Kromi

[Rob A.]

I had a bit of fun translating this...a few difficulties...

Kromi ja ihmisen ravitsemus

Ihmiselle kromi on välttämätön, mutta liian suurina määrinä myrkyllinen. Ilman sitä elimistö ei kykene tarpeeksi hyvin hyödyntämään glukoosia. Sitä saadaan kuitenkin ravinnosta riittävästi, joten lisäravinteena sen nauttiminen on erittäin harvoin tarpeen. Ravinnossa kromia on erityisesti munankeltuaisessa, vasikanmaksassa, maapähkinässä, viinirypälemehussa ja mustapippurissa sekä myös omenissa, porkkanoissa, pavuissa ja perunoissa.

1. Kromi ja ihmisen ravitsemus

..."Chromium and Human Nutrition"

2. Ihmiselle kromi on välttämätön, mutta liian suurina määrinä myrkyllinen.
..."To humans chromium is essential, but as very large amounts toxic." I notice there is no overt verb in the "mutta" clause. Implied?

3. Ilman sitä elimistö ei kykene tarpeeksi hyvin hyödyntämään glukoosia.
...Without it, the body is unable to benefit well enough from glucose." The verb is "kyetä"="to be capable of".

I believe hyödyntämään is a third infinitive nominalized verb with an elative case ending ..??

4. Sitä saadaan kuitenkin ravinnosta riittävästi, joten lisäravinteena sen nauttiminen on erittäin harvoin tarpeen.
..."It (the body??) gets, nevertheless, sufficient from nourishment, therefore ingestion of it as additional nutrient (supplement??) is very seldom necessary."

5. Ravinnossa kromia on erityisesti munankeltuaisessa, vasikanmaksassa, maapähkinässä, viinirypälemehussa ja mustapippurissa sekä myös omenissa, porkkanoissa, pavuissa ja perunoissa.
..."In nutrition chromium is especially in egg yolk, in calf liver, in peanut(s), in grape juice and in black pepper as well as also in apples, in carrots, in beans and in potatoes."

I notice that the first group of foods is all singular inessive and the second group all plural inessive, which isn't too much different from what you would expect in English, with the exception of "peanuts"....In a discussion like this the word, "peanut", would always be plural in English. Is there some consistency expectation in Finnish when listing items in this manner? And the repetition of the essive case ending seems, to me anyway, a bit tedious....I suppose there is no way in Finnish to recast these listings to avoid that...??

[AldenG]

2 - On is carried over from the beginning of the sentence. To recast your sentence a trifle and use the same trick in English, Chromium is essential but in large amounts also toxic. I don't think anyone would raise an eyebrow at that.

3 - Illative, and one of the most common forms of infinitive because of just this and similar constructs.

4- Of it is gotten sufficiently... A sufficiency of it is gotten from dietary sources... We get, one gets, enough of it from dietary sources...

5 - Ravinnot is more like foodstuffs. I agree it's a little odd about the peanuts but if you consider pepper, the person may have been thinking of peanut in the same way. It's possible though not common to use it that way in English. My reaction to that is an English speaker's, no idea how a native would hear the singular peanut. All those words in -ssa are only long by our standards. You can always try something like seuraavissa ruoissa: ... and then list a bunch in nominative (that might be going too far, I don't know for sure). But even then I think people would tend to repeat the case.

And when people complain about the length of Finnish words, I always remember a visiting Good Morning America anchor's reaction to kuulakärkikynä -- can you believe it takes that many letters to say ball-point pen in Finnish? Now look at how many letters (and spaces) it takes in English. Pretty impressive, eh?

[Jukka Aho]

2. Ihmiselle kromi on välttämätön, mutta liian suurina määrinä myrkyllinen.
..."To humans chromium is essential, but as very large amounts toxic." I notice there is no overt verb in the "mutta" clause. Implied?

Yes. That technique also works with other verbs than just olla, and across personal endings:

Meillä on yksi ero: minä juoksen nopeasti, sinä [1] hitaasti.
Hän laulaa hyvin, mutta he [2] huonosti.

[1] Implied juokset
[2] Implied laulavat

3. Ilman sitä elimistö ei kykene tarpeeksi hyvin hyödyntämään glukoosia.
...Without it, the body is unable to benefit well enough from glucose." The verb is "kyetä"="to be capable of".

I believe hyödyntämään is a third infinitive nominalized verb with an elative case ending ..??

It’s a third infinitive illative.

4. Sitä saadaan kuitenkin ravinnosta riittävästi, joten lisäravinteena sen nauttiminen on erittäin harvoin tarpeen.
..."It (the body??) gets, nevertheless, sufficient from nourishment, therefore ingestion of it as additional nutrient (supplement??) is very seldom necessary."

Sitä saadaan ________:sta = 4th person form / Finnish “passive”

“One gets it from _________” (or the interpretation could in some cases be “They get it from _________” when it’s obvious neither the reader nor the writer are included in that group!)
“You get it from _________”
“It is generally sourced(/acquired/‘gotten’) from _________”

The pronoun sitä refers to the aforementioned nutrient, chromium. You get it [chromium] from __________.

5. Ravinnossa kromia on erityisesti munankeltuaisessa, vasikanmaksassa, maapähkinässä, viinirypälemehussa ja mustapippurissa sekä myös omenissa, porkkanoissa, pavuissa ja perunoissa.
..."In nutrition chromium is especially in egg yolk, in calf liver, in peanut(s), in grape juice and in black pepper as well as also in apples, in carrots, in beans and in potatoes."

I notice that the first group of foods is all singular inessive and the second group all plural inessive, which isn't too much different from what you would expect in English, with the exception of "peanuts"....In a discussion like this the word, "peanut", would always be plural in English.

The writer has chosen to treat the word pähkinä as a mass noun (which conveniently includes products like ready-made crushed peanuts sold in bags where the peanuts are more like an uncountable “substance” or “ingredient”) instead of leading us to thing about a multitude of individual, complete peanuts. He could have used the form maapähkinöissä, too, though. Whichever way you choose to treat the word doesn’t really affect the practical interpretation in any way, just changes the underlying (rather subtle and mostly unconscious!) implications a bit.

Is there some consistency expectation in Finnish when listing items in this manner?

That’s an interesting question. I have never noticed that sort of a thing going on but maybe there is a natural tendency to group “similar” words that way. I have to keep an eye out for it!

And the repetition of the essive case ending seems, to me anyway, a bit tedious....I suppose there is no way in Finnish to recast these listings to avoid that...??

You could say something like “Kromia sisältävät erityisen paljon mm. munankeltuainen, vasikanmaksa, maapähkinä, viinirypälemehu ja mustapippuri sekä myös omenat, porkkanat, pavut ja perunat.” But longish lists with case endings come quite naturally in Finnish. Despite of them being a bit tedious to type – especially if you later feel the need to change the sentence a bit and find out you need to change the case endings in the list accordingly! – there’s no stylistic need to avoid them... unless the whole text is “technical” in its nature – a specification, a standard, or something like that; not regular prose – and contains lots of lists.