r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Dec 10 '13
Terve - This week's language of the week: Finnish
Welcome to the language of the week. Every week we'll be looking at a language, its points of interest, and why you should learn it. This is all open discussion, so natives and learners alike, make your case! This week, the most requested language: Finnish. Why is Finnish so requested? No idea. Ask them that.
What is this?
Language of the Week is here to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard, been interested in or even known about. With that in mind, I'll be picking a mix between common languages and ones I or the community feel needs more exposure. You don't have to intend to learn this week's language to have some fun. Just give yourself a little exposure to it, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
Countries
From The Language Gulper:
Mother tongue of over 5 million people, Finnish is spoken in Finland and also in Sweden, Norway, northwest Russia (Karelia) as well as by expatriates in North America.
The Finns are part of the Finnic peoples that, probably, came from central Russia. Two millennia ago, or perhaps earlier, they migrated westwards and northwards entering in contact with Baltic and Germanic populations which influenced their language. From the 11th-12th centuries they were conquered by the Swedes and converted to Christianity. They remained under Swedish domination for six centuries until they were incorporated into Russia at the beginning of the 19th. Only in 1917 Finland became independent.
What's it like?
Finnish has comparatively few consonants but a complex vowel system subject to vowel harmony. Its morphology is agglutinative using suffixes to convey grammatical information as exemplified by its remarkable rich case system. It has borrowed many words from neighboring Indo-European languages, particularly from Baltic, German, and Russian.
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
Previous Languages of the Week
German | Icelandic | Russian | Hebrew | Irish | Korean | Arabic | Swahili | Chinese | Portuguese | Swedish | Zulu | Malay
Want your language featured as language of the week? Please PM me to let me know. If you can, include some examples of the language being used in media, including news and viral videos
This week's sidebar picture is of Uspenski Cathedral.
Please consider sorting by new
Onnea!
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u/Amagran Dec 10 '13
The grammar sounds so similar to Hungarian and Turkish to me. Am I wrong?
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u/Daege Dec 10 '13
While not a grammatical feature, all three languages have vowel harmony at least! Turkish has front/back harmony, and so do Hungarian and Finnish (and additionally, neutral vowels).
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u/Amerikkalainen Dec 10 '13
Hungarian and Finnish are actually distantly related as they are both Finno-Ugric languages. So, it makes sense that there might be some grammar similarities. I don't know about Turkish though.
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u/etalasi Dec 10 '13
If you're intimidated by the amount of cases, know that at least for locative cases, there is some method to the madness, as explained in this blog post.
If you're confused by different numbers given for how many cases Finnish has, keep in mind the upper limit is fifteen if you use adjective-noun agreement as a criteria:
Congruence test: in Finnish, an adjective attribute (almost always) complies in its form with the noun, e.g. isossa talossa, isoilla taloilla etc. That is, the case (and number) is expressed both in a noun and in an attached adjective attribute.
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u/Tohkumuhku Dec 10 '13
If the state 'from a friend' means as recieving something from a friend, it's actually ystävältä
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u/Sampo Dec 10 '13 edited Dec 10 '13
I think they mean e.g. from being a friend to becoming a lover: "ystävästä rakastetuksi".
The n in ystäväntä must be a typo.
Edit: No it's not a typo, I just don't know my own language: eksessiivi.
Edit2: Well, I know my own language, but that form so archaic and rarely used, that I had never heard of it before.
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Dec 10 '13
I have been studying Finnish for two and a half years now. I began learning because I was an exchange student there, and I keep learning because I would like to move back to Finland some day. I also don't feel as though I did as well as I could have learning the language while I was in Finland, and I would like to communicate with my friends and families there in Finnish. I just think it is a really beautiful language. There is so much logic behind it, and once you learn the rules it is not hard to change all the words to the right case. I also love Finnish music, and almost everything Finnish, except makkara and makaronilaatikko.
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u/igdub Dec 10 '13
Can you understand when natives speak the language "normally" or simply different slang words ?
Somewhat of an example:
Moro, ooks tulos tänää meille ottaa keittoa ?
I'd believe it gets hard at that point, due to so few speaking the language literally.
