This is the fourth and final installment of my brief series of blog posts introducing peculiar, hardly translatable Finnish terms. At the end of this one I will say something about a few “false starts” that I had when preparing this series (which was originally planned as a single post, but was finally divided into a series because as a single post it would have been just too damn long). By false starts I mean terms that I first thought could be Finnish peculiarities but then learned that they are not so peculiar after all. Those were educational cases, too, and there are some nice anecdotes to be made in connection to them. But first, the word of the day. It is (the pejorative) veivikaula.
1. Introductory Ruminations: Is It a Real Word Even?
Now, first, I should admit that veivikaula is a debatable choice because, frankly, I am wandering off the map – or, rather, outside dictionaries – here. I actually went to a brick-and-mortar library for this post (well, okay, I was going there anyway, but I took the opportunity), to glimpse some half a dozen Finnish dictionaries, and not one of them had an entry for veivikaula. From this, someone might conceivably draw the conclusion that veivikaula is not a real Finnish word at all. That conviction could be further boosted by the finding that many (most?) native speakers are actually more or less unfamiliar with this term (would admit that they are not certain about its meaning, or perhaps that they have never even heard the word before). Indeed, even those who are familiar with veivikaula tend to use the term, and interpret its meaning, differently.
So, what counts as a real word? I suppose it depends on one’s take on what language or semantics is, in the end, but personally I woud find it deplorably deprived a view if we were to count as real words and real semantics of a language only what we find in the dictionaries of that language. If a word is widely enough used, it will certainly make it to dictionaries, but I think it qualifies as a real, semantically meaningful word already before any dictionary editor makes that decision. As Kory Stamper (here interviewed by Jennifer Schuessler) from the Merriam-Webster says, we should not think of dictionaries as “argument-settling arbiters of truth” about the ultimate real meaning of all our words; rather, a dictionary is simply an attempt “to objectively and comprehensively catalogue the many different ways words are used by real people.” Clearly, such a catalogue will always be to some extent debatable, in a sense even defective; and it will always be very much a work in progress, lacking many words that a significant number of language users feel do have a semantic meaning in their language (and holding on to many nowadays altogether obsolete words that the vast majority of language users would agree have become effectively dead letters). Meanwhile, it would be an even more untenable a position to require that all or even some significant majority of native speakers need to know the meaning of the term for it to qualify as a word in that language: the dictionaries of many languages include at least a hundred thousand words or more, even a couple hundred thousand, whereas a normal person’s vocabulary is way less than that, some tens of thousands words. It is true that the bulk of the thousands of words that you know are in fact known also by most of your contemporary native speakers, but that still leaves literally thousands of words that might be familiar only to this or that social or subcultural group or to some geographically restricted population.
Think about it like this: semantics is abstracted from how people use words (in some of their various social practices). This means, of course, that one cannot create acceptable semantics of a language all by oneself, or even with just a couple other people; you need quite a few people (how many, I don’t know and really couldn’t care less) using the word in such and such ways (in some of their social practices (or, “language games”)), over a period of at least a couple years. On the other hand, real semantics can arise from considerably less than all or even a majority of language users agreeing on the meaning.
By these standards, I think, veivikaula is a real Finnish word: I trust that it is (roughly) understood by a sufficient number of Finnish speakers in (a set of) relatively consistent ways. Besides having heard or seen the term being used by a few different and unconnected people with my own ears and eyes, a quick Google search gave me some 1,200 results for “veivikaula.” (Keep in mind that Google does not by any means show all the pages where the search term appears, but rather just the tip of the iceberg of those; so to get even 1,200 results means that the term is actually being used quite a bit.) It is an oldish term, to be sure, a bit antiquated, one that you probably won’t hear young people using much these days, but as those 1,200 results in Google search testify, it is by no means an obsolete term. It also helps that, even though, as said, most native speakers are relatively unfamiliar with the meaning of veivikaula, they are likely to be not totally unfamiliar with it, because it happens to be yet another compound word, consisting of two other, quite familiar terms, which obviously give us at least some clues as to what the term might mean.
I will get to the meaning of veivikaula presently, but first let me just point out that, for my purposes, it does not really even clinch the matter whether veivikaula is a real word or not. I am something of a fan of the term: as I hope to make clear here, it is a vivid, colorful, very tasty term, which I would hope to hear used much more in the future. So although there is admittedly not too much by way of concrete, objective (recognized and agreed upon by most native speakers) content to this term for me to discuss and catalogue here, and accordingly I will be mostly only arguing for or trying to persuade the reader with my interpretations, I still find this a worthwhile post to write if only with the intent to try and promote the term and its renownedness.
Think about it like this: semantics is abstracted from how people use words (in some of their various social practices). This means, of course, that one cannot create acceptable semantics of a language all by oneself, or even with just a couple other people; you need quite a few people (how many, I don’t know and really couldn’t care less) using the word in such and such ways (in some of their social practices (or, “language games”)), over a period of at least a couple years. On the other hand, real semantics can arise from considerably less than all or even a majority of language users agreeing on the meaning.
By these standards, I think, veivikaula is a real Finnish word: I trust that it is (roughly) understood by a sufficient number of Finnish speakers in (a set of) relatively consistent ways. Besides having heard or seen the term being used by a few different and unconnected people with my own ears and eyes, a quick Google search gave me some 1,200 results for “veivikaula.” (Keep in mind that Google does not by any means show all the pages where the search term appears, but rather just the tip of the iceberg of those; so to get even 1,200 results means that the term is actually being used quite a bit.) It is an oldish term, to be sure, a bit antiquated, one that you probably won’t hear young people using much these days, but as those 1,200 results in Google search testify, it is by no means an obsolete term. It also helps that, even though, as said, most native speakers are relatively unfamiliar with the meaning of veivikaula, they are likely to be not totally unfamiliar with it, because it happens to be yet another compound word, consisting of two other, quite familiar terms, which obviously give us at least some clues as to what the term might mean.
