FINNISH - PROBABLY THE BEST LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD?
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- Опубліковано 12 жов 2023
- I am a British guy who has been living in Pori on the West coast of Finland for nearly three years. Finnish has a reputation as being a very hard language for foreigners to learn. Is this perception true? In this video, I also explain some of the fundamental differences between Finnish and English.
"J.R.R Tolkien took an interest in the Finnish mythology of the Kalevala, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot. He then became acquainted with the Finnish language, which he found to provide an aesthetically pleasing inspiration for his Elvish language Quenya. Many years later, he wrote: "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me." and used it to construct Quenya."
Interesting, did not know that
@@nigelwatson2750 Please read "The Letters of Tolkien" book if you want to find out more :)
Im here also because of seeking Quenya sources.
I grew up in a Part of Northern Minnesota that had a strong Finnish demographic ( including my family). It even had an effect on the local dialect. It was habitual to drop pronouns from sentences when they were implied. "Went to the store" rather than "I went to the store" etc.
Interesting.
How did you know who went, when english doesn't have "bending" verbs? Or was only the word I dropped, but if it was someone else, "He went to the store", you'd mention who?
@@lyondragons8898 It had to be implied by the context. Such, as "Is Tom home?" "No, went to the store".
This was a very nice "Finnish in a nuthshell for English speakers" -video. I am a native Finnish speaker.
Kiitos palijon.
I was born in Finland but moved to Sweden more than 50 years ago. Honest people still ask me if I am from Finland, they can hear it, but somehow I can not. It's a strange thing, I can not hear it myself, even if I know Swedish better than Finnish today.
A small clarification: the dots on Ä and Ö are not umlauts. Umlauts modify the pronunciation of already existing letters. It's a bit confusing because of the look of the letters, but for all intents and purposes, Finnish Ä and Ö are considered wholly separate letters, not modified A and O.
Thanks - you make a good point. ä is a distinctively Finnish letter, as is ö
My friends mom has lived here like 40 years and her accent is still so distinguishable. Its really easy to notice whether someone has born in Finland or moved here at a very young age.
holy shit! so the fluency barrier is eternal
Thanks for sharing your insights on learning Finnish! I studied the language on my own just to try it. It's neat how there is no gender agreement for certain nouns. Where I live in the US, it's common to study the Latin languages( Spanish, French and Italian). Certain nouns are male or female. Besides the essential rules to be learned, a proper rhythm or flow helps with speaking these languages.
You pointed out how each letter in Finnish is spoken. I remember it mentioned that Finnish is a phonetic language. It's interesting how the double consonants change the meaning of words as well!
At any rate, Jumala siunatkoon sinua ja perhettäsi.
Kiitos ja Jumala siunatkoon sinua ja sinun
Great video Nigel, I enjoy all your sharing on Finland , very good.
Many thanks, Marty.
I love learning languages, this was really interesting and I want to give it a go! 🇫🇮
Kiva.
Really nice insights, you are quite a bright fella. Finnish is quite hard, but very logical, albeight you understand it.
Great video. You speak finnish quite well👍!
Kiitos palijon.
Thanks, Nigel. I really enjoyed listening to this and hearing you speak Finnish. All I knew about Finnish is that it's an Uralic language and not Indo European.
Perhaps it compares well with Latin in that it is concise and uses a lot less words to express an idea. But obviously not dead. Also its elegance. The word for 'book language' - is it anyway connected to ecclesiastical usage? It sounded like it when you said it.
Thanks, Gwen
book language is a more formal language and generally used in written texts and government sites and in press conferences and the like. It is not connected to churce or clergy. As far as I know the book language and the grammar was created from combining several dialects, when trying to standardize and create grammar rules for Finnish. That is why the book language can be quite different from the way people talk.
Puhekieli just shows that languages evolve - no doubt there will be some people who say that there are grammatical mistakes in puhekieli. For me, the most important thing is that people speak and express themselves!@@SorbusAucubaria
@@SorbusAucubaria Thanks for your explanation. That makes sense.
Wwe learn something new every day thanks Nigel god bless
And God bless you and yours
Your finnish is great! I don't know if it's because of the pronunciation or misunderstanding, but that's not how A and Ä are pronounced and differ. A is a more clear sound that's hard to find in english, similar to U in "sun". Ä on the other hand is very prominent in English, e.g A in "apple".
Thanks. Rolling the R doesn't come natural to native English speakers, either
Nice video Nigel :)
Thanks.
I remember reading that Tolkien, a great scholar of languages, had two favourite languages: Welsh and Finnish.
