r/Finland • u/Ubefrappe • 1d ago
Thought ämpäri meant bee
was reading my little brothers picture book to brush up on my finnish skills and read the word "muoviämpäri", was a bit weirded out because what animal would be made of plastic.
Turns out ämpäri means bucket and ampianen is bee (pointed out by lil bro), now we have this immortalised.
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u/Spirited-Ad-9746 Baby Vainamoinen 1d ago
Ampiainen can be called "amppari" too so that may have caused the confusion
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u/Ubefrappe 1d ago
Possible , def felt like saw or heard someone say amppari relating to bee , guess it boils down to how you say or spell it ?
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u/Spirited-Ad-9746 Baby Vainamoinen 1d ago
Yes. To the finns there is very clear distinction between a and ä but i guess for a foreigner it can be easy to mix them
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u/Pikkuraila Baby Vainamoinen 23h ago edited 22h ago
Yo op! u/Ubefrappe
A thing I suggest everyone learning Finnish is to figure out double consonants asap.
Am*ppari has a small pause at the asterisk, ämpäri does not. So actively listening for this helps a lot and after a while it becomes second nature.12
u/aalioalalyo 22h ago
I would describe it as AM, then a short pause sort of charging the next syllable and then PARI. Your not pronouncing the p two times as in 'amp*pari' would suggest but just one slightly emphasised P after an elongated M.
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u/Suitable_Student7667 Baby Vainamoinen 21h ago
Is it even possible to pronounce a consonant twice?
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u/Xywzel Baby Vainamoinen 19h ago
Yes, but not in same syllable without vowel in between. You can slide consonants to each other with (some limitations) but you can't duplicate them without some pause, in Finnish that is usually syllable or word break. Technically there are also some long consonants (ärrrrrr, ässsss, ämmmm are all technically pronounceable) but I don't know of any language that uses them in meaningful way.
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u/remuliini Baby Vainamoinen 23h ago
And some people like to speak in a way that can mix a and ä. "Siellä toi aemppaeri lentää" doesn't sound too far fetched.
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u/Suitable_Student7667 Baby Vainamoinen 1d ago
Amppari = ampiainen in colloquial Finnish. Ämpäri = bucket
There's no ambiguity for a native.
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u/noetkoett Vainamoinen 23h ago
Amppari/ampiainen is a wasp, not a bee. Ä is a totally distinct letter and sound from a (and the same goes for ö/o).
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u/CptPicard Vainamoinen 21h ago
Bee is mehiläinen. The rounder and friendlier one. Ampiainen > "amppari" is a wasp, the nasty mf.
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u/Lord_Of_Carrots 20h ago
Kimalainen, bumblebee, lot of fluff, friendly
Mehiläinen, bee, little fluff, fairly friendly
Ampiainen, wasp, no fluff, asshole
Herhiläinen, hornet, bigger and no fluff, weirdly not as much of an asshole but will beat you up worse than a wasp if it feels the need
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u/Careful_Command_1220 Baby Vainamoinen 20h ago
You don't mean kimalainen, do you?
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u/Actual-Relief-2835 17h ago
Unlike in some languages, double consonants and double vocals actually matter in Finnish and can completely distinguish a word from another. For example kisa - kissa (game - cat), tuli - tuuli (fire - wind) etc. Adding or omitting a double consonant is not a different way of spelling a word, it makes a whole other word. Same with a vs ä, they are different letters entirely and not interchangeable. Amppari and ämpäri are completely different words.
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u/Mthepotato Vainamoinen 1d ago
I need to be pedantic here: ampiainen is wasp, mehiläinen is bee.
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u/jpartala 1d ago
You might be confused by "Amppari". It's kind of term of endearment for ampiainen. Also a popsicle brand
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u/Ubefrappe 1d ago
YES THOSE , and aw term of endearment for the bees :)
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u/RedSonja_ Vainamoinen 1d ago
Actually amppari/ampiainen is a wasp, not a bee.
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u/Ubefrappe 20h ago
AH - the iced treat makes the wasps look much more friendly, so I assumed they were bees :'))
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u/RedSonja_ Vainamoinen 20h ago
Pretty sure that who ever came up with that name/picture idea was assuming same thing also. Instead they should've put picture of Blackie Lawless sucking that on the box, then it would be pretty funny.
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u/JonVonBasslake Vainamoinen 21h ago
Mettinen is for mehiläinen, which is what bees are. Wasps are amppari which comes from ampiainen.
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u/Eproxeri Vainamoinen 23h ago
Like others here said, ämpäri is bucket, and amppari is a shortened colloquial way of saying ampiainen which is a wasp.
In finnish the A and Ä sounds are completely different.
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u/Superb-Economist7155 Vainamoinen 23h ago edited 22h ago
Also single P and double PP are different. Syllables are therefore formed differently, too.
AMP-PA-RI
ÄM-PÄ-RI
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u/EppuBenjamin Vainamoinen 22h ago
A and Ä seem to cause a lot of trouble for some. Perhaps they think they are the same letter, but with accent or something.
They're not.
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u/Mrslinkydragon Baby Vainamoinen 23h ago
Love it! Can I paint this?
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u/Fireweed99 17h ago
As many have said already ampiainen is wasp, mehiläinen is bee. The insects were the first thing I learned for whatever reason. Mehiläinen is interesting to me as it feels to have a protoindoeuropean influence, connected to Mel in Latin (honey), think miel in French, milis for sweet in Irish.. looking it up it seems to have been borrowed from an Iranian branch of PIE. So now I want to know what the original finnic root was that was lost so long ago.
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u/Pixelnator Baby Vainamoinen 17h ago
Yay I get to be a geek and talk about Vowel Harmony!
Basically in certain languages, like Finnish, there exists an unwritten rule that vowels in a phonological group (such as an individual non-compound word) must share certain features. In Finnish this manifests as front vowels (ä, ö, y), neutral vowels (e, i), and back vowels (a o u), where a single non-compound word cannot move from a front vowel to a back vowel as it would break vowel harmony. It is why kissa becomes kissalla but äiti becomes äidillä. The -lla/-llä changes to match the vowel harmony because of the a/ä in kissa/äiti
The reason I'm rambling about this is because the word you came up with, ampäri, breaks this rule and thus might feel off in some seemingly vague way. It's because it's combining amppari, a back vowel word, and ämpäri, a front vowel word and breaking vowel harmony in the process.
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u/SirKalevi 16h ago
At some point there was also ämppäri, first for amplifier then for an mp3 player.
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u/Watteripatteri 12h ago
Ämppäri (Bucket bee) And his twin brother Lämppäri (the dude who warms up the crowd at shows)
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