Learning Finnish: My First Steps
Вставка
- Опубліковано 18 жов 2022
- Sauli Luolajan-Mikkola provides a Finn's perspective as Jackson Crawford discusses his first week of trying to learn Finnish and his thoughts on the language.
Jackson Crawford, Ph.D.: Sharing real expertise in Norse language and myth with people hungry to learn, free of both ivory tower elitism and the agendas of self-appointed gurus. Visit jacksonwcrawford.com/ (includes bio and linked list of all videos).
Jackson Crawford’s Patreon page: / norsebysw
Visit Grimfrost at glnk.io/6q1z/jacksoncrawford
Latest FAQs: vimeo.com/375149287 (updated Nov. 2019).
Jackson Crawford’s translation of Hávamál, with complete Old Norse text: www.hackettpublishing.com/the... or www.amazon.com/Wanderers-Hava...
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Poetic Edda: www.hackettpublishing.com/the... or www.amazon.com/Poetic-Edda-St...
Audiobook: www.audible.com/pd/The-Poetic...
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Saga of the Volsungs: www.hackettpublishing.com/the... or www.amazon.com/Saga-Volsungs-...
Audiobook: www.audible.com/pd/The-Saga-o...
Music © I See Hawks in L.A., courtesy of the artist. Visit www.iseehawks.com/
Logos and channel artwork by Justin Baird. See more of his work at: justinbairddesign.com
Tolkien said he struggled to learn Finnish, but described learning it as like "entering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before." It's cool seeing another linguist have a similar experience, struggling with it but being fascinated by how unique it is.
Whatever struggles he had with the Finnish language, Tolkien used it to enhance his mythology. Some of his stories are loosely based on or inspired by Finnish legends, and Quenya, the language of the High Elves, is derived from Finnish.
Of course, he was fascinated by the cellar door as well.
(If you get the joke...)
I noticed the 'archaic' ending of "-tar" is something Tolkien must have liked, as the Numenorean kings and queens used it as a title or honorific "Tar-Minyatur" etc
@@jennifers9389 tar/tär is a feminine ending, one of the only such case of gendered language in finnish language if not the only one. For example näyttelijä - näyttelijätär (actor - actress). But its an odd ending, you cant put it in most nouns or it just sounds bad/wrong, for example lentäjä - lentäjätär, pilot - pilotress??, no one would ever write or say lentäjätär. And like you said it is archaic and not really used outside stuff like poems, lyrics, books etc.
PS. Teräsbetoni has a song called Orjatar (female slave)
@@rykehuss3435 I love that explanation! Thank you!!
Finns actually pronounce double vowels like "kuusi" as a kind-of-diphthong where the pitch for the latter letter is slightly lower. That allows Finnish to be pronounced pretty fast without ending up mixing e.g. "kuusi" and "kusi". If you cannot do the diphthong with the same vowel, you can pronounce the vowel extra long and you'll be understood correctly, but you'll be instantly recognized as non-native speaker. In fact, now that I think about it, pretty much all diphthongs are pronounced with a downgoing pitch, for example "kuori" (shell or casing or bark), "hauki" (pike fish), "vuori" (mountain) all have the 3rd letter with lower pitch than the second letter.
One important part for pronouncing Finnish is that syllables are very important and if you want to pronounce something like "pussi" (bag), it must be pronouced as pus-si instead of puu-si or puss-i or pu-ssi. The rules are mostly very simple, there's never a syllable break between double vowel and there's always a break between double consonant.
I have noticed the pitch thing with the long vowels but never really thought much about it. The way you describe it being pronounced like a diphthong actually makes a lot of sense.
Het, never thought about the lower sound on the second vowel. True!
As a typical Swede I don't actually know any Finnish, but yeah now that you mention it that diphthong for long vowels does make it sound like Finnish!
(Finnish spelling is clearly superior to Swedish spelling, actually writing what is said is such a good idea)
great examples
It is beautiful to see a talented linguist learning a new language. Cheers from Finland!
Such a beautiful language
Suomi on kaunis, mutta outo kieli! Minä rakastan sitä. Kippis!
There is no such thing as talent. It's dedication and training.
"Imuroida" is some slang that I have not heard since the 80s or so. The standard word for download is "ladata" which means "load" (like a weapon) but also "charge" (like a phone battery). The same word can be used for uploading also.
That's got to be a indo-european loanword - cf swedish "ladda".
@@sailonstellarwinds Yes, it is a Swedish loanword, at least according to Kaisa Häkkinen's etymological dictionary of Finnish.
I definitely heard the word a lot in the noughties. Mainly in the context of pirating music etc. though.
Nowadays in cs slang imuroida is still in use but mostly in relation to a large amount of files while ladata is a general term for downloading
Imuroida has also been a main stay in the warez (piracy) scene, which admittedly has been pretty dead in recent years.
As a Finnish speaker myself I've never thought about these things. It's really eye-opening to see someone struggle somewhat with what I was given since birth, never had to work for it etc. Makes me appreciate it even more.
I had to go around my workplace and do the kusi kuusi experiment with my coworkers. Interestingly the coworkers who speak Asian tone languages did far better than my English, Spanish, and Russian speaking coworkers. I live in America and speak finnish albeit with an accent but my family are native speakers. This was rather interesting to watch.
*Nods in English* (its "rules" are absurd)
The hardest part of the language for me pronunciation-wise is that bloody rolled R. 😅 I love the sound but I can finally say that sound consistently. The double vowels and consonants were actually not that hard to get a grasp on. But the hardest part is definitely the grammar.
You did have to work for it. You just don't remember :)
@@Hwyadylaw Kind of, kind of not. I just kept talking and my family corrected me when I messed up until it stuck.
Satyricon shirt, nice!
Welcome to Helsinki! I'm a Swedish-speaking Finn (Fennoswede), who grew up in the mostly Swedish-speaking archipelago of Southwestern Finland, now studying general linguistics and Nordic philology at Uni Helsinki, with a day job translating from Finnish into Swedish, so this content really speaks to me!
