"Finlands huvudstad"
Translation:Finland's capital
33 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Every time Finland is mentioned in this course I want to translate to my native Finnish instead of English. Too many languages.
Is there a way to literally say "The capital of finland"? even if it's not commonly used? If i had to guess it would be either "huvudstaden Finland" eller "huvudstaden av Finland", although which one it is definitely feels up for grabs :p
That's because you can't have the definite article before that: it's either The capital of Finland or Finland's capital.
It's the same in Swedish – an owner in the s-genitive is enough to make something definite, so you can't have the 'owned' thing definite too. So it's pojkens bok and the boy's book, not "pojkens boken" and "the boy's the book".
"Finland" is not (generally speaking) an adjective; "The Finlandic capital" might be correct, but nobody would ever say it in real life.
I like the simplicity of Swedish. Huvud = Head, Stad = city/town, Huvudstad = Headcity/Capital
capit- also means "head", so English isn't that far behind, actually. :)
842
And in German, Hauptstadt is nothing but a semantic interpretation, with Haupt (head) and Stadt (City). We all use the same word, but with different interpretations. :D
Well, the difference is that capital means something in another language (Latin), therefore it might not be apparent for an English speaker, whereas the Swedish or German words mean something in these languages themselves.
There are all kinds of other refreshingly straightforwards compounds in Swedish. Some of my favorites so far are raketstol (literally 'rocket chair', used to refer to the chemically propelled ejection seats used in military fighter jets) and sköldpadda (which literally means 'shield toad', which actually kind of makes sense given that turtles aren't native to Scandinavia in general, let alone Sweden).
The word "huvud" is often pronounced as if it were "huve". That is not the case with the automated voice here though.
Rovaniemi, Oulu, Kajaani, Joensuu, Kuopio, Mikkeli, Seinäjoki, Kokkola, Vaasa, Tampere, Jyväskylä, Pori, Turku, Lappeenranta, Lahti, Hämeenlinna, Kouvola, Mariehamn, and of course Helsinki are all "Finnish capitals". Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_Finland
Wouldn't they rather be called "regional capitals"? I don't think anyone would think of them ahead of Helsinki if "Finnish capital" was brought up in a conversation.
I always thought that 'capital city' is wrong. it should be just 'capital', no?
"capital" is simply short for "capital city". They're both fine. It's from the Latin caput, which means "head".
A capital is a huvudstad, and a capitol is e.g. a parlamentsbyggnad or Kapitolium.