I will get to the meaning of veivikaula presently, but first let me just point out that, for my purposes, it does not really even clinch the matter whether veivikaula is a real word or not. I am something of a fan of the term: as I hope to make clear here, it is a vivid, colorful, very tasty term, which I would hope to hear used much more in the future. So although there is admittedly not too much by way of concrete, objective (recognized and agreed upon by most native speakers) content to this term for me to discuss and catalogue here, and accordingly I will be mostly only arguing for or trying to persuade the reader with my interpretations, I still find this a worthwhile post to write if only with the intent to try and promote the term and its renownedness.
2. Today’s Main Course: On the Meaning of Veivikaula
As said, veivikaula is a compound word consisting of two other, familiar terms. Those terms are veivi (“crank”) and kaula (“neck”). For starters, this tells us the literal meaning of veivikaula – “crank-neck.”
However, in what comes to translating the term into English, I doubt that the literal translation is very promising because there is already in English the term “crank neck,” which means something different from the Finnish veivikaula, namely a certain kind of tool, a chisel of sorts. There is also a jiu jitsu hold called “neck crank.” Given this, it seems unlikely that we could successfully introduce “crank-neck” as a new term into English. So I suppose that, if you find veivikaula as described herein intriguing and would like to use a term like that in English, you will just have to do what you did with sauna and lend the word as it stands.
However, in what comes to translating the term into English, I doubt that the literal translation is very promising because there is already in English the term “crank neck,” which means something different from the Finnish veivikaula, namely a certain kind of tool, a chisel of sorts. There is also a jiu jitsu hold called “neck crank.” Given this, it seems unlikely that we could successfully introduce “crank-neck” as a new term into English. So I suppose that, if you find veivikaula as described herein intriguing and would like to use a term like that in English, you will just have to do what you did with sauna and lend the word as it stands.
But what, then, does the term mean? To begin with, as you might have deduced from the fact that it does not appear in official Finnish dictionaries (at least in the ones that I consulted), there is some considerable vagueness involved in it, different people using the term rather differently. So what I say here will be more speculative, and more a matter of personal opinion, than what I say in many other posts. But I did find some more objective facts about how the term has been used. For example, prominent amongst those 1,200 Google hits that I got for veivikaula were, first, a web dictionary stating that the term has been used as a pejorative slang expression referring to “a boy or a young man”; and, second, a web page cataloguing Finnish military slang, saying that some (likely the conscript in military service, I take it) have referred with the term to someone belonging to the cadre – “a military officer (in the permanent staff),” that is.
But in my own experience of the term, as used outside military and other slang contexts, it has not been restricted to those rather specific meanings. I have also heard or seen it used quite simply as a mild pejorative. That use also emerged from amongst the Google hits that I got; there were some clear cases of someone using the term just to bad mouth someone else. Perhaps the term was originally used in the said, more specific meanings, but – as often happens – it then spread out of the original contexts and began to be used in other, less specific and somewhat different meanings too. Perhaps I can offer the following, generic, definition: veivikaula is a slightly insulting, pejorative term with which one can refer to an irritating person (of a certain peculiar kind, in particular – more about that shortly).
Now I do not think that veivikaula is more than only a mildly offensive pejorative: there are probably hundreds of worse words of abuse in our language. Yet veivikaula is definitely somewhat insulting, so if you meet a Finn and want to stay in good terms with him or her, it is probably not a good idea to call after them: “Yo, veivikaula ...!” Such a mild slur it is, though, that a simple “Voi sinä senkin veivikaula!” (“Oh, you veivikaula!”) will very rarely feel like a sufficient discharge of anger if the target person has been getting on your nerves. Indeed, if you are angry with the person, you will usually want to use some stronger pejorative, or alternatively strengthen the word veivikaula with a curse word and say, for example: “Voi vitun veivikaula!” (“Oh, [you/that] f-ing veivikaula!”).
That said, if you are not all that angry, you can very well use veivikaula in a sentence without any additional curse words. It could then be used as a slightly amusing way of transferring some information, referring to some third person in a way that allows the hearer to deduce that it is someone who you sneer at and/or find a little annoying: “Tiedätkö, siellä oli yksi sellainen ihme veivikaula ...” (“You know, there was this one curious veivikaula ...”). Of course, you could add some curse words to this sort of, mainly information transferring sentence, too. Perhaps you start getting all worked up right there as you speak, your very talking about the person making your anger rise as you realize just how much you actually hate him/her. A simple veivikaula could then start tasting much too lame an expression on your tongue, and you might end up adding some choice stronger words; after the previous sentence, for example, you could continue: “Etkä ikinä arvaa mitä se perkeleen veivikaula sanoi minulle ...!” (“And you’ll never guess what that goddamn veivikaula said to me ...!”)
Now, as mentioned, I think that there is a case to be made for the term veivikaula being a more natural fit to certain kinds of irritating people than to others. I guess this intuition comes from the literal meaning of veivikaula, “crank-neck,” which could obviously also be taken as description of physical characteristics or behaviors. To be sure, that is not by any means an overpowering intuition and veivikaula can be understandably used as a pejorative reference even to people whose necks are not in any sense crank-like. But personally I would prefer some other insulting term if the target person’s physical characteristics and behavior were utterly incompatible with the idea of their neck being in some sense crank-like. In that respect, veivikaula seems somewhat different from, say, “sh-t for brain” and other such slurs which totally lack any descriptive criteria for use (although the literal meaning of “sh-t for brain” does have descriptive criteria, the semantic meaning is just very straightforwardly and simply pejorative, because you do not expect the person who someone abuses with this expression actually to have sh-t inside his or her skull instead of the brain). On the other hand, veivikaula is by no means as tightly definable a descriptive pejorative as many other insulting terms, such as those that refer to (what the speaker claims is) the target person’s body type or facial characteristic. Just consider the fact that the latter kind of terms can even be used sarcastically, i.e. to make a humorous reference to someone whose bodytype or facial characteristics are obviously the opposite of those that the term singles out (for example, using the expression “big nose” (isonenä in Finnish) to refer to someone with an exceptionally small nose, etc.). By contrast, veivikaula has nowhere nearly tight enough descriptive content for it to be used sarcastically. For the same reason it also does not become incomprehensible or nonsensical if you use it to refer to someone who is actually physically anything but veivikaula-like.
