#because! the finnish word for blue is SININEN

[lowstakesvampires]

in which a certain dude meets himself from an alternate universe

[niuniente]

Finnish Tango

Since we have opened the can of Finnish tango - a genuine music genre of its own - with Control's Sankarin Tango song, here are some other tango songs from Finland. Some of these are original and some are covers. I have marked which are definitely original Finnish songs but I might have missed some.

More information about Finnish tango under read more.

MALE TANGO SINGERS (links take to Youtube)

Reijo Taipale - Tähdet meren yllä (Stars Above an Ocean) [original Finnish tango]

Sauli Lehtonen - Mun aika mennä on (It's Time For Me To Go) [an ironic tango for him as he unfortunately died young] [original Finnish tango]

Olavi Virta - Hopeinen kuu (Silver moon)

Topi Sorsakoski - Kohtalon Tango (Tango of Destiny) [he's got an extremely unique whiskey croaky voice] [original Finnish tango]

Taneli Mäkelä - Humiko-san [original Finnish tango]

Kyösti Mäkimattila - Tango d'Amore

Marco Lundberg - Tango Desirée

Amadeus Lunberg - Täysikuu (The Full Moon) [original Finnish tango]

Saska Helmikallio - Sininen huvimaja (A Blue Gazebo)

Jaska Mäkynen - Sabina [original Finnish tango]

Eino Gröhn - La Cumparsita

FEMALE TANGO SINGERS

Eija Kantola - Yön Kuningatar (The Queen of the Night) [original Finnish tango]

Marita Taavitsainen - Lottopotti (Lottery win) [original Finnish tango]

Kaija Pohjola - Miller Tango [Tango Queen 1991 and my distant relative from father's side] [original Finnish tango]

Arja Koriseva - Rannalla (On the Beach) [original Finnish tango]

Saija Varjus - Yön tummat siivet (Night's Dark Wings) [original Finnish tango]

Mira Sunnari - Myrskyöinä (On The Stormy Nights)

Elina Vettenranta - Ensi yönä (Tomorrow Night)

Merja Raski - Tunteellinen tango (Sentimental Tango) [original Finnish tango]

Tamara Lund - Lapin tango (Tango Lapland) [original Finnish tango]

Tarja Lunnas - Sinun kanssasi tähtisilmä (Together With You, The One With Sparkling Eyes) [original Finnish tango]

Typical to a Finnish tango is that it's mostly talking about yearning and misery of life. Quite often the most positive tango songs are covers translated in Finnish. R sounds is typically rolled extra hard and words are stretched to add more drama. Many male singers have a vibrating voice which adds the drama. The strong R is especially present in how men sing. Women typically sing tango with a brighter voice and tone even when a song is dark.

Finland has a tango singing competition called Tangomarkkinat. It's currently struggling, partly because the after effects of covid and younger generation preferring other genres over tango but it's still hold annually. It was aired on TV each year for decades. Tangomarkkinat crowns a Tango King and a Tango Queen. Some of the winners are still extremely well known and popular artists decades later like Arja Koriseva (Tango Queen 1989), Mika Pohjonen (Tango King 1992) and Marita Taavitsainen (Tango Queen 1995).

If you search Finnish tango by a composer you should go after Unto Mononen. He has composed the majority of Finnish tango sngs.

Many of the above songs are sung by different artists so if you search by the song name you will find new singers to listen to.

The search word for Finnish tango in Finnish is suomalainen tango.

[mehilaiselokuva]

Finnish Duolingo course unit 3

UNIT 3

VOCAB:

Undulaatti Parakeet Kissa Cat Koira Dog Poni Pony Nimi Name Viikinki Viking Ystävä Friend Shamaani Shaman Venäjä Russia Norja Norway Maa Country Yksi One Onko (sinulla/minulla/hänellä) Do (you/I/he/she) have… (Minulla/Sinulla/Hänellä) on… (I/you/he/she/they) have… Millainen … on …? What kind of … is …? Tuhma Naughty Kiltti Good Kaunis Beautiful Kylmä Cold Sininen Blue Valkoinen White Ruotsalainen Swedish Tanskalainen Danish Saamelainen Sámi

REVIEW:

The name for unit 3 was "Discuss your pets, talk about places". We did touch on 4 animals in the "jump here?" recap (which i collect these words from). The "places" discussed were all countries. I see there are a lot of adjectives here too, so I think the title is a bit misleading? Not too much tho, we love adjectives. The three grammar points are great (I put them in bold) and I definitely think that they are appropriate to teach this early on. I'll give unit 3 a solid 9/10, just because it's a lot more diverse in content compared to 1 and 2.