Fun fact (among many possible fun facts): kaunis 'beautiful' is also a borrowing from Proto-Germanic, < *skauniz 'beautiful' (modern Swedish skön).
@@KasperSundstrom Køn in Danish. although skøn works too.
@@KasperSundstrom interesting, my hunch was correct. I bet there are more words borrowed between Norse and Finnish than one might expect.
@@joshadams8761 English is replete with homophones: heir/air, there/their/they're, seen/scene, pain/pane etc. It rarely causes misunderstandings because of context.
@@joshadams8761 No, as far as I know, it actually never causes any confusion. There are other things in Finland Swedish that may confuse Swedes from Sweden, but it’s mostly vocabularic and not phonological. However, Finland Swedes are often well aware of those differences and adapt to them when speaking to people from Sweden.
Some potentially useful or interesting notes and additions to this conversation from a Finn and former linguistics major:
- Words ending in vowels is definitely a thing in standard Finnish, but there are many dialects where word-final vowels are often dropped and consonant-final variants are preferred.
- I believe the "native" words for things like telephones and the like were mostly purposefully created at the Institute for the Languages of Finland (I believe Icelandic has historically had a similar approach), though as noted many of the coinages have been displaced in common parlance. In many cases nativized loanwords exist as well (telefooni, kompuutteri), but are generally considered "old-timey" (similar to the word automobile in English for example)
- As you theorized, the long-short vowel distinction actually has much to do with stress and tone and the difference in temporal length is usually not all that big (at least according to our phonetics professor).
- With Finnish it's more accurate to use the term "adposition" instead of pre-/postposition, since they may (in principle) be positioned freely within the sentence and therefore the relation of preceding/following the modified phrase is not fixed. Interestingly the words for before and after almost exclusively place themselves before and after the modified expression respectively, e.g. "ennen talvea" = before winter, "talven jälkeen" = after winter.
- You're correct in linking the genitive-partitive accusative distinction to perfectivity/aspect -- e.g."pesin pyykkejä ~= I was washing the laundry, pesin pyykit ~= I washed the laundry. The before-after example also illustrates this.
- In the word "opinto" you see a common derivational suffix, -nto, which is sort of equivalent to the English formula "an x-ing" or the latinite -ion, i.e. "oppia" = to learn, "opinto" = a learning/lesson; "havaita" = to observe, "havainto" = an observation; "olla" = to be, "olento" = a being.
- "Hän" in spoken Finnish has either a formal or diminutive shade to it. People often use it for dogs and cats and infants as mentioned. If you refer to an adult with it it's generally to show respect (e.g. of an elder), though this is often also done sarcastically (for instance if you think someone thinks a bit too highly of themselves, you might subtly indicate this opinion by using "hän").
Some additional factoids:
- older nouns loaned from Swedish tend to end in -a or -u. This is because of a widespread accusativism in the loans: Finnish tended to loan old Swedish accusatives. (swe kanna > fi kannu, swe lakan > fi lakana, swe packe > fi packa)
- I've heard that "hän" originally was used in subclauses only, and there was some distinction where e.g. "se sanoi että hän ..." and "se sanoi että se ..." had different referents for the pronoun in the subclause. I figure "se" would be coreferential in that stage of the language. No idea how long ago that was, or even whether it's something linguists are *certain* about.
Hyvinkää is the fennisised version of the Swedish place name Hyvinge. Hyvinge, on the other hand, is from an old personal name Hyvä which is derived from the Finnish adjective hyvä (”good”).
Basically everything is postulated to derive from Swedish but there's often no solid proof for it. Just like in this case...
@@polhokustaa4989 If the a place is named after a person named Hyvä, from where would you say that Hyvinnkää is derived from again?
@@polhokustaa4989 nope, not even close. We have a lot of words from Russian as well
Oldest part of what now is Hyvinkää is Hyvinkäänkylä which first appears in documents as Höffinge in the end of 15th century. I have not seen this 'personal name' etymology in any sources.
@@anssihakkarainen5726 also Höffinge is very close to Hyvinkää as are it's other foreign spellings and often Finnish place names are simple calques from their previous Swedish names on the map if there are no known original place name in Finnish such as Björneborg (bear castle) where borg has been turned in to Pori then we also have names that seemingly have no etymology at all such as Imatra.
Branching out of Indo-European into the Uralic languages. Really cool.
As a finn I would say:
"Do you want a (singular bottle of) beer?" - "Haluatko oluen." But in that bottle, there still is "olutta".
So I think you are both right.
Ostitko yhden oluen vai kaksi olutta?
I've studying Finnish for a few years now and do (mostly) weekly video chats with a Finnish friend. I'm always amazed at how often the partitiivi form of nouns is used. At least once a season I say something like. "Is that partitiivi? *Sigh* it's always partitiivi."
Partitiivi will be the death of me, I swear.
Seriously!
Why do intra-Finnish linguistics use a Latin name for a case that seems so specific to Finnish in its behaviour?
@@bacicinvatteneaca There's something called nominal partitive in Romance and Germanic languages, I'd assume the name for the Finnish case comes from that
@@wildcardbitchesyeehaw8320 yep. We used to have more Finnish names for them, but nowadays just use the Latin based names, like accusative, locative, etc.
The beer example:
“Ostan pullon olutta”.
The bottle is bought in whole (accusative), it happens to contain “some beer” (partitive)
Yes, there was some misunderstanding by Sauli on this. Pullo olutta= a bottle of beer, ostan pullon olutta= I buy a bottle of beer, juon oluen= I drink the beer (all of it). And remember , Jackson, the stress is always, always on the first syllable (well, almost, but if you put it on the first syllable, it´s never wrong).
I always wonder, why you say "Muumitalo lukitaan yöksi" in nominative form, but when you negate that claim, you use partitive, like "Muumitaloa ei lukita yöksi". Why is that?
@@mhyotyni I think it is that it is not locked at all but I do think if there is any specific reason. One just uses partitive om negative forms.
Slightly off-topic.. with all the nuances about usage, I wonder if Finnish is best learned by getting a little bit of basics and then just go 100% immersing? Because that's really the only way to learn other case languages like German unless you're willing to dedicate an awful amount of study and time (years!) to it. I've seen enough of people doing it both ways and the ones who come up top are nearly always the immersers - getting it quickly too.
