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What makes finnish so hard? | ||
Tags: Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 16 04 July 2012 at 1:17am | IP Logged | |||||
Ai kuin nii? ;-) It's not a huge deal, partially through what I explained in that Finns normally talk to foreigners (or foreign learners of Finnish) using standard language unless they're confident that using colloquial Finnish will not confuse anyone. This kind of accommodation would make the internal diglossia less apparent or relevant for at least the beginning learner who's being addressed by Finns. However I don't think that it's as trivial as I'm picking up from your post (unless of course, I'm overreacting). When I first came upon the difference between puhekeli and yleiskieli, it reminded me a lot of the distinction between colloquial and standard Czech. Even though Finnish and Czech developed independently of each other, the similarities in their development leading to what happens among Czechs and Finns in 2012 are interesting. CZECH: Modern Standard Czech is derived from what was used in Bohemia (especially Prague) in the 17th and 18th centuries FINNISH: Modern Standard Finnish is derived from what was used in Eastern and Western Finnish dialects from the 16th to 19th centuries (thank mainly Agricola and then Lönnrot for this). CZECH: (General) Colloquial Czech is derived from what has been used in Bohemia (especially Prague) from the 19th century onward. FINNISH: (General) Colloquial Finnish is derived from what has been used in Uusimaa (especially Helsinki) from the 19th century onward. CZECH: Morphological distinctions between colloquial and standard forms which foreigners must learn consciously as they're not necessarily simple truncations which might be easily guessed anyway. FINNISH: Morphological distinctions between colloquial and standard forms which foreigners must learn consciously as they're not necessarily simple truncations which might be easily guessed anyway. e.g. English: "I work / We work in Prague" Standard Czech: Pracuji / Pracujeme v Praze. Colloquial Czech: Pracuju / Pracujem v Praze. (i.e. different verb endings for 1st person singular/plural present for the -ovat class of verbs) English: "Who are you?" (informal singular) Standard Czech: Kdo jsi? Colloquial Czech: Kdo seš? (i.e. 2nd person singular present of "to be" looks and sounds different) English: "Are you going with friends?" (informal singular) Standard Czech: Jdeš s kamarády? Colloquial Czech: Jdeš s kamarádama? (this isn't even slangy as Czechs could use kámošema or felákama (< kámoš, felák "buddy", "friend") for kamarády) (i.e. ending for instrumental plural differs entirely between standard and colloquial) English: "I am / We are at home" Standard Finnish: Olen / Olemme kotona Colloquial Finnish: Mä oon / Me ollaan kotona English: "What does (s)he / do they want?" Standard Finnish: Mitä hän haluaa? / he haluavat? Colloquial Finnish: Mitä se haluu? / ne haluu? (N.B. for those who don't know Finnish, what Finns often use here is literally "What does it want? / What does they [inanimate] want?"; 3rd person singular and plural present tense forms have merged) English: "Are you going home?" Standard Finnish: Menetkö kotiin? Colloquial Finnish: Meetsä kotii? *** Dialects in both languages are a different story altogether, and it's quite common for members of a speech community to be befuddled by forms used in regions of the speech community other than their own. As a foreign learner of Finnish I can get befuddled by a native speaker of Savonian using fairly simple sentences as much as I could as a native speaker of English by a fellow native speaker using Geordie. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5035 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 10 of 16 04 July 2012 at 1:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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This discussion of Finnish diglossia made me feel unsure of myself. I never noticed any huge differences between written and spoken Finnish, so I wondered if perhaps I hadn't learned as much as I thought I had. That is a distressing thought.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 11 of 16 04 July 2012 at 2:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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A couple of ways to get an idea of how much colloquial Finnish you understand is to overhear several conversations among Finns, or listen to the dialogues (or read their transcripts) in "Colloquial Finnish", "FSI Conversational Finnish" (the colloquial variants, that is) or "Kato hei!". "FSI Conversational Finnish" is available online so you could test yourself for free if you'd like. Edited by Chung on 04 July 2012 at 2:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 12 of 16 04 July 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh Kalakukko! I miss Kuopio... Perhaps spending a lot of time in the heart of Savo has helped me more than I think :) (don't you want to try my Finnish challenge btw? it's Savo too:))
Do you use Finnish forums btw? Now that I think of it, seeing the colloquial forms in writing must've helped a lot as well. In fact, nowadays I suppose my main problem with Finnish is that I haven't had any pakkoruotsi so I don't understand the slang coming from Swedish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 13 of 16 04 July 2012 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Better question: what is easy about Finnish?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 16 04 July 2012 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
1) Stress is fixed on the first syllable 2) No vowel reduction (leading to 3)) 3) Spelling is relatively phonemic (a huge relief compared to English or Russian orthography, among others) 4) No grammatical gender 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 15 of 16 04 July 2012 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
What's your Finnish challenge? A little variety in my Finnish regimen could be helpful. I don't use Finnish forums too much, although that's a good idea. On Facebook I chat and post regularly with my Finnish friends in Finnish, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 16 of 16 04 July 2012 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's here... unfortunately nobody who did the accelerated challenge wanted to try it.
as for what's easy, the Finnish cases are more regular/logical than the Indo-European prepositions. also, the verbs are MUCH easier than the Romance once (especially Spanish). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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