In this article, you can read word by word what Ismo Leikola says in one of his comedy shows. This article is all about how NO NIIN is the most important Finnish word you’ll learn. This is a video you’re likely to get recommended by your Finnish teacher, as it is both funny and informative.

You can watch the whole sketch here:

1. Important notes

Ismo Leikola uses spoken language in his comedy shows. I will be linking to related articles that deal with the specific spoken language elements that are present in this comedy piece.

Ismo is also speaking like a normal person: he starts sentences and then doesn’t complete them, and he stutters in places. I have attempted to include these elements in both the literation and the translation. To a Finn, it may seem like Ismo stutters more than a regular person, but I personally think this is a skill he uses for comedic effect. He doesn’t stutter this much in all of his standup comedy. Then again, even people who always stutter have better and worse days.

It can be an important lesson for you to notice that Finnish speakers don’t speak like your textbooks do.

2. Words and translation – No niin – Suomen tärkein sana – Ismo Leikola

3. Glossary

The following grammar terms have been abbreviated.

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

4. No niin – Suomen tärkein sana – Ismo Leikola – Finnish Sketch Analysis

The word kuule is fairly commonly used to start a story of some kind. It calls the listeners to attention: “So hear me out”. It can also be used to express exasperation when the other person isn’t hearing your point: “En kuule halua enää keskustella tästä!” would mean something like “Listen to me, I don’t want to talk about this anymore!”.

As you will see all through this sketch, kun is used in spoken language to mean “because”. Ismo sometimes uses kun and sometimes shortens it further to ku. In written language, kun means “when” and koska means “because”. In spoken language, kun can be used to mean “because” and koska can be used to mean “when” in questions (e.g. Koska tuut? “When are you coming?”).

The verb olla is conjugated in spoken language as follows: Mä oon, sä oot, se on, me ollaan, te ootte, ne on. Read more about verb conjugations in spoken language here. Read more about pronouns in spoken language here.

It’s a good idea to just learn jossain as-is to mean “somewhere”, but technically it’s the missä-form of jokin “something”. Jokin can be inflected in all the cases, such as jostain/jostakin (from somewhere), johonkin (to somewhere) and jotakin (“something” in the partitive). I have an article about jokin and joku here.

“Yksi vaikeimmista kielistä” means “one of the hardest languages”. It consists of the number yksi, combined with the plural mistä-form of “vaikein kieli“. The word vaikeimmista contains the following parts: vaike-imm-i-sta, ie. [adjective + superlative marker + plural marker + elative marker]. The inflection of the superlative vaikein “most difficult” in the Finnish cases is a topic for advanced learners. You can read more about it here.

Dropping the -i from the end of certain words and forms is a very common spoken language element. Read more about it here.

Many spoken language elements again! In spoken language tämä becomes tää, and tuo becomes toi. Read more about spoken language demonstrative pronouns here. The standard language form olisi can be shortened in spoken language in two common ways: we could say olis or ois. The word niinkun (also niinku or niin kuin) is used in spoken language as a filler word. It’s similar to how English speakers add “like” to sentences.

“Top viisi” is of course an anglicism, but is used pretty regularly, for example, in lists of the 5 most popular songs. It’s very common in spoken Finnish to drop the -i from the end of a word. You can read more about this here.

The word joukossa means “among” or “amongst” and is considered a postposition. Thus, it appears at the end of the phrase [vaikeimpien kielien joukossa] and requires the words vaikein kieli to be inflected in the genitive case. The word vaikeimpien roughly consists of the following parts: vaike+imp+ie+n (ie. adjective + superlative marker + plural marker + genitive marker).

The word kieli can have two possible plural genitive forms: kielten and kielien. You can read more about the genitive plural here.

During your studies, you will definitely come across sentences where a negative statement contains the word kyllä “yes”. In these situations, it has an emphatic function: it stresses the negativity of a sentence. For example, “En tiedä” means “I don’t know”, while “En kyllä tiedä” could be translated as “I do not know” or “I certainly don’t know”.

The verb käsittää is a synonym for ymmärtää. It appears in its basic form in the sentence because the verb voida will require verbs attached to it in the basic form: e.g. En voi tulla “I can’t come”, Emme voineet jatkaa “We couldn’t continue”.

Spoken language elements:
– The spoken language partitive form vaikeeta is interesting. In standard language, the partitive of the adjective vaikea would generally be vaikeaa. In spoken language, vaikea becomes vaikee. The partitive rules say that when a word ends in a long vowel, we will use the marker -ta for the partitive. Thus, we get vaikeeta.
– You will find it’s very common in spoken language to replace ole with oo. For example, “En ole” because “En oo” and “Ei ole” becomes “Ei oo“. When pronouncing this, make sure you stretch your -o- sound.
– In spoken language tämä often becomes tää. Read more about spoken language demonstrative pronouns here.

The clitic -han/hän is used in rhetorical questions. The sentence “Eihän tämä ole niin vaikeaa” is a question meant to convey that both the speaker and the listener know the answer already. In English, you might add “is it?” to the end: “This isn’t that difficult, is it?”

