Okei (that's Finnish for okay)class, today's lesson gives us the explanation on discrepancies Barb has found in a posting above:

1st: minjovani/minjoani from minja = daughter in law, son's wife, + (v)a = partitive case ending, + ni = possessive ending of 1st person singular.

When inflected, in Karelian, the final /a/ of a word gets labialized (rounded) to /o/, the partitive case marks the word as the object of the sentence. Whether /v/ is there or not is a matter of local dialect; no /v/ being more common.

The Finnish equivalent is miniä (miniä-ä-ni).

minjoAvani must be a typo.

2nd: poikkipuoliselta/poikkipuolisella = the one that is crosswise; here I think it's used for 'treshold'.

In Finnish there are three cases for expressing 'external' locality: adessive ending -lla (on sthng), allative -lle (onto sthng) and ablative -lta (from upon sthng). BUT in Karelian the first two have fallen together so there's only -lla left.

And since the bride - at this stage of the ceremony - is going into the house, she should step her feet onto the stairs first and then onto the treshold - not from upon. That's my interpretation, could be the other way 'round though, both forms being grammatically correct.

3rd: toven valehtii/toen valehti

Oorait (that's Finnish for allright): valehtia (inf) = to lie; -ii = present tense 3rd p. sgl, -i = past tense 3rd p. sgl. Both grammatically correct, still I'd choose past tense, because the sister already sees that her brother has his bride with him, so 'the lie' is valid no more. The girls sing it with long /ii/.

Now, this is a tricky one to explain in short (like the truth sometimes is): tosi = true (as opposed to false), truth.

In Finnish (and other closely related languages) there's a thing called the consonant gradation; stop consonant gets weakened (according to certain rules) if the following, originally open, syllable becomes closed when the word is inflected. The weakening has gone so far that in some cases (single k/t) it ends up with nothing.

Secondly Finnish words ending (once in the past) with /e/ have shifted to ending with /i/. This ending /i/ has, in turn, effected the preceding /t/ to become /s/.

So, this all put together, we get this seemingly absurd series of inflections: tosi, orig. *tote (nominative), toen (genitive), toella (adessive) etc.

Again, /v/ is a matter of local dialect, those with /v/ haven't gone reached the limits of weakening consonant, yet.

That's all confusion for today, I'll be back when (if?) I get the links!

Arto Kalevi Sallinen (male)