[lily-learns-finnish]

Adjectives + nouns / Nouns + nouns - how does it even work in Finnish?

A very tricky topic, that covers "compound words" (yhdyssanat), a few interesting grammatical concepts (how to replace " X of the Y" in Finnish) and sometimes this is something even Finns struggle with (apparently!)

Here are some main points:

1. adjective + noun - the simplest case, an adjective (describing the properties of something) + a noun

sininen hame = blue skirt

vanha nainen = old woman

iso koulu = big school

2. genitive + adjective - genitive form can be used to add extra meaning to an adjective, so it is the same as adverbs (ending with -ly) in English:

suhteellisen vanha nainen = relatively old woman

riittävän iso paketti = sufficiently big packet

yllättävän hidas tietokone = a surprisingly slow computer

3. compound words - what Finnish is famous for... two words are added together and they make a new concept

tieto (knowledge) + kone (machine) = tietokone (computer)

luonto (nature) + äiti (mother) = luontoäiti = mother nature

There are A LOT of words like this. The list actually never ends...

asuinrakennus - building used for living

vaakasuunta - horizontal / horizontal direction

pukuhuone - dressing room

kerrostalo - apartment building

lähiopetus - schooling / learning in person

etäopetus - distant schooling

4. genitive + noun = this is the possessive form ('s in English)

Minun taloni = My house [in written Finnish just taloni is fine - in spoken Finnish just "mun talo" is fine]

5. genitive + noun can actually replaces the form " X of [the] Y" form used in English !

seinän saumojen tasoitus = levelling of wall seams

tutkimuksen eettiset periaatteet = ethical principals of research

6. genitive + noun (NO SPACE) = when something is again a "well known concept", it can be written with the genitive and no space

I can never know when these will appear, I always have to check them. But I hear these are also hard for Finns

äidinrakkaus = a mother's love

ääneneristys = sound insulation

So to summarize there are lot of different ways to combine adjectives + nouns, nouns + nouns, etc. !

Something you don't see in Finnish (FINNS CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG) is two nouns in a row:

So for example when Luke Brand invented "Finnish Thursday" and named it "Suomitorstai" - it becomes a new compound word, you can't write: Suomi torstai

Or "research question" (two words in English) is again a compound in Finnish: tutkimuskysymys (because you can't write tutkimus kysymys)

[significant-what]

#suomi100

the following post has nothing to do with solangelo or pjo/hoo/toa whatsoever, so if you’re not interested in my personal life at all just keep scrolling, no gay demigods here.

as some of you already know, i’m finnish. as in from finland. as in a finn. i don’t really talk about it because there’s really nothing to talk about and it’s really not that important, but it’s important for this post, so i’m starting with it. i’m finnish.

some of you may also know (and lately it feels like most of the world knows) that this wednesday (6.12.2017) is finland’s independence day, and finland turns 100 (yay)! so of course it’s a big celebration and different countries are even celebrating with us by lighting up monuments with white and blue (i may or may not have cried when i learned about this because it’s so effing cute omg).

i’m not going to go into history and politics and all that boring stuff about finnish independence. that’s not what i’m here for. if you want to learn more, you can do so in wikipedia.

what i am going to do, however, is tell you a few things i like about finland. not the boring things everyone lists, like the lakes and lapland and salmiakki and sisu (although all of those are cool). noooo, this is a list of my favourite things. no judging.

(and now i have my favourite things from sound of music stuck in my head. not bad.)

so grab your koskenkorva and your fazerin sininen. let’s talk about finland.

first (and this is important), we have TwoDads! sure, it’s just juice boxes and cereal, but it’s cool. and it’s name is two dads. what’s not to love?

finland’s national personification is called suomi-neito, the finnish maiden. too bad her arm is cut off...

moomins! they’re small round pacifists that live in a round multi-story building in a valley. they’re adorable.

the fact that the whole country gets crazy about ice hockey. sure, there are always issues, and we hate the russian team and the judges are unfair and the team management is always shitting the whole thing, but at least we rage as one. gotta admire that. (the statements here are not important, they’re said in the heat of the moment. we don’t really hate the russian team. we’re just serious about hockey.)

