If you like music and translating Finnish song lyrics, then you might like this article. Below, you can find the lyrics of the song Kesäloma kellarissa by Jarkko Martikainen.

1. Song Lyrics – Kesäloma kellarissa

2. Glossary

The following grammar terms have been abbreviated.

I have marked different elements of the analysis using the following symbols.

3. Jarkko Martikainen – Kesäloma kellarissa – Finnish Song Lyrics Analyzed

In spoken language, it’s very common to replace the first person plural (me menemme) with the passive (me mennään). This is the case for all tenses (e.g. present, imperfect, conditional). In this song, the sentence “me emme menneet” (the negative imperfect) has been replaced with the negative passive imperfect “Me ei menty“.

Neutral word order would be “Me ei menty Kreikkaan“. Putting the “ei” in front of the personal pronoun rather than after it stresses the denial.

Neutral word order: Kai rakkautemme kestää myöskin tämän myrskyn.

We need the strong stem of the word rakkaus (rakkaute-) when adding a possessive suffix. This is the same stem you use for the mihin-form (rakkauteen) and the essive case (rakkautena).

The verb kestää gets a total object in this song: our love withstands “one, whole storm” completely.

The word myöskin actually contains the same meaning twice: the word myös on its own means “also, too”. The suffix -kin also means “also, too”. Combining the two stresses the meaning even more. You can read more about myöskin in Finnish on this page.

The verbs kärsiä and voida have been conjugated in the third person singular. This is done in order to create a generic sentence. In this sentence, the third person does not refer to hän “he, she” but rather can be translated as “one”: if one suffers a lot, surely one can also forget it. In English, you more commonly use “you” than “one”.

The word vaan is used in place of mutta in negative sentence. Both mean “but” in English.

The word leima can mean both a stamp or a label. No one wants to be labeled as poor, but (as the song says) it’s not a label that can be easily removed. The verb used in the sentence is pestä “to wash” which fits well with the meaning of “stamp”: some stamps can be washed away. In Finnish, you can both say “köyhän leima” (label of the poor) and “köyhyyden leima” (label of poverty).

The personal pronoun me is inflected in the mistä-form because of the verb pestä: labels are washed off, washed away from a surface.

Adding -kaan to a sentence can have several implications for the meaning of a sentence as a whole. In this case, it’s used to accentuate the fact that washing away a label just isn’t a thing. It stresses the impossibility of such a thing.

The construction tehdä + jostakin + jokin means “to make + from something + something”, ie. “to turn something into something”. Literally translated, the song says “from our family (perheestä) was made the week’s top story”.
This means that the family was turned into the top news story (ykkösuutinen) by the media.

The passive tehtiin is used because we’re not specifying who did it. If we’d include a subject, the sentence would become “Media teki perheestämme viikon ykkösuutisen” (The media made our family the week’s top story). Note how the word ykkösuutisen is inflected in the genitive case in my sentence. In the song’s lyrics we use the basic form ykkösuutinen because the verb is conjugated in the passive: the total object of a passive verb will be written in the basic form rather than the genitive case.

The compound word ykkösuutinen consists of ykkös- (from ykkönen “number one”) and uutinen “news”.

In Finnish, things start from something: “Tulipalo alkoi keittiöstä” ie. “The fire started in the kitchen”, or “Riita alkoi tekstiviestistä” ie. “The argument started with a text message”. In the song, the word siitä (from se) replaces the element that would be added in the mistä-form. We could rephrase the song’s line as “Se alkoi koiran onnettomuudesta” ie. “It started with the dog’s accident”.

The phrase “Koira karkasi auton alle” combines two sentences in one: Koira karkasi (the dog escaped) ja jäi auton alle (and ended up under a car). Both the verbs karata and jäädä require the mihin-form so it’s easy to combine them and leave the second verb out.

The postposition alla can be inflected in three cases: alla (missä, “under”, static location), alta (mistä, “from under”, movement away) and alle (mihin, “to under”, movement towards). In the song, the dog’s experiencing a movement towards the bottom of the car; moving underneath it, so we use alle.

Ensihoito or esiapu is generally used in its singular form. The song has the plural form ensihoidot because there were several procedures: saving the dog took, for example, multiple operations.

The word säästöt technically does have a singular form: säästö. When referring to one’s savings, this word is a plurale tantum word: it is always used in the plural.

The verb form “Ei menty” is the negative passive imperfect form of the verb mennä. In spoken language, the first person plural form (e.g. me emme menneet) is often replaced by the passive (me ei menty).

The verb mennä requires both nouns and verbs to be inflected in the mihin-form. In the song, both the noun maailma and the verb lomailla appear in the mihin form. For verbs, this means we use the third infinitive’s –maan form, such as lomailemaan. The word maailma has been inflected into maailmalle rather than maailmaan. This is because the world is a wide place rather than a specific location.

The first person plural kehtasimme has been replaced with the spoken language past passive form kehdattiin. This word has the interrogative suffix -ko/kö which makes the sentence a question: Did we dare?

The verb kehdata always gets followed by the basic form of the next verb (here: kehdata + myöntää). Another example would be “En kehtaa kysyä sitä” (I don’t dare to ask it), with kysyä in the basic form.