(Yes I'm interested in learning at least enough to understand a bit of Finnish, that would have been *very* useful the last time I went there. It's easy enough to communicate - just speak English - but when you listen to a short speech or you have to read information only available in Finnish.. then you need to understand Finnish.)
@@tohaason Hard to say as a native speaker but seems to me that learning a lot of vocabulary and immersing would be more useful at least in the short term. You can make yourself understood with the basic forms of the words.
Learning at least the basics of conjugations and declensions is definitely useful, though.
Without it, you might not recognize the words you learned.
The difference between written and spoken language is also a big thing in favor of immersion.
Of course if you just need to understand the news (tv/internet/paper) or formal speeches etc then written form is fine. 👍
The use of the partitive in Finnish sounds to me a lot like how it works in French. We have what are essentially partitive articles, formed using the preposition "de" (of, from) and the definite article (le or la, depending on the gender).
For exemple, "I drink alcohol" would be "Je bois de l'alcool" (with elision of the vowel in the article because the following word starts with a vowel)
"I drink beer" would be "Je bois de la bière"
"I drink coffee" would be "Je bois du café" ("du" is a mandatory fusion of "de" and "le", which does not occur if there is elision, like shown above)
But you would say "Je bois une bière" for "I'm drinking a beer", and "Je bois un café" for "I'm drinking a coffee". I think it works that way because we imply a specific quantity here, like a bottle, a glass, or a cup, unlike for the previous examples where the amount is not even implied (in fact, since the present tense in French can be used both for habitual and progressive, those French examples don't even specify if I'm talking about a habit or something I'm doing right now).
Also I can confirm that in French, "husband" and "wife" are "mari" and "femme", where "femme" also means "woman", while "mari" is different from "homme" ("man"). And I agree with the argument, I think grammar doesn't have a lot to do with how people are treated in the society. Some societies speak languages which have gender distinctions, yet are some of the most egalitarian and progressive countries on Earth, while others don't have gender distinction, yet are not scoring as high on that side of things.
Btw, "femme" is pronounced /fam/. This is because the first "m" stopped being pronounced, leaving the vowel nasalised as [ɛ̃], then all instances of [ɛ̃] shifted to [ã~ɑ̃], merging with the /ɑ̃/ phoneme (see "dent", meaning "tooth", and "dans", meaning "in", both pronounced /dɑ̃/). Then, in this specific context, the vowel lost its nasalisation. This is not unique to "femme", it's also a phenomenon that occurred with adverbs created from adjectives ending with "-ent"; for example : "évident" /evidɑ̃/, meaning "obvious", becomes "évidemment" /evidamɑ̃/, meaning "obviously".
Sorry, I'm rambling too much about French now, this is a video about Finnish, I'll stop here.
Does this mean we will get Crawford on the Kalevala?
Hope so! 🍻 👍 🍃🍂🍁
Seems like he may have mentioned it once or twice in some of his older videos. Nothing in depth yet though I think.
There should be a video playlist about Jackson's adventures abroad and it should be called "Jackson Crawford's Nordic Saga".
Haha tervetuloa! I've been learning Finnish for seven years now, and it's been a ride. It drives me crazy sometimes, but it has brought so many people and experiences into my life, and I will be forever grateful for it.
I'd be curious to see if you continue with the language and how much you end up learning.
This video is very helpful in understanding language construction in any language, but Finnish is especially fascination. Especially helpful for to watch an expert with his 'first steps.' Many thanks to you and Sauli.
The animal “hän” I find is usually used by e.g. dog owners in reference to their pets.
This is to give the pet a quasi-personhood, making it a member of the family etc.
Mostly we say “se” about animals, too.
I have been learning Finnish for the last 6 months, and am enjoying it.
Goodness, listening to this, didn't actually realise how much I knew..
Sopiiko tänne tulla puhumaan hölynpölyä vai onko liian julmaa murskata osaamisen tunne?
I'm trying, hope you didn't mean to mock me......but at least I'm trying.... I got the idea of what you said... ..
@@jaynerobinson7008 no mocking intended at all. :) Maybe it was too cruel to write such a difficult comment. You're doing great if you got any of it after only 6 months.
@@jattikuukunen Thank you, I am trying learn, the best I can.. it's going to take a while xxx
In Lithuanian: Kunigas would mean priest, Kaupti would mean to preserve, stack, collect. Sadly, I could not think of a Lithuanian word for ware. It's extremely nice to see that albeit our language has modern words and loanwords for the exact same words (Karalius for King, Parduotuvė for Shop, or Sandėlis for a warehouse) that were adopted into our language rather recently, the old meanings have been preserve to describe the other words or actions.
The root wold be 'vara' in Finnish, if that helps; depending on context, in modern Finnish, it can mean wealth (varakas is literally wealthy) or, something stored for later use, extra stock something. (Varastaa is to steal but that has a different root - in Russian, vora.)
I imagine that Dr Crawford would feel like a child in a candy-store when visiting Lithuania and Latvia! There's a language adventure, still Indo-European, needless to say! Is "parduotuve" like barber-shop (parturitupa).
@@DNA350ppm oh definetely, especially for someone who knows so much about Indo European languages, I imagine Lithuanian would be a treasure trove for Dr Crawford. And as for parduotuve, it is a formation from parduoti (to sell), itself a prefixed form of duoti (to give), a cognate to Latin dare (to give)
@@justames5979 A) I so agree; b) really interesting little piece of fact! Thanks for replying! 🙂
The thing about technical jargon is very reminiscent of Quebecois French. In order to preserve the french culture and language, the provincial authority on the language has created words for technical things despite people in France largely just adopting the English loan words.
Example:
Download -> 'Télécharger' which is the tele prefix for long distance plus the verb 'to charge' (like to charge something to a credit card)
Email -> 'Courriel' which is a portmanteau of the french word for a courier and the 'el' as in 'electronic'
Sidenote: I once used the word "Portmanteau" in an English conversation with a Quebecois colleague and he had no idea about the English meaning and tried to correct me that "Port-manteau is two words" XD
😁*portmanteau* nice attempt at correction from the French speaker.
