A lovely private student of mine asked me how to translate actually to Finnish. I immediately answered “oikeastaan”, but after our lesson, I got to thinking about how there’s a bit more to it.
These are (at least) two different ways of saying “actually” in Finnish:
- Oikeastaan
- Itse asiassa
They can usually be used interchangeably, but there are some differences in tone and even meaning.
I couldn’t find any proper research on these (not that I looked very hard, let me know in the comments what I’ve missed), so this post is based on my own intuition and on a very quick look at some publicly available data.
1. Oikeastaan
can be translated to both “actually” or “really.” It works well when you’re talking about how things really are, what is really going on in the world:
Mitä oikeastaan tarkoitat?
= What do you actually mean?
Oikeastaan also works really nicely when you want to make a suggestion:
Oikeastaan mä haluaisin olla tänään kotona. Tilataanko pizzaa?
= I would actually like to stay at home (literally: be at home) today. Shall we order some pizza?
So what I might mean here is, if I’m completely honest with you, I’d like to stay at home.
2. Itse asiassa
This one is, in my opinion, the slightly better translation for “Well, actually…”, when we mean “I think I know more about this than you do.”
Kurkut ovat itse asiassa hedelmiä.
= Cucumbers are actually fruit.
Itse asiassa is also a great way to suggest that you have a new idea:
Itse asiassa, mehän voitaisiin mennä junalla!
= Actually, we could take the train!
/ You know what? We could take the train!
Fluent Finnish speakers, do you agree with me? And can you think of other ways of saying “actually” in Finnish?
Leave a Reply