In a regular sentence, the verb myöntää would get a total object (e.g. Myönnän sen “I admit it). Total objects are inflected in the genitive case. In the song, we have the partitive case instead because it’s immediately clear that we didn’t admit it. The object of a negative sentence will be inflected in the partitive: sitä rather than sen.

Kenellekään means “to no one, not to anyone”. It’s the -lle form of kukaan “no one”. We use the allative case because you admit something to someone.

Rather than “me väitimme“, the song has the spoken language me-form “me väitettiin“.

The phrase lyödä ovet lukkoon literally says “to hit the doors into the locks”. However, this is a phrase that means locking the doors. It implies either a force behind the action or a finality to it.

Just like in the rest of the song, the first person plural form has been replaced by the spoken language me-form: “me löimme” has been turned into “me lyötiin” and “me pakkasimme” has been turned into “me pakattiin“.

In written Finnish, we would have me menimme rather than the spoken language form me mentiin.

The word kanssa is technically a postposition, which means it should appear after the word it’s connected to. In the song, the word order is flipped. Neutral word order would have been “kalliin koiran kanssa“. It’s common in songs to get creative with word order.

In written Finnish, we would have me piilottelimme rather than the spoken language form me piiloteltiin. The verb piilotella requires the partitive case. That’s why köyhyys becomes köyhyyttä. You can read more about the inflection of words ending in -UUS here.

If something is hullun homma it’s something only a crazy person would do. The singer expresses that they think it hardly was all that crazy of a plan.

The phrase yhteisen hyvän vuoksi means “for the common good”. In this song, the family has been trying to convince themselves that hiding is the best thing they can do in the current situation, to keep up appearances.

The suffix -han/hän reinforces that meaning: this suffix can be used to express that both the speaker and the listener already know this. This is one of the many meanings of -han/hän. I added “after all” to the translation above to kind of mimic the same meaning.

The verb lymytä means “to hide oneself”. It’s a less common synonym for piileksiä and piileskellä. In written Finnish, we would have me lymyäisimme rather than the spoken language form me lymyttäisiin.

The T-plural of the word ruoka can be both ruoat and ruuat. Both are accepted. The T-plural is used here to reflect that every single food they eat in the basement will come out of a jar. The “Greek tan” they’re supposed to be getting also comes from a jar.

The double conjunction [niin … kuin …] can be translated to English as [both … and …]. It’s a double conjunction. You can find other double conjunctions in this article. While it’s common to add -kin in this type of phrase, this is not 100% necessary.

In written Finnish, we would have me saisimme rather than the spoken language form me saataisiin.

Chorus

You can find more noun + noun rections here.

This line of the song contains a metaphor: the hours pass as slowly as if they were lice swimming inside a stream full of tar. In English, you’d probably use syrup rather than tar.

The word joki undergoes several changes when you put it in the missä-form. The final -i of joki changes into -e-, and the -k- disappears due to consonant gradation. This word is considered an “old word” in Finnish. You can read more about old and new words ending in -i here.

The verb uida looks the same in the present and past tense. For example, “minä uin” can mean both “I swim” and “I swam”.

The Finnish word katarri and its English translation catarrh were both new to me, but google helpfully informed me that it’s also called limakalvon tulehdus (literally: mucous membrane infection) ie. gastritis. This is a gastrointestinal bacterial infection which can be passed from person to person.

The verb tarttua can mean to grab hold of something, to stick to something or to be infectious.

In Finnish, you don’t “call” a cab or an ambulance. Instead, you “order” them. The object of the verb tilata will appear in the genitive case because you order “one, whole ambulance”. You can read more about the object here.

The word kaikki can mean both “everything” and “everyone”. You can tell which one is meant by looking at the verb. If the verb is inflected in the singular form (e.g. kaikki paljastui), it means “everything” (everything was revealed). If the verb is inflected in the plural (e.g. kaikki paljastuivat), it means “everyone” (everyone was revealed).

The word rakkaus “love” is an abstract noun. You can see this from the English translation: “Is there love anymore” rather than “Is there a/the love anymore”. You can’t use a demonstrative pronoun there. In Finnish, you will use the partitive to express an unspecified amount of an abstract thing.

Rakkaus is a word ending in -Us which gets -ttA in the partitive case. Other such words are kosteus (kosteutta) and mahdollisuus (mahdollisuutta). This is in contrast with other words ending in -Us such as merkitys (merkitystä) and tarjous (tarjousta). As a guideline, words that are based on an adjective (rakas > rakkaus, kostea > kosteus) will belong to the first group, while words based on a verb (merkitä > merkitys, tarjota > tarjous) will belong to the second group.

The verb nähdä gets a total object when you see “one, whole thing”, such as a headline. In regular sentences, the total object of a sentence is inflected in the genitive case: julman otsikon.

The adjective julma is julmin in the superlative “the most cruel”. The adjective has to be inflected in the same case as the noun: julmin becomes julmimman in the genitive case. You can learn more about the inflection of comparative forms here.

The word jälkeen is technically a postposition, which means it should appear after the word it’s connected to. In the song, the word order is flipped. Neutral word order would have been “sen kellarin jälkeen“: after the basement. It’s common in songs to get creative with word order.

The adverb vielä means “still”. Adding -kin to the end stresses how this might be against expectation: even now I’m here, despite the basement. Read more about the many meanings of the suffix -kin here.

That’s all for the song Kesäloma kellarissa by Jarkko Martikainen! More lyrics analysis articles will eventually be released!