Ive been learning Japanese as a Finn, and they are quite similar in pronounciation, and both have different meanings for words with short or long wovels and consonants, that you were talking about. So golden on that department 😃 The grammar is of course completely different.
late comment! I know nothing about japanese and as a swedish speaking finn my finnish is sadly quiet bad but ive noticed before how finnish and japanese pronounciation are very similar.
@@spoonzor1 Yes proounciation is almost exactly the same. A Finn can pretty fluently read Japanese out loud, despite not understanding a word, and vice versa lol
I'm in Hungary right now, being exposed to the other major Uralic language. I lived in Sweden some years ago, and saw quite a bit of written Finnish (since food products and instruction manuals and such tended to be written in Swedish, Danish, English and Finnish) but didn't hear it spoken much as I was in Skåne and there weren't many Finns around.
I have a bit of a weird background. I'm an Italian who learned Hungarian (a2/b1) and moved to Finland.
Excluding vocabulary (Hungarians were far too influenced by Slavs and Turkic languages) I was quite surprised at how much I could take advantage of similarities between the languages, mainly case system and lack of to have verb.
The one thing imho that really caused me trouble stills is their over reliance on verbal forms instead of conjunctions.
Take the verb to do/make tehdä
"by means of doing something" has its own verbal form: tehden
"while doing something" as well:tehdessä
"in order to do something":tehdäkseen (I am working so something gets done )
"to do something" : tekemään (I came here to do something)
"after something is done " tehtyä
Also the infinite has its own conjugation. Technically the present continuous is formed in this way : olen tekemässä (lit. I am in the making)
Also, the participle is split in active and passive. So I have eaten is different from i am eaten, as one would imagine since there is no to have, so the distinction is solved in the participle :olen tehnyt (i have done) vs olen tehty (i am done)
But watch out! There's a agent participle so it yiou want to say "something done by me" you need yet another form "tekemäni".
There's obviously an active participle (tekevä, he who does) which however is however different from the noun tekijä (doer, maker)
And of course you can specify if something is undone (tekemätön). But again, if you want to specify that something was not done (lit without doing) you use another conjugation (tekemättä, as in "he passed the class without doing anything")
You can of course also specify the generic act of doing something (tekeminen).
And lsdt, but not least, you have a fifth infinite verbal form tekemäisillään (lit, to be about to do something)
Is that all? Kinda.
Finnish verbs can easily manipulated so that a generic verb can change its meaning
frequentative teeskellä, momentane tekaista, factitive teettää, reflexive tekeytyä so you can have fun building tons of new participles!
Actually, we have 21% uralic vocab, 20% slavic and less than 10% turkic vocab in Hungarian. Buuut even those 21% very different because of sound changes over the years and obviously we are part of the Ugric branch while Finnish is Finnic, even if people likes to merge them into "Finno-ugric". And there is 30-something % of vocab with uncertain/unknown origin.
Also Hungarian case system is much more consistent than Finnish (except for -ban/-ben and -ba/-be because nowadays people tend to drop the n from the -ban/-ben, not all but it's common enough to be called a fresh evolution pattern).
Kiitos! I have been learning some Finnish also - my mom says hearing it reminds her of her grandmother talking with her sisters. But besides a few words the language wasn't passed down.
I do struggle with the pronunciation, but I try to think of it like music with a tempo and that seems to help.
It's a beautiful language and maybe one day I will do it justice.
I always thought pronunciation would be the easiest part. Finnish doesn't have any silent letters or letters making different sounds depending on the word. The letter A always makes the same sound. I think you should learn to pronounce every letter separately first including the prolonged version. Written Finnish has so many double letters because it's extremely formal and makes it easier to read. And yes there are some trickier words especially when you are not used to long compound words. Good luck!
Good luck my friend. I speak finnish and obviously English. Took me 9 years to learn and my family is from there. My girlfriend has been learning Swedish and is doing very well. I tried teaching her finnish to absolutely no prevail. Our 3 year old is picking up a little bit but would be better if I had more people to speak it with around her.
This conversation does so very much remind me of my own first weeks of studying Finnish.
Admittedly it was rather confusing.
I learned German at University, including in Germany on a university exchange program. My German has gotten pretty rusty and I am very shy about speaking now. My accent is still pretty good though. The right accent, as close to the native accent as humanly possible, makes a big difference when talking to native speakers. If you sound right, it is a lot easier to break the ice. I know that when I meet someone for whom English is a second language and they speak little or no accent, I am very impressed. It's strangely reassuring.
9 years to learn English? 😵💫
Just kidding.
@@revylokesh1783 I believe he meant Finnish.
@@jounisuninen Sarcasm isn't your forte, is it? Perkele! 😆
Jackson doing the firearms AND the linguistic versions of "Finnish Brutality" 🤘👏😎
Those two men talked about "vaimo" word, which means a wife in the modern Finnish. But that is a proto-Germanic loneword. The old Finnish word, which meant a wife was "sielu". But when our anchestors loned this "vaimo" to replace "sielu", they changed the meaning of "sielu" to be a soul. So the wife of a man is actually the soul of this man. Poetry..
From what I can find, you have it backwards. Vaimo comes from proto-uralic and sielu is a newer swedish loanword. But yes, vaimo did use to mean soul or "-self". Vaim in estonian still means spirit.
I just love the sound of Finnish. I am blessed to have a very good Finnish friend who came to my high school 30 years ago on an exchange. She and another Finnish student taught me phrases and words in Finnish I will never forget as we used them together for that entire year. I have been able to go there more than a few times to experience Finland with her and plan to go again. I studied it briefly, it’s most definitely different! Nothing like Danish for sure. Great video of the more nitty gritty grammar of Finnish.