Ismo’s speech deals with “no niin“, but the word niin on its own is also interesting – definitely a good contender for a future article. When followed by an adjective in a negative sentence, we can translate it as “that, to that extent”: Se ei ole niin vaikeeta “It isn’t that difficult”, En ole niin väsynyt vielä “I’m not that tired yet”.

If you listen carefully, you can hear how Ismo adds a schwa vowel svaavokaali to helppoo, making it heleppoo. This is done in many dialects (e.g. kahavi rather than kahvi, and kolome rather than kolme).

The -han clitic is added here to express that this is an obvious statement, which both the speaker and the listener should have no trouble accepting.

One of the uses of the essive case is to express during which life period you did or do something: pienenä means “when I was small, as a small child”, nuorena “when I was young, as a youth” and aikuisena “as an adult”.

You can read more about ihan and other adverbs of intensity such as aika, tosi and melko here. Read more about the demonstrative pronouns tämä, tuo and se here.

This section is a good example of how some of the things people say during free speech doesn’t always form proper sentences. This line could just as well be cut out of monologue, the only function it serves is to give Ismo time to gather his thoughts and decide how to express what he wants to say next.

Combined with the previous section, we can turn this whole section into one clause: “Jos oppiminen on niin vaikeaa, niin sitten” ie. If the learning is so hard, well then…” (this statement continues in the following section).

Oppiminen “learning” comes from the verb oppia “to learn”. This is the fourth infinitive form, used to turn a verb into a noun. We need to do this when the subject of our sentence is a verb, like in this case: The learning is hard.

The word niin on its own is often used in jos-sentences to connect the condition and the result to one another: “Jos x, niin y” ie. If [insert condition x], then [insert consequence y]. In written Finnish, this will be omitted: “Jos suomen kielen oppiminen on vaikeaa, niin opetusmetodissa on pakko olla joku vika“.

This sentence is the second part of the sentence above: (If the learning of Finnish is so hard…), …then there must be something wrong with the teaching method. We can rephrase this section as: “(Siinä) opetusmetodissa on pakko olla joku vika” to make it more like standard Finnish.

While Finnish doesn’t have articles such as “a” and “the”, it’s common in everyday language to use the pronoun se “it” as a similar element. In this sentence, se is used in combination with opetusmetodi to form “siinä opetusmetodissa”: “in the teaching method”.

The construction [x:ssä on joku vika] is a common expression. It could also be [x:ssä on jokin vika]. You can read more about joku and jokin here.

The necessity structure “on pakko” means “must be, has to, is obligatory”. If you’re a beginner, you’ve most likely learned “minun täytyy” and “minun pitää“. “Minun on pakko” is similar to täytyy but stronger. In Ismo’s sentence, there’s no genitive at all because he’s not saying someone has to do something. Rather, he’s expressing that there must be a problem in the teaching method (opetusmetodissa).

Spoken language elements in this section:
1. The diphthong -ea- is replaced with the long vowel -ee- > Learn more about vowel assimilation.
2. The letter -d- is often dropped > Learn more about the letter -d-.
3. The -maan form (third infinitive) is often shortened > Learn more about the third infinitive in spoken language.

The verb lähteä in its most basic use means “to leave a place”. In combination with the third infinitive‘s -maan form (the mihin-form), it means “to start doing something. In this sentence, the passive form lähdetään is used to express that some undefined person or people start teaching Finnish.

The form eikö can be translated to English in several ways, depending on which form of a verb it is connected to. For example, “Eikö hän lähde?” (Isn’t he leaving?), and “Eikö hän lähtenyt?” (Didn’t he leave?). The negative verb can be conjugated in Finnish so, in the first person singular, you’d get “Enkö lukenut tätä jo?” (Didn’t I already read this?), and in the second person plural “Etkö ymmärrä minua?” (Don’t you understand me?).

This section isn’t a complete sentence: Ismo doesn’t in this section say right away from what subject people start teaching Finnish.

Combined with the previous line, we see more repetition. This doesn’t give any new information besides the word jostakin, which is needed in combination with the verb lähteä: the verb lähteä requires a word in the mistä-form to express a departure from somewhere. Here, Ismo is explaining what the departure point is for learning Finnish, which he specifies in the next phrase.

In high school, Finns learn the names of the Finnish cases, usually as a list. Later on in life, it’s very unlikely that a native Finn will remember the names of all the cases. They will remember that they all end in -tiivi.

In order to make fun of these case names, Ismo has included some made-up words which are a little dirty. The last few –tiivi‘s contain the words for testicle (palli), dick (kulli) and pussy (pillu).

The word tiiviste is used simply for comedic effect. The word tiiviste means some kind of a seal, usually to keep water out or in. Here, it’s used because it starts with tiivi-, which is the ending that appears in all these case names (illatiivi, partitiivi).