Anyways, let me now delve into the (vague) descriptive criteria that I think there are to veivikaula. Personally, I would say that the behavioral criteria are more important than the physical criteria, but I know that some people might think that it is the other way round. And I admit that the physical criteria are not at all unconsequential at least. Conceivably, the very best fit would be a target person who meets both sets of criteria.
The physical criteria are the simpler and more straightforward of the two, so I will start with those. Here is an example of a person who does not come across as a veivikaula: someone with a very short and thick neck, a bodybuilder type perhaps, or a stubby person whose head seems to start straight from his/her shoulders. I would hesitate to call such people veivikaulas. Maybe if the guy’s personality and behavior otherwise made me feel like: what an utter veivikaula this person is, maybe then I could consider using the term anyway, but the physical characteristics are definitely a consideration and the behavior would have to be very, very veivikaula-like to completely override those.
The physical characteristics that I find best suited for the target to be called a veivikaula, then, would be the opposite of those of a short- and thick-necked person: a long and thin, slender neck.
Those physical aspects resonate nicely at least with the old slang sense of veivikaula mentioned above, that of the pejorative reference to a boy or a young man. A young boy’s neck, after all, in general tends to be thinner than an older man’s neck and may therefore seem longer too. In addition, keep in mind that if we go back some fifty or sixty years, it was not at all uncommon for boys to experience mild physical punishment inflicted upon them even by a stranger or a semi-familiar like the janitor of their apartment building: if an older man saw school kids doing some mischief, he might well have taken it upon himself to “teach them some manners” – grabbing them by their ear, or by their hair, or by the back of the neck, and shaking them a little; so there could also be that side to the slang expression veivikaula. Think of the familiar image from the TV show The Simpsons: Homer Simpson getting angry at his son Bart, roaring “Why you little ...!” and starting to strangle the boy with both hands. Don’t you think that Bart’s neck in those scenes is a bit like a crank, which Homer cranks away?
Aww, that image! Actually, the image may have some real relevance here. I mean, it is not at all inconceivable that you find the person you are referring to as veivikaula so infuriating that you feel (almost) like, or even experience mental imagery of, grasping the person by the neck and jolting them. (Not that I encourage anybody to do that sort of thing: violence is wrong!)
With this we come now to the (slightly more multi-sided issue of the) behavioral aspects of veivikaula. For there was a time when a young boy’s neck could be expected to be turning around somewhat like a crank (at least to the eyes of older folks more set in their ways and grown to cynicism, tired of life). Especially back in the day when our youth wasn’t hunched over smartphones or computers all day, when they spent most of their days outdoors, in the streets or in the woods and fields, running this way or that, scavenging something, climbing a tree, every day coming up with some physical games or plays or mischief ... Well, it is perceivable to me that the older folks found it apt to characterize that kind of little weasels with the term veivikaula.
However, I do not think that, today, these are among the characteristics most likely to inspire us to call a person’s behavior veivikaula-like. To me, an exemplary veivikaula would be someone who is always on your case, sticking their nose to your business, condemning your behavior or character. (If this is right, then the opposite of veivikaula, behavior-wise, would perhaps be a very jovial person who didn’t get irritated easily and didn’t reprehend others for their doings very often, someone who would be mostly minding to his or her own business and in no way getting in your way. Indeed, if the thick- and short-necked type was the opposite of veivikaula in physical appearance, then the jovial, friendly type would probably be the opposite of veivikaula as far as personality is concerned.)
You can see how the army slang meaning, that of an officer, a member of the permanent staff, fits to this side of the concept perfectly. Come to think of it, it could be said to connect to some of the physical aspects of veivikaula too: just think of the character Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) giving hell to some recruits: he would be so on their case that, it might seem as if his neck was extending towards them, growing length!
It does not matter whether the person who is on your case has every legal and/or moral right to supervice you and to intervene with your actions; it does not necessarily stop you from calling that person veivikaula: you could call a person veivikaula even if s/he is your parent, teacher, boss, supervisor, parish priest, or, as would be the case with Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your ranking officer (though in many of those cases you would be wise to call them veivikaula only behind their backs – obviously, oftentimes it is not wise to do so to their face). But if you ask me, what would be the most apt, ideal situation where I would just love to use the term, it would have to be one where the person sticking his or her nose to my business clearly has no f-ing right doing so, yet take it upon themselves to reproach me for something. Perhaps the absolutely ideal type of veivikaula would be a nosy neighbor, always complaining about something s/he saw you do in the yard (imagine seeing that person extending his or her neck for a better view from their window or from behind a fence ...). That physical appearance would certainly add to the aptness of your words when you said to your partners in crime, “Uh oh, look out, guys: there comes that f-ing veivikaula again ...”