Great video! Being Finnish myself, I wouldn't go quite as far as to say that "hän" is more commonly used of animals in spoken Finnish. People who do it are sometimes ridiculed for overly humanizing their pets. That is to say, supposedly not recognizing that they are, in fact, animals whose behavior patterns may be entirely different from those of humans and who should be allowed to behave in ways appropriate to their particular species without people viewing them through an excessively human lens. Of course, everyone doing this will undoubtedly say that they are the exception and simply do it because their pet means so much to them. Personally, when I think of someone who calls their pet "hän", I tend to think they're the same type of people who buy them cute little outfits at Christmas and parade them around town, thinking all the while that they must be having the time of their lives.
Exactly, I'd say if someone uses "hän" for a pet, they're giving "crazy cat lady" vibes.x) But it might be different in some other areas or social circles. For the context, I'm a capital region native with a history of being around animals (dogs, cats, horses, helping at a kennel & stable, doing shows, working at shows).
Copying my comment from another thread: "Yep, the "hän" for animals is not universally used in Finnish. I do use it, but I understand it as an endearing and a bit funny term - it sort of highlights the animal (usually pet) being important and loved and (sometimes questionably :D) intelligent."
I most often use it in the joking way, but have definitely met people who exclusively use it for their pet and agree that it gives bit of "crazy cat lady" vibes :D.
It’s most often used for pets or otherwise cute animals, and it’s indeed pretty rare to hear someone use it seriously. As a whole, I think it’s used rather commonly because non-serious uses do count.
Similarly, it’s not too common to hear someone use ”hän” of a human in their ordinary speech without a special reason.
That’s why I think they are criss-crossed between the written and spoken languages. It’s not 100%, though.
What an interesting video, thank you for making this.
Phonemic vowel length was tricky when I was learning Japanese. There are a lot of features of Finnish that remind me of Japanese, actually.
In several Aki Kaurismäki movies there's a clear affinity for Japanese culture - the phonologic similarities are real.
I'm Finnish myself and I always thought the same. Also a fun thing, Japanese word for "ticket" = kippu, Finnish word for "ticket" = lippu
Yep, Japanese words sound pretty close by just pronouncing the western transliterations in a Finnish way. Hajosiko Toyotasi = did your Toyota break. Its a word play in Finnish basically just sounding very stereotypically Japanese.
Japanese: Omea *no* sei da
Finnish: Sinu*n* syytä
English: Your fault
Partitive is tricky for adult Finnish learners, as we need to learn to think about if something is divide-able or not, and if it is, then we need to think about if it is just a part, or an indivisible whole, in this particular case, or not. Reminding me of partitive in Latin, too...
First thought when reading the video title - "Yay ! If I ever get to meet Jackson in real life we can now talk to each other in Finnish!! Happy days !😁
At time stamp 10.30 - Ha ha (Finnish - Lol )
After 20.45 - Hyvin meni (Finnish - Well done )
Such a pleasure to watch this episode and I will end with the highest compliment I can give - in the words of my mother "Kymmenen pistettä ja papukaijanmerkki !! 🦜 ..to you both.
Halaus ja auringonpaistetta 🌻 N
Modelling life-long learning. 🙂
Appreciate the discussion on learning Finnish and points to be aware of.
Hyvää päivää!
You briefly cover my favorite thing about Finnish, which is that it uses suffixes to derive different but thematically related words from a single root word. If you're familiar with the suffixes then it's kinda easy to guess what a word means even if you haven't seen it before, which means that you don't have to memorize as many separate words as in some other languages.
For example:
oppi = a study or dogma
opiskelija = a student
opiskella = to study
opettaja = a teacher
opettaa = to teach
oppia = to learn
opinto = a degree
and so on
My pet peeve is that for school we use the word 'koulu', which is a loan word from Swedish 'skola' (and possibly Latin 'schola'). The Finnish word would be 'opettamo', which no one uses because it's not a real word--and here's the fun part--but would be recognized instantly by any Finnish speaker because '-mo' is the common suffix for 'a place for the activity'. (see: 'teurastaa' -> 'teurastamo')
this example has been really useful! more useful than a lot of other things I’ve seen about finnish
I don’t know if semitic languages have the same consistency, but it’s crazy how many related words they can get from the same root. instead of just agglutinatively adding letters, they have a root like k-t-b where they can add vowels in between and also suffixes/prefixes. k-t-b has to do with writing so there are dozens of arabic and hebrew words with that root.
opisto = institute
yliopisto = university
Two other words for school are oppilaitos and opinahjo but they are not drop-in replacements for koulu.
@@jattikuukunen Adding to yliopisto = university: the word yli = over comes from ylioppilas or ylioppinut, lit. over-learner/learned, which is the word for those that have graduated from high school. (High school = Lukio, lit. place for reading, from lukea= to read. Its all connected :D) This is because originally the high school graduation exams were the entrance exams to university.
"Koulu", btw, has some interesting quirks in its etymology!
-u in Finnish loans from Swedish is often a sign that in modern Swedish, it'll have -a. This is accurate: skola koulu. This does not appear to be a very natural correspondence. It is due to Finnish generally borrowing the oblique form of Old Swedish nouns, so e.g. mössa > myssy (u > y by vowel harmony), tavla > taulu, etc. Ostrobothnian Swedish dialects also replace the old nominative wholesale with the old accusative, so påse > påsa (pussi, bag), tavla > tavlu, stuga > stögu, etc.
However. Skola was masculine 'skoli/skole' in Old Swedish, and the oblique has for some reason supplanted the nominative when modern Swedish emerged (same happened with apa, which was api/ape in old Swedish ), and no form "skolu" ever appeared in old Swedish. "Koulu" is thus a generalization of the pattern "Swedish -a gives Finnish -u". And funny enough, the same mistaken pattern happens with 'apa' in ostrobothnian Swedish, giving *apu for apa, but skoulu for school seems unusual (young speakers of my dialect seem to have it, but most have skoula).
Vow Dr. Jackson Crawford is here, in Finland! I like very much your Norse mythology and language videos. You are good man 👍 tnx for nice video.
I wish I’d known you were in Finland, wouldve loved to shake your hand! Excellent content as always, big fan.
Loved Finland, the language is fascinating. thank you for this video.
You're living one of my life's wishes - to learn this absolutely wonderful-sounding northern language. Damn, I'm green with envy. Your channel ist great and good luck with your learning!
