Reacting to FINGERPORI (finally!) 

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The puns are the best and it is hard to translate them. One of my favourites I could remember is easily explainable: Heimo is ordering something and says "minulle passionhedelmä", which means "I want passionfruit" (in the context of ordering something with that taste). The cashier answers "to me its a travel document". This is a pun, because "passionhedelmä" is a fruit, but when you write it like "minulle passi_on_hedelmä", it means "to me, passport is a fruit". It is often these kinds of things, where the spelling is super important, but when talking, someone (in theory) could understand the message wrongly and that is the fun in it. Finnish language is special!

Fingerpori plays a lot on Finnish words, so a lot of it can't be translated. My favorite is when Heimo calls his friend who is holding a vacuum cleaner and sweating while answering the phone and Heimo said, ajattelin soittaa kun tulit juuri Mieleen(I thought I'd call you when you CAME to mind). Now Miele is a brand of vacuum cleaners, you connect the dots.🤣

I feel like the best humor in fingerpori are finnish puns and finnish proverbs taken literally, and since those really can't be translated into english, the ones that have been translated are bound to be a little less 'clever'. I find it a little surprising that they've even translated these

Reads Fingerpori "I'm trying to keep this family friendly" That is one thing I can assure you Fingerpori usually isn't 😅😂

Fingerpori is quite literally *_the quintessential dad joke / anti-joke-humor_* at it's best *_(and worst depending on who you ask)_* , and a lot the jokes are written with the idea that the reader understands the different quirks of the finnish language such as literal interpretations of sayings, literalized words and synonyms etc. I hate to admit i giggled at many of these strips because I have red them myself

6:00 Finns often take candles to the graves of their loved ones (especially around certain holidays). Heimo here is trying to do that, but it's dark and he can't see what he's doing, so knocks down some gravestones and wherever he left the candle eventually lit the church (traditionally made out of wood) on fire.

I think some of the more clever and subtle ones are basically untranslatable, so this may not be exactly a representative sample. Your ultimate goal should be to be able to read and understand them in Finnish. 😄

Most of the Fingerpori jokes are done by playing with the finnish language, so they might not work in english very well.

My favorite is when Elias calls 112 and the operator asks ”Kertokaa Nimenne ja Asianne” (Tell me your name and your problem) so the caller says ”Elias Tapani Karhu” and then the operator says ”Ja nimenne oli?” (And your name was?) i don’t think it is that funny in english but his name in this joke translates to ”Elias was fucked by a bear”

One of my favorites from Fingerpori goes like this: a news headline is shown that goes: ”A man bred(paritteli) with a 200 kilogram pig”. Then a pig and a man are shown in a laundry room, organising socks. The joke obviously is that ”paritella” can mean ”to have intercourse” or ”to match pairs of socks from a collection of socks that got mixed in the washing machine”.

In early days of telescopes, people thought that the dark lines on Mars were rivers and chunnels, and that the latter were build by the Martian Civilization. So it’s a word pun. Chunnels - tv channels. The Fingerpori is best known for it’s word puns.

Btw. cat in a leash is a thing in suburbans in Finland 😄 In cities they are mostly in and in country they often walk free but in smaller cities/suburbans people walk them 🙂

The best ones are those You read on Monday and then start laughing uncontrollably at church.

Fingerpori works much better in Finnish, but It truly is the master class of learning Finnish. When you understand the play of words with their multiple meanings and how that connects to the drawings, you’ve become fluent in Finnish. You’ll get there. This was fun video! Thanks!

Heimo takes a pentecostal preacher from USA to a vegan restaurant. Promotes a food: "Seitan is great."

Most fingerpori humor is about interpreting figurative phrases literally or vice versa (for example the sweat bath comic). That makes it hard to translate because some sayings don't exist in other languages.

Fingerpori is observational, dad joke humour playing around with words and sayings of the finnish language that DOES NOT translate well into english like at all... The "free range egg" joke demostrates this quite well. Free range eggs are called "vapaan kanan munia" in finland. It literally translates to "the eggs of a free chicken". So in the comic you see a chicken who is clearly free from captivity laying an egg. And the guy who picks it up sells them as "the eggs of a free chicken" or free range eggs. This joke works in finnish because the store literally sell these "vapaan kanaan munia", but they are just free range eggs and not literally eggs from a "free" chicken. I personally love the Mayor character of Fingerpori and how his innocent goings on are reported in a scandalous manner in the local tabloid, because of taking a word out of its context. For example that one joke when the Mayor is making a public speech during some community event and he has his dogs sitting next to him. A couple of boxers (a dog breed). The next day the headline of the tabloid reads, "Mayor speaking to grannies at an event with his boxers down his ankles." Giving the reader an impression that he had his underwear down.