we only have one railway company, vr. the trains are clean and modern and good and whatnot, but the funny thing is that they seem to always be late. there are dozens of jokes. my favourite is that vr is actually shortened from the words “venaa rauhassa”, slang for “wait in peace”. we also have a joke that finnair promises to bring their customers home for christmas and vr starts the same campaign in february.

the fact that most people here speak at least one other language than finnish. we have a lot of swedish speaking people here, and it’s our second official language and therefore a mandatory subject at school. every child starts learning english at school at the age of 11 at latest. that makes three languages in total. on top of that many kids (myself included) starts learning french, spanish, german, russian, estonian or multiple other languages at an early age. go education!

last but not least, the aforementioned fazer. people praise swiss chocolate, but clearly they have never tasted finnish milk chocolate.

yeah. that’s a few things off the top of my head. on wednesday night i will curl up on a couch with a glass of mulled wine and join half of finland in watching tons of people shake hands with the president. happy birthday, finland. here’s to another great one hundred years!

[drev-the-ambassador]

Can you tell us a little about food in Finland, like... What do you eat day to day? What are sweets like? Which fast food chains are the most popular? or something else you think is interesting. Thank you! :D

Thank you for the ask! I can tell you a lot about food in Finland, fortunately, because both of my parents happen to be cooks, so I can ask about stuff from them. A lot the information I’ll tell you probably came from them.

Well, first off, I want to say that today Finnish people often eat food that isn’t necessarily traditionally Finnish or anything, for example my town has at least 5 pizza-kebab restaurants, and spaghetti is very popular. This thing called “raketti-spagetti” is sold in stores, it’s just normal spaghetti but cut into shorter pieces, and the name literally means rocket-spaghetti. I’m not sure how that name came to be, but it rhymes, so maybe it just sounded funny…? I don’t know. Stuff like rice is pretty common too, even though it’s in no way traditionally Finnish. Anyway, I’m sure that a similar phenomenon (the international foods thing, not raketti-spagetti) exists in almost every country.

Also, the Finnish cuisine has gotten a lot of influence from our dear neighbours, Sweden and Russia. Especially Sweden. So anyway, if you’re from either one of those countries and I say that something is Finnish when your country has the exact same thing, please blame my ancestors for not being more original. Although I’d like to hear about foods or customs similar to these I’m about to mention from other countries, so if you’d like to, please share them in the tags!

Okay, so I think I’ll start with the fast food- part of the question.

Finland doesn’t have that many fast food chains, really. We have McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, and soon a few Taco Bells. Like, three. BUT! We do have a chain of our own, Hesburger, which is my personal favorite out of these. It is the most popular fast food chain in Finland, with 268 restaurants. For comparison, McDonald’s has 65, Burger King 32, and Subway 155 restaurants here.

If you want to have a taste of Hesburger’s food, but don’t want to come all the way to Finland, that’s totally fine! There are Hesbugers in eight other countries, too: Estonia (42 restaurants), Latvia (44), Lithuania (47), Russia (34), Germany (3), Ukraine (3), Bulgaria (3) and Belarus (1). Pretty impressive for a chain from such a small country, huh?

I hope this doesn’t sound too much like an ad, this post is not sponsored by Hesburger. I just think it’s pretty neat. I don’t know where the restaurants are more specifically, but I’ve been to Tallinn and there were a few Hesburgers there. They have really good paprika-mayonnaise! Just saying.

Scratch that, I now know where is the Hesburger farthest from Finland: 

Now, for sweets, I think I’ll have to make their own post, but we do have a lot of different kinds of candy in Finland, since we have two bigger and several smaller candy manufacturers, the two big ones being Fazer and Panda. Fazer also makes bread and cookies.

Popular candies are suklaa (chocolate) in different forms - bars, slabs (?? I hear that is also called a bar sometimes? Like smaller bars like Snickers and then slabs like the one I’ll show a picture of), chocolates, like the ones sold in a box, with filling or without, you get the idea, a lot of chocolate - and, of course, salmiakki, salty liquorice. Salmiakki candies get their amazing/awful taste from ammonium chloride. Mmmm. Potentially life-threatening chemicals combined. Delicious. (pic source)

Here is perhaps the most iconic Finnish sweet: Fazerin sininen, Fazer’s Blue. It’s just simple old milk chocolate and yet is the most popular candy in the country. Is it really that good?

