# stay for



## Gavril

How is the phrase "stay for" normally rendered in Finnish? An example:

"The movie is over, but I'm staying for the five o'clock showing."

Kiitos


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## Tappahannock

I don't know how to answer the question as posed.

I would say, in all my foreigner-ness, _Jään katsomaan seuraavaa esitystä_.

It may be (or may not) that _jäädä katsomaan, jäädä kuuntelemaan, jäädä tekemään_, etc. is the closest common correspondence to what you're asking about, even though it is grammatically and semantically re-cast from what you actually asked how to say.


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## Tappahannock

Jään odottamaan seuraavaa junaa.   I'll stay (here / on the platform / in the town) and wait for the next train.  For instance, instead of calling a taxi.

Hän odottaa seuraavaa junaa.  He's waiting for the next train.
Hän jäi odottamaan seuraavaa junaa.  He stayed (and waited) for the next train.

Is any of this helpful or am I telling you what you already know?


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## Tappahannock

I look at it this way: the impulse that fetches "stay" or "jäädä" is the same in the Finnish and English brains.  But after that point, there are only certain paths forward.  "Stay _for_" comes from the English brain and that is where the difficulties begin.

In the Finnish brain, the most common paths forward are things like:

Jään tekemään
Jään Jaanan takia
Jään Jaanan vuoksi
Jään niin kauan, että
Jään siinä toiveessa, että
Jään sitä varten, että
Jään kunnes

There's nothing inherently human about saying "I'll stay for the 5 o-clock show."  There is, however, something inherently American or English-speaking to it.  When you think about it, "5 o'clock show" is a fairly arbitrary and idiomatic construction.  Your English brain fetches it in that form because that is such an established way of describing the situation.

The Finnish brain naturally gravitates to what it's going to do with that show, namely to watch it.  And it gravitates to that conceptualization for the most part because the language for it is so common.  We could say "stay and watch the next show" in English but we're not thinking so much "watch" as "next show", which we quickly modify to "5 o'clock show."  So we end up with "stay for" where the Finnish brain ends up with "stay/watch." And it's not because the original Finnish and English impulses are different -- it's because the close-at-hand constructions are different, the ones that not merely express but also refine or shape the impulse.


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## Gavril

Thanks, I like learning about cases in which word-for-word translation is impossible (or at least unnatural). When I initially posted this thread, something about my question felt forced, and you've clarified what that something is.


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