I don't know who translated these but whoever it was they didn't have enough of a clue about translating comedic rhythm into English and just went with mostly literal translations. It's very subtle, but the jokes are just way better delivered, or "hidden" in Finnish. I'm glad you did this, but if you asked me, I would tell you to have someone curate the ones that work well enough in English and just react to those. Have everyone think that the quality holds up and then move on.

The early strips are both a bit clumsy AND an acquired taste - they were for me, at least. At first, I hated how clumsy and groanworthy they were. Then suddenly I was looking forward to seeing the newest dad joke in comic form. I think many of them work better in Finnish, though, because the word order in Finnish allows for more natural wordplay. The English versions are sometimes not quite as efficient: the ”I don’t drink alcohol for religious reasons” being a prime example.

My fav is the one where God says "thou shall not sleep with a man like you sleep with a woman" and then some bloke says "truly, you have to do that in a totally different way!"

Part of the fun is to see the main character and already anticipate what kind of situation will follow. My favourite is the city mayor. Once he was driving and old Mercedes and trying to wipe the corner of the window, misinterpreted as a salute. And the city lake which has lots of space, then a sign how many have drowned there.

One I can remember. Let us see if I can explain it. There was a sign PELASTUSTIE -> Pelastus = rescue or salvation. Tie = way. The arrow was pointing towards a church. The sign is actually for the firebrigade.

It seems the less legendary strips have been translated because the best ones you just cannot. I said my friend who is learning Finnish that understanding the best word plays in Fingerpori is his final exam of Finnish language. 😅

For any non-native Finnish speaker, understanding the Fingerpori strips in its original language displays outstanding level of sophistication in the said language.

This is the video I never knew I wanted to see! Also, a Brit in the Finnish winter waiting for the sun to go down, the irony! LOL!

My favourite Fingerpori pun is "Väinämöinen soittaa kannelta". Väinämöinen is a great figure from the national epic of Kalevala, and the kantele is a traditional instrument he is playing (soittaa kannelta = playing kantele). However, the "soittaa kannelta" can also be translated as "calling from the deck", as in the deck of a cruise ship. So here we have pictured the great Väinämöinen sitting on the deck of a cruise ship with way too much cheap tax free liquor to carry, calling to his buddy to pick him up from the terminal.

Mots of the best Fingerpori jokes are based on Finnish wordplay, which sadly are also the ones that often don't really translate into English, or would require the visuals to also be changed. For example (I know some others are already in the comments elsewhere, but one more): There's this one strip that takes place somewhere in the countryside in the 1900s, and... I think they needed a child to be baptised quickly (could also have been someone needing their last rites), but someone comes in saying the priest won't be able to get there any time soon. In response, granny exclaims "sus siunakkoon", which you'd _usually_ just take as a general exclamation, but the characters take it literally ("a wolf shall bless"), and get a wolf to do it. Dos _not_ translate at all, but works in Finnish.

Pretty surprising to show up 20 seconds right after it was posted. Excited to watch the video!

Some of my favourite Fingerpori jokes include the one that gets the words "Your piss" and "publication" mixed together (both words mean "kustanne" in finnish). In another one, where in english you would say "late twenties" or "early thirties", the finnish language uses the words "reilu" (fair) and "vajaa" (short, also used to describe someone with less than average intelligence). The comic finishes with a fair guy telling a mentally challenged man that he's cleaned his car of snow.

Fingerpori is usually about word playing and it has some cultural or historical base/twist same time and might sometimes take a while when you got it. Those gems are impossible to translate.

My favorite one is the when they make fun of manga/mangas (Japanese comics.) In finnish, multible manga was called mangoja, and instead of reading a manga, the MC had a singular mango. He tried to read a piece of fruit, that's it.