Yes. Yes it is. The shade of blue used in the wrapping is trademarked*, by the way.

Okay, moving on to the day-to-day stuff…

In Finland we drink the most maito (milk) in the world per capita, a bit over 360 liters. The 2nd is Sweden by the way, with around 356 liters. We also consume the most kahvi (coffee) per capita, the national average being around 2.6 cups. Seriously, people here drink coffee all the time. In the morning, after lunch, when you come to visit you can be sure you’ll be offered a cup of coffee, at weddings, at funerals, with dessert, I mean, all the goddamn time. Sometimes they don’t even have a reason I’m sure. You know when at work there are those shorter breaks? In Finland a break like that is called kahvitauko. It means coffee break, which I’m sure is a familiar concept in other countries too.

But yeah, people do drink milk at every meal - not everyone, of course, but most people - and for people who are lactose intolerant there are special kinds of milks where the lactose has been processed already, so lactose intolerant people can drink it safely.

This is our fridge. That milk probably lasts like half a week. The light blue one is fat-free.

‘There is also this thing called piimä, which is a drinkable product made from milk with Lactic acid fermentation. It’s not my favorite, but it’s okay.

Maito versus piimä. (source) 

Apparently there is a strict divide in Finland between west and east, where west likes piimä better, but east prefers something called kokkelipiimä, which, to me, sounds very suspicious, and I did not know it even existed. It’s piimä with something more solid also made from milk mixed into it. Looks like this.

I seriously had never heard of it. I do live in the western half, so I suppose the divide is real. Huh. (source)

A traditional Finnish drink, kotikalja, is often drunk at fancier occasions, for example at the Christmas meal or at some other celebration, like weddings or such. It has a bit of alcohol, but so little that it doesn’t really count as an alcoholic beverage. Wikipedia tells me that it’s similar to Estonian kali, Swedish svagdricka, Dutch oud bruin and Russian kvass. It’s not the same, but it’s similar. People drink it with food.

(source also includes a recipe for kotikalja)

 There is a Finnish word ruokajuoma, which means any drink that is often drunk at meals, like water or kotikalja or milk and sometimes also juice.

This post is getting really long, sorry about that. Anyway, we eat a lot of different keittoja (soups) here too. Most of the time they contain potatoes (perunaa), carrots (porkkanaa), possibly other vegetables, and some meat (lihaa). Kalakeitto (fish soup) can be creamy (I love it) or clear (not so good). Lihakeitto (meat soup) and jauhelihakeitto (minced meat soup)are usually clear as well. There is also hernekeitto, which is made from peas, minced meat or ham or something and some carrot. People can add mustard and onion to it. It’s often eaten on Thursdays, a habit that has spread from the army. There every Thursday is hernekeittopäivä, hernekeitto-day. With hernekeitto the dessert is usually pancake with jam. (pic source)

The pancake, pannukakku, doesn’t look like what you might expect, though. It’s like this.

(source)What is the closest relative to the other kind of pancake is called lettu here, or räiskäle, and it’s closer to a crêpe or a blin. (An actual blin, in Finland there is some misconception about blinis being small and thick… things, but maybe people would otherwise mistake them for a räiskäle?) (source)

 They are usually eaten with jam or sugar or whipped cream, or ice cream, or berries, or all of them. There are also muurinpohjaletut, which are cooked differently. (source)

A very basic dish we eat a lot here is potatoes and some kind of kastike (sauce). The sauce usually has pieces of meat, or sausage, or minced meat. We use a lot of minced meat. The picture example is made with makkara (sausage). (source)

When it comes to leipä (bread) I might be a little biased, because my parents bake a lot of bread themselves. Most households usually have at least two types of bread available, some lighter bread like piimälimppu for example, and ruisleipä. It is very Finnish, even though rye bread is eaten elsewhere too. In grocery stores you can find many shelves full of it. There are even rye chips here! Not French fries, or potato chips, really, more like nachos. But made from rye. Weird. (source of pic below)

One of the many forms of rye bread. (source)

Usually the shelves would be full but it was late and almost juhannus. That’s all for rye bread there. (Don’t mind my sister’s hand btw)

You can get rye bread in dried from too, all crunchy and pretty tough. Examples of this, dry, crunchy, though perhaps not that tough bread are näkkileipä and hapankorppu. Näkkileipä is often served in schools, since it doesn’t go bad easily. Both näkkileipä and hapankorppu are the best when they have some butter (voi) on top, at least I think so.