The word tämmönen is the spoken language version of tällainen, and very popular in spoken language. It sounds very much like Ismo says tämmöstä rather than tämmösistä, but he might just be swallowing a few letters. It might be beneficial for you to see how this phrase is constructed in several steps:
> joistain tiivisteistä “from some -tiivi’s”
> joistain tämmösistä tiivisteistä “from some of these kinds of -tiivi’s”
> joistain tämmösistä ihmeen tiivisteistä “from some of these weird kinds of -tiivi’s”

The word puoli “half” in the T-plural is a shortened form of “puolet ihmisistä“, or maybe “puolet opiskelijoista“. Half of the Finnish learners get confused immediately in the beginning of their Finnish studies.

The meaning of the English phrase “to fall off the wagon” is different from the Finnish meaning! If someone “putoaa kärryiltä“, it means that they lose track of the conversation, ie. no longer understands what is being said. In this context, Ismo is describing that people immediately get confused when Finnish is being taught starting from the case names.

While Ismo ends up using the verb tiputtaa here, in this context, tippua is actually the correct verb. People aren’t dropped “off the wagon” by someone (tiputtaa), rather they fall off themselves (tippua).

This is a very broken sentence, typical for Ismo. It also conveys the helplessness when even considering that someone should start learning a language in this way.

The standard language tuollainen is extremely commonly replaced with tommonen in spoken language. You can read more about tämmönen, tommonen and semmonen here.

The demonstative pronouns tämä, tuo and se also get changed quite a lot in spoken language. You can read more about tää, toi and se in this article.

The thought of the previous line doesn’t come to a conclusion. Instead, Ismo switches to a different point he wants to make about how language is taught to beginners.

The verb lähdetään misses the -d- in the middle. This is another very typical feature of spoken language. Likewise, the -n that’s dropped from jostakin is also a typical phonological change in spoken language.

The passive form lähdetään is used here because we’re not specifying who specifically starts teaching Finnish with the phrase “Missä on rautatieasema?” (see the next line). The passive conveys that we’re referring to a person, but it’s not important who is doing the action. The most natural translation to English in this case is probably “they start”, with the “they” being left ambiguous.

The verb lähteä usually means “to leave (a place)”. In our current context, we could imagine the word liikkeelle to be added, which would make the sentence easier to understand for non-natives. The phrase “lähteä liikkeelle jostakin” means “to start moving, to move ahead from somewhere”.

This sentence should be clear 🙂

The question “Missä on rautatieasema” isn’t particularly long but compared to the word “no niin” which Ismo is suggesting as a better starting point for beginners, it is indeed long.

In order to make an adjective stronger, we can precede it with a word in the genitive case: helvetin pitkä (hellishly/really long) or hirveän vaikea (terribly/really long). These words are used as adverbs of intensity.

Finnish students very often say “yksi kerta” when they mean “one time” or “once”. This is something that you should avoid: just drop the “yksi” and use kerran instead. The genitive case expresses that it’s “yksi“. You can say “yhden kerran” (with both words inflected in the genitive case), but this is a little redundant.

The verb tarvita often gets inflected differently in spoken language. The third person form tarvitsee is often replaced with either tarvii or tarttee. The third person singular is used here as a type of passive: “one needs”. In this context, “you need” is more natural of a translation. Read more about generic sentences here.

The standard language tällainen is extremely commonly replaced with tämmönen in spoken language. You can read more about tämmönen, tommonen and semmonen here. It’s inflected in the plural mistä-form because of the verb lähteä.

The form pitäs is – from a learner’s perspective – hardly recognisable as the -isi- form of pitää. Two typical spoken language features are the cause of that. Firstly, there is a strong tendency in spoken language to drop the final -i of any word (pitäisi becomes pitäis). Secondly, the -i- of diphthongs such as -ai- (pitäisi) is dropped inside a word.

The verb lähteä has two possible rections when a second verb is added: we can use either the -masta form (e.g. Lähdin juhlimasta “I left the party ‘from partying’)” or the -maan form (e.g. Lähden juhlimaan “I’m off to go partying”). In this line, we’re starting to teach, so the -maan form is used. However, the -maan form is often shortened in spoken language. You can read more about phrases such as “menen nukkuun/nukkumaan” in this article.

The previous line has “ei pitäis lähtee opettaan” (shouldn’t be taught), which is followed by the word “rather” and then the new phrase “pitää lähtee opettaan” (must be taught).

Just like tämmösistä in the previous line, siitä is inflected in the elative (the mistä-form) because of the verb lähteä. The word se in is used to “fill in” the lack of a noun to inflect in the mistä-form. This might be a good idea to read over my article about verb rections with että. In this case, we don’t have että. Rather, we have the question word mikä. The question continues in the next line.

Ismo makes the choice here to use the basic form of kieli here rather than the partitive case. The verb opettaa is usually followed by the partitive case (eg. Opetan ranskaa “I teach French”). You can’t teach a whole languageat once, so the partitive helps convey teacher is a process. However, if you exceptionally want to express teaching the whole language, you can use a total object as well. The word kieli in Ismo’s speech appears in the basic form because it’s the object of a necessity sentence: “pitää lähteä opettamaan kieli“.

