Small guide to one of the official languages of rallying, Finnish
Why this isn’t a feature on WRC’s official website, I don’t know. This language sounds great, even though if you try to read it, you’ll quickly realize that it’s not actually a language – it looks like someone sat on keyboard, or fell asleep on it, and letters just keep pouring out, forming words and sentences. In all honesty, I love it. It’s so different to everything else… no knowledge of German or Italian will save you. In case you don’t believe me, just hit Youtube and look for some Finnish crew rally onboards. See?
To be able to at least understand more than 2 words of the language, one of which is the infamous P, I jumped over to Google and quickly put some words in English, hoping that I’ll receive the good translation. And hooray! It worked, at least for few words. If any of my Finnish friends feels like adding more to this “list”, please do! We need it, world needs it. It’s magical to realize that those drivers and co-drivers are actually doing what the rest of the world is doing, describing corners in numbers and directions. Even though to us, non-Finns, it may sound like they’re chanting some magical words, making car go faster by itself.
The second word of Finnish I know is – kiitos. Which is exactly what I’ll tell you if you add few more words to the mix!
Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure one or more terms are not actually used in Finnish as they are in English, especially when it comes to description of road conditions or severity of the corners. Sorry about that!
Thanks to Rontti, we have a correct translation for “left”, and finally I know what “kiirra” means!
[tabgroup][tab title=”English”]one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
left
right
long
short
thirty
fifty
eighty
hundred
tightens
narrow
slippery
risk
open
slow
quickly
wide[/tab][tab title=”Finnish”]yksi
kaksi
kolme
neljä
viisi
kuusi
seitsemän
kahdeksan
yhdeksän
kymmenen
jäljellä vasen
oikea
pitkä
lyhyt
kolmekymmentä
viisikymmentä
kahdeksankymmentä
sata
kiirra
kapea
liukas
vaara
avata
hidas
nopeasti
laaja[/tab][/tabgroup]