But in my own experience of the term, as used outside military and other slang contexts, it has not been restricted to those rather specific meanings. I have also heard or seen it used quite simply as a mild pejorative. That use also emerged from amongst the Google hits that I got; there were some clear cases of someone using the term just to bad mouth someone else. Perhaps the term was originally used in the said, more specific meanings, but – as often happens – it then spread out of the original contexts and began to be used in other, less specific and somewhat different meanings too. Perhaps I can offer the following, generic, definition: veivikaula is a slightly insulting, pejorative term with which one can refer to an irritating person (of a certain peculiar kind, in particular – more about that shortly).
Now I do not think that veivikaula is more than only a mildly offensive pejorative: there are probably hundreds of worse words of abuse in our language. Yet veivikaula is definitely somewhat insulting, so if you meet a Finn and want to stay in good terms with him or her, it is probably not a good idea to call after them: “Yo, veivikaula ...!” Such a mild slur it is, though, that a simple “Voi sinä senkin veivikaula!” (“Oh, you veivikaula!”) will very rarely feel like a sufficient discharge of anger if the target person has been getting on your nerves. Indeed, if you are angry with the person, you will usually want to use some stronger pejorative, or alternatively strengthen the word veivikaula with a curse word and say, for example: “Voi vitun veivikaula!” (“Oh, [you/that] f-ing veivikaula!”).
That said, if you are not all that angry, you can very well use veivikaula in a sentence without any additional curse words. It could then be used as a slightly amusing way of transferring some information, referring to some third person in a way that allows the hearer to deduce that it is someone who you sneer at and/or find a little annoying: “Tiedätkö, siellä oli yksi sellainen ihme veivikaula ...” (“You know, there was this one curious veivikaula ...”). Of course, you could add some curse words to this sort of, mainly information transferring sentence, too. Perhaps you start getting all worked up right there as you speak, your very talking about the person making your anger rise as you realize just how much you actually hate him/her. A simple veivikaula could then start tasting much too lame an expression on your tongue, and you might end up adding some choice stronger words; after the previous sentence, for example, you could continue: “Etkä ikinä arvaa mitä se perkeleen veivikaula sanoi minulle ...!” (“And you’ll never guess what that goddamn veivikaula said to me ...!”)
Now, as mentioned, I think that there is a case to be made for the term veivikaula being a more natural fit to certain kinds of irritating people than to others. I guess this intuition comes from the literal meaning of veivikaula, “crank-neck,” which could obviously also be taken as description of physical characteristics or behaviors. To be sure, that is not by any means an overpowering intuition and veivikaula can be understandably used as a pejorative reference even to people whose necks are not in any sense crank-like. But personally I would prefer some other insulting term if the target person’s physical characteristics and behavior were utterly incompatible with the idea of their neck being in some sense crank-like. In that respect, veivikaula seems somewhat different from, say, “sh-t for brain” and other such slurs which totally lack any descriptive criteria for use (although the literal meaning of “sh-t for brain” does have descriptive criteria, the semantic meaning is just very straightforwardly and simply pejorative, because you do not expect the person who someone abuses with this expression actually to have sh-t inside his or her skull instead of the brain). On the other hand, veivikaula is by no means as tightly definable a descriptive pejorative as many other insulting terms, such as those that refer to (what the speaker claims is) the target person’s body type or facial characteristic. Just consider the fact that the latter kind of terms can even be used sarcastically, i.e. to make a humorous reference to someone whose bodytype or facial characteristics are obviously the opposite of those that the term singles out (for example, using the expression “big nose” (isonenä in Finnish) to refer to someone with an exceptionally small nose, etc.). By contrast, veivikaula has nowhere nearly tight enough descriptive content for it to be used sarcastically. For the same reason it also does not become incomprehensible or nonsensical if you use it to refer to someone who is actually physically anything but veivikaula-like.
Anyways, let me now delve into the (vague) descriptive criteria that I think there are to veivikaula. Personally, I would say that the behavioral criteria are more important than the physical criteria, but I know that some people might think that it is the other way round. And I admit that the physical criteria are not at all unconsequential at least. Conceivably, the very best fit would be a target person who meets both sets of criteria.
The physical criteria are the simpler and more straightforward of the two, so I will start with those. Here is an example of a person who does not come across as a veivikaula: someone with a very short and thick neck, a bodybuilder type perhaps, or a stubby person whose head seems to start straight from his/her shoulders. I would hesitate to call such people veivikaulas. Maybe if the guy’s personality and behavior otherwise made me feel like: what an utter veivikaula this person is, maybe then I could consider using the term anyway, but the physical characteristics are definitely a consideration and the behavior would have to be very, very veivikaula-like to completely override those.
The physical characteristics that I find best suited for the target to be called a veivikaula, then, would be the opposite of those of a short- and thick-necked person: a long and thin, slender neck.
Those physical aspects resonate nicely at least with the old slang sense of veivikaula mentioned above, that of the pejorative reference to a boy or a young man. A young boy’s neck, after all, in general tends to be thinner than an older man’s neck and may therefore seem longer too. In addition, keep in mind that if we go back some fifty or sixty years, it was not at all uncommon for boys to experience mild physical punishment inflicted upon them even by a stranger or a semi-familiar like the janitor of their apartment building: if an older man saw school kids doing some mischief, he might well have taken it upon himself to “teach them some manners” – grabbing them by their ear, or by their hair, or by the back of the neck, and shaking them a little; so there could also be that side to the slang expression veivikaula. Think of the familiar image from the TV show The Simpsons: Homer Simpson getting angry at his son Bart, roaring “Why you little ...!” and starting to strangle the boy with both hands. Don’t you think that Bart’s neck in those scenes is a bit like a crank, which Homer cranks away?
Aww, that image! Actually, the image may have some real relevance here. I mean, it is not at all inconceivable that you find the person you are referring to as veivikaula so infuriating that you feel (almost) like, or even experience mental imagery of, grasping the person by the neck and jolting them. (Not that I encourage anybody to do that sort of thing: violence is wrong!)
