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Hungarian OR Finnish - please help!

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
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Hencke
Tetraglot
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Spain
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Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish
Studies: Mandarin
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 Message 49 of 64
22 December 2008 at 3:05pm | IP Logged 
Camambert wrote:
The point is that if I and foram knew, which language/country/culture was more attractive, this thread wouldn't ever exist :-) As for me, I want to know other people's ideas and opinions in hope to make up my mind, cause otherwise, I guess, I will give up and choose none of the languages. I spent like 3 weeks reading and asking about the topic, but as I obtained more information, it was getting just harder to make a decision.

Finno-Ugric languages are damned fascinating, but... Which to choose :'(

If it is really still that close between the two, even now after all the input, and I agree it has been interesting, then maybe you should just indulge and allow yourself to go for both. After a while of doing both the ideas might start clearing up and your mind might start tilting in one direction or the other. How about that?
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Chung
Diglot
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 Message 50 of 64
22 December 2008 at 4:39pm | IP Logged 
Camambert wrote:
Wow! Such interesting responses! Thank you all, friends!

Masked Avenger wrote:
I strongly disagree with your statement that Hungarian is more influenced by indo-european languages than Finnish.


Péter Hajdú in his book "The Uralic folks and languages" writes, that in general the Finnish language is to a lesser extent influenced by Indo-Eropean languages as compared to other Finno-Ugric languages (for example Hungarian) due to puristic movement has been taken effect from the XIX century until nowadays and promoted creation of finnish equivalents of previously borrowed words.



The trouble is that some Finnish words which began as Germanic loanwords have been used by Finns for so long that their Germanic heritage may not be that obvious now because of changes in sounds or semantics. Purists inadvertently contradict their goals when their creations or neologisms draw on ancient loanwords themselves. Kuunhalme touched on this point when he mentioned his surprise at finding out Germanic roots of supposedly "pure" Finnish words when browsing the etymological dictionary of Finnish.

Camambert wrote:


Masked Avenger wrote:
Hungary is located in the middle of Europe, yes that had an impact, but one can not underestimate the influence of Turkish during the long Ottoman occupation and that had a signiicant influence on Hungarian.


Yep, infuence of another language family just makes the language less "Finno-Ugric". Out of curiosity,



If I'm reading between the lines here, a lessening of Finno-Ugric character (thanks to Turkic influence) hardly means that we should conclude that Hungarian becomes more Indo-European.

Camambert wrote:


Chung wrote:
When it comes to sounds, Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian sound fairly similar to me.


Leopejo shared with me the idea that another distinctive feature of Finnish is there are voiceless consonants only with "v" being the exception. I agree with this and could admit that Finnish sounds even more like Swedish than Hungarian, while the latter seems something between slavic languages and Turkish.



Hungarian has voiceless consonants as well. There's a rather predictable alternation of voicing-devoicing that's not reflected in spelling.

E.g.

- azt = that (accusative) (pronounced as "ast" since the voiceless "t" turns the preceding voiced "z" into a voiceless "s")
- egyszer = once (pronounced as "et'ser" since the voiceless "sz" turns the preceding voiced "gy" into a voiceless "ty" or t')
- rakd! = put (it)! (pronounced as "ragd" since the voiced "d" turns the preceding voiceless "k" into a voiced "g")

On the other hand, I'm not sure how this alternation in voicing-devoicing could be part of the criteria in determining which Finno-Ugric language to study. Is it really a selling point for you if you think that Finnish sounds more like Swedish?

Camambert wrote:


Chung wrote:
In any case you can't truly go wrong with Finnish over Hungarian or vice-versa. Just pick what interests you most and run with it.


Kuunhalme wrote:
Just as Chung said, pick the language that interests you most or choose the culture that interests you more.


The point is that if I and foram knew, which language/country/culture was more attractive, this thread wouldn't ever exist :-) As for me, I want to know other people's ideas and opinions in hope to make up my mind, cause otherwise, I guess, I will give up and choose none of the languages. I spent like 3 weeks reading and asking about the topic, but as I obtained more information, it was getting just harder to make a decision.

Finno-Ugric languages are damned fascinating, but... Which to choose :'(


Hencke's suggestion of settling for one of them after having begun studying both seems fair. It'll let you find out first-hand if one of them truly interests you more than the other.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6601 days ago
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 Message 51 of 64
22 December 2008 at 4:43pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
One thing that you may be overlooking is that Estonian and Finnish have gradation. This means that when declining nouns and adjectives or conjugating verbs, sounds start to change or drop altogether when going from one case to the next or one tense to the next. Moreover the changes in stems caused by gradation aren't that regular or predictable and you come to grips with them after lots of practice.
In Finnish the gradation is pretty regular. Practice is of course still needed, but there are very few words that you have to memorize with some of their forms.