We could translate “suomen kielen tärkein sana” both as “the most important word of the Finnish language” or “the Finnish language‘s most important word”. The latter option doesn’t sound as good in English, but it follows the word order of the Finnish phrase more closely.

The numeral yksi means “one”, but “number one” is ykkönen. When combined with the noun sana “word”, we get ykkös-sana. Nouns ending in -nen always do this is compound words. For example, “hevonen + kilpailut” becomes “hevoskilpailut” (horse races), and “nainen + kuljettaja” becomes “naiskuljettaja” (female driver).

Ismo is saying that there’s one word with which (= jolla) you can manage in all situations. Joka is a relative pronoun, a pretty important word once you start creating more complicated sentences.

The verb pärjätä is inflected here in the third person singular, but the sentence doesn’t have a subject. This is a generic sentence: it applies to any person, nobody specific. In this sketch, Ismo uses both this third person form and the passive in order to convey this generic meaning.

It’s common in certain dialects to shorten the -ssa form (the inessive case) to just an -s.

Ismo is talking about “(the word) which (joka) is the most versatile”.

In Finnish, you can add -in to any adjective to make it a superlative form. As you can see in the English translation, this is not always the case for less common adjectives. Adjectives ending in -nen will get the -nen replaced with -sempi in the comparative and -sin in the superlative.

The diphthong –ea– in the word oikeastaan will be assimilated into a long vowel: –ee– (oikeestaan). The word oikeastaan is based on the word oikea, but its meaning has shifted away from that. It’s best to just learn the form oikeastaan as-is rather than analyze it. It means “actually”, “really” or “in fact”.

The word pääsana is another compound word. The base meaning of the word pää you might know already: it means “head”. At the start of a compound word, pää usually means “main” (e.g. pääasia “the main point”, pääkatu “the main street”, pääkirjasto “the main library”).

In spoken language, the negative form of the verb tietää becomes “en tiiä“, “en mä tiiä” and “emmä tiiä“. The -d- of the standard form “en tiedä” gets removed or replaced very often in spoken language, as is the case in kaheksan “kahdeksan” and oottaa “odottaa”. Read more about the consonant -d- in Finnish here.

The form kertoa very often becomes kertoo in spoken language, because of spoken language assimilation of -oa- to -oo-. Note that in Ismo’s sketch, this is not the third person singular “hän kertoo” but rather the infinitive of the verb kertoa. We use the infinitive because of the verb voida, which always gets followed by the basic form of a verb, eg: “voin mennä” (I can go), “voisimme syödä” (we could eat), “voitko tulla” (can you come).

Ismo first says ylivoimaisesti, which is an adverb, followed by ylivoimainen, which is an adjective. What he’s trying to say is that “no niin” is by far (adverb) the most superior (adjective) Finnish word. Both the adjective and the adverb make sense in this sentence.

Kakkossana is a compound word, consisting of kakkonen (number 2) and sana (word). When we make a compound word where the first part ends in -nen, you will replace the -nen with -s. This is not a word you will find in the dictionary. Rather, it’s been made up on the spot, which is very common in Finnish. The word ykkössana “number one word” follows the same pattern. Other similar compound words are hevoskilpailu (hevonen + kilpailu, horse race), naiskuljettaja (nainen + kuljettaja, female driver) and venäläismies (venäläinen + mies, Russian man).

When putting things in order of a superlative, we can use the translative case of the ordinal number: toiseksi paras laulaja (the second-best singer), toiseksi kaunein malli (the second most beautiful model), kolmanneksi suurin kaupunki (the third largest city).

Repeating the kaukana here stresses that it’s far, far behind. You do this type of repetition in most languages, I think, to stress what you’re saying.

There is no reason for Ismo to repeat “paras ja paras” here. I think this is just a matter of him getting his bearings on what he’s going to say next. Doing a bit of stuttering or repeating words is something Ismo often does right before he’s announcing something important or getting to the point of a joke.

So far, Ismo has used the compound words ykkössana, kakkossana and pääsana. New to the list is ydinsana, consisting of the word ydin (core) and sana (word).

The big reveal! The most important word is “no niin“! This is technically two words, but they are used as a unit and are also often written as “noniin“.

Consonant clusters like pr- are regularly simplified in spoken language. You see this phenomenon, for example, in the words prinsessa “rinsessa” and projekti “rojekti“.

The millä-form (adessive case) can be used to express what you use to do something. For example, “Avaan oven avaimella” means “I open the door with a key” and “Tulen kouluun bussilla” means “I come to school by bus”. In this line, Ismo is expressing that you can succeed in most conversations with the expression “no niin“.

Numbers are often shortened considerably in spoken language. You can read more in my other article that addresses this topic.

This is another “empty” sentence that doesn’t fulfill a clear function. Ismo is collecting his thoughts, or perhaps giving the audience a chance to properly process what he is claiming.

Another feature typical for spoken language is just abandoning words or sentences midway. It’s used when you want to rephrase something or when you’ve used the wrong word. In this case, it’s possible that Ismo was going for käyttökelpoinen (usable) but realized the word wasn’t strong enough. Another word that comes to mind is käytännöllinen, but “practical” is also not the perfect word.