With this we come now to the (slightly more multi-sided issue of the) behavioral aspects of veivikaula. For there was a time when a young boy’s neck could be expected to be turning around somewhat like a crank (at least to the eyes of older folks more set in their ways and grown to cynicism, tired of life). Especially back in the day when our youth wasn’t hunched over smartphones or computers all day, when they spent most of their days outdoors, in the streets or in the woods and fields, running this way or that, scavenging something, climbing a tree, every day coming up with some physical games or plays or mischief ... Well, it is perceivable to me that the older folks found it apt to characterize that kind of little weasels with the term veivikaula.
However, I do not think that, today, these are among the characteristics most likely to inspire us to call a person’s behavior veivikaula-like. To me, an exemplary veivikaula would be someone who is always on your case, sticking their nose to your business, condemning your behavior or character. (If this is right, then the opposite of veivikaula, behavior-wise, would perhaps be a very jovial person who didn’t get irritated easily and didn’t reprehend others for their doings very often, someone who would be mostly minding to his or her own business and in no way getting in your way. Indeed, if the thick- and short-necked type was the opposite of veivikaula in physical appearance, then the jovial, friendly type would probably be the opposite of veivikaula as far as personality is concerned.)
You can see how the army slang meaning, that of an officer, a member of the permanent staff, fits to this side of the concept perfectly. Come to think of it, it could be said to connect to some of the physical aspects of veivikaula too: just think of the character Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) giving hell to some recruits: he would be so on their case that, it might seem as if his neck was extending towards them, growing length!
It does not matter whether the person who is on your case has every legal and/or moral right to supervice you and to intervene with your actions; it does not necessarily stop you from calling that person veivikaula: you could call a person veivikaula even if s/he is your parent, teacher, boss, supervisor, parish priest, or, as would be the case with Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your ranking officer (though in many of those cases you would be wise to call them veivikaula only behind their backs – obviously, oftentimes it is not wise to do so to their face). But if you ask me, what would be the most apt, ideal situation where I would just love to use the term, it would have to be one where the person sticking his or her nose to my business clearly has no f-ing right doing so, yet take it upon themselves to reproach me for something. Perhaps the absolutely ideal type of veivikaula would be a nosy neighbor, always complaining about something s/he saw you do in the yard (imagine seeing that person extending his or her neck for a better view from their window or from behind a fence ...). That physical appearance would certainly add to the aptness of your words when you said to your partners in crime, “Uh oh, look out, guys: there comes that f-ing veivikaula again ...”
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| Photo: Ruth Caron / Unsplash |
3. Final Thoughts: Some False Starts
Writing a blog can be an educational experience. Ideally, it will involve some research on the topic that you are writing on, and with research there are bound to come some surprises. In the present case, as I have been considering a few Finnish words for this latest series of blog posts (this post and the three before it in October and November 2017), pondering whether they might be peculiar, hard-to-translate terms, I have learned a thing or two myself. Most prominently, I learned that a few Finnish words which I originally thought could be hardly translatable Finnish peculiarities, are not at all untranslatable or peculiar after all. And I thought it might be educational for the readers too if I were to take a moment here to discuss some of those false starts.
3.1. Ammattiloukkaantuja / ammattinärkästyjä
These two, ammattiloukkaantuja and ammattinärkästyjä, are funny terms that mean about the same. They are compound terms where the first part is ammatti, which means “profession,” but which used as the first part of a compound word oftentimes (not always, though) reads “professional” (as in ammattiurheilija : “professional athlete”). The respective second parts of the terms are a bit different, but both are derived from verbs. The verb loukkaantua means “to get hurt / injured,” and could be used in connection of either emotional or bodily injury; whereas närkästyä means “to become offended” (the noun närkästys, in turn, means “indignation” or “resentment,” so there is a sense of moral outrage involved). In both cases, a descriptive noun has been derived from the verb, one that says of the target person that this is a person who engages in the kind of activity referred to by the verb. That is, loukkaantuja refers to someone who is getting hurt / injured, and närkästyjä means someone who is becoming offended. Despite the slight differences, the terms ammattiloukkaantuja and ammattinärkästyjä are used pretty much exactly the same way, so the verb loukkaantua in this case clearly refers to the emotional kind of getting hurt.
Both terms are used as a pejorative reference to someone who is allegedly the kind of person who we will always find offended, their feelings hurt by something – the kind of person who gets upset by and reprehends a great variety of other people’s behaviors and institutional or societal defects.
A funny and useful concept, that is, especially now in the age of social media forums, although it may conceivably have been used already before the invention of the internet, to refer to the type of people whose angry letters to the editor we would find published in our local newspaper every other week, announcing that they reprehend this or that sort of behaviors and phenomena.
However, I simply could not include these terms to this series of posts (except now under the heading “false starts”), because, I found out, there is a perfect translation. The English equivalent, as some of you might know, is, quite simply, “professional offense-taker.” I did not know that beforehand, and was delighted to have this little bit of learning experience.
Both terms are used as a pejorative reference to someone who is allegedly the kind of person who we will always find offended, their feelings hurt by something – the kind of person who gets upset by and reprehends a great variety of other people’s behaviors and institutional or societal defects.
A funny and useful concept, that is, especially now in the age of social media forums, although it may conceivably have been used already before the invention of the internet, to refer to the type of people whose angry letters to the editor we would find published in our local newspaper every other week, announcing that they reprehend this or that sort of behaviors and phenomena.
However, I simply could not include these terms to this series of posts (except now under the heading “false starts”), because, I found out, there is a perfect translation. The English equivalent, as some of you might know, is, quite simply, “professional offense-taker.” I did not know that beforehand, and was delighted to have this little bit of learning experience.
