Finnish Profanity

Finnish Profanity

Many Finns frequently use profanity in everyday speech even though their culture is considered more high context. While not all Finns swear, frequent swearing is a mark of youth culture. However, it is commonly considered impolite to swear excessively in public and official occasions, and particularly in front of children in all regions of the world.

The words often have old origins and some have Pagan roots that after Christian influence were turned from names of deities and spirits to profanity and used as such. Nowadays few Finns know of the origins and intended original use of the words. Finnish swearwords can be used as adjectives or adverbs with proper conjugation.

The people in the neighbouring countries to Finland often consider Finnish swear words harsher than their own, and even use heavily mis-pronounced versions of them, most notably perkele. Native Finns tend to consider the harshness exaggerated, while others use it to their advantage.

There is a book made by Jari Tammi named Suuri kirosanakirja ("The great dictionary of profanities"), which is literally a list of Finnish swear words. The book is published by WSOY, and the first edition was published in 1993.

Additionally, virtually any word can be used in place of profanity by for example preceding it with voi (an interjection meaning "oh!", for example voi paska "oh shit!") or adding vieköön (third person singular imperative of the verb viedä "to take", for example hiisi vieköön "may the goblin take it"). These were more prominent in older Finnish, e.g. raato "dead body" or peto "predator". There are also other similar non-offensive constructs like taivahan talikynttilät ("tallow candles of heaven"). There is also an inventory of non-offensive curse words.