Day 1300: Ruotsinsuomalainen

If you got in your secret time machine, went back to 2010, accosted me and told me I would one day live in Sweden I would have said "Let me go before I call the police". But then as an afterthought I would have sniggered and said to myself "I hardly even know where Sweden is, let alone what the language is like." So believe me when I say that it is surreal learning Finnish phrases on Swedish packaging and that it is surreal for Finnish, quite possibly the strangest language on the planet, to be on my linguistic radar. Me. Someone from an island that languishes at the bottom in Europe for teaching kids a second language and pretends the old Celtic languages don't really exist.

Approximately 5% of the population in Sweden are native Finnish speakers thanks to a long and complicated history between the two countries. This involved at some points the systematic enforcement of Swedish over Finnish in Finland itself and it was relatively recently that Finland stopped making all their public signs in Swedish too. The most famous product of the Swedish/Finnish cultural blending was the Moomins by the Swedish Finn (Finlandsvensk) Tove Jansson. Confusingly, native Finns living in Sweden are known as Finnish Swedes (Sverigefinnar.) Finnish and Swedish are in absolutely no way alike, since Finnish developed from a completely separate language family (the Uralic langauges).

Nevertheless, most Swedish people know one or two bits of Finnish. Here's my handy-dandy guide for anyone finding themselves in an inevitable "Swedish-people-pretending-they-know-some-Finnish" conversation, in which people shout stupid phrases at each other in a pseudo-Finnish accent.

EI SAA PEITTÄÄ
They'll explain that they got this one from all the Finnish electric radiators. It means "do not cover". Except in all my years of being in Sweden I have NEVER SEEN A RADIATOR WITH EI SAA PEITÄÄ ON IT!

YKSI KAKSI KOLME
When they say this it will sound like a witch uttering a spell, but it just means "One, Two, Three"

KIITOS
Again, it sounds mysterious and foreboding, but it's just "Thanks".

RUOTSI/SUOMI
I know this one from working in schools, but everyone else knows this from seeing the dictionary cover "Swedish, Finnish"

RUOTSINSUOMALAINEN 
If you want to contribute to the slinging of pointless phrases, this would be a safe bet; it's long, impressive and most people don't know this one, it means "Finnish Swedish"

PARASTA ENNEN 
Admittedly this was probably the first Finnish phrase I learned since it's on every item of food: "Best Before". It's so different from all the other Scandi languages on the packet I reckon it should be one of those memes:

HYVÄÄ
Oh this, you definitely can't avoid this. They won't just say "Hyvää" though. They'll say "HYYYYYYVÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ" like a constipated duck. It means "good".

SUU AUKI SUUREMPAAN
Only use this in extreme circumstances. This is my trump card, my Ace, my crushing blow. Nobody will know what this means, and if they do then they're Finnish and you should be ashamed of yourself for shouting pointless phrases at them in their own language.