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Finnish: most difficult language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| hcholm Heptaglot Groupie Norway Joined 6070 days ago 43 posts - 65 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish, Danish, German, French, Polish Studies: Czech | Message 17 of 22 30 December 2008 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
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There's no such thing as "a difficult language". There are native languages, and then there are languages that are "considered difficult for speakers of language X". A native speaker of Basque will not say Basque is difficult, and a native speaker of Estonian will not say Finnish is difficult.
If your native language is an IE language spoken in Europe, Basque will probably be the toughest European language to learn. Finnish should not be that difficult. Finnish is highly influenced by IE languages such as Swedish and Russian, and the grammar isn't that complex. It isn't as simple, regular and neat as many people claim, but it isn't very "difficult", from an IE point of view. I don't know much about Basque, but the ergative stuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative-absolutive_language) seems hard to grasp, especially since I've never studied an ergative language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Camambert Triglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 5935 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Korean | Message 18 of 22 30 December 2008 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm a Russian native and I assert, that RUSSIAN IS DIFFICULT, since I doubt whether I spell correctly very often being considered very literal not only by myself, but also by all the other Russian natives, who had a chance to estimate my literacy. We do learn grammar at school for 10 years (oh, those myriads of exceptions that are obligatory for EACH rule made me really sick) and I noticed that I started forgetting many things after I had graduated, so I have to open my Russian grammar book from time to time!!! I think there is absolutely nothing wrong in calling a language difficult or easy even in absolute mesurement. I also bet that Spanish would be much easier than Finnish to a Basque or Chinese (i.e. non-Indo-European) native. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6043 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 19 of 22 30 December 2008 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Finnish is not in the Indo-European language family, so it's just natural that speakers of other IE languages find it difficult. Maybe it is inherently complex too, but that's rather difficult to judge. These "cactus" ratings are valid only from the point of view of English speakers. Any attempt for further generalization is pointless...
I've been told that Bulgarian has more tenses. According to Wikipedia there are 40 tenses total ( tense = temporal part + aspect + mood). I can't vouch it's true but in any case there are more than in Russian. Edited by Sennin on 30 December 2008 at 3:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hcholm Heptaglot Groupie Norway Joined 6070 days ago 43 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish, Danish, German, French, Polish Studies: Czech | Message 20 of 22 30 December 2008 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are so many factors when judging how "difficult" a language is, that it's almost meaningless to measure difficulty. An Englishman, Dutchman or a German may find a Scandinavian language easy to learn, and he may master both vocabulary, grammar and basic pronunciation quite well in little time, but he may perhaps never in his life be able to master the tones in Norwegian and Swedish or the "stød" in Danish. Does that mean Scandinavian languages are difficult or easy from his viewpoint? That is impossible to tell.
Still, it's not completely meaningless to say something about difficulty in general terms. To a German, Dutch is obviously generally easier than Vietnamese, but this is impossible to measure. For European languages, there are so many pros and cons that comparing usually is meaningless. You will always find some features that are easy to some learners and difficult to others, or difficult to any learner. There may even be features that can be difficult for native speakers. Bulgarian may have lost it's case system, making it easier for some (and more difficult for others!), but the verb system is still complex. Even for speakers who find the verb system easy (Serbs?), definiteness can be difficult if they don't have it in their native language (Serbian...?). And even if Bulgarian had no cases, a simple verb system and no definite markers, there are surely features in syntax, vocabulary and means of expressing ideas that will be difficult to any learner. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6903 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 22 31 December 2008 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
Funny that this thread should have been woken to life again, three and a half years on.
Don't forget though, that that influence is almost exclusively limited to vocabulary, of which a large part has undergone changes beyond recognition to the naked eye of the prospective language-learner. Any influence of this type, even if it is there, will be of very little help to someone coming from an IE background. Whether some languages are objectively more difficult than others or not is a never-ending debate that has been going on in this forum as well as in many other places for a long time. It is fairly clear that nothing can ever be absolutely proven about this question since there is no way of measuring these things with any kind of precision. To my way of thinking the burden of proof should be on those who claim equal difficulty and personally I have not seen anything remotely convincing yet. I disagree though, that the inability to measure precisely makes all comparison meaningless. On the other hand, just comparing on a one-dimensional more difficult/less difficult-scale seems an oversimplification. It is much more interesting to compare what elements pose special difficulties or which ones are especially easy to learn. Edited by Hencke on 31 December 2008 at 8:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hcholm Heptaglot Groupie Norway Joined 6070 days ago 43 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish, Danish, German, French, Polish Studies: Czech | Message 22 of 22 01 January 2009 at 6:23am | IP Logged | ||
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There are a number of features in Finnish, not only vocabulary, that make Finnish a lot easier for IE speakers than many other non-IE languages. These may be the result of IE influence, a common "Nostratic" ancestor, or pure coincidence. I can't tell, and for all I know it can be a combination.
Finnish phonetics is typically European. There are no "weird" sounds or rules from a European perspective. Unstressed long vowels and intervocalic h may be unusual to some speakers, but you can find that in Czech and Slovak as well. Finnish syntax is slightly different from the average European language, but nothing special. I've had a brief look at Welsh recently, and I found Welsh syntax more difficult and odd than Finnish syntax. The only thing I found a bit odd in Finnish is the conjugated negation verbs. Posessive suffixes may seem unfamiliar, but it isn't that different from spoken Norwegian. Finnish verbs are very similar to IE verbs. There are two main tenses, past and non-past, just like in Germanic and most Slavic languages. Conjugation patterns like olen/olet/on/olemme/olette/ovat could even be mistaken for IE. The polite form is 2p plural, like in so many IE languages. There is also a perfect tense which uses a pattern (auxiliary + participle) that is very similar to Germanic perfect. For spoken urban Finnish, the similarities are even bigger. There are a lot more loan words than in the rather puristic written language. In the literary langugage you would use an expression like ystäväni, but there are no prices for guessing what the corresponding Helsinki expression mun frendi means. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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