Another example of how, in spoken language, repeating chunks of sentences is very common.

The word tarkoittaa appears again and again in this sketch, and it’s always pronounced without the -i- in the second syllable. This is a common spoken language feature, which is also used in the words punainen (“punanen“), hiljainen (“hiljanen“) and kotoisin (“kotosin“).

The verb alkaa has two possible rections: we can use it in combination with the basic form of the verb (“Alan pitää puhetta“) and with the third infinitive’s -maan form (“Alan pitämään puhetta“). Originally, only “alan pitää” was considered correct, but due to the popularity in everyday language use, “alan pitämään” also became a correct form.

The phrase “to give a speech” in Finnish is “pitää puhe“. Both the genitive case (Pidän puheen) and the partitive case (Pidän puhetta) are used. The genitive focuses that you will give and finish a whole speech, while the partitive focuses more on actually giving the speech. It’s likely that no one will correct you for using one over the other.

Judging Ismo’s intonation, this “no niin” is a factual “this speech is over, let’s move on to the next one”. Note how intonation is very important with “no niin“. Without listening to Ismo’s sketch, it’s hard to interpret the sentiment behind this line. It could, with a different intonation, have been a sign of relief that the speech is over.

Some words like sit (sitten), et (että) and mut (mutta) can lose their second syllable completely in spoken language.

“Jonkun muun vuoro” means “someone else’s turn”. Joku is a fun word that contains double inflection: the genitive’s -n is repeated twice within the word: jon-kun. This also happens in the other cases of this word: e.g. jotakuta (partitive), jollakulla (adessive case). You can read more about joku and the closely related jokin in this article.

This “no niin” is one of resignation, admittance of something that you should have seen coming.

“Sormeen tuli haava” is a sentence without a subject. We’re not saying who cut the finger, though in this case it’s implied that Ismo cut his own finger. This is done regularly in Finnish but can sound a little weird in English: “into my finger came a cut”. We’re using the mihin-form (illative case) of sormi because we’re expressing a cut coming “into” the finger.

Ismo’s low pitch and slight exhalation while saying “no niin” here suggest resignation with the current situation. The cut isn’t a big deal but an annoyance.

This “no niin” is a strict, authoritative one. In addition to the tone of voice, the fact that Ismo looks over to the side helps interpret the meaning.

If we were talking to one child, you’d say “Lopeta” (the singular imperative). When addressing multiple children, you use the plural imperative “Lopettakaa“. The object of the imperative form is riehuminen (rampaging, raging), which is the fourth infinitive from  the verb riehua (to rampage, to rage).

Riehuminen appears in the nominative case due to the imperative form: in imperative sentences you will use the basic form instead of the genitive case. If this was a regular sentence, we’d use the genitive case “Minä lopetan riehumisen“.

This no niin expresses resignation or an acknowledgement that something was to be expected. It’s pretty similar to the one where Ismo expresses getting a cut on his finger.

One tricky spoken language feature for learners of Finnish is realizing that we’re dealing with the past tense (the imperfect) when the final -i of the imperfect is dropped from the word. You really should be able to hear the difference between kaatuu and kaatu in spoken language, because the former is the present tense (“it falls”) and the latter is the past tense (“it fell”). This is the case for many verbs, e.g. kattoo (katsoo “he sees”) vs. katto (katsoi “he saw”); istuu (“he sits” vs. istu (istui “he sat”).

Ismo uses se in this section as a definite pronoun. This is generally unnecessary in Finnish, where definite (the English “the”) and indefinite (the English “a”) pronouns are most commonly expressed through word order. In spoken language, however, we do see the pronoun se “it” because used to fulfill that same function.

The smile on Ismo’s face and “happy” intonation here help interpret this “no niin” as a pleasant surprise about being right. I can imagine this one to be used, for example, when you predict something, and it actually comes true. Maybe your soccer team finally made that goal when you doubled down on how certain you were that they would succeed during this next opportunity.

The suffix -s is pretty common in Finnish and has many uses. Here, it makes the question less like a real question and more like a rhetorical statement.

Another instance where “no niin” expresses a pleasant surprise.

The words “en olisi aavistanut” together form the perfect conditional tense: I wouldn’t have guessed. The verb aavistaa means to foresee something, to anticipate or sense that something will happen.

We can say “never” in several ways in Finnish. “En ikinä” is one option, but we also have “ei koskaan” and “ei milloinkaan“. The negative verb ei will be inflected: en, et, ei, emme, ette, eivät.

The verb voida is always followed by the basic form of the verb attached to it (e.g. voin tulla, voidaan mennä, voisitko auttaa). Other common verbs with an infinitive rection are haluta and osata.

This “no niin” can be used to call people to the dinner table without using any other words. Often, you will hear “No niin, nyt syömään!” as a longer version. The intonation tells us the cook is happy they finished preparing the meal. Likely Ismo is imagining the cook to be a woman here, which explains the slightly higher voice.