When Heimo is taking candles to the grave of his deceased family members (a relatively common thing done especially around Christmas time), he trips over a tombstone and lights a church on fire by accident. That is in reference to a Satanic panic during the 90’s and noughties when heavy music became especially prevalent in the Nordic music scene. A lot of metalhead trolls and hooligans got into vandalizing church properties and it made headlines very often. Especially kicking down grave stones and committing arson on church buildings. It was such an phenomenon that there was a dedicated comic called “Saatanan tunarit” (‘Satan’s stumblebums’ as a loose translation, but in spoken language “saatanan tunari” simply means “a goddman duffer”). It was published in Myrkky magazine. (The magazine is HEAVILY R-rated, so google at your own risk.) P.S. Welcome to Kouvola! 🎉 I told my kid you are coming and she squealed. 😂❤

Trying to keep Fingerpori family friendly? 😳 Good luck with that 🎉🤣😂🤣😂

Already looking forward to the next Fingerpori video, might be worth giving a shot to the Finnish version aswell.

For the joke in 6:28 - Mosel is a river bordering Luxembourg and Germany which has a lot of wine farming around it, Heimo is in a wine aisle so there's just wines from that region

Your Finglish sounds like an English guy trying to sound like a Finnish guy trying to speak English. Which it is, and I love it. 😄

The hand in a cow's butt is actually not in the butt, it's in the other hole (at least in the first comic). When calves are born it usually takes a vet or the owner of the cow to help with delivering, so the vet there is like a midwife to the cow, it is actually normal to do that. Also when pigs are giving birth they sometimes need help and the only way to reach into the womb to get all piglets out in a difficult birth is to literally reach into the womb with your hand.

Some of the comics are literally untranslateable, like the strip with Elias Tapani Karhu. It's a play on words, when pronounced it has a very different meaning.

I guess with "well oiled team" you kinda got ther why Fingerpori is so hooking. At first sight you can quite see the punch line and then, all of the sudden you just got it. That's the best with Gingerpori

5:04 I believe that the Finnish version might've used the phrase "Makaa (Kalojen) Kanssa" Which could also indeed mean.... the very family friendly thing. Haven't really heard anyone use "Nukkuu" used that way

Martian channels prefers to those lines that you can see on surface of Mars or as in this case, Martian TV channels.

"Martian channels" is reference to belief that people 100 years ago had. People observed lines on the surface on Mars and some enthusiastic and imaginative authors thought that they could be water channels created by the Martians.

You came into my Miele, Dave.

Fingerpori somehow lacks the punch in English. Maybe all the best ones are wordplays?

There are literally a lot of message board threads and FB groups dedicated to explaining the more obscure puns, such as Figerporin ymmärtäjät. Only a fraction of it is translatable. The type of humor is indeed the "haha groan haha" type 😄 An acquired taste. At 5:32 the humor comes from the fact that years back there were occasions where "satanists" would vandalize graveyards by knocking down gravestones or burning down churches. So in the comic they're trying to innocently commemorate someone with a candle but it's dark so they end up wrecking the graveyard and the church. So very "haha groan haha". And no, they were not censured in HS newspaper. Some of the humor plays on being seemingly innocent but being very raunchy when the pun is taken literally. Personal favorites to check out in Finnish, I think if you use google translate word by word you'll get the gist "Väinämöinen soittaa kannelta", "helikopterilla Tallinnaan", "kustanne on vessan lattialla", "pelkään että hän on kateissa", "tehdään juna" etc.

Come on Dave, Fingerpori in Finnish next?

Dave, these are just the ones that can be translated. And some of these were made for English audience, like the police one. We do not call our police pigs. The real gold is in the Finnish language puns.

Kudos to the translations. I think they picked the ones that at least translate somehow to English language. This isn't easy because it is based on tricky Finnish language mostly.