Hapankorppu in the front, näkkileipä in the back. 

“Which side do you put the butter on?” is a common topic of debate between Finnish people. (It’s the side without the holes, fight me)

And yet another traditional Finnish food that’s eaten like bread and has rye in it, is karjalanpiirakka, Karelian pie. It’s basically rice porridge in a crust made from rye flour. It is also called riisipiirakka. There are other versions of it as well, for example they can have mashed potato instead of rice in them. It’s traditionally eaten with munavoi, boiled egg and butter mixed together. It is heavenly. It’s the stuff in the picture way up there, actually, but I’ll refresh your memory.

(source)

Another pretty basic, and quite traditional Finnish food that is still pretty popular as I understand, is makaronilaatikko, macaroni casserole, made of macaroni, minced meat, and a mixture of milk and egg. All the ingredients are put together and mixed, and cheese is put on top, though not in traditional versions. Then the whole thing is put into the oven and cooked for some time, and then eaten usually with ketchup. It’s one of my favorite foods.

(source)

Fish is eaten fairly often, but pork, chicken and beef are probably more common. In summer we eat a lot of sausages and nakki (frankfurters) (?? I have never heard this word). Most common spices are salt, suola and pepper, pippuri. There are also a ton of prepared foods in markets, and I mean a lot. Whole aisles, many meters, of foods like makaronilaatikko or jauhelihakeitto that you just need to warm up. Convenient. One of my favorites are pinaattiletut, small lettus with spinach in them. I like them a lot. There are also the same kinds of small lettus made with carrot. Oh, and also blood. They’re called veriletut in Finnish.

(source)

Well, I’d love to tell you more, but this post is already way too long, so. I’ll end it here. If you want to know more of something specific I mentioned, ask, and I’ll try to get a post made. I’m planning on covering a few topics here more in depth in the future, but we’ll see.

Oh, also, a lot of the sources for the pictures in this post also feature a recipe, though they’re in Finnish. If you’d like me to translate one of them so you can try it out, just ask!

Thank you for the ask again!

(*edited because I, the smart person I am, mixed up copyright and trade marks. Sorry about that.)

[caixxa]

A, B, C, kissa kävelee 😉😚

A. If you could rec a piece of music to accompany one of your fics, what would you pick? Why?

Copying from a previous answer, @itsadrizzit asked this before

This is unfair! I want to rec music for all my fics because in many cases it’s an integral part of them. I use song titles as fic or chapter titles, song lyrics in summaries as elements of describing the mood of the fic / chapter, I have been inspired by music etc.

But to pick one, I’ll say  Gold All Over the Ground by Brad Paisley for The one that the reaper missed. I say it because it is not mentioned in the fic but it was a big part of my writing. The lyrics are a Johnny Cash poem for his wife June Carter, the song is super romantic and describes the kind of love and devotion I wanted Gareth to have for his life-long spouse in the fic.

I refer to the song in this line:  You deserve gold and emeralds, all the beauty in the world.

It’s from these lines in the song:

I’d turn your green to emeraldAnd give you gold all over the ground

The song actually came to my mind because of the photo prompt for the fic, it was for football prompts monthly challenge and the photo was a golden wheat field. Hence gold all over the ground.

I have to add a bonus song here, sorry! It would be for two hockey fics (users only), the finnish  Jussi Jussilla and the english hot tramp, daddy’s little cutie. It’s Peto on irti by Antti Tuisku, a finnish pop singer. In my headcanon it’s Sebastian’s personal party anthem (I have NO idea whatsoever if he likes it or not irl!! Total headcanon!). The lyrics tell about losing your inhibitions while partying, releasing your inner beast (peto = beast, irti = on the loose). 

There’s also a hockey themed cover version of the song, it’s sometimes been used as team Finland’s goal song.

B. Who’s your favorite side-character from something you wrote?

Jesse Puljujärvi! This is one of the favorite bits I wrote for him in Jussi Jussilla / Jussi at Jussi’s:

Jesse muistaa yhtäkkiä jotain ja häipyy sisälle.”Saa sitä”, hän sanoo Roopelle takaisin tullessaan ja latoo tämän eteen pöydälle nuuskatorneja. 

