Johanna Kurkelan "Muuttolinnut"

[Sn0bunni24]

I'm translating this song just for fun, and now I've come across a line that I can't understand at all:

"Mi öisen talven halki matkaa siivet viuhuen
"

Can someone please explain what "mi" and "viuhuen" mean in this context? Is "mi" a poetic form of "mikä" in this case? When I look up "viuhuen" the morphology dictionary says that it's a form of "viuhua," but that doesn't make sense to me.

[Vellamo]

"Mi öisen talven halki matkaa siivet viuhuen
"

That which through the nightly winter travels, wings whishing.

You had it covered though. "Mi" is a poetically short "mikä" and "viuhuen" is a form of "viuhua". Excuse my clumsy and direct translation to English.

[alexbk]

Viuhuen is a 2nd infinitive instructive form of viuhua and it's used here in a modal construction, which you can expand to a separate sentence that describes the way something is happening ("... ja sen siivet viuhuvat"). They generally teach it in more advanced levels of finnish for foreigners courses.

[AldenG]

They generally teach it in more advanced levels of finnish for foreigners courses.

Sad, isn't it, how many of the simpler (and also most commonly seen/heard) things about Finnish are treated as advanced and difficult.

And when they're treated that way in the teaching, students start to think that way in practicality.

[alexbk]

Sad, isn't it, how many of the simpler (and also most commonly seen/heard) things about Finnish are treated as advanced and difficult.

And when they're treated that way in the teaching, students start to think that way in practicality.

I disagree. Modal construction is simple, but it is not at all common in writing, and it is rarely if ever used in speech. So it makes total sense to defer teaching it until students have a firm grasp of much more important - and more difficult - basics (noun plural forms and rektiot come to mind).