Incidents of In My Language, That Sounds Like... specifically involving the Finnish language.
- Finnish language has the words "matka" (journey) and "kotka" (eagle). Kotka is also a city in southern Finland. In Polish, the same words mean "mother" and "female cat", respectively.
- "ale" means "alcoholic drink" in English, "but" in Polish, Czech and Slovak, and "sale; discount" in Finnish.
- A Syrian singer earned the nickname "Pensselisetä" (brush uncle) in Finland after videos of his wedding singing group were put on YouTube with Finnish subtitles on how the singing sounded like. The "narrative" includes pulling Nile geese up my ass, among other absurd and raunchy twists.
- In Finnish, "takoa" means "hammer" (verb). It sounds similar to "taco".
- Orava with a capital "o" is the name of one of Slovakia's northwest historical regions. In Finnish, orava means "squirrel", causing laughter for all Slovak learners of Finnish from Orava.
- The Finnish poet Eino Leino is popular among Czechs though sadly not because they would be fans or great scholars of his work. It is his name that is well-loved: the rhyming itself is irresistible, but there is more. Eino is close enough to the Czech interjection "ejhle", which means "lo and behold", while Leino sounds exactly like "lejno", and that is a word for excrement.
- There are three countries in Europe, whose — and also whose capitals' — Finnish names make complete sense in Finnish. They are Puola (Poland) — "spool" with capital Varsova (Warsaw) "foaling", Malta — "wait a minute!" with capital Valetta ("It's a lie!") and Turkki — "fur coat" (Turkey) with capital Ankara ("harsh").
- Finnish has a lot of words that look or sound like English words, but mean different things, such as "tie" (road) and "vain" (only). "Vain" is also pronounced like the English word "vine". "Vaippa" sounds like "viper", but it means "diaper". "Puu" (pronounced exactly how you'd expect it to be) means "wood" or "tree". "Pussi" (sounds like "pussy") means "bag". "Happi" means "oxygen". "Fagotti" means "bassoon" (similar to Italian and other languages). "Pasuuna" (which sounds almost exactly like "bassoon") means "trombone". "Harmonikka" means "accordion". "Flipperi" is the Finnish word for a pinball machine. "Kola" (sounds like "cola") is a generic Finnish slang term for any carbonated soft drink, not specifically Coca-Cola. "Me" means "we" and "he" means "they" (though they're pronounced more like "meh" and "heh"). "Tyyppi" means "character", as in someone with a colourful personality (one Finnish business college had the quasi-English slogan "Enter the Type" at first because of this).
- "Kamala" means "horrible" in Finnish. As a result, some detractors of Kamala Harris who know Finnish have given her the Embarrassing Nickname "Horrible Harris".
- During the Winter War and Continuity War and long after, the Finnish army had behind-the-lines special forces called "sissit". The singular, "sissi", sounds like the English word "sissy".
- The Finnish word for “bunny” is “pupu”, which is pronounced exactly how it looks.
- Finnish to English examples:
- "he" means "they".
- "me" means "we; us".
- "on" means "there is; there are".
- "no" means "well".
- For Germans learning Finnish: "ja" means "and", not "yes".
- "Hallitus" means "government" or "board of directors" in Finnish, and "mould" (that stuff that grows on food that's gone bad) in Estonian.
- "jano", meaning thirst in Finnish, sounds to most people who don’t speak Finnish like the words "yes" and "no" in succession.
