Any native or fluent Finnish speakers want to weigh in on this?
I maintain or co-maintain a few Finnish courses which I did not create (the creators left memrise years ago, and I volunteered a while back). Although I’ve clarified a lot of definitions, there remain more to fix Here’s one:
Some Finnish courses say “therefore” and want “joten”. But another course says “therefore” and wants “senvuoksi”. Would it be best to make these synonyms and have each course accept either word for “therefore”? Or are they different enough that they should remain separate?
If they are different enough, can you suggest some better English equivalents, either word lists or short phrases? One that describes joten but has something that is not appropriate for senvuoksi, and one that is the opposite - a word list or phrase that is incorrect for joten but is right for senvuoksi.
I don’t know Finnish, but a random dictionary I looked at says joten is “so”, as in the one that connects sentences (I had some free time so I went there). Another dictionary for another language claims it means “due to that thing”. When I think about it, I guess the two meanings aren’t actually different.
While “senvuoksi” isn’t listed in either dictionary, sen by itself is “its, that thing’s (in a possessive sense)” according to one, and vuoksi is “due to, on the basis that”, so senvuoksi would be, I imagine while knowing absolutely zero Finnish, “it’s/that’s the reason for”. Dunno if any of that helps…
Thanks. I actually have a really excellent Finnish-English dictionary. It says joten means “so that” and can be used for saying “and consequently”, so “therefore” seems like a valid English equivalent. Based on both my dictionary, and yours, senvuoksi might also mean therefore in that sense, or might only be usable to mean “for that reason” (which is subtly different). I can’t tell based on dictionaries alone, which is why I’m asking for advice here.
Some Swedish-Finnish dictionary that my wife trusts says joten is “following the fact (that)”. I’ll ask some Finns for you and see if any of them get back to me…
Hi, I saw that you needed native input here The explanation above seems ok to me, but I just want to add that notice that"sen vuoksi" is two words, not one.
It’s nuanced and there’s lots of overlap, but “joten” is more like “stating” whereas “sen vuoksi” is more like “explaining”.
Yup, this feels about right (native speaker here).
I’d translate joten as hence or consequently. The link between the two things mentioned in the sentence is pretty self-explanatory: Meitä paleli, joten puimme lisää vaatteita päälle. (We were feeling cold, and hence put on more clothes. The “and” is kind of understood there – I wouldn’t say joten = and hence, but the sentence just works out better with it.)
In contrast, sen vuoksi or sen takia (do note the two-word spelling as mentioned by chirel) or siksi are closer to therefore or because of that. It is for something less obvious, and it might actually be that there are several possible reasons for the second part of the sentence:
Menimme kotiin. (We went home.)
Ai senkö vuoksi, että teillä oli nälkä? (Was it because you were hungry?)
Ei, vaan sen vuoksi, että meitä paleli. (Not, it was because we were feeling cold.)
So in many instances, you might use either. It can also be a matter of style: sometimes you want to make it sound as if a particular connection between two things is obvious (in which case you would use joten), and sometimes you want to to allow for, or even highlight, there being many possible reasons for whatever comes at the end of the sentence.
Would you consider all three of these - “sen vuoksi”, “sen takia”, and “siksi” - to be synonyms?
I would. Someone might come up with good examples of where they don’t mean exactly the same or aren’t used in the same way, but at least I can’t think of any right now.
Here’s one: