small questions from the news

[Pursuivant]

... ummm... something is put into order, like in lines, or piles... hakemukset järjestettiin kaupungeittain the applications were put in order city by city... So in the phrase the leadership tasks were distributed into the minstries... (no pushing, one task each, line on the left)

[garoowood]

... ummm... something is put into order, like in lines, or piles... hakemukset järjestettiin kaupungeittain the applications were put in order city by city... So in the phrase the leadership tasks were distributed into the minstries... (no pushing, one task each, line on the left)

So "ittain" means by sth in order?

[garoowood]

Ylen mukaan oikeuskansleri Jaakko Jonkka ryhtyi selvittämään asiaa toukokuussa sen jälkeen, kun Ylen Ajankohtainen kakkonen oli kertonut, että Turunen oli teräsyhtiö Outokummun hallituksessa perustamassa Fennovoimaa samaan aikaan kuin hän johti valtion energiapolitiikkaa.

I gave a try first:
... justice chancellor Jaakko Jonkka started to investigate the matter in May after ... had told that Turunen was in the board of directors of a steel company Outokumpu establishing Fennovoima at the same time as he led country's energy policies.
Questions:
meaning of ylen mukaan; ylen ajankohtainen kakkonen; a complete translation

Thx!

[Pursuivant]

It should be Yle:n (I think the modern spelling omits the : tho)
Yle is acronym...well... abbreviation for Yleisradio - public radio, as in the government monopoly radio corporation, say like BBC in the UK.
"Ajankohtainen kakkonen" is a show, like 60 minutes or spotlight... Current Two (as in current affairs current), Starts with a very distinctive ancient green monitor radar screen and Francis Lai's Aujourd'hui C'est toi starts playing... plagiarized from BBC's 'Panorama' I guess as it uses the same theme.

"Back in the "good old days" of Kekkoslovakia there was two tv channles YLE1 and YLE2 in TV and then advertisement-selling private MTV Mainostelevisio that bought time on channel 2. TV1 was produced in Pasila with more serious business, news, documentaries and classic films and TV2 produced in Tampere and had a more "lighter" proggramming with childrens programmes, sports, music shows & so forth. Imagine in 1986 we had three tv channels!!!

[Pursuivant]

So "ittain" means by sth in order?

Well... by/according/in the manner/order... auto liukui sivuittain car skildded sideways mies ryyppäsi pulloittain the man drank one bottle at a time (instead of say glasses) , viesti juostiin joukkueittain the relay race was run by teams (which is the usage in ministeriöittäin)

[Rob A.]

So "ittain" means by sth in order?

Well... by/according/in the manner/order... auto liukui sivuittain car skildded sideways mies ryyppäsi pulloittain the man drank one bottle at a time (instead of say glasses) , viesti juostiin joukkueittain the relay race was run by teams (which is the usage in ministeriöittäin)

Wiktionary gives us some ideas on this...though I'm sure there are nuances that would be well beyond most of us non-native speakers...

The suffix, "-ittain", turns a noun into an adverb and addresses concepts such as:

Multiples of a quantity....pulloittain= "by the bottle"....

Manner of doing something... The wiki example is, Hän äänsi nimensä ruotsalaisittain....another example might be, Hän käyttäytyi ruotsalaisittain.... Though I wonder if this could be ambiguous...???...

Point of view... The wiki example is, Suomalaisittain Vancouverin olympialaiset menivät surkeasti....and, of course, even worse for the Russians...Venäläisittäin Vancouverin olymp......

[Pursuivant]

Oh yes, so really it isn't a "simple answer" for poor garoowood but an opening of a matopurkki, or purkillinen matoja which is not a matoinen purkki but a purkkimato

[Pursuivant]

though I'm sure there are nuances that would be well beyond most of us non-native speakers...

Oh, I enjoy this section immensely as I have forgotten all my grammar and need rehearsing as I need to produce technical writing - in both E & F - without the benefit of a ghostwriter. And KISS it as well. And I enjoy the "explaining of the idioms" as say if you were to "pass" as a Finn, you would - could not know what was the color of tha hat of the Virginian, as it was on BW telly.

