"The capital of Finland is called Helsinki."

Translation: Finlands huvudstad heter Helsingfors.

[Blehg]

Fun fact: Helsingfors means "Helsinge Rapids" (fors = rapid[s]), Helsinge being the name of the parish where the city was founded. The first part is common in Scandinavian place names, such as Helsingborg and Hälsingland in Sweden and Helsingør in Denmark.

Finnish Helsinki is an adaptation of the parish name Helsinge.

[MarkBorkBorkBork]

fors (or foss in Norwegian and Icelandic) is also common in place names from what I've seen.

[jayagmon]

So that makes Engelsfors "The British Rapids", right?

[Anrui]

No, "Engel" most likely comes from "Ängel", which means Angel. So, the Angel Rapids then.

British - Brittisk
English - Engelsk

[KittyGoema]

Why not huvudstaden

[Arnauti]

You can't have the definite form in genitive expressions, this goes both for Swedish and English. You couldn't say Finland's the capital in English either.

[limara.deeb]

can we say 'finlands huvudstad kallar helsingfors'?

[Lundgren8]

No that means ”The capital of Finland calls Helsinki.”, you could use ”kallas” though which is ”is called”, but it’s much more used for nicknames etc.

• Jag heter Karl, men jag kallas Kalle. (My name is Karl, but I go by Kalle.)

[hdcanis]

Had to try if "hufvudstad" was accepted...it was, but marked as a typo.

[Blehg]

I'm afraid you're 109 years too late ;(

[hdcanis]

It's still there in the name of the main Swedish-language newspaper of Finland, Hufvudstadsbladet :) (known also as HBL, Husis or Hubla)

[Blehg]

I know :) It's the older spelling, which was removed during the spelling reform of 1906. Such older spellings are still quite common in brand names and surnames!

[deactivated user]

Har aldrig hört att man kallar det Hubla:) Vi kallar den alltid Husis

[MihailDimitrov]

Why is it that Helsingfors is sometimes written with capital letter and sometimes not? Come across it even in this lesson. Come across Stockholm and some other geografical names too.

[LenaStorli]

It is a typo from Duo. They should always be written with capital first letter.

[3SfVXnZ0]

When do we use heter and when do we use som heter? Is it a definite / indefinite thing?

[Vithralas]

I thought it would be "Den Finlands huvustaden", is there any kind of rule to use the definite or not?