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FINNISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

puhua.

to speak, talk (communicate with one's voice)

5 characters2 syllables approx.Suomi language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈpuhuɑˣ/[ˈpuɦuɑ̝(ʔ)]

  1. to speak, talk (communicate with one's voice)

    intransitive · rare · transitive
    Nuorin lapseni opettelee vasta puhumaan.

  2. to speak, talk [with elative ‘about, of’ and allative ‘to’] (communicate, discuss, converse; usually by speaking or with one's voice)

    intransitive
    Me puhuimme ainakin tunnin.

  3. to speak (deliver a speech)

    intransitive
    Matti on lupautunut puhumaan illan juhlassa.

  4. to speak (be able to communicate in a language)

    transitive
    Puhutko englantia?

  5. synonym of puhaltaa (“to blow”)

    poetic
Where this word comes from

From Proto-Finnic *puhudak (“to blow”) (compare Estonian puhuma), from Proto-Uralic *puše- (“to blow”) (compare Northern Sami bossut, Western Mansi [script needed] (put-)). Attested since the time of Mikael Agricola (output c. 1543–1552). The semantic shift from “to blow” to “to speak” is found only in Finnish (and rarely in Karelian), unless Proto-Mordvinic *pəškaďəms (“to accost, speak (to), address”) derives from the same root. It may have developed via a sense “to cast a healing spell”, which is found also in some other Finnic languages. Note that the Finnic languages have multiple unrelated words for “to speak, talk” (Estonian rääkima, Ingrian läätä, Karelian paissa ~ Livvi paišta ~ Ludian pagišta ~ Veps pagišta, Livonian rõkāndõ, Võro kõnõlõma, Votic pajatta).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.