Of course some of Fingerpori is translatable, but the bread and butter of the comic is the weird wordplay. One of my favourite strips is about a doctor who says "En voi leikata tätä potilasta". In the next picture, his assistant (or maybe it was another doctor, not really sure) says "En haluaisi muistuttaa valastasi", to which the doctor responds by saying "Muistutat silti" and holds up a picture of a whale that resembles the assistant in the last picture. So this is how nonsensical that is when translated to English: The doctor says "I can't operate on this patient". In the next picture, his assistant says "I would not want to remind you about your oath", to which the doctor responds by saying "You do anyway" and holds up a picture of a whale that resembles the assistant in the last picture. So yeah that made absolutely no sense in English, because you simply can't translate the wordplay. "Vala" is a vow or oath, in this case it would mean the hippocratic oath. Then we of course have to add some Finnish grammar nonesense: "valastasi" is an elative (which generally means "from something" but can also mean "about/of something", which it does in this case) of "your oath", which means "about your oath" or "of your oath". In turn, "valas" means whale, and so "valastasi" is also a partitive (which is kinda hard to explain, but according to Wikipedia it "is often used to express unknown identities and irresultative actions") of "your whale". Meanwhile, "muistuttaa" can either mean to remind one about something, or to be reminiscent of/resemble something. So "en haluaisi muistuttaa valastasi" can actually be either "I would not want to remind you about your oath" or "I would not want to resemble your whale". Naturally, from the context you just first assume that they are talking about his hippocratic oath, but when the doctor brings out the picture of the whale, it turns out the assistant just looks a bit like the doctor's pet whale and brings that up in a bit of an awkward moment. So, many of the jokes play on the imperfections in Finnish grammar in many different ways, this for example uses the fact that many times when there are two similar words (vala and valas), those words can become identical in two of the ~15 grammatical cases in Finnish language. These kind of things are impossible to translate to English for two reasons: first, the words that are similar in Finnish will almost never be similar in English, and even if they were, English doesn't have the weird grammar of Finnish that lets you twist them into being identical. Of course there are jokes that work the similarly the other way around, but these kind of things are rarer because English has very limited ways to inflect words, while in Finnish inflections are almost endless.

My all time favorite is a strip in which Heimo´s girl friend is baking. On the table she has a packet of coarse wheat flour and a packet of semi-coarse wheat flour. In Finnish language the word for coarse is "karkea", which also covers the meanings "rude" and also "abusive" when talking about language. The coarse wheat flour packet says "Vatkaa sitä munaa, horo!" Which means "Beat the egg, slut" but also about "wank the cock". To this, the package of semi-coarse flour ads: "Niin, hitto vie!" which is a very mild and amusingly old modish curse word, something which the Famous Five could have used.

Mosel in ALKO refers to Mosel wine region in Germany. By the way there's also a Fingerpori cook book.

i've got a few of these comic strips as university overalls patches, sown on to it. in one of them there's a bunch of students drinking alcohol and a teacher who is unhappy with then. the teacher goes "opiskelijat eivät ota oppiakseen!" which basically means "the students just aren't learning this!". BUT it can translate to "the students aren't drinking in order to learn this!". next one of the students takes a big swig of alcohol and goes "lähinnä otetaan vitutukseen" which means "we mostly drink to get rid of annoyance and unpleasentness"

The "well oiled" strip was possibly about joining the "train", which is an reoccurring theme in Fingerpori. I'm sure you can find the "train" further in the book...

Probably the most brutal Fingerpori joke was about "free jew soap" being sold in Nazi Germany for the more ethically aware citizens. I think that one got cancelled.

The cows butt cartoons are connected to each other and the first that you showed was a sequel to the dentist story.

I love Fingerpori 😄 It is so weird sometimes. Heimo takes words literally.

Excited to watch a new videooo!!!!!!!!

The cat on a telescope is my favorite comic ever. Funnier in Finnish tho.

Fingerpori is mostly based on wordplay in Finnish and I strongly respect whoever has translated some of them to English. Many of those strips are simply untranslatable or they loose half of the fun when translated.

Nice meeting you at airport today. Hope you had a pleasant flight.

How big is a school of fish? I bet it's bigger than kindergarten of fish. Why Fish Swim in Schools? They are not in the kindergarten anymore.

i think that i was 7 when i first started reading fingerpori. here i am now reading it almost everyday

There's actually a moose statue in the yard of a house on the side of the road six between Juuka and Nurmes :D

Nice video, yeah these translated versions are not that good. But still fun too see, definetly do more

Do more of these! Fingerpori is the best😂

In my life many people keep their cats on a leach, and so do I. Simply to avoid the horror of the family member not coming back and never knowing why.

