If you like music and translating Finnish song lyrics, then you might like this article. I will be analyzing the Christmas song Petteri Punakuono. This is the Finnish version of the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

1. About the Song Petteri Punakuono

This tune of this song and the general idea of the lyrics are the same as the English Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. However, in order to make this song work in Finnish, some notable changes have been made in the translation. The beginning of the song, for example, does not contain the names of the other reindeer. Instead, it lists the name of popular fairytale creatures.

In addition to differences in the meaning of the lyrics, another challenging issue is the word order in this song. While the lyrics in itself are fairly straight-forward, as a learner of Finnish, the word order can make this song hard to understand. I’ve provided a neutral word order for most of these sentences.

2. Song Lyrics – Petteri Punakuono

3. Glossary

The following grammar terms have been abbreviated.

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

4. Petteri Punakuono – Finnish Song Analyzed

The English version of this song lists the names of all the other reindeer in this section. In the Finnish translation, they list the names of the most common fairytale characters. The other reindeers’ names just aren’t used in Finnish.

The verb muistaa generally has a total object: you remember the whole person or thing. You will use the genitive case in these sentences.

Neutral word order: (Muistat) Punahilkan ja harmaan sudenkin. Word order is changed in order to maintain the correct rhythm and to make the sentences ending in varmaan and harmaan rhyme.

The clitic -kin is used in its most basic meaning in this sentence: it means “also”. We can rephrase “Muistat myös suden” as “Muistat sudenkin“. The word susi gets inflected in the same way as some other old words ending in -si, such as vuosi (vuoden) and uusi (uuden).

Neutral word order: mutta tää poro jää sulta usein unhoon. Very complicated word order in the song!

The phrase “jäädä unhohon” means “to be forgotten”. You could translate it more literally as “to remain in oblivion”. This is a very poetic phrase, which is also clear by the use of unhohon rather than unhoon. We will use the verb unohtua in everyday language. This means we could replace “Poro jää unhoon” with the phrase “Poro unohtuu” (the reindeer is forgotten).

The keneltä-form sulta (sinulta) is used because of the verb jäädä. We could consider the verb jäädä to have two separate rections. First and foremost, you will use the mihin-form: Jäin kotiin, jäin opiskelemaan.

Occasionally, you will also find the keneltä-form, like in this song. It’s not especially common to add this element, but you can find it in sentences such as:
– Minulta jää harvoin kirja kesken means literally “From me a book rarely remains unfinished”.
– Minulta ei jäänyt ruoantähteitä means literally “From me no food scraps remained”.

Neutral word order: Poro oli nimeltään Petteri Punakuono.

The word nimeltään belongs to the same group as the words koulutukseltaan and ammatiltaan. You can learn more about these types of words here.

The name Rudolph is such a foreign name that the translators of this song picked a totally different name for the reindeer: Petteri. This is the Finnish alternative of the English name Peter. I’m going to call him Rudolph when explaining things in the sections below.

Neutral word order: Petterimme nenänpään loiste ei ollut huono. The word order in this section can be hard to understand. The neutral word order’s “Petterimme nenänpään loiste” is most clearly translated as “the shine of the nose tip of our Rudolph”, though the word order matches up better with “Rudolph‘s nose tip‘s shine”.

In the English version of this song, this line goes as follows: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose”. During translation, the “very shiny nose” was changed to say “not a bad shine”. Changes like this can be necessary when translating a song in order to match the original song’s rhythm.

In this song, toiset “the others” means “the other reindeers”.

The verb haukkua means to badmouth or to diss someone. The verb pilkata has a similar meaning: to mock, to taunt. In this song, Rudolph is being called a lighthouse: maljakka. This differs from the English version, where it’s not specified what names the other reindeers are calling Rudolph.

The translative case (majakaksi) is used with both haukkua and pilkata whenever you want to specify the name someone is called. Both pilkata and haukkua have a translative rection.

The instructive form of ilta is usually present in the phrase “aamuin illoin“, which means “mornings and evenings”, ie. the whole day, every day. The more common phrase used to say “every evening” would be iltaisin.

If this was a regular sentence rather than the lyrics of a translated song, it would likely sound more like: “Toiset haukkuivat ja pilkkasivat häntä majakaksi iltaisin“, ie. “The others badmouthed and dissed him as a lighthouse in the evenings”.

Neutral word order: “Silloin joulupukki saikin tuosta vain aatteen“

The phrase “tuosta vain” (which means ” just like that”) is used to express that Santa suddenly got an idea, out of nowhere.

The particle -kin has many meanings, which you can read about more here. In this sentence, it’s used to express that something happened unexpectedly: Santa’s idea came out of nowhere.

The word aate usually means “ideology, concept”. A more everyday word is idea: Joulupukki sai idean. In addition to using the more old-fashioned word aate, the form used is also old-fashioned: the sentence contains the archaic aattehen genitive case form rather than the current Finnish genitive form aatteen.

Neutral word order: Aattoilta on pitkä (ja) taival (on) valoton.

On the evening of Christmas Eve, Santa goes on his long round of people’s homes, a passage which is dark (pimeä), lightless (valoton).

Neutral word order:  Petteri vois nenässään tuoda valon pimeään.

The light is in Rudolph’s nose: nenässä. The -än and the end of nenässään is the third person possessive suffix. We could both say nenässään and nenässänsä. The -än suffix is far more common.

The verb tuoda comes with the mihin-form: Rudolph brings light into the dark.

The adverb asti has a different meaning depending on which case ending is used with it. The mistä-form can be used to express the beginning of the situation (e.g. keväästä asti “from spring, starting in spring”). The mihin-form can be used to express the endpoint of a situation (e.g. jouluun asti “until Christmas”). In addition to timespans, asti can also be used with locations in much the same way. We can form sentences such as “Metsä kasvaa [rantaan asti]” and “Tavarat tuotiin [kaupungista asti]“.

The second infinitive expresses the way in which something is done. I have a separate article on the use of the modal substitute construction (modaalinen lauseenvastike, modaalirakenne). In the song, we’re describing in what way Rudolph leads Santa to the children: he leads them by pulling the sled.

The name joulupukki (Santa Clause) literally means “Christmas goat”. It’s not uncommon for people to use pukki as an affectionate way to talk about Santa.

The word order has once again been switched: luokse is a postposition, so generally you will find the neutral word order “kilttien lasten luokse“.

The postposition luokse expresses a movement towards (the homes of) the children. In addition to the mihin-form, this postposition also has a missä-form (luona) and a mistä-form (luota). Read more about the inflection of postpositions here.

As always with these songs I post, do let me know in the comments if you have a song suggestion for me to tackle next!

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Oikein surullista joulua – Leevi and the Leavings – Finnish Songs Analyzed Lähtisitkö – Finnish Song Lyrics Analyzed Tuiki Tuiki Tähtönen – Finnish Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Matkustan ympäri maailmaa – Finnish Children’s Song