Hän vilkaisee toisia pöydän ympärillä istujia. ”Kävin Torniossa”, hän selittää näille. ”Joen yli vaan ja mistä tahansa Icasta löytyy. Nää on kyllä siitä isosta karkkikaupasta Ikean talosta. Siellä on kassan vieressä isot kylmäkaapit ja pitäs liikkua niin hyvin että on tuoretta.”

”Myydäänkö Ikeassa nuuskaa?” Teuvo kysyy.

Jesse katsoo häntä pää kallellaan. ”Voidaan siellä myydäkin. Mutta en mä sanonut että tää on sieltä. Sama talo mutta eri kauppa. En mä käy Ikeassa, Ikea on saatanasta.”

Teuvo nauraa. ”Miten niin Ikea on saatanasta?”

Jesse katsoo häntä silmät levällään. ”No ootko koskaan käyny? Siellä on semmonen labyrintti joka pitää mennä läpi kokonaan! Siinä menee tunti ja sitten sä tuut ulos ja sulla on sininen jättikassi täynnä kynttilänjalkoja ja sohvatyynyjä. Ei oo mun paikka.”

In English:

Jesse remembers something and goes inside.

“Now you do”, he says when he returns, pointing his words at Roope. He places four towers of snus on the table before Hine.

“I’ve been to Tornio,” he says like an explanation to the players looking at his lot on the table. “You cross the river and buy it in any Ica. This is from the giant candy shop in the Ikea building, they have display fridges full of this near the counter and it should be fresh.”

“You bought it from Ikea? They sell snus?” Teuvo asks.

“Ikea might sell snus,” Jesse replies, shrugging his shoulders. “But I didn’t say this is from there. I said another shop in the same building. I don’t go to Ikea, Ikea is evil.”

Teuvo laughs. “How is Ikea evil?”

Jesse looks at him with wide eyes. “You go in and it’s a terrible maze you have to go all the way through! You come out an hour later with a giant blue bag full of candles and couch cushions. Never again.”

C. Get any good comments on your stuff this year?

So good! I’ve been totally in awe. I mean, how good can some people treat a writer! Detailed reviews quoting my stuff! Comparing reading my work to fricking listening to Sibelius forgodssakes, I should print it out and put it on the wall and get goosebumps daily. Thanking me and telling something personal about themselves, reasons why my work has been meaningful to them.

It makes me feel more than a fanfic writer in a way. Niinku olisin oikea kirjailija, tai joku uuden polven Mikael Agricola / Elias Lönnrot joka tuo kulttuuria kansalle näiden omalla kielellä

I’d quote them here but i think this is long enough… but THEY MEAN SO SO SO MUCH TO ME! THANK YOU!!!

[lily-learns-finnish]

Heya! I'm trying to make sense of word types and consonant gradation.. Which should I try to learn first? I'm having a hard time understanding whatever the heck my book or the internet are talking about because if I read about word types they mention consonant gradation, and if I read about consonant gradation they mention word types.

I think The Finnish Teacher explains both KPT and word types well! I learnt it there from memory.

But more specifically my process to learn these was 

1) Read up quickly on KPT:

So I had a sense for what it was, but didn’t try to learn the rules. For example I understood that there was STRONG and there was WEAK - and that you have to move from to strong and weak (and also from weak to strong) in different cases. Namely, when you started using verbs and when you starting finding the cases of words (i.e. genitive). 

I think maybe I even learnt a few examples - such as...

Matti on a mies. (Matti is a man). Matin hattu on sininen. (Matti’s hat is blue). 

So from that I could remember tt (strong) can become t (weak). 

2) Watch out for it in text’s: After I understood this ‘weak to strong’ / ‘strong to weak’ could happen I watched out for it when I read text’s. So for example it I read a text and saw something like

“Katon päällä on koira.” (On top of the roof is a dog) - I’d be thinking, I don’t know the word “katon” - I’ll check what it means... then I’d think - wait could it be katto in a different form? Then I’d type katon into Wiktionary and confirm it’s the word in katto, and it’s being used in form katon (in this case because of the word päällä, which means on top of and refers to whatever is in genitive form).

3) Start learning the rules:

So then I was super comfortable with the idea had my examples cases, i.e.

Matin kanssa - with Matti (which comes from Matti + kanssa)Katon päällä - on the roof (which comes from katto + päällä) 

At that point I started learning the “word type rules”....That process I have no hints for other than learning one at a time. It’s a slow process.