Edited by Serpent on 22 December 2008 at 4:46pm
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Chung
Diglot
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 Message 52 of 64
22 December 2008 at 4:57pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Chung wrote:
One thing that you may be overlooking is that Estonian and Finnish have gradation. This means that when declining nouns and adjectives or conjugating verbs, sounds start to change or drop altogether when going from one case to the next or one tense to the next. Moreover the changes in stems caused by gradation aren't that regular or predictable and you come to grips with them after lots of practice.
In Finnish the gradation is pretty regular. Practice is of course still needed, but there are very few words that you have to memorize with some of their forms.


Hmmm... It sounds as if the Estonians haven't got around to establishing more regular or predictable changes caused by gradation. Or they don't make enough mistakes with the gradation which would eventually lead to a simplification or levelling of changes caused by gradation.
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Camambert
Triglot
Newbie
Russian Federation
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 Message 53 of 64
22 December 2008 at 5:42pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
If I'm reading between the lines here, a lessening of Finno-Ugric character (thanks to Turkic influence) hardly means that we should conclude that Hungarian becomes more Indo-European.


Exactly. But the point is the loss of the Finno-Ugric origin itself.

Chung wrote:
Hungarian has voiceless consonants as well. There's a rather predictable alternation of voicing-devoicing that's not reflected in spelling.


Right, Hungarian does have unvoiced consonants as well and by no means I tried to say the opposite. But Finnish mostly lacks voices counterparts of consonants, while in Hungarian it's not like that.

Chung wrote:
On the other hand, I'm not sure how this alternation in voicing-devoicing could be part of the criteria in determining which Finno-Ugric language to study. Is it really a selling point for you if you think that Finnish sounds more like Swedish?


It is not a part of the criteria, but it's just another dictinctive feature that just could help me or anybody to obtain the impression of a particular language :-) Anyway, this peculiarity makes the language more special or even exotic what is a pro to me. I prefer rather outstanding things than ordinary :-) And I mentioned Swedish just to point out that in my humble opinion Hundarian and Finnish sound completely different.

Hencke wrote:
If it is really still that close between the two, even now after all the input, and I agree it has been interesting, then maybe you should just indulge and allow yourself to go for both. After a while of doing both the ideas might start clearing up and your mind might start tilting in one direction or the other. How about that?


I think what you said makes sence :-) That's just another approach I will probably try.

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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 Message 54 of 64
23 December 2008 at 4:46am | IP Logged 
Has the criterion of available resources been discussed here? :) I've just noticed you're Russian too - what textbook(s) are you going to use if you choose Hungarian? (or are you perhaps one of the 0,001% of Russians that are willing to order stuff from abroad?;)) Finnish might be worth choosing simply because it's so much easier to study when you have better study materials.
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cordelia0507
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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 Message 55 of 64
26 December 2008 at 4:50pm | IP Logged 
Oh, mark my word, Finnish is near impossible to learn. I come from the neighbouring country and there is plenty of exchange and interaction with Finland, but it's a well-known fact in Sweden that it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn Finnish. I've never heard of anybody who succeeded (on the other hand quite a large number of Finns speak Swedish, fortunately).

I know two people who seriously tried to learn Finnish: One was IN Finland working, and really wanted to learn it. The other has a Finnish mother and enrolled in a full-time Finnish course at University in Sweden.

Both failed and gave up because it was too hard - despite being quite motivated.
You've got to be a language wizard cum laude to succeed,

These are people who have experience of successfully learning German, French, Russian and English... They knew they met their match!


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Leopejo
Bilingual Triglot
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Italy
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 Message 56 of 64
26 December 2008 at 5:03pm | IP Logged 
cordelia0507 wrote:
Oh, mark my word, Finnish is near impossible to learn. I come from the neighbouring country and there is plenty of exchange and interaction with Finland, but it's a well-known fact in Sweden that it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn Finnish. I've never heard of anybody who succeeded (on the other hand quite a large number of Finns speak Swedish, fortunately).

I know two people who seriously tried to learn Finnish: One was IN Finland working, and really wanted to learn it. The other has a Finnish mother and enrolled in a full-time Finnish course at University in Sweden.

Both failed and gave up because it was too hard - despite being quite motivated.
You've got to be a language wizard cum laude to succeed,

These are people who have experience of successfully learning German, French, Russian and English... They knew they met their match!


Cordelia, I fear that you are underestimating Camambert's language learning skills :-)


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