English-Finnish vocabulary
In Finland, you can get by in English pretty well, especially with ***** adults. With older people, German tends to work better.
However, there are some Finns with whom communicating in English can be tedious at best. Thus, it's a good idea to be prepared by knowing a few common phrases. In case you want to learn a bit more about the Finnish language you can check out this online course, which also includes some useful audio clips so you can hear how Finnish is pronounced.
For other phonetical languages, as Spanish, Finnish is easy to pronounce: just read aloud. The only difficulty comes with ä (pronounced as "cat"), ö (pronounced as an open "o") and y (pronounced as a french "u"). Double characters (such as "kk", "tt" and "ll") are doubled while speaking.
english | finnish |
Yes | Kyllä |
No | Ei |
Thank you | Kiitos |
You are welcome | Ole hyvä |
I'm sorry | Anteeksi |
Excuse me | Anteeksi |
Good morning | Huomenta |
Good afternoon | Päivää |
Good evening | Iltaa |
Hi | Hei |
Bye | Heihei |
See you later | Nähdään |
I don't speak finnish. | En puhu suomea. |
Taxi situations | |
Take me to HUT, please. Otakaari 2(the address) | Otaniemeen, kiitos. Otakaari 2 |
What is the fare? | Mitä se maksaa? | Emergency/medical situations |
Please, I don't feel well.. could you call a doctor? | Apua, en voi hyvin... voisitko soittaa lääkärin? |
Could you tell me the way to a pharmacy? | Missä on apteekki? |
Where is the toilette? | Missä on vessa |