Pyöräilisinköhän? What do you mean?

My friend Dr. Dan Karvonen, who teaches Finnish at the University of Minnesota, has said that Finnish is not difficult, it's just different. Instead of using many small words, we like to add few letters here and there and alter the word body in various ways to change the word's meaning. Therefore some words become ridiculously long. For someone not familiar with Finnish it might look horrible, but it's all very logical, and once you master the basic rules, you're good to go. The name of my blog looks like a word-monster. Is that even a word? How can you pronounce that, with all those dots and stuff? The name of the blog is inspired by a meme (see below) in which a guy tells a Finn that the Finnish language has a word for "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly?" And the Finn immediately replies "juoksentelisinkohan?". "Pyöräilisinköhän" is the same for riding your bike. It means "I wonder whether I should ride around aimlessly (or ride my bike)". Instead of using all those small words, we bake them into a single word which is easy to understand if you know Finnish grammar. So let's break this into pieces.

Source: http://satwcomic.com/aimlessly

PYÖRÄILisinköhän. The base of the word is the verb "pyöräillä", to ride a bike. The original meme about running is a bit different than riding a bike, because for riding a bike the basic form of the verb is the same as its frequentative form, where as for running to run is "juosta" and the frequentative to run around aimlessly is "juoksennella". Frequentative form implies repetition but also that the activity is less focused and not goal oriented. For cycling, the word is the same whether or not the activity is focused and regardless of how many times you repeat it. This observation could be a beginning for a study in the Finnish philosophy of cycling, but I'll leave that for later. In this blog I'm usually riding around aimlessly and I try to repeat it as often as I can.

pyöräilisiNköhän. "Pyöräillä" is the base form for riding a bike which does not specify who is riding. We don't need a separate word for that but can do it by little adjustment and addition. I'm riding a bike is "pyöräileN", you're riding a bike is "pyöräileT", he/she/it is riding a bike "pyöräileE". So in this blog it's me who is riding a bike.

pyöräilISInKÖhän. -ISI- and -KÖ- are two different but connected additions. Finnish language has seven so called clitic endings or "liitepartikkelit" as we call them in Finnish. In this case -KÖ- transforms the word into a question. And when the word is transformed into a question, it must also be turned into conditional mood with -ISI-, because if there are no alternatives, there's no need for the question, right? So the conditional, I would ride my bike is "pyöräilISIn" and the question should I ride my bike is "pyöräilisinKÖ".

pyöräilisinköHÄN. You can add more than one clitic ending to a word and combine them in various ways. So the final -HÄN transforms the question into a rhetorical question. The question, should I go ride my bike is basically rhetorical. You don't need an answer to it, because it is always yes.

Simple. Finnish is not difficult, it is just different.