Hot air balloon (kuumailmapallo in Finnish)

This article is mainly for all you studying the Finnish language, or anyone interested in linguistic idiosyncharies!

You might have heard that there are lots of long - very long - words in the Finnish language. That is true. And even though Finnish in no way has a monopoly on long words, their abundance in the language is something you just get used to early on.

Yet in these times when communication and information exchange occurs in a faster pace, there is a common, unspoken agreement that it is okay to shorten a lot of these longer words - as long as they are still understandable. This is especially true when it comes to social media where even short words are shortened, and emojis are used for convenience. Or even words from some other language, all in order to faciliate and quicken the pace of messaging And have some fun and freedom with the language.

Anyway, let’s have an example of a shortened long word. People used to say henkilökohtaisesti - which means personally. Constructed from the words henkilö (person), kohta (place/spot), the suffix -inen (pertaining to) and the suffix -sti (in the way of). Of course, many still do say so. But these days you may hear “henk koht” which means just the same and is understandable. It sounds pretty artificial though. And artificial it is of course, just leaving out a few letters like that, and by so doing reduce the number of letters from 18 to a mere 8. But it does take much less time to say that. So to a certain degree it is acceptable to shorten any words, and still it always remains a personal choice whether you want to say the whole word instead.

So, with that in mind, even as a Finn you might look with some wonderment at a word like this that suddenly pops up in the news stream:

Matkustajainformaatiojärjestelmämme

That’s 35 letters. A very long word! Nevertheless, as long as you know the basics of the language and can discern the separate words within a combined word like this, it is easy to see at a glance what the word entails. But for someone from the outside just learning the language, it may look like a monster word. Let’s break it into the bits it consists of!

matkustaja = passenger
informaatio = information
järjestelmä = program
-mme = our

or like this:

Matkustajainformaatiojärjestelmämme

Meaning of course “our passenger information system”. When you hear this from a loudspeaker spoken by a monotonous, robotic voice, you may lose all interest in what comes next after just a few syllables! But you do know that the next word would start with an emphasis on the first syllable - as the case always is in the Finnish language. So you only need to wait for that next emphasis - even if it takes a while. And if you’re still interested…

To round off, here’s another one:

Kuumailmapallolentolahjakortti

From kuuma (hot), ilma (air), pallo (ball), lento (flight), lahja (gift), kortti (card). And meaning, of course, a gift card for a hot air balloon ride!

Have a nice day!