That Satyricon shirt ❤🔥🤘
As a native speaker of Finnish, when it comes to newer loanwords ending with the letter i, I think the easiest reason to think of is basically so that we know the word is in an unbent singular form. Most of the time in Finnish, words in their singular form tend to either end with any vowel, the ending -in, or the letter S. And in contrast, words in plural form end with a T and bent words end with specific word endings. And also because Finnish has what is called "vowel harmony", the vowels are divided between front (ö/ä/y), back (a/o/u) and neutral (e/i) vowels. Front and back vowels don't appear together in a single word in Finnish unless it is a compound word, since it's a little difficult to pronounce for native speakers, but both front and back vowels can appear together with neutral vowels. So it's also just very comfortable for a native speaker to plop that nice and neutral "i" at the end of a foreign word when speaking Finnish.
Edit: also to add to the ordering a drink thing, you can also say for example "ostan oluen" or "ostan kahvin", which uses the genitive form of the word to convey that you are buying a single item, like a cup of coffee or a can or bottle of beer without you actually having to tell the other person that you want "a cup of" or "a bottle of".
What is really interesting is that Finnish, which is theoretically related to Hungarian, appears to do the genitive in a manner similar to the Indoeuropean languages (i.e. the possessor gets inflected). Hungarian does it in a manner similar to Turkish (i.e. the thing possessed gets inflected). It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but that is the fundamental difference.
I love your videos and this one hits closer to home for me than most. I'm an American of Finnish descent and have always found the language to be magically amazing. I keep telling myself that I will learn it, but I don't have anyone in my circles also interested to practice with.
I could listen to you talk ALL day in any language. I will stop here. wow!!! You are brilliant.
Bought some stuff from Varusteleka years ago. Great catalog, I'll have a browse later.
Tried studying Finnish once can't remember much, really challenging language, but I love the sound of it.
i think you are right on that when even visiting you try to learn a littlebit , it shows your humble and learning new stuff goes long way with locals.
Funny how everything comes together. I follow Jackson for years and bought the Särmä Anorak a few weeks ago🤩😬
The "passive means we" thing reminds me of French. In informal French you use "on" (one, someone, people in general) plus a third person singular in many cases where you'd use "nous" (we) plus a first person plural in formal French. For example for "we haven't seen him since yesterday" you'd say "on ne l'a plus vu depuis hier" instead of "nous ne l'avons plus vu depuis hier". "on" is also used for general statements where English would use a passive: "En français, on appelle un homme marié un 'mari'", literally might be best translated as "In French, one calls a married man a 'mari'" but it's also the natural way to translate "In French a married man is called a 'mari'" 🙂
Terve and Kiitos!!! Thanks for having the Sisu to at least approach Finnish, especially since your understanding of the Germanic languages is so great. It is really insightful and good of you to include it in your broadcast. So many leave it out. Thank you for pointing out that it is not Germanic. Please, if you're not too busy with the Germanic languages, consider studying Suomi and exploring the Kalevale. Tolkien did. Good interview, too. Do you think you might explore the Kalevala?
Kiitos!
I'm impressed that you Dr Crawford want to become familiar with Estonian and Finnish. Actually it also warms my heart! Thank you for sharing!
This is nearly ASMR. Very peaceful, calm and nice ❤
In Swedish we have some old constructs, where the genitive is used. Like "till havs" (to sea), "till skogs" (into the forest/woods). In many Swedish dialects they are also used for names, like "till Crawfords" (to the family Crawford). My grandmother, from Västergötland often used this form, for example when she was going to visit someone. "Jag ska till Crawfords", which means that she was going to visit the Crawford family.
Welcome to the weird world of Finno-Ugric languages! After this you can try to learn my native language as well, Northern Sámi. 😅
There are some Sámi words I understand as a Finn, but they are few and far between.
I found it surprising how far south you can find Sami words in place names.
My perspective to 'tarjeta':
"Minä tarkenen tällä takilla" = something like "I am/will be fine with this jacket" or "this jacket is/will be sufficient"
I think that the -n accusative goes back to a proto form *-m which contrasted with an old genitive *-n. The word final *m changed to n in atleast Finnish and probably most if not all Finnic languages. This change also affected the first person singular ending which also ended in *m.
Love the Finn's Satyricon shirt. Great video
New intro and outro, cool.
This channel is so inconspicuously "metal" lol. Thanks for all the great content Mr. Crawford.
Nice to see you learning a Uralic language! It's difficult, but oh so fascinating and rewarding
Indeed. Learning Finnish drives me up the wall sometimes but it has been so worth it, even though I still have a lot to learn.
"Kaunis" is another word borrowed from Proto-Germanic. It was "*skauniz", which became "schön" in German.
Though, the party pooper mathematician here must point out that about 1/3 of Finnish words would look like Proto-Germanic even if the languages were random generated.
The phoneme shift from Germanic to Finnish is an injection, a Finnish word can often be compared to even several dozen possible Germanic words .
As a Finnish linguist and long-time fan of yours, I'm absolutely over the moon about you traveling to Finland and learning Finnish. You should definitely travel up north to my hometown, Oulu.
I'm also learning Finnish and randomly I started in the exact same week as you!
About ten years ago I discovered the Finnish tv show Dudesons and when I heard them speaking the language it sounded so interesting, unlike anything I had heard before, specially because I noticed it had a lot of vowels and very long words.
Finnish does have a comitative but it's rarely used and is instead replaced with the genitive + kanssa (or kaa in spoken Finnish) -structure as mentioned in the video. It's also weird for only existing in plural form, though it can still be used for singular meanings.
e.g. koirineen (with his/her/their dog/dogs), vaimoineen (with his/her wife (assuming monogamy)), verisine miekkoineen (with his/her/their bloody sword/swords)
I've only heard "Kanssa" shortened as "Kans", not "Kaa" (I've been told "Kaa" is short for "Kaksi").
@@corinna007 Both "kans" and "kaa" are used to mean with, though the latter is more common where I live (capitol region). And yes, "kaa" can also mean the number 2 when counting but otherwise "kaks" is used.
