# mettiä



## Gavril

Päivää,

I can't find a translation for the word _mettiä_ in the context below, regardless of whether I search for _metti _or _mettä _as the nominative singular form.



> Entisaikojen lastenkasvatuksen huolettomuus näyttää nykyään edusvastuuttomalta, holtittomalta heitteillejätöltä ja lapsen turvallisuuden vaarantamiselta. Mutta ollaanko menty ojasta allikkoon: vaikuttaako nykyinen lastensuojelu valtakunnalliselta holhoamiselta? Jos ennen sai kuljeskella vapaasti pitkin mettiä ja rantoja, nykyään isä päivystää olan takana vaanimassa, ettei lapsi keinu liian lujaa.



The highlighted phrase refers to children's freedom of movement ("If children were once allowed to wander freely along the [?] and beaches ..."), but I'd still like to know exactly what _mettiä_ refers to.

Kiitos


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## reamary

_Mettä_ is a slang word for forest/woods, _metsä_. So _mettiä_ is the plural partitive form of it.


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## Hakro

reamary said:


> _Mettä_ is a slang word for forest/woods, _metsä_. So _mettiä_ is the plural partitive form of it.


... or rather a dialectal word.


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## Gavril

Thanks -- I've definitely seen this alternation before (_ruotti / ruotsi, kattoa_ / _katsoa_), but for some reason I didn't recognize it here.  

Maybe because most of this column (= the Uusi Suomi column that the quote comes from) is written in standard Finnish, the sudden appearance of a dialectal form like _mettä_ was unexpected for me.

(I also think it might be less common for English-language writers to "lapse into" dialect in this way: sometimes, writers will use archaic English words to make their language more colorful -- e.g., _heath_ rather than _fields _or _dale _rather than _valley_ -- but at the moment, I can't think of many examples where a dialectal form of an otherwise-common word is used for this purpose.)


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## etrade

http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etel%C3%A4-Pohjanmaan_murre


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## Marsario

> _Mettä_ is a slang word for forest/woods, _metsä_. So _mettiä_ is the plural partitive form of it.  ​



Do you know, this is seriously one of those cases where you feel the useless of standard Finnish in comparison to spoken language, when it comes to real communication. 
I had been living in Oulu for almost one year and a half, and then one day, a friend made a sentence with mettä and I did understand it: I did understand mettä for the first time in my life! And that point, I started to think how many times I had already heard that word and never I had realized its meaning nor understood those sentences! 
In another case, after one year that I had been living in Oulu, they finally explained me that "nää" means "you", and so I had the greatest epiphany of my life! Try to think at my shame all the times people where asking me "puhukko nää suomee?", and that I had been wondering "is he asking me whether I speak Finnish or what?"…


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## reamary

Marsario said:


> Do you know, this is seriously one of those cases where you feel the useless of standard Finnish in comparison to spoken language, when it comes to real communication.
> I had been living in Oulu for almost one year and a half, and then one day, a friend made a sentence with mettä and I did understand it: I did understand mettä for the first time in my life! And that point, I started to think how many times I had already heard that word and never I had realized its meaning nor understood those sentences!
> In another case, after one year that I had been living in Oulu, they finally explained me that "nää" means "you", and so I had the greatest epiphany of my life! Try to think at my shame all the times people where asking me "puhukko nää suomee?", and that I had been wondering "is he asking me whether I speak Finnish or what?"…



Yes, it's true that the standard "literal" Finnish is really only spoken in the news, and there are a lot of dialects, and differents variations within the spoken language. I started to think the pronom you, that you mentioned. In addition to the standard form _sinä_, people say _sä_, _sää_, _sie_, _nää_. So at least 5 different ways to say it. 

Also, about that alternation _ruotti-ruotsi_, _kattoa-katsoa_, I'd say that some of the alternatives are more commonly used than some other alternatives of some other words. I mean, I for example, pretty much always say "_kattoa_" when I speak, but then again I never use the word "_Ruotti_", instead I always say "_Ruotsi_". To me, "_ruotti_" feels like too much of a dialectal word, it feels "dum" somehow (I am sorry to say this), but with _kattoa_, it feels totally normal saying it. I don't know why it is like that though. And also, you could say "_kahtoa_", which is again a dialectal word, I think it's used in the north more.


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## DrWatson

reamary said:


> Also, about that alternation _ruotti-ruotsi_, _kattoa-katsoa_, I'd say that some of the alternatives are more commonly used than some other alternatives of some other words. I mean, I for example, pretty much always say "_kattoa_" when I speak, but then again I never use the word "_Ruotti_", instead I always say "_Ruotsi_". To me, "_ruotti_" feels like too much of a dialectal word, it feels "dum" somehow (I am sorry to say this), but with _kattoa_, it feels totally normal saying it. I don't know why it is like that though. And also, you could say "_kahtoa_", which is again a dialectal word, I think it's used in the north more.


Depends, north from where...  _-ht- _is most frequently encountered in Central Ostrobothnian and Savonian dialects. Here in Oulu it is rare, but you do occasionally hear a specimen or two.

Anyway, the sort of idiolectal variation alongside dialectal variation you described is a fascinating phenomenon. Case in point: I have a friend who uses _-ht-_ (as in_ mehtä_, _kahtoo_, _ihte_) pretty consistently but never says _ruohti_ and uses _ruotti_ instead. Then again such ”literal” words like _suvaitsee_ my friend pronounces with _-ts-_.


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