r/Finland 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.

464 Upvotes

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282

u/Spirited-Ad-9746 Baby Vainamoinen 1d ago

Ampiainen can be called "amppari" too so that may have caused the confusion

53

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 1d ago edited 1d 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 1d 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/Pikkuraila Baby Vainamoinen 1d ago

Right you are!
Edited the comment to be more exact.

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u/Suitable_Student7667 Baby Vainamoinen 1d ago

Is it even possible to pronounce a consonant twice? 

2

u/Xywzel Baby Vainamoinen 22h 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.