[garoowood]

Oh yes, so really it isn't a "simple answer" for poor garoowood but an opening of a matopurkki, or purkillinen matoja which is not a matoinen purkki but a purkkimato

Yeah, poor me, and you immediately came up with a series of things that puzzle me even more.

[Rob A.]

Oh yes, so really it isn't a "simple answer" for poor garoowood but an opening of a matopurkki, or purkillinen matoja which is not a matoinen purkki but a purkkimato

Yeah, poor me, and you immediately came up with a series of things that puzzle me even more.

all variations on the "can of worms" theme...I don't really know if this is an original idiom in Finnish...probably not, but in English...it means creating a whole lot of additional problems when trying to solve some original problem....

[Pursuivant]

Nobody here would be objecting to a can of worms as we go fishing.... then again in history class we read of the "Diet of Worms" ...

[Jukka Aho]

meaning of ylen mukaan;

“According to YLE.”

As Pursuivant explained, Yle is the commonly used abbreviation for Yleisradio Oy, the Finnish national, state-owned broadcasting company. At one time, Yleisradio used to have a near-complete monopoly on TV and radio broadcasts in Finland but the political and legal obstacles placed upon commercial TV and radio operations were gradually lifted during the 1980s.

The name Yleisradio translates literally as “General Radio”. The abbreviation, “Yle”, is typically pronounced the same way as you pronounce the first part of the name Yleisradio. So Yle is not an acronym and it is not read out letter-by-letter... in Finnish.

However, Yleisradio tends to use logotypes where they spell the abbreviation in block letters. This makes it look kind of like it were an acronym. Additionally, in international contexts – such as in their English service – Yle seems to have adopted a convention where they call themselves “wy el e”; treating the abbreviation as if it were an acronym even though the letters Y, L, and E do not stand for individual words.

Of course, many well-known TV channels or companies do have a three-letter acronym (MTV, NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, ITV, etc.) which is read out letter by letter. This “acronymization” is such a strong convention in the field it is understandable that in international contexts, treating the abbreviation “Yle” as a pseudo-acronym “YLE” is probably the path of least resistance... especially as Yle, when pronounced the Finnish way, would be difficult to explain and impossible to pronounce for many foreign speakers.

So you have some degrees of freedom when treating this particular abbreviation... or “pseudo-acronym”, if you like. However, in Finnish texts and speech, you’re expected to use Yle just like any proper name or generic noun; pronouncing it as a word and affixing case endings to it the usual way: directly after the last y, instead of using the “:” notation, which is reserved for acronyms which you spell out letter by letter or for abbreviations which are unpronounceable and are usually expanded into the full word when saying them aloud (such as “km”.)

Yle has also occasionally used an actual acronym “FBC” (short for “Finnish Broadcasting Company”) for referring itself in some English texts. However, “FBC” is not a well-known alias for the company and will probably never become one.

ylen ajankohtainen kakkonen; a complete translation

Yle’s (or YLE’s) Ajankohtainen kakkonen, a locally well-known / well-established current affairs TV show. (The first episode was was aired in 1969 and the show is still in production.)

[maxxfi]

Yle has also used an actual acronym “FBC” (short for “Finnish Broadcasting Company”) in some English texts but this is not a well-known acronym and will probably never become one.

This note made me think that actually, while many real Finnish acronyms have a Swedish equivalent
(e.g. public transportation company in Helsinki area HKL/HST or the newer duo HSL/HRT)
Yle, probably due not being a real acronym, keeps as Yle also in Swedish.

[garoowood]

Thx Jukka, you just corrected one big mistake for me, I used to prounance YLE as seperate letter. And it well explains why it is not YLE:N

As the difference between saattaa and saada seems to be vague for me when refer to "may" or "can", how do you choose which one to use in the real life conversation?

[Rob A.]

... ummm... something is put into order, like in lines, or piles... hakemukset järjestettiin kaupungeittain the applications were put in order city by city... So in the phrase the leadership tasks were distributed into the minstries... (no pushing, one task each, line on the left)

So "ittain" means by sth in order?

Here's a little more on the use of the -ttain/-ttäin suffix:

http://users.jyu.fi/~pamakine/kieli/suo ... rbien.html

It's described here as one of the adverbial cases...the "Distributive Adverbial Case"...turning a small number of nouns, adjectives and numerals into adverbs....singular forms are seldom used....