The most common use would be perheineen (with his//her family) or vaimoineen/puolisoineen. In some sort of list/report of people arriving to some sort of party or event. Koirineen may come up for a hunting or a search party. Always with a possessive suffix.
@@corinna007 there was even a television series "Kumman kaa"
”Kaa” is indeed also short for ”kaksi”. You would absolutely never hear a Finnish band count the time of a song with ”yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä”, not even in classical circles. Many numbers have short forms like ”kaksi” is ”kaa”.
Yy, kaa, koo, nee, vii, kuu, see, kasi, ysi, kymppi, yytoo, kaatoo, kootoo…When arriving to ”kaksikymmentä” it’s ”kakskyt”, then ”kolkyt”, ”nelkyt”, ”viiskyt”, ”kuuskyt”, ”seitkyt”, ”kahekskyt” or ”kasikyt” and ”yhekskyt” or ”ysikyt”. After 20, short forms are used for tens and singles without distinction so 22 (kaksikymmentäkaksi) would be ”kaakaa”. The round tens are special but anything in between is formed by saying the short forms of the numbers one after the other.
Finnish is a very interesting language and as a Swedish-speaker I find it interesting to see all of the Swedish loanwords in Finnish and also Finnish loanwords in Swedish, such as "pojke" and "känga". It is also interesting that the Swedish gender-neutral pronoun "hen" that has been getting popular in the last decade seems to have been (at least partially) taken from Finnish "hän".
Mum back in Finland said Swedish an very very hard language to learn in school , English easy later apparent as her mastery of it here to our delight
@@benwinter2420 funnily enough, i found Swedish easier because it was less irregular, but due to the cultural hegemony of the US, i have basically learned English by osmosis
Beer can be ordered with both cases: 1 "saisinko olutta"' (Could I have some beer) / 2 "saisinko yhden oluen" (Could I have a beer).
So refreshing and rare to see someone take such a deep interest in Finnish; oikeesti tosi siistiä! I'm bilingual (Eng/Fin), a linguistics graduate, a writer, and I work as a translator and teacher -- so this made a big impression on me on many levels. Kiitos tuhannesti, and thanks for all your other philological work as well! 💟
I wish there was more actually linguistically in-depth but also casual content about the Fenno-Ugric languages in general. I want to also mention that there are more than a dozen Uralic minority languages still spoken throughout parts of Russia and some autonomous regions (e.g. Marimaa), some of which are spoken by only few nomadic populations. The situation with the Sámi languages and indigenous culture is also a huge issue connected to human rights in the Nordic countries, especially since the ancestral Sápmi region crosses four modern countries in the Arctic. There's a tapestry or root network of language and culture that needs repairing.
I appreciate that you're taking us thru this in earnest & you haven't completely mastered the language first & then pretending to learn it
That was the fastest 44 minutes ever, I'm gonna need to watch some more.
Ahhh the cases mixing with prepositions is what I found most difficult when learning Estonian! Consonant gradation is also very difficult (the tarjala > tarkenen thing) and I never properly got a hold of it. I agree though, the grammar overall is not as hard as many people make it out to be.
Yeah, Finnish grammar is very logical, and once you see the patterns, it's relatively easy to figure out which case to use in different situations.
Except partitiivi and the KPT thing. I don't know if I'll ever completely get the hang of those. 😅
Fantastic as always! I have some experience with Hungarian but very little exposure to Finnish so it was good to see you explore the language here. The Uralic languages definitely need to be championed more so 'kiitos' for that. It was interesting seeing you discuss Finnish's lack of grammatical gender, did not know about the use of 'hän' and 'se' in the spoken language. Grammatical gender in Indo-European can be pretty arbitrary and seen some interesting studies out there about it.
There's one case of gendered language in finnish, and thats the feminine tar/tär ending to some nouns. Not used very often anymore
@@rykehuss3435 Interesting - I've heard similar things in Turkish which has a similar lack of grammatical gender. There's an archaic ending which can make nouns feminine usually words for jobs, but it's usually not used nowadays
About "hän" (he/she) and "se" (it) ... Yes, in the spoken language we indeed often use "hän" for an animal and "se" for a human. However it applies mostly for the pet animals. A wild animal is mostly "se" (it). I guess it's because of the tendency of humanizing pet animals.
@@jounisuninen Only those crazy cat/dog "mamas" do that. I've never met a dude who calls his dog hän. Normal people call pets and all animals it.
@@rykehuss3435 My experience on this is that there's huge individual variation. Being what we may term a "near-native speaker", I pay attention to this kind of thing a lot.
Great video…really enjoyed it….and now i know to be careful when ordering a beer in Finland…
The genitive can be used partitively in Slavic too (at least in some languages). Croatian: voda (water, nom.), vodu (acc.), vode (gen.); popij vode (drink some water), popij malo vode (drink a bit of water), popij čašu vode (drink a glass-acc. of water-gen.), popij vodu (drink the water-acc., i.e. drink all of it). The partitive genitive is used either alone or after adverbs or nouns that express quantity (similar to English 'of').
About the -mme vs passive thing:
It's not that uncommon in world languages to shift from a passive/mediopassive/reflexive form to 1st person plural. In Tuscany it's pretty common to use the reflexive instead of the standard 1st person plural.
Standard Italian: noi andiamo, Tuscan: noi si va
Another similar example is French using the indefinite (?) third person pronoun _on_ instead of the first person plural: instead of the formal “nous allons” you usually hear “on va”, which literally means something like ‘one goes’ but really just means ‘we go’.
One thing that helps getting started in Finnish that might have something to do with what Sauli said about the language being more forgiving of errors, is that our grammar rarely if ever dictates the order the words have to be in to get your point across correctly. It can certainly sound funny and sometimes have some double meanings and whatnot but for the most part word order is free form.
This was really interesting appreciated! I didn't expect we'd get some Finnish, too, since it's from a completely different language family. This was great!
