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Here you can read the English version of the above.

Peculiar Finnish Sayings With Food

Welcome to the second part of the blog series, Peculiar Finnish Sayings With Food! You will become hungry here! What an odd consequence, that I just noticed that all the food sayings are meat.

 Sopii kuin nyrkki silmään tai nakki nenän reikään
In English this is "Fits like a glove", but in Finnish we say it fits like a fist in an eye or a wiener up your nose. This can be used, for example, when two people cooperate well or something else goes well. Or maybe this literally means when two or several parts of something fit together well.

Helppo nakki
In English this means "piece of cake". An easy nakki is almost the same thing as someone who fits like a wiener up your nose hole. This is used when something / a task is easy or it is assumed to go well. The literal translation is “easy frankfurter/wiener”.

Olla nakit silmillä
This saying is literally "to have frankfurters/wieners on your eyes". The saying has its origins in frankfurters that were sold sometime in the 50s-70s. The wieners were made of with eyes of carp and whitefish that were mixed into the wiener dough. The saying means to be so intoxicated that you can no longer see ahead of yourself.

Katsoa kuin halpaa makkaraa
This saying "to look at someone like they are a cheap sausage". This is what you do when you feel so negatively about someone that you look at them like they are cheap sausage. You can continue the saying by adding: look like a cheap sausage, even though you are on sale yourself. This, as an opposite, means that you shouldn't look down on someone else, because you can be in an even more disadvantaged position yourself.

Vuonna nakki ja muusi
If something happened a long time ago, you can say in the year nakki and muusi. Literally "in the year of Frankfurter and mashed potatoes. It is not entirely clear where this saying comes from, but someone once defined that the year nakki means the time before the year 2000.

 Asia on pihvi
Here is one perfect example of the influence of Swedish language on the Finnish language. Back in the day, when a soldier applied for leave, he had to make a written request, and if the leave was granted, the Swedish word "bifalles" (= granted, accepted) was written on the form. The word “bif” was used as a short form. Bif in Swedish is beef. In Finnish, this became pihvi: if the holiday has been granted - the matter was a pihvi, i.e. "it/case/that is a steak". 

Asia on pihvi.