The mass noun ruoka in a complement sentence with require the adjective describing it to be inflected in the partitive case. Compare “Ruoka on valmista” to the sentence “Kotitehtävä on valmis“, where ruoka (food) is a mass noun and kotitehtävä (homework) is a concrete noun.

Ismo pronounces this “no niin” as “nonniin” and uses a slightly lower and less intense intonation. It conveys a sense of satisfaction with a task completed successfully: the food is gone, and our tummy is full now.

The passive perfect tense consists of the verb olla conjugated in the third person singular present tense “on” combined with the main verb in the TU-participle. It expresses that something has been done (eg. Ruoka on syöty “the food has been eaten, Työt on tehty “the work has been done”, Ikkuna on avattu “The window has been opened”). You can compare this to the active perfect tense (e.g. Lapsi on syönyt “the child has eaten”, Mies on tehnyt työt “the man has done the work”, “Ari on avannut ikkunan “Ari has opened the window”).

Saying “no niin” when the visitors arrive expresses that we’ve been waiting for something and it is now starting. Saying “no niin” when the visitors are leaving similarly expresses that we’ve been anticipating something, which can include a certain amount of relief that it is over. Both instances of no niin in this sentence show that the speaker was waiting/expecting something and it is now happening. The wait is over, things can move along now (either the beginning of the visit or the end of it).

Ismo’s intonation here isn’t the actual intonation you’d use in this situation. He’s just speeding up his sentences to humoristically convey “no niin” being used in almost any situation with guests.

The third person plural of verbs in spoken language will generally not include the -vat element used in standard language. You can learn more about “Ne tuli” and “ne meni” in this article.

Spoken language elements in this section:
1. The third person plural form (the -vat form) of verbs is replaced by the third person singular form (the hän-form), as seen in “ei > eivät“. > Learn more about the third person plural.
2. The letter -d- is often dropped, as seen in “lähe > lähde” > Learn more about the letter -d-.

The word isäntäväki consists of the nouns isäntä (host) and väki (people). If you’re having guests over, as a man you’re usually called the isäntä “host”, and as a woman you’re the emäntä “hostess”.

This “no niin” is spoken under your breath: you’re silently and impatiently sighing to yourself that you wish the guests would hurry up and leave already. It’s not directed at the visitors. Ismo conveys this by looking down, lowering his voice, and lengthening the phrase.

Spoken language elements in this section:
1. The pronoun he “they” is very commonly replaced with the pronoun ne in spoken language. Officially, ne is used to refer to things, while he is used for people.
2. The verb form voisivat has lost its -vat ending, as is common in spoken language (read more here), making it voisi. In addition, the final -i has also been lost, which is also extremely common in spoken language.
3. Diphthongs like –ea– are regularly replaced in spoken language with a long vowel sound. This is the case for lähtee in this section: in standard Finnish, we’d see lähteä in this context, because of the rection of alkaa (+ basic form).

Spoken language elements in this section:
1. Very common verbs like mennä, olla and tulla get shortened significantly by omitting letters in the middle of words (e.g. sä meet, sä oot, sä tuut) > Learn more about verbs in spoken language.
2. Word are often shortened from the end. Ismo uses both sit and sitte to shorten the word sitten “then”. > Read more about the shorting of words in spoken language.

The singular sinä-form is used in this section, which is an example of the sinä-passive. This is another spoken language tendency which has likely been introduced into the Finnish language through English and other languages. In formal Finnish, people use either the actual passive forms (e.g. mennään, huomataan) or the generic third person form (e.g. menee, huomaa) to express that something is done by an unspecified person. This wouldn’t work in Ismo’s speech at all.

The form johonkin is the mihin-form (illative case) of the pronoun jokin. We’re using mihin because you go to a place. The pronoun jokin inflects in all the cases (e.g. jokin “something”, jossakin “somewhere”, jostakin “from somewhere”). You can read more about jokin and joku on this page.

In this situation, Ismo’s intonation and body language express resignation and annoyance.

In spoken language, the pronoun se can be used much like the demonstrative pronoun “the” in English. Finnish doesn’t technically have demonstrative pronouns, so this is another element that has been borrowed from other languages. In this line, “se jono” means “the queue”, and has been inflected in the inessive case (missä-form): “in the queue”.

We could alternatively also consider siinä as a separate element, rather than considering it connected to jonossa. The words siinä “there”, siitä “from there” and siihen “to there” are used to express a relative location. You can read more about these words here.

The singular sinä-form is used in this section, which is an example of the sinä-passive. This is another spoken language tendency which has likely been introduced into the Finnish language through English and other languages. In formal Finnish, people use either the actual passive forms (e.g. seisotaan, yritetään) or the generic third person form (e.g. seisoo, yrittää) to express that something is done by an unspecified person. This wouldn’t work in Ismo’s speech at all.

In this section, no niin expresses impatience and has a sort of commanding tone to it.

This is a necessity sentence, where the subject is not a person (Annan pitäisi “Anna should”) but rather an inanimate object (Jonon pitäisi “The queue should”). Of course, the queue consists of people.