3.2. Kekkeruusi
The term kekkeruusi is in many ways similar to veivikaula. Like veivikaula, kekkeruusi is a mild pejorative. It also sounds similarly archaic – to those who even recognize it in the first place! Indeed, kekkeruusi is similarly an exentric and uncommon term, likely not to be found in many dictionaries; so, as with veivikaula, we might well question whether kekkeruusi is a real Finnish word at all. But even more than this, kekkeruusi reminds me of veivikaula by being a highly colorful, delicious term. Much like veivikaula, and for the same sort of reasons, kekkeruusi is one of my favorite words!
Kekkeruusi combines a few connotations, but the weightiest of those I believe to be the idea that it refers to a person (usually, man) who dresses up in flamboyantly flashy clothes – though perhaps not quite over-the-top, exentrically flashy clothes, I would say: rather, he is just slightly overdoing (what the speaker considers) smart and stylish clothing, overdoing that just enough to stand out and seem a bit ridiculous to the more modest, humdrum folks. Where exactly the lines of such slightly overdoing lie, obviously depends on the time and the place and the people around. Should the context be the court of King Louis XIV, for example, one could probably dress up like freaking Liberace and still be deemed underdressed, whereas in most other contexts someone wearing that sort of clothing would be too over-the-top to be viewed as a kekkeruusi. There are no doubt also many contexts where being clothed like Liberace would be viewed as a distinctive mark of a (rather gaylordish sort of) kekkeruusi. Usually, though, I’d say, it does not quite require Liberace-like clothing for one to be deemed a kekkeruusi: in many places, a guy in a pinstripe jacket, a colorful scarf, and a brimmed hat, for example, would be likely to be called a kekkeruusi. (Not in the celebrity, artist, or pimp circles, though.) And in a place like, say, a mining town working-class bar, even a simple blazer and bow tie could be quite enough to earn one the title of kekkeruusi.
There is more to kekkeruusi, however. For one thing, certain verbs obviously come to mind when we speak of a person slightly overdoing stylish clothing, verbs like “coquet,” “strut,” or “swagger.” And, intriguingly, some Finnish verbs that well translate this line of words, verbs like “keikaroida,” “kekkaloida,” or “keekoilla,” they start with the same ke- sound as kekkeruusi. I do not think that that is a coincidence: most probably, kekkeruusi is kind of derived from that family of verbs. But furthermore, when we say of a man that he is kekkeruusi, we are not only sneering at him because of his appearance – his clothing and apparent behavior – but are also oftentimes implying that there might be something a little suspect about his character, too. We are not quite spelling it out, perhaps, but there is a hint in there that this person might well turn out to be a con artist, or perhaps a philanderer.
So, why did I not discuss kekkeruusi at length in an installment of this series of posts on Finnish peculiarities? Well, quite simply, aside from some of the said nuances, I think the concept in its general outline was too easily translatable. There are terms like “dandy,” “fancy boy,” and “fop,” which capture most of the concept, and one can add to those some of the verbs mentioned: “coquet,” “strut,” and “swagger.” They do not capture quite everything involved in kekkeruusi, to be sure, like how a Finn is likely to think that kekkeruusi might be a bit suspicious character (or how it sounds like Finns would pronounce certain type of Swedish surnames (for example, Björkroos might be pronounced “Björkruusi” ...)), but I do not think that these are peculiar enough aspects for me to dedicate a whole blog post to the term kekkeruusi. Which is a shame because, as said, I really like the term.
Kekkeruusi combines a few connotations, but the weightiest of those I believe to be the idea that it refers to a person (usually, man) who dresses up in flamboyantly flashy clothes – though perhaps not quite over-the-top, exentrically flashy clothes, I would say: rather, he is just slightly overdoing (what the speaker considers) smart and stylish clothing, overdoing that just enough to stand out and seem a bit ridiculous to the more modest, humdrum folks. Where exactly the lines of such slightly overdoing lie, obviously depends on the time and the place and the people around. Should the context be the court of King Louis XIV, for example, one could probably dress up like freaking Liberace and still be deemed underdressed, whereas in most other contexts someone wearing that sort of clothing would be too over-the-top to be viewed as a kekkeruusi. There are no doubt also many contexts where being clothed like Liberace would be viewed as a distinctive mark of a (rather gaylordish sort of) kekkeruusi. Usually, though, I’d say, it does not quite require Liberace-like clothing for one to be deemed a kekkeruusi: in many places, a guy in a pinstripe jacket, a colorful scarf, and a brimmed hat, for example, would be likely to be called a kekkeruusi. (Not in the celebrity, artist, or pimp circles, though.) And in a place like, say, a mining town working-class bar, even a simple blazer and bow tie could be quite enough to earn one the title of kekkeruusi.
There is more to kekkeruusi, however. For one thing, certain verbs obviously come to mind when we speak of a person slightly overdoing stylish clothing, verbs like “coquet,” “strut,” or “swagger.” And, intriguingly, some Finnish verbs that well translate this line of words, verbs like “keikaroida,” “kekkaloida,” or “keekoilla,” they start with the same ke- sound as kekkeruusi. I do not think that that is a coincidence: most probably, kekkeruusi is kind of derived from that family of verbs. But furthermore, when we say of a man that he is kekkeruusi, we are not only sneering at him because of his appearance – his clothing and apparent behavior – but are also oftentimes implying that there might be something a little suspect about his character, too. We are not quite spelling it out, perhaps, but there is a hint in there that this person might well turn out to be a con artist, or perhaps a philanderer.
