Affective particles

The concept

Particles like “oh”, ”wow”, “er”, and “oops” in English have great practical impact, but they are difficult to analyze and describe. Therefore they are usually described just briefly in grammars. Dictionaries may have more detailed explanations, but in language learning, these particles are learned almost exclusively by listening to how people speak. To some extent, they can be learned from written dialogs, too.

These particles are described using many different terms like “interjections”, “discourse particles”, “pragmatic particles”, etc. This book uses the collective term “affective particles” to reflect their usage. They express feelings, attitudes, and affections of the speaker—relating to the content of a sentence, to something in reality outside the language, to the audience, or to the discussion context, such as a statement just made by someone else. This is the semantic definition of an affective particle. Syntactically, an affective particle appears outside sentence structures. They are not sentence constituents at all. They are separate signals intermixed with sentences, though they are often written as if they belonged to sentences, e.g. Ahaa, ymmärrän (Oh, I see).

An affective particle is usually short, typically one syllable only. It may have a physiological or phonetic motivation. For example, the English “oh” or the Finnish oi can be as stemming naturally from opening one’s mouth when surprised and then breathing out!

Affective particles may also originate from normal words used in special ways. This applies in particular to curse words.

Classification of affective particles

One way to classify affective particles is how they are used with respect to sentences:

• Interjections are typically used alone and might be said to be at a more primitive level of communication than language. They are usually uttered more or less spontaneously. We can shout ”Oops!” or Oho!, instead of formulating a sentence or even a fragment of a sentence. Even though such an interjection may be immediately followed by a sentence, the interjection is independent.
• Initial particles are words that we use when we start talking, to clear our throat, to draw attention, or to get started. Thus, they appear before a sentence or a sequence of sentence. They hardly have any meaning; they just have a practical effect. In English, we can use e.g. “well”; in Finnish, tota noin is common. Often people use sentences or fragments of sentences instead, e.g. “I’d like to comment that…” or “Attention, please”.
• Retraction particles take back something that you just said, e.g. to correct a word or to formulate an entire sentence again. A common one in Finnish is eiku or the longer form ei kun. It is left to the listener to figure out what part is being taken back.
• Response particles express reactions to what someone else has just said. Interjections can be used in such roles. A dedicated response particle is “aha”, in Finnish ahaa or aha. It can signal different things depending on context, tone of voice, look on one’s face, etc. It may be used alone or as followed by a really verbal reaction.
• Fill words just fill gaps. They prevent you from losing the floor, so to say: they tell others that you keep talking even though you are not really saying anything for the moment. Initial particles are often used as fill words, too. Typical Finnish fill words are tota (shortened form of tuota), siis, and niinku (shortened form of niin kuin). It is almost impossible to speak naturally without any fill words. On the other hand, their overuse can be very annoying.
• Throw-in words express affections and can appear inside or at the start or beginning of a sentence. Although they are not part of sentence structure, their position within a sentence may matter, so they are syntactically not quite purely affective particles. Mostly they express attitudes that relate to the sentence or the discussion or something else as a whole. E.g. the words ihan totta (literally “quite true”) might be thrown in, to convince the listener, like “really” in English. Curse words can usually be characterized as throw-in words, with some specialties. In some forms of religious language, words like hallelujaa may appear as throw-in words.

Interjections

Interjections are typically spontaneous expressions of reactions, though they can be used consciously, too. The following table summarizes the use of some common interjections.

Initial particles

Initial particles vary greatly by speaker and context. The particles tota and tota noin are rather colorless, whereas hei, moi, and kuule (literally “hear!”) are also greetings of a kind. The word anteeksi often has a similar role, in addition to or instead of its normal meaning “sorry, excuse me”. The word siis (literally “so, then, consequently”) is nowadays often used, even in informal writing, as in initial particle. This may irritate people who expect siis to express a conclusion.

The word no is very common at the start of a sentence, though it usually does not work alone as in initial particle, rather in combinations like No hei. It is also frequently used during a dialog when starting one’s own contribution, rather than opening a dialog. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly common at the start of an answer, as in the following start of a dialog:

– No terve, mitä kuuluu? (Hi, how are you?)

– No mitäpä tässä. (Well, nothing special.)

It is also possible to make non-verbal sounds, as if clearing one’s throat, or actually doing so. I written dialogs, this is often expressed as kröhöm or krhm.

Retraction particles

In addition to ei kun in different variants (eiku, ei ku), possibly followed by siis, there are not many words that work as retraction particles in Finnish. The word meinaan (a colloquial verb, “I mean”) or its more formal equivalent tarkoitan might be used. The word korjaan (I correct) is used in military service, and this is sometimes imitated, jocularly, in other contexts.

Response particles

Response particles normally have the role of letting another person keep talking without feeling that he is not being listened to. Some of them have nominally an affirmative role, more or less accepting what was said, but in practice they too typically mean at most “I’m listening”. They include aha or ahaa (may indicate some surprise), aivan, ihanks totta (oh, really?), jaa, jep, joo, just, juu, mm, niin, okei, vai niin.

Fill words

Even fill words can be characterized as affective particles, even though they appear to have no content and no associated feelings. They express the speaker’s affection to his talking, the desire to avoid being interrupted and to give the impression of continuity. As mentioned, tota (or tota noin) and niinku (or sit niinku) are commonly used. The words sillai (colloquial form of sillä lailla “that way”), tavallaan (in a way), and sellanen (like that) are also common, though they are not alwatys pure fill words: especially sellanen is normally used with syntactic restrictions, namely only where an adjective may appear, and with congruence.

The words niin (so, that way) and siis (so, consequently) are also used as fill words. This may cause some confusion, since they might be taken as having some meaning.

The word kato^x, a spoken form of katso^x, the imperative of katsoa (to look), is also a common fill word. It may be regarded as requesting for attention, but mostly it is about as empty as “you see” in English. It is typically used as in kato^x ku^x, where ku^x is a spoken form of kun, literally meaning “when”. So instead of starting a sentence simply Se on… (It is…), you could start with No siis kato ku se on… [no siis katok kus se on].

Especially young people often use vittu (literally “cunt”) as a fill word, rather than as a curse word. Somewhat similarly, common curse words are used by some people just as fill words, naturally often causing negative reactions.

Throw-in words

Throw-in words are similar to interjections but less spontaneous. They express feelings and other things that come into the speaker’s mind while talking. They are often difficult to distinguish from fill words—many words can be used for both purposes. However, a throw-in word has a purpose and asks to be noticed.

Curse words mainly express feelings, though they are often taken as offensive. There is great variation by personality. It is widely considered as vulgar to use basic curse words like helvetti, perkele, and saatana, except perhaps to express strong feelings that others may find justified. Their modified variants, like helkutti, perhana, and saakeli are much less offensive. Many people have their favorite personal “curse words” that just express feelings like annoyance or disappointment, such as oi voi, voihan nenä, voi harmi.

As mentioned above, vittu is a common curse word, also used as a fill word, alone or e.g. in the combination voi vittu. It can also be used as part of sentence structure, in attribute position, in the genitive form vitun, as in Mikä vitun auto? (possibly expressing just surprise, but often as a nondescript negative attribute).

A large number of curse words are described in the book Suuri kirosanakirja.

See notes on the social acceptability of curse words in section “Forbidden” words.