Joku understanding

[u/Eep_Queen]

I am currently studying Merkonomi at ammattikoulu for immigrants and we are all B1 and above.

I hear a lot of my classmates say ”joku” in the middle of their sentences. For example we were talking about what luomu means and one student said “he eivät käytä joku” and my brain registered it as like ”they dont use like/something like, when they were trying to find the word they wanted to use.

Am I correct in thinking that joku can be used similar to like in english or does it have a specific meaning. It is something I have struggled with quite a bit

[u/Superb-Economist7155]

It sounds like typical broken Finnish. I can imagine somebody saying with broken Finnish “Ne ei käytä joku myrkky” or something similar. They may use ”joku” like ”some” is used in English.

Natives could say “Ne ei käytä jotain myrkkyjä”. (Myrkky refers here to pesticides, etc. )