So, why did I not discuss kekkeruusi at length in an installment of this series of posts on Finnish peculiarities? Well, quite simply, aside from some of the said nuances, I think the concept in its general outline was too easily translatable. There are terms like “dandy,” “fancy boy,” and “fop,” which capture most of the concept, and one can add to those some of the verbs mentioned: “coquet,” “strut,” and “swagger.” They do not capture quite everything involved in kekkeruusi, to be sure, like how a Finn is likely to think that kekkeruusi might be a bit suspicious character (or how it sounds like Finns would pronounce certain type of Swedish surnames (for example, Björkroos might be pronounced “Björkruusi” ...)), but I do not think that these are peculiar enough aspects for me to dedicate a whole blog post to the term kekkeruusi. Which is a shame because, as said, I really like the term.
3.3. Konkari
Now this one, the (descriptive) noun konkari is without a doubt a real Finnish word. An old term, but still in frequent use. It refers, to put it bluntly, to a person with lots of experience in some field or trade. But more specifically, it refers to a person with lots of useful experience, and one who also puts that experience to good use. That is to say, a konkari is not anyone who mostly has lots of bad experiences, who has proven himself crap time and time again, or been traumatized by lots of horrific things that have happened to him or her. No, a konkari is a positive characterization, a commendation, a testimonial to the person being very good at what he or she does, (largely) due to the experience. A konkari would be someone who has learned by doing, and by doing and doing, over many years, who knows every trick of the trade. Sometimes you hear a sports commentator call an older ice hockey player, for example, a konkari. It might then be used pretty much interchangeably with the term veteran; but personally I do not feel that the meaning is the same: a “veteran,” after all, might also be someone who is more or less sheit, but has just managed to hang in there, some lucky bastard. One might be a veteran even though one has not learned very much at all! Simply to be an old player would be enough to earn one the title “veteran.” But if one is called a konkari, now that is different: you do not get to be called a konkari simply by being the oldest player on the pitch; no, if we hear someone being called a konkari, we tend to have certain expectations as regards his or her skill set, too. We expect that the person called a konkari is definitely not sheit in what one does, in fact we expect him or her to be one of the best, although in most fields of sports we will also know that the older age will have affected some of his or her attributes, like the speed and explosive strength.
Again, there might be a bit of interesting cultural-historical background to the term that explains some of this. I learned (well, saw someone making this claim in an online conversation) that konkari might actually come from an old Swedish term gångare, which in the times when the Swedish crown waged wars all over Central Europe and recruited young men (through the feodal system where all the lords and nobility, landlords and vassals and whatever, would be expected to send a certain number of men and horses when the king called for them) to fight in those wars, would have been used to refer to someone, a person or a horse, who was in every way eligible and fit enough to be drafted to military service. I would imagine that they had some criteria for that, so that the landlord could not send for his king a handful of cripple weaklings, hunchbacks, and half blind old men, sitting on scrawny weak ponies scared of any loud noise. So, to meet the criteria, whatever they were, one would have to have been pretty qualified in certain ways. And then, if some of those men and horses came back from the war, say after having been tested in battles numerous times over many years, well, one could imagine that many of those konkaris would have been admired very much as qualified and experienced veterans, who had seen a lot and found a way to survive in tough conditions (likely hacking their way through enemy lines a few times, engaging in melee combat with them as they were doing their best to kill them, through a storm of spears, axes, swords and daggers cutting through flesh, muscle and sinew and bone, feeling blood splashing on their face ...).
Again, I like this term, konkari very much and I do not think that the term “veteran” means quite the same; nor do I think that you can explain the meaning of konkari simply by saying that it is an “experienced person.” As I have explained, there is more to the term, and thus it is not a simple tautology to say, as one often hears people say, that someone is a “kokenut konkari” (“experienced konkari”). However, there was one simple reason why I could not do a full post on this term. The reason is that there is an English term that is much too close in meaning to konkari. Or, perhaps, a term that captures most of the aspects of konkari that the term “veteran” does not quite cover. The term is “old hand.” It is a term that I was not familiar with before I started thinking about konkari some more, so I was actually quite excited to learn about that term. You know, “old hand” ... brilliant! I am not sure whether it is an exact translation of konkari all by itself in all imaginable contexts, and sometimes it might be better to translate konkari as “veteran,” but I do believe that those two terms together cover just about all of the meaning of konkari quite sufficiently.
One more interesting anecdote about konkari, though, if I may. Arguably, a rare occasion of a translator having actually remarkably improved J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings [1954–55] is found in the 1973 Finnish translation by Kersti Juva and Eila Pennanen (in a recorded discussion, of which I found a couple of clips of transcription online, Ms. Juva let us know that the original innovation was hers – that she had mulled it over a long time before she came up with it, and was especially satisfied with it afterwards) used Konkari to translate Strider (the name by which Aragorn Son of Arathorn is known in the town of Bree, by those simple folks who have no idea that he is the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor (and one of the Dúnedain, Men of Westernesse – kind of Supermensch, if you will)). The reason I say the translation is an improvement is that, Strider is by comparison a rather modest name, based on a very straightforward physical description: it mainly just says that the man has long legs with which he takes long strides; or, at best, it might be taken as a metaphoric characterization referring to how swiftly he moves around in the woods, across swamps and thickets, how he can travel long distances in a day, perhaps, likely because he knows the local terrain like the back of his hand. Konkari, on the other hand, says that you can see that this man has been around, that he knows his stuff – including, no doubt, how to move swiftly in the nearby woods, but likely also lots of other skills and wisdom; indeed, if a man in a tavern is called by the name Konkari, that is certain to give you the impression that what you have here is someone who probably has a considerable experience-based set of skills and wisdom, knowledge and know-how. Okay, so Tolkien probably used such lame-ass name as Strider because he wanted to say that those idiots at Bree were absolutely clueless as regards what there was underneath, that they thought that the guy was just some long-legged vagabond; but, intuitively, don’t you think, it is just not very likely that people would remain so absolutely clueless about a Superman-like heir to the throne who has spent time with the elves, who sings old poems, heals people with herbs, has travelled all around the world and fought in many battles over the supernaturally plentyful years of his life, a man who, if those drunken commoners in The Prancing Pony tavern would attack him, say a dozen guys with swords all at once, could easily kill them all with nothing but a sturdy stick in one hand, while holding a pint of beer in the other hand, never splashing a drop. Yeah, I’d say that those people would have had some sort of intuitive understanding that this is a man who you do not want to pick a fight with; that this is a man who’s been around, seen places beyond this town and the next (who “on kiertänyt muutakin kuin tahkoa” (“has turned/toured more than just the grindstone”)), i.e. knows a lot of stuff, probably more stuff than you can even imagine. Briefly put, I think it would have been likely that those simple folks would have sensed as much, seen it in the way that Aragorn talked and carried himself, and would have been far more likely to call him Konkari than Strider. Had Tolkien thought about this some more, perhaps he would have made the good folks in Bree call Aragorn by the name Old hand.
