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Changes in Spoken Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4948 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 1 of 17 10 May 2012 at 3:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I am struggling dealing with the differences between spoken and written Finnish. On becomes oo, tule becomes tuu, minä becomes mä. It also seems like the -n is frequently unpronounced at the end of words. Are there explanations of these changes anywhere?
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| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5025 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 17 10 May 2012 at 3:46am | IP Logged | ||
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When I lived in Rovaniemi 10 years ago, the local dialect tended to lengthen some words. "Kolme" became "kolome" and a few others like that. "Helvetti" to "helevetti". I guess the pattern was to insert a vowel after the letter L which would normally be followed by a consonant.
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| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4948 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 3 of 17 10 May 2012 at 3:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I have heard that that way of speaking, with the vowel inserted, sounds *rural* to Finnish people. Do you know whether that is true?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 17 10 May 2012 at 5:06am | IP Logged | ||
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This is a reasonably informative introduction to the topic.
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| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5025 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 17 10 May 2012 at 5:46am | IP Logged | ||
I can not answer this question with authority. Rovaniemi is one of the larger cities as well as being a major tourist/university town. I wouldn't consider it rural at all, and that "accent" was common wherever I went in the city. I can not say, however, whether or not people who live in Helsinki, for example, would consider it quaint and rural. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mustaviiksi Diglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4675 days ago 4 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 6 of 17 10 May 2012 at 8:37am | IP Logged | ||
In my experience people all over Finland speak like that at times. I myself mix many dialects when I speak, although I must admit that it sometimes confuses people. :) The wikipedia article that Chung recommended seems to explain the changes pretty well. Good luck with your studies! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4613 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 7 of 17 10 May 2012 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
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The wikipedia article is all right, but confusing. I don't have a better source, though. I don't know that there are rules (unless you know a lot about linguistics).
I don't get the thing about final n's not being pronounced. I've never been conscious of such a phenomenon. One thing I didn't see in the article was the use of the the present passive with the first person plural, e.g. "me mennään nyt". (Wait, it is there, but not very conspicuously - it's fairly important, though.) I would never omit the negative verb from a sentence and it would sound very odd (and brusque) to me. (I'm referring to the article.) In my opinion saying 'mettä' instead of 'metsä' is not really "accent free". Some people (and children) simplify initial double consonants in common loan words, e.g. 'lunssa' instead of 'flunssa', but this can give an unsophisticated impression. (It's probably more common in the country.) Keep in mind that people mix up the colloquial language and the written language, so where the article says 'X is not used in the spoken language' it has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Some people use more of the written forms in their speech. Also some of the colloquial forms are more colloquial than others. You don't need to learn the whole 'system' to use the colloquial forms. One challenge is keeping regional forms separate from the standard colloquial language. It's an interesting subject. Good luck with it! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4948 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 8 of 17 10 May 2012 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for all the help!
Would I sound *odd* if I don't use the consonant sandhi when speaking? I find it rather confusing. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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