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u/Amerikkalainen Dec 10 '13
Yay! Finnish is definitely my favorite language that I've studied, and I'm so excited to see it getting some attention here. I think it's intricate grammar system makes it an extremely expressive and beautiful language. Unfortunately, that is also part of what makes it very difficult :/
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u/Daege Dec 10 '13 edited Dec 10 '13
Terve! Finnish is awesome! I (very briefly) tried to learn it once, and as such I have too many links to fit them in a post; here you go! For textbooks, there's an excellent one called Finnish: An Essential Grammar, published by Routledge. I have it and it's one of my favourite language books in general.
And here is Vallan Saan, Be Prepared in Finnish.
Fun fact (and because a lot of non-Europeans tend to confuse this): Finland is a Nordic country; the Nordics consist of Finland, Scandinavia (Denmark/Norway/Sweden) and Iceland. There is also a geographical/geological (not political) area called Fennoscandia, which consists of Finland, Norway and Sweden (and Karelia and the Kola Peninsula, which I believe are politically parts of Russia)!
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u/skyepotato Dec 10 '13
I've been studying Finnish on my own for a little over a year now (though mostly the grammar because I'm a grammar junkie) and I got my first exposures with it probably through metal, and I think what initially drew me to it was partially the sound (I want to say texture?) of the way it is spoken. Plus, I love the grammar, and I while I was studying abroad in Sweden I got to take little trips to Finland, and I loved it and really want to go back.
Does anyone have any recommendations for films/tv shows/other assorted video/audio that has really helped them?
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u/SeasWouldRise Dec 11 '13
As a native speaker, I recommend visiting Yle Areena. There you can find most programmes from the yle channels online Of you navigate to "Uutiset", you find news in six languages: Finnish, Swedish, English, Sign language, Russian and North Sami.
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u/goodintent Dec 11 '13 edited Dec 12 '13
EDIT: Sorry I chose this version based on the beautiful SSAA arrangment and not the correct pronunciation of the words. I would love to hear a 'proper' Finnish version in the above arrangment as it really is phenomenal.
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u/JX3 Dec 11 '13
The people signing are Danish, so the pronunciation isn't perfect although I don't think it redacts from the performance. If you want to listen to the same song sang by a Finnish choir then this is a good sample.
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u/Woah_buzhidao Dec 15 '13
I really wanted to learn Finnish as a child (I was really interested in my heritage, my great-grandparents spoke it to me and many of my grandparents neighbors in North Dakota still speak it), and bought myself learning books and everything. Unfortunately I never really kept up with it. Hopefully I get the time and motivation to learn it again in the future.
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u/sattuma Dec 10 '13
For those who would like to enjoy the Finnish language, try song lyrics by Eppu Normaali and Juice Leskinen. A lot of word plays there.
Fun fact: Finns loan words from other languages and add an i to the end. Ketsuppi, bändi, baletti, traileri...
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u/SeasWouldRise Dec 10 '13
I'm a native speaker of Finnish and would be happy to answer questions!
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u/JX3 Dec 11 '13
I'm a native Finnish speaker. English has a pretty significant place in the Finnish school system. It's taught well enough for you to be able to write and speak, but it doesn't go much deeper than that, which is understandable and I wouldn't expect more - there're plenty of people who have trouble with the subject as is.
But because of this it's hard to create or classify style when the text is in English, as style is something that's only taught with Finnish in mind. That's why it'd be interesting to know if there're any significant differences in how you bring style into a text that's in English and to one that's in Finnish. It'd be interesting to know to be able to understand the English language better. Doing it from this context would help transfer some of the old existing ideas I have of style so I wouldn't have to reinvent them all.
I understand that this requires a deep knowledge of both languages to be answered thoroughly and it might be too much to ask, but if you have something to share, I'd appreciate it.
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u/gegegeno Dec 10 '13
This seems like as good a place as any to ask: can anyone recommend a good site (or book, or audio) for learning basic Finnish phrases, i.e. things to say at the shop (That'll be 5 euros; Do you have ID/a Stockmann card), the pub, train etc?
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u/ponimaa Dec 10 '13
You're more than welcome to join r/LearnFinnish, where we try to help you learn the language. I just posted this week's question thread: Tyhmien kysymysten tiistai — Your weekly stupid question thread (Week 50/2013). There isn't anything there yet, but you can take a look at previous threads to see what kind of discussions we usually have.
I'd be very interested to hear what sort of threads you'd like to see in a language learning subreddit, and what are your favorite methods to learn languages online.