Borrowed Words to Finnish Language
Did you know that in the Finnish language, there are known and less known borrowed words from other languages? Let me mention a few of those to you now.
Banana is easy to recognise, it is of course banaani and it is the only word generally used in the nation that comes from Africa and is ingrained into the Finnish language.
From Japan, we have received plenty of words meaning food, martial arts and cultural things. They are widely used internationally and do not need any extra introduction: tofu, aikido, anime, karate, sudoku, sushi, kimono, ninja. The list goes on!
Even more than Japan, Italy has contributed to our language in the form of food, but there are also words like spagaatti, (spaccata it., split eng.), kirahvi, (giraffa it., giraffe eng.), pankki, (banca it., bank eng.).
Some other random words from other languages are tee, (tea eng.), from Chinese, jooga, (yoga eng.) from Sanskrit, curry from Tamil, and paprika from Hungarian.
Rottinki (rattan eng., a type of palm tree) comes from the Malay language. Funnily enough there is a peculiar saying in Finnish related to rottinki: olla rinta rottingilla, which means to be proud of something. Which again reminds me, did you already read our blog articles › Peculiar Sayings in Finnish with Animals and › Peculiar Finnish Sayings With Food (in Finnish).
Have a great weekend!
Minna, OLS Community Manager – Finnish