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Jessi: Hello, and welcome to Finnish Survival Phrases, brought to you by FinnishPod101.com. This course is designed to equip you with the language skills and knowledge to enable you to get the most out of your visit to Finland. You'll be surprised at how far a little Finnish will go. Now, before we jump in, remember to stop by FinnishPod101.com and there you'll find the accompanying PDF and additional info in the post. If you stop by, be sure to leave us a comment!
Finnish Survival Phrases lesson 23 - Riding the Finnish Bus: Long-Distance Trips
Reeta: In the previous lesson, we covered how to get bus tickets in cities. You also might want to move between cities, and Finland's convenient and relatively punctual coach service is perfect for that. So let's see how you do that now. The sentence you use will be: Yksi lippu ...-lle.
We've covered all these words in previous lessons already, except for the little suffix that you have to attach to a place name to get something like: "all the way to (place)."
So for example, saying Tampereelle means "all the way to Tampere." You can notice that there is an extra -e sound before the suffix -lle. This suffix has some irregularities.
Let's imagine now that you are in Helsinki and you have to go to Turku, the second biggest city in Finland. What would you ask the bus driver?
Kuinka paljon maksaa lippu Turkuun?
"How much is a ticket to Turku?"
Here you can see that instead of the -lle suffix, there is a double vowel sound and an -n at the end.
Imagine that you are visiting Finland for the first time, you have no idea of the distances between your favorite destinations, and you need to ask the bus driver how long the bus takes.
Kuinka monta tuntia matka Helsinkiin kestää?
Kuinka monta tuntia is "how many hours," matka means "journey/trip," Helsinkiin means "to Helsinki" and as you can notice it has a double vowel and an -n letter to express the direction. Kestää means "lasts or takes" (as in duration of time).
Kuinka monta tuntia matka Helsinkiin kestää? Let’s break it down, Kuinka monta tuntia matka Helsinkiin kestää. Once more, Kuinka monta tuntia matka Helsinkiin kestää.
Another way to ask how long the trip takes is Kuinka kauan matka kestää?
Kuinka kauan means "how long." The rest of the phrase is the same as the previous one. In this phrase the destination can be added after the word matka like before. For example, Kuinka kauan matka Helsinkiin kestää?
You might hear the answer Neljä tuntia. It means "four hours," but I'm sure that by now you're all familiar with numbers in Finnish.Neljä tuntia.
Ok, to close out today's lessons, we’d like you to practice what you have just learned. I’ll provide you with the English equivalent of the phrase and you’re responsible for shouting it out loud. You’ll have a few seconds before I give you the answer, so Onnea! which means “Good luck!” in Finnish.
“One ticket to Tampere, please.” - Yksi lippu Tampereelle, kiitos.
“How many hours does the journey to Helsinki take?” - Kuinka monta tuntia matka Helsinkiin kestää?
“How long does the journey take?” - Kuinka kauan matka kestää?
“Four hours.” - Neljä tuntia.
Jessi: Alright! That's going to do it for today. Remember to stop by FinnishPod101.com and pick up the accompanying PDF. If you stop by, be sure to leave us a comment!

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