...almost forgot...I didn't really understand the word, draivia except to assume it comes from "drive"...???

[Upphew]

armeijaa...probably from French originally...

Just like in English: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=army

[Rob A.]

armeijaa...probably from French originally...

Just like in English: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=army

Yeah...probably it would have been something like, "heer"/"here", if the Germanic version had survived in modern English...(besides "Armee", modern German also has, "Heer".) There are hints in English place names of this ...Hereford... the place where the army crossed the river.... And I suppose the English word, "herd", is connected to this, although I didn't check this out...

[Jukka Aho]

Getting some practice with colloquial language...nelkytkaks

There’s an old thread about informal numbers.

...and looks like there were a few Russian words there...armeijaa...probably from French originally...

“Armeija” is quite obviously originally a loan word but has long since been fully adopted into the Finnish language.

...and interesting their pronunciation of "flower power"....I suppose it would have to be spelt something like flauö(r) pauö(r) to get the typical English pronunciation...

Hah... I was wondering if anyone would notice that! ;) Yes, that’s the literal pronunciation a Finn would use when reading aloud English text “as it is written”. You already know how strong a coupling there is between the Finnish phonetics and the writing system – they’re pretty much in lockstep to one another. For a native speaker, that kind of a pronunciation is the instinctive “default mode” of reading... and also something you must actively learn to repress when you’re learning another language and replace it with other mental models of foreign letter patterns and the corresponding (likely) pronunciations.

This kind of a “literal” (Finnish-phonetics style) pronunciation runs strong in any reading-age Finn. Basically, that’s what you get from a child who has never taken English classes, or from someone who is not too good about languages and never bothered honing his or her English pronunciation but is now required to read aloud some text with English words in it... or simply from someone who is feeling too lazy at the moment to do the mentally taxing “context switch” into a different “pronunciation mode” mid-sentence, or just considers it unnecessary as the (Finnish) audience will pick up the intended words anyway.

Sometimes this lazy, “literal” Finnish-style English pronunciation can be done for a comic effect. But often it’s done just because isolated English words in the middle of a Finnish sentence just flow out of your mouth with less effort if you do it in “Finnish phonetics”. The attitude being: “Yeah, right, I know how it should be pronounced but can’t be bothered... so I’ll just say it as it is written! Deal with it.”

Hence, most Finns would say “koka-kola” instead of “khoukha-khoula”, “apple” instead of “äphl”, or “mikrosoft” instead of “maikrousoft”. And It’s even common to bastardize Peugeot by pronouncing it as... “Peugeot”! Basically the same thing as you guys do with our “sauna”...

In the “flower power” part of the song, the son is showing indifferent attitude towards his mom’s ideals and the singer is quoting his words. Perhaps that “lazy”, “indifferent” pronunciation is meant to underline the “whatever!” attitude the son has... and more to the point, it wouldn’t quite rhyme with the next line if it were pronounced correctly! ;)

(Your Finnish-style phonetic transciption of the correct pronunciation of “flower power” is spot on, by the way. Although you can only approximate the “correct” pronunciation with the Finnish phoneme values for the letters, of course... The IPA was designed to overcome all these problems and is widely used in e.g. in the vocabulary sections of the English text books written for the Finnish audience.)

[Edit: Oh yes...almost forgot...I didn't really understand the word, draivia except to assume it comes from "drive"...???

“Drive” (here written out phonetically as “draivi”) is to be interpreted as a noun, in the dict.com senses 24, 25, 28, 29. Not really standard Finnish but just the kind of a direct loan from English those irritating marketing types, 80s-style yuppies and other “upwardly mobile” business-oriented “suits” (who are the antithesis of the hippie ideology!) could easily adopt in their jargon.

Why the “i” at the end of draivi? It’s something that often happens to loan words which originally ended in a consonant. Finnish requires a vowel sound at the end of the infinite forms so one can more naturally attach the case endings to them. On some loan words (or foreign words occasionally used as a part of a Finnish sentence) such vowel is added as required, on some others it becomes an integral part of the word.