The pronoun se in “sen jonon pitäs” (the queue should) is used as a definite article, which in Finnish doesn’t technically exist. However, in spoken language, se has taken on the role of this English “the”. Usually, word order will be used to express whether we’re referring to “the” or “a” in a sentence.

Diphthongs like –ea– are regularly replaced in spoken language with a long vowel sound. This is the case for nopeemmin in this section: in written Finnish, we’d see nopeammin in this context. Ismo could also have said “liikkuu” rather than liikkua, turning the diphthong -ua into the long vowel -uu. This shows that this isn’t a systematic change that happens every single time in spoken language.

The conditional in spoken language can be hard to recognise for non-native speakers because the -isi- element can get shortened so significantly (pitäisi > pitäs). This is often the case for the third person and for the passive conditional. Examples for how this works: hän opiskelisi > se opiskelis, he imuroisivat > ne imurois, mentäisiin > mentäs.

This “no niin” has a happy note, as you can tell from the context as well.

This section has once again multiple examples of how the final -n of words often is dropped in spoken Finnish: sitten > sitte, kun > ku and vihdoinkin > vihdoiki.

This section has more examples of how in spoken language, sentences contain repetition and are often broken off and restarted mid-sentence.

The word aivan has several meanings, which I should really write an article about someday! In this context, it means “really”.

Everyday language uses tämmönen instead of tällainen regularly. You can read more about semmonen and tämmönen in this article. Ismo repeats the word tämmönen so he can add the suffix -kin to it, which means “as well, too”.

Ismo slows his speech down in this section, so it should be easier to understand.

The wife expresses with “no niin” that she has been waiting for the husband and is ready to carry out what she’s been anticipating: an angry speech about how the husband should have stayed sober.

This sentence lacks a verb: the verb olla has been left out: Vaimo on vastassa eteisessä. The phrase “olla vastassa” can’t really be translated literally. It means that’s you’re waiting to receive someone. The phrase “tulla vastaan” is used similarly. It means you’re going towards someone, coming closer to receive them or welcome them.

The essive case of vihainen is used here to express “the state” the wife is in while she’s waiting for her husband: she’s waiting angrily. It’s important to realize that “angrily” can also be translated as vihaisesti, but doesn’t fit into this context: you can say something angrily (e.g. “vaimo vastasi vihaisesti” means “the wife answered angrily”), but waiting expresses a state rather than an action. As such, we use vihaisena rather than vihaisesti. English and Finnish rarely can be translated directly.

The no niin here is the husband’s reply when his wife reminds him that they agreed he would stay sober today. Ismo’s sigh and intonation show perhaps that the husband is resigning himself to what’s to come.

In standard Finnish, we would write “Emmekö me sopineet” (didn’t we agree). The spoken language version has the negative verb in the third person form ei and the main verb in the passive. In an affirmative sentence we would say “me sovittiin” in spoken language, the negative is “me ei sovittu“, which has been turned into a question here: Didn’t we agree? You can find more examples of the negative passive imperfect in this article.

You can read more about “ei mitään” in this article, which goes over ways to say “nothing”, “nowhere” and “never”.

The pronoun se in siinäkin refers to the phrase “no niin“. The basic form se can be used in sekin to mean “the phrase as well”. Inflecting se into the inessive case siinä, causes it to mean “in the phrase as well”. As such, Ismo’s sentence expresses that in the phrase “no niin” the accusation and the defence have been taken care of with the same word.

The verb hoitua might be new to you, but perhaps you know the verb hoitaa. These two verbs form a transitive-intransitive pair. The verb hoitaa is transitive: a person takes care of something. The verb hoitua is intransitive: something is taken care of.

A straight-forward question without anything special to remark on.

The “no niin” here expresses a sort of anticipation coming to an end: it’s finally time to enjoy this beer.

The word no (and its version with aspiration at the end noh) can be translated to English as “well” here. It’s just a filler word used to start an explanation.

In standard Finnish, kun means “when”. In spoken language it can also mean “because”.

I’m not sure how to translate silleen to English. This is a spoken language element that can be used in situations where you’re answering the question “millä tavalla“, which makes it something like “sillä tavalla”. However, translating silleen to “in that way” doesn’t make much sense in English. In Ismo’s sentence, I would translate it as “like”.

The word otettais is the shortened spoken language form of otettaisiin (the passive conditional). The passive can be used to replace the active first person plural standard Finnish ottaisimme “we would take”. In addition, we can also use it in suggestions: “otettaisiin” can also mean “let’s take”. In this context, the men are taking/buying/drinking beer.

Hölkynkölkyn or hölökyn kölökyn is a phrase used when making a toast. The suffix -kin means “as well”: “Chin chin also can be…” You can also say “no niin” instead of saying “hölkynkölkyn” sometimes.

The “se on” at the end of this section doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t get resolved. It’s hard to say when Ismo was intending to add here.

