Lots of languages have words with no direct counterpart in English. Dutch for example has a word for skimming stones (it’s ‘plimpplamppletteren’, in case you need it). Indonesians have a word meaning ‘to take off your clothes in order to dance’. A Japanese word which might be rather useful is ‘age-otori’, which means ‘looking less attractive after a haircut’. (On second thoughts though, such honesty might not be very diplomatic).

The Finns, all 5.56 million of them at the last count, have lots of words for specifically Finnish concepts. Even better than that, they’ve also designed emojis for many of them. Here are some of my favourites…

Bear – is for that feeling when you just want to sleep all winter. Hibernation has its attractions. Whereas in the summer you might want to use Out of Office – there’s a Finnish saying ‘to put your brain in the cloakroom’, which is what Finns like to do every Friday afternoon after work. If in July, when the whole of Finland is ‘out of office’, you try to reach a Finnish person, prepare for a voice mail message saying ‘the person you are calling has gone fishing’. Probably at the summer cottage, as there are more than 500000 of them in Finland.

You might get the feeling of PRKL. If you do decide to use ‘perkele’, the mother of all Finnish swearwords (literally ‘the devil’ but means much more than that), say it like you mean it! You can make the curse longer and more effective by rolling the ‘r’. You might experience the feeling of banging your head, too. (Finns do, a lot –  heavy metal is mainstream, and there are more heavy metal bands in Finland per capita than anywhere else. Who knew?)

We can learn lots about Finnish culture from the emojis. Bus stop reminds us that Finns respect the privacy and personal space of others, and expect the same in return. If you’re on the bus, you’ll notice Finns won’t sit next to you if another seat is free. Don’t take it personally. And don’t stand too close when you’re talking to someone either, unless you want to see a Finn edging slowly backwards… Then there’s girl power, the feeling of ‘when women can’. Finns are rightly proud that theirs was the first country in the world to give women the rights both to vote and be elected. Finnish women are highly educated and full-time employment is the norm. The pronoun ‘hän’ means both she and he. And talking of pride, suomi mainittu is the feeling when someone mentions Finland abroad. 

 

So, if any Finns happen to be reading Travelling Frogs blog, thanks for the insights into your country, and for the emojis! Not to mention the permission to download* (for non-commercial use) all 56 of them

*at https://finland.fi/emoji/