Tuna burger?
It was with a bit of hesitation that I began to learn Europe’s second-most difficult language, Finnish.
But try I did. And enjoyed almost every moment of it. No. I would be lying if I said every moment. There were days of frustration that vented itself onto the patient Finnish man that I had married.
And just as the puzzling puzzle pieces began to go click and fit and form cohesive sense, we moved. And my poor brain, already a bit rattled, had to make room for another language and a new script. Mongolian.
And just when I was starting to get appreciative “Za! Chi sain yarij bainaa shuu!” from my Mongolian friends about speaking their language so well, we had to zoom off to South India. I had to re-calibrate the language settings on the worn-out brain cells.
Moving between different South Indian states, each with a different language, Tamil Nadu, to Karnataka, to Kerala and then back to Finland again, took quite some adjustment. Leaving me, a never-at-a-loss-for-words soul to a confused one. Sentences I uttered would leave poor patient Husband flabbergasted. I would use smitterings and smatterings from all the different languages in one single sentence. Except, when I spoke in English. No confusions there. And so quite quietly it has come to be, that at home, the Husband and I use English.
But, am in Finland now. And no more Finnish classes. So, how do I get to practice Finnish?
What better way to practice a language than to live amongst the native speakers? To bravely try out few sentences with shop assistants? Never mind that in the capital city — all of them speak English. Specially, ones who are quick to use English with us immigrants who look like they don’t know Finnish. Yes, it must be my brown skin and black (though now, greying) hair.
And so, quite mindful of not wanting to converse in English, I marched into a BurgerKing store. I had to start the conversation. In Finnish. So that I got a response in Finnish. Not English. All very logical. Well-planned.
Of course, advertisements (in Finnish, we are in Finland, you know) help us choose what we want. Hmm. That’s a nice advertisement. A quick glance, just in time before I got to the counter. Tuna burger…Si, si.. yeah, that’s it. I would ask for that. It sounded as though it would taste good. I proceeded to spout in Finnish that I wanted to order the burger with tuna. Mitä? What?
Your tuna burger… see it says right here.
I tried again. Maybe he didn’t understand my accent. My Indian accent can’t quite cut English English, and I’ve never tried. Also never ever wanted that other nasal mericanized twang anyway. So, I said slowly… enunciating every syllable and sound… I tried… /ˈtʃuː.nə/ and then tried /ˈtuː.nə/. All I heard was some rapid Finnish reply.
My turn to say, “ Mitääää?”
The Finns are a queer lot. They swipe a verb out of the English language and plunge it into a barrel of Finnish sounds and grammar rules, fish it out and paste it on their advertisements and smack it some more, sandwiched unsuspectingly between street-slang and Helsinki-slang and ketsuppi-it (ketchup-it!) and add it to burgers. …. a tizzy, served up to poor unsuspecting, trying-hard-to-integrate immigrants like me who faithfully attended their language classes.
No one taught me these words. Not even in those expensive Finnish language classes that Husband paid for.
Quite calmly, I was told, in English, that I could “tune” my burger with what I liked. Well, fine-tune, you see. Then all those puzzle pieces of the once-learned grammar rules descended in a whir, each went click-clack clang! And I got it. All very logical.
But no one had prepared me for this.
Tuunaa…
A new Finnglishification. An English verb, tune, in Finnish, becomes Tuunaa. And is said with an “oo” sound. Toon-ah.
Tune your burger.
Tuunaa burgerisi
Of course, burger, the “u” said with an “oo” sound, becomes some burp-induced burger. The “-si” being: “your” added at the end of the your beholden object. Not to forget, mutilate the /r/ sound, stretch it, then rattle your tongue. Quite simple, tuunaa burgerisi. A statement. A question?
Tuunaa burgerisi
Well, just tune (aka fill) your burger with whatever you like.
😈 😆 😃 😆
I should have checked the advert more closely.
…..Not much choice…
I didn’t want to tune my burger. That day, some tonnikala in the Baltic Sea sang. For real. It had escaped being tuned in my burger. It had crucially escaped from my vocabulary drive and I was left confusing tuna and tuunaa. Tonnikala. The Finnish word for tuna. A fish.
Quietly, I chose to order some Ranskalaiset. A choice word. Literally, plural of a person from France- the French. Just that, in Finnish, Ranskalaiset also means French-fries — for now at least — in a Finnish fast-food joint.
🍟 🍟🍟🍟🍟
Am mostly sworn vegetarian these days. And, yes, am still sticking with the ‘Learn Finnish to Integrate’ program, but, it’s back to learning the basics: names of animals, vegetables, and things.