Again, there might be a bit of interesting cultural-historical background to the term that explains some of this. I learned (well, saw someone making this claim in an online conversation) that konkari might actually come from an old Swedish term gångare, which in the times when the Swedish crown waged wars all over Central Europe and recruited young men (through the feodal system where all the lords and nobility, landlords and vassals and whatever, would be expected to send a certain number of men and horses when the king called for them) to fight in those wars, would have been used to refer to someone, a person or a horse, who was in every way eligible and fit enough to be drafted to military service. I would imagine that they had some criteria for that, so that the landlord could not send for his king a handful of cripple weaklings, hunchbacks, and half blind old men, sitting on scrawny weak ponies scared of any loud noise. So, to meet the criteria, whatever they were, one would have to have been pretty qualified in certain ways. And then, if some of those men and horses came back from the war, say after having been tested in battles numerous times over many years, well, one could imagine that many of those konkaris would have been admired very much as qualified and experienced veterans, who had seen a lot and found a way to survive in tough conditions (likely hacking their way through enemy lines a few times, engaging in melee combat with them as they were doing their best to kill them, through a storm of spears, axes, swords and daggers cutting through flesh, muscle and sinew and bone, feeling blood splashing on their face ...).
Again, I like this term, konkari very much and I do not think that the term “veteran” means quite the same; nor do I think that you can explain the meaning of konkari simply by saying that it is an “experienced person.” As I have explained, there is more to the term, and thus it is not a simple tautology to say, as one often hears people say, that someone is a “kokenut konkari” (“experienced konkari”). However, there was one simple reason why I could not do a full post on this term. The reason is that there is an English term that is much too close in meaning to konkari. Or, perhaps, a term that captures most of the aspects of konkari that the term “veteran” does not quite cover. The term is “old hand.” It is a term that I was not familiar with before I started thinking about konkari some more, so I was actually quite excited to learn about that term. You know, “old hand” ... brilliant! I am not sure whether it is an exact translation of konkari all by itself in all imaginable contexts, and sometimes it might be better to translate konkari as “veteran,” but I do believe that those two terms together cover just about all of the meaning of konkari quite sufficiently.
One more interesting anecdote about konkari, though, if I may. Arguably, a rare occasion of a translator having actually remarkably improved J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings [1954–55] is found in the 1973 Finnish translation by Kersti Juva and Eila Pennanen (in a recorded discussion, of which I found a couple of clips of transcription online, Ms. Juva let us know that the original innovation was hers – that she had mulled it over a long time before she came up with it, and was especially satisfied with it afterwards) used Konkari to translate Strider (the name by which Aragorn Son of Arathorn is known in the town of Bree, by those simple folks who have no idea that he is the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor (and one of the Dúnedain, Men of Westernesse – kind of Supermensch, if you will)). The reason I say the translation is an improvement is that, Strider is by comparison a rather modest name, based on a very straightforward physical description: it mainly just says that the man has long legs with which he takes long strides; or, at best, it might be taken as a metaphoric characterization referring to how swiftly he moves around in the woods, across swamps and thickets, how he can travel long distances in a day, perhaps, likely because he knows the local terrain like the back of his hand. Konkari, on the other hand, says that you can see that this man has been around, that he knows his stuff – including, no doubt, how to move swiftly in the nearby woods, but likely also lots of other skills and wisdom; indeed, if a man in a tavern is called by the name Konkari, that is certain to give you the impression that what you have here is someone who probably has a considerable experience-based set of skills and wisdom, knowledge and know-how. Okay, so Tolkien probably used such lame-ass name as Strider because he wanted to say that those idiots at Bree were absolutely clueless as regards what there was underneath, that they thought that the guy was just some long-legged vagabond; but, intuitively, don’t you think, it is just not very likely that people would remain so absolutely clueless about a Superman-like heir to the throne who has spent time with the elves, who sings old poems, heals people with herbs, has travelled all around the world and fought in many battles over the supernaturally plentyful years of his life, a man who, if those drunken commoners in The Prancing Pony tavern would attack him, say a dozen guys with swords all at once, could easily kill them all with nothing but a sturdy stick in one hand, while holding a pint of beer in the other hand, never splashing a drop. Yeah, I’d say that those people would have had some sort of intuitive understanding that this is a man who you do not want to pick a fight with; that this is a man who’s been around, seen places beyond this town and the next (who “on kiertänyt muutakin kuin tahkoa” (“has turned/toured more than just the grindstone”)), i.e. knows a lot of stuff, probably more stuff than you can even imagine. Briefly put, I think it would have been likely that those simple folks would have sensed as much, seen it in the way that Aragorn talked and carried himself, and would have been far more likely to call him Konkari than Strider. Had Tolkien thought about this some more, perhaps he would have made the good folks in Bree call Aragorn by the name Old hand.