The long sounds/vowels remind me of some of the words in Swedish that look almost the same but are different. Like vägen ("the road", longer first vowel) and väggen ("the wall", double/longer consonant). Worse still stegen ("the steps", as in the steps you take) and stegen ("the ladder"). The only difference is the first word has a slightly longer first vowel. Can definitely understand that non-natives might have trouble with Finnish for subtle differences like that.
A thing in standard Swedish, is that there's both consonant length and vowel length, but these come together in "contradictory pairs":
(long vowel, short consonant) V:C vs. (short vowel, long consonant) VC:. Most speakers seem unaware of this, and only hear either the vowel length or the consonant length. In Swedish in Finland, a third option, short v, short c exists.
In the way I speak, for instance, tagen ('taken'), taggen ('the thorn') and 'tagen' (imperative plural of take) are a minimal triplet for this:
/ta:gen, tag:en, tagen/
Re: stegen/stegen, are you sure the difference you're not thinking of is the pitch accent (one being grave, the other acute?). This is not a feature in Swedish in Finland. (However, of course, Finnish everywhere has the full V:C:, VC:, V:C, VC tetrad of length combinations, and this can happen in stressed as well as stressless syllables so... yeah, that's challenging.)
@@markusmiekk-oja3717 That's very interesting. Thank you!
Not sure about the pitch accent for the stegen/stegen bit. I'm born and raised in Stockholm with some experience from family on the northeastern outskirts of Gothenburg and one Finnish friend from eastern Finland who only remembers how to say "I don't speak Swedish" in Swedish. Lol So maybe?
Sauli’s ending description made me laugh! And his delivery made me laugh harder 😂
This was informative even for a Fin, thanks
And I found some awesome merch for my brother, too! Finnish is super hard. I have a friend who’s parents are from there and did her entire BA in Finland.
This is really fascinating! I kinda wanna learn Finnish now. I can barely speak a few lines in German though so I doubt I will.
I'd like to add that we have/had a separate word for mobile phone that is still used interchangeably with älypuhelin/smartphone, which is kännykkä. And ordering drinks can be done in several ways; "yksi kahvi", "ottaisin kahvia", "haluaisin kahvin", "yksi kuppi kahvia" all of which have little different feel to them, and usage depend also on who initiates the interaction and how.
Some comments:
The Estonian -ga ending is etymologically a very reduced form of the "kanssa" postposition.
1pl and passive mixing is a common phenomenon, it has notably happened in colloquial French. There seems to be some kind of a semantic link between "people generally" ~ "we".
Kaunis comes from proto-Germanic *skauniz
Enjoying the Satyricon t-shirt ;)
My friend was learning Finnish he also had problems with short and long vowels but he had bigger problem with differentiating single and double consonants.
I left Finland before computers were found in every home and the Internet communication was only text - so I struggled for a while, when my son installed the Finnish version of the latest Windows. Sometimes I only understand the words because I know the icons/order of folders in English.
You have figured out Finnish extremely well in 6 days! I would say most people who speak English as their mother tongue don't speak Finnish that well even after living half a year in Finland.
Paljon Kiitoksia Dr. Crawford.
I can hear the Germanic aspirated stops in your pronunciation prof Crawford :^)
26:30 As a native Finn, I'd agree that passive is used because it's easier to pronounce. Pretty much everybody would agree that it's more like a slang expression or old dialect so it's avoided in any formal situations.
One thing about English is that we habe predictable vowel lengthening before voiced stops: bag vs back, wide vs. white or made vs. mate. In the case of "can" or "can't" in American English it's the vowel length that distinguishes them in natural/regular speech as the t tends to be silent.
I would never have imagined that the English speakers have problems detecting the difference of words like "fit" and "feet", "twit" and "tweet", "sit" and "seat" or "pod" and "pawed". :p
15:40 komitative form would be "kävelee naisineen/kävelen naisineni" (1st person form kinda requires the possessive suffix -ni). Rarerly used for sure 😀
In my limited studies of Finnish I also noticed the verb endings felt familiar to the Romance language endings. It would be interesting to see if there is some common ancestry to the PIE and Uralic languages.
Not sure on ancestry, but I know that there was a lot of cultural exchange between proto-germanic and proto-finnic. You can see this in the etymologies of many words, the first one that springs to mind is Kuningaz (reconstructed proto-germanic) and Kuningas (modern Finnish), Kung, König (Swedish and German)
E: after I wrote this I heard this example used in the video. nvm
Learning a new language is hard. In particular as an adult. I have found even learning a few words is helpful. Picked up a few words and phrases in Italian and Serbian on a trip. It shows, at the very least, an effort.
About the "tar" ending, one place where it's still used and will probably be used is in the words for royalty and other nobility, kuningas and kuningatar (king and queen), kreivi and kreivitär (count and countess) etc.
In the example "naisen kanssa", kanssa is a postposition, as is alla in "talon alla".
Non-native Finnish speakers have most trouble with their vowel sounds and diphthongs, that often are reversed - in my experience.
If I had a penni for every time the people in my Swedish-speaking village have mispronounced the -ie- in my surname, I'd have a lot of useless currency by now.
16:37 I would add that you can say "on top of the house" with a preposition = talon päällä
Hey, exciting! As a Finnish-language learner, _tervetuloa suomen opiskelemaan! Se ei ole helppo mutta on innostava!_
Harder than double vowels in my opinion are double consonants! As Sauli said, there are double-vowels in English, but double-consonants don't really exist. Like, Crawford said _kaupa_ not *kauppa.* The trick that helped me is to pronounce each syllable as if they were separate words: _kaup,_ then _pa.._ _Men-nään kaup-paan_
"Tervetuloa suomea opiskelemaan! Se ei ole helppoa, mutta (se) on innostavaa!" I wish I knew how to explain why those words are like that, but I don't. I just speak Finnish, I don't really understand what makes it tick...
You can't count "suomi", so you use the partitive case, as far as I know.
@@nuoksu it's true! And I knew that! And yet, I used the wrong form! Thats kind of how it goes for me. 🙊
@@RendallRen Also, I would swap the words suomea and opiskelemaan around, so "Tervetuloa opiskelemaan suomea". Dont know how to explain it, but it definitely sounds a lot more natural. Perfectly understandable either way, though!