8:25 There's actually this Golden deer on top of the cliff right next to highway at Siilinjärvi. I gotta drive past it when visiting my relatives and way too often when driving tired I've almost got a stroke 'cause I forgot it's there 😂

It's fun to see some Fingerpori in English as some of the "translated" strips are new and wouldn't even work in Finnish.

Best fingerpori’s are the ones that you will need to really think over what the joke is 😁 When you realize the joke it feels nice 😌

That moose statue is from kurikka city, but i never heard somebody would have been crashed because of it but could be true story.

You should check out the comic strips of Hugleikur Dagsson. They're originally Icelandic but work in English and Finnish. Dark comedy at its best.

My favourite character is the mayor Homelius whom the yellow press reporter tries to frame in the most scandalous way, using partial quotes and misrepresentation. I think it tells a lot of this day and age of fast news and click-bait, where we try to create drama at any cost.

My favorite fingerpori is Wittgenstein joke. The customer service asks Wittgenstein, as salespeople often ask: mitä saisi olla, this means how can I help but literally what should be. Wittgenstein answers: Your question is insane. Awkwardly, the customer service question always sounds crazy these days.

The one thing I really miss as a Finn living abroad is the language. Finnish language is so fun and playful. Maybe others are too for the natives, but I've never seen the same level of word play used daily as in Finland.

Most of Fingerpori probably gets lost in translation.

Mosel is a wine producing valley in germany (I think).

Musta yks parhaista fingerporeista on se jossa Väinämöinen soittaa kannelta. Väinämöinen soittaa siis laivan kannelta kaverille, et tuuks hakee? Mä en osaa sitä kyllä mitenkään kääntää englanniksi 😀 Se on varmaan just niitä joita ei vaan voi kääntää koska se on näitä suomenkielen kääntelyä. 🤔

Many Fingerpori strips are about something that's currently happening in the news or in Finland elsewhere, so usually the frame of reference exists related to something the reader probably saw in the same newspaper they were reading probably the same week, the old ones don't pack the punch they would if you'd have read them at the time of their original publication (something I doubt you're up to mid to late 2000s Finnish news :D )

The one with the oiled up guys where probably a referense to (the artist) "Tom of Finland" my guess... Ha ha!

I like the shirt.. Which one you like more, UK or US Office?

Adding comment the further I get in to the video 😅😂 Yeah, the roudy ones makes the newspaper even today but it's assumed that kids don't understand the double meanings of those. As doesn't all adults either on some of those 😉

There is also the Fingerpori The Movie

So now i understand why my dad has great humor.

After living in Finland for 23 years with a husband who wants me to see the humor in Fingerpori, I fail. Most of it is word play and I get his joy, but to me as a native English speaker....well

My favorite. Allan is at 112 call centre. A guy calls in and Allan asks "what is your name and what happend" Caller replies Elias Tapani Karhu. Okay, what is your name? Impossible to translate...

Fingerpori writer Jarla have very dark humor. :)

More, please :D

The "martian channels" refer to geographical formations on the surface on the planet Mars which can be seen from the Earth and which were earlier interpretated to be irrigation channels built by ancient martians.

fingerpori is dumb comedy and play on words comedy, most of these are funnier in finnish(i promise) and they always make me at least smile a little bit.

Come on Dave. Cat sitting on the lens. Uranus ring any bells...

Where can i find this book?

How says spring is here?

Taking your cat for a walk on a leash is actually not that uncommon in Finland. I do that with my cat in summer, and know many other cat owners who do the same. :)

Looks so fun . I read only one in Finnish . When he is asking his way to the airport to English people And translate his words , to I have a difficult question .. kinkkinen kysymys.. To i have a kinky question ? 🤣👍

I havent seen all of these so with my permission you can make many more of these

04:03 I think her name in english could be something like "Raunchy-Rachel."

Fingerpori is really hilarious. 🙂 Yes, it has been published in Helsingin Sanomat and many other newspapers. In my opinion, the best Fingerpori strips are about religion and feature Jesus and God.

Sometime in the 19th century, scientists imagined that they saw water channels dug by humans on the surface of Mars, when in reality they were optical illusions created by shadows. At the Fingerpol research center, a modern researcher has found a television connection to the Mars TV channels, but Heimo doesn't believe it because he thinks that his colleague is referring to those imagined formations on the surface of Mars.

You need to watch episode or two Dr.Pol and you'll know a lot more how cows are treated.