While I literated this sentence as “mä oon ihan varma“, Ismo shortens it significantly, making it almost “män ihan varma“. With a very focused ear, you can make out the -o- slightly, but it’s very short: “mäon ihan varma“.

You can expect an article about ihan and aivan on my website soonish, because they are very interesting yet slightly tricky words to use correctly.

The word eka is spoken language for ensimmäinen. You can shorten “ensimmäistä kertaa” to “ekaa kertaa“. The partitive case is common in this phrase.

In order to make things look neater, the main verb of this sentence is actually in the previous section: “Suomalainen ihminen pääsee harrastamaan seksiä“. The rection of the verb päästä requires it to be followed by the third infinitive’s illative form -maan. You can read more about third infinitive rections in this article.

You can express having sex in Finnish using the phrase harrastaa seksiä. Usually, harrastaa expresses that you do something as a hobby.

In standard Finnish, we would say “me yritämme” rather than “me yritetään“. This spoken feature is so common that you should make an effort to use the passive in this way whenever speaking Finnish yourself.

In spoken language, the first person plural form doesn’t usually get the -mme ending you have in standard Finnish. Instead, the form “Me sanomme” becomes “me sanotaan“, while the negative “me emme sano” becomes “me ei sanota“. You can read more about the passive here.

The word vahingossa is an adverb which means “by accident, accidentally”. Likewise, ääneen is an adverb that means “out loud”.

The “no niin” here expresses anticipation finally coming to an end.

The word kyllä means “yes”, but it can also be used to stress a verb. When we turn “me ajatellaan” (we think) into “me kyllä ajatellaan“, the meaning shifts to “we do think”. Word order isn’t particularly important here.

This is another occurrence where no niin is used to express resignation: you should have seen it coming that this is how your first time would go.

In the word ennenaikane there are two common spoken language elements present. First, the final letter -n of words is often dropped when speaking. Second, the -i- of diphthongs ending in -i (e.g. -ai-, -ui-, -oi-) disappears in spoken language. This is the same change that happens throughout this whole sketch to the word tarkoittaa (tarkottaa).

Spoken language elements:
– The -i- often disappears from words ending in -i (e.g. aluksi > aluks, yksi > yks, viisi > viis).
– Pronouns in spoken language: mä, mun, mulla
– The -n at the end of a word disappears regularly (vähän > vähä, skeptinen > skeptine).

Ismo could have shortened että to et here, as he does in other sections of this sketch, but he doesn’t here. This is typical for spoken language: some variation does take place within the dialect of a speaker.

I decided to translate this as “no niin is the most important Finnish word”, but literally it’s “no niin is Finnish’s most important word”. Sometimes translating literally gives us unnatural English sentences.

When you use osa “part” to focus on a subgroup within a larger group, you will use the plural -sta form (the elative case). For example, that’s how you get “osa kekseistä” (part/some of the cookies), “osa tehtävistä” (part/some of the exercises) and “osa kakusta” (a part/section of the cake).

The verb saattaa can be translated as “may”, “might” or as “probably”. It expresses that something is likely but not certain. You can read more about taitaa, saattaa and mahtaa in this article.

The word niin functions as a kind of transfer word here. I definitely need to write an article on the many uses of niin. It’s just as interesting as “no niin“!

Spoken language elements:
– The -i- disappears from diphtongs ending in -i (e.g. ai, oi) when they’re in the second, third or fourth syllable of the word (saattoi > saatto).
– The -n at the end of a word disappears regularly (vähän > vähä, skeptinen > skeptine). Ismo could have done this to niin as well (nii), but this isn’t a spoken language feature that is necessarily used with every single occurrence of a word ending in -n.

Spoken language elements:
– The -i- disappears from diphtongs ending in -i (e.g. ai, oi) when they’re in the second, third or fourth syllable of the word (saattoi > saatto).
– The -n at the end of a word disappears regularly (vähän > vähä).
– The -j- inside ajatella gets left out in many Finnish dialects (ajattelen > aattelen, ajatellaan > aatellaan).

The verb saattaa can be translated as “may”, “might” or as “probably”. It expresses that something is likely but not certain. You can read more about taitaa, saattaa and mahtaa in this article.

Inserting kyllä in the middle of a sentence stresses the meaning of it, similar to using “really” in English.

I’m not sure how to translate silleen to English, but in this particular instance, the English word “like” fits very well. It’s a common element in spoken Finnish.

“Niin on” is a phrase on its own. It’s used to express agreement with another speaker. I could say “Onpa ihana ilma” (“What wonderful weather”), which you could reply to saying “niin on” (Yes, it is). The “no” at the beginning of this phrase just serves the function of stressing the “niin on“. If we add “no” to my reply about the weather, I’d translate it to English as “It totally is” rather than just “Yes it is”.

The verb in this sentence is inflected in the third person singular form on, but actually should be ovat. The subject is loputkin “the rest”, which is a plural word (loput is loppu in the T-plural). In spoken language, the third person -vat form is usually replaced with the third person singular form.

Inserting kyllä in the middle of a sentence stresses the meaning of it, similar to using “really” in English.

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