Kiitos paljon 😊
Ole hyvää
This was a nice introduction to Finnish. Although, you got the pronunciations of A and Ä the wrong way around at the beginning but you did pronounce Ä right later with the word "hän". By the way, when you were talking about that word, I was just thinking about J. Karjalainen's song "Hän". Imagine my surprise when you actually began singing it.
It is funny while all anglosaxians can pronounce "and" correctly, but with the letter "ä" they have difficoulties. The sound is the same tough. Äiti äiti. and and! It's so easy.
Puolalaisilla on sama ongelma.
If I remember right, Finnish is one of the oldest languages still spoken. There are also some cool loan words like ""kuningas" (from the old Gothic language: "kuningaz" = a king)
Finnish is one of the oldest languages spoken. It is also incredibly pure & beautiful.
I've read that Latin is quite popular in Finland (relatively), some suggest that the declensions don't deter Finns or they like an Indo-European language that has that feature in buckets.
Finnish has at least one preposition: "ennen" (before). There are some postpositions (that are prepositions in English), such as "jälkeen" (after) or "alla" (under). So, Finnish isn't utterly free of this grammatical structure more common in Indo-European languages.
There’s another: yli=over that can be used both ways: yli vuorten or vuorten yli (=over the mountains)👍
ilman@@ristovirtanen6396
8:55 That is something that drives me insane with English regularly. I am trying to say or write something nuanced and specific and it's a real battle of itself to just get the idea expressed properly and then after that you notice that the other person either stopped trying to follow it or was unable to once you've finished. Specially with stuff with multiple dependencies.
Also could note for people afraid of new letters that while å,ä,ö may not exist in the English alphabet, the sounds do exist in English. Which is different compared to most other languages that have additional letters.
A is the same A sound as in "all".
Å is never used in Finnish even though it exists, probably comes from Swedish and is just pronounced identically to a Finnish "O".
Ä is the same sound as the "A" in "angry" or "apple".
Ö is the "O" sound of a word like ... "word".
Y is like the "Y" in "syringe".
As for J in Finnish, it's pronounced the same way as "Y" in various English words. "Yellow" or "Yankee" for example.
P.S. The best word in the Finnish language is "pilkunnussija" and I'll fight anybody who disagrees.
1:41 J Karjalainen is clever way to remember how to say letter J, in Finnish :D 👍
There is at least one silent trick in Finnish language. In my heart translates to sydämessäni. When you speak it out, it's sydämmessäni. How come Leicester is called Lester? Another one is the word route. At least in US they pronounce this word in two different ways. I was on route to Memphis. Route 66. Two completely different cases.
I lived in Korea for 10 years and know the language well. I've heard there're connections between Korean and Finnish, so I'm listening intently. Hmmm, Finnish has a 'to be' verb that Korean lacks, .....still listening, lol.
Many languages are like LEGO blocks. the finished certain words are formed into the phrases. Finnish is like a plasticine. It can be modified to extremely special varieties. That´s why it´s said to be so difficult, especially to the native english speakers. But it´s obvious, finnish and english are from definite different language family. I see that finnish is a rich langauge because it´s so imaginative.
Kyllä
I think the misconception of finnish being a difficult language since it works with a different logic than indo-european languages but once you get the logic it's really simple. Lots of people just dont want to learn it further when they see theres thousands of different conjugations and what ever linguistic mumbojombo. I think many finns are just at fault pushing this meme how hard the language is and foreigners refuse to learn it since they think it's already too hard whats the point
And i've never really understood those gender pronounces are such a big deal. It doesnt mean you have to be trans or what ever. Just be human (Hän)
Puhut hyvin suomea. Alunperin löysin sun videot ku britti suomessa ja näytit suomen ja britannian eroja kun olit just muuttanut suomeen.
Kuitenkin tuota puhekieltä pitäs entistä enemmän painottaa suomen opiskelussa, ku vielä harvempi suomalainen puhuu mitään kirjakieltä. Ja kirjottaa vielä vähemmän kirjakieltä
Kiitos palijon. Kaikki kehut otetaan kiitollisina vastaan. Puhuttu suomi on täysin järkevää - henkilökohtaisesti pronomineja ei tarvita, jos verbiä säädetään vastaavasti. Suomi on fantastinen paikka, ja suomalaiset ovat mahtavia ihmisiä. Taloudellisesti olen omavarainen. Mielestäni on kauheaa, että ihmiset saavat muuttaa tänne ja elää suomalaisilla veronmaksajilla.
@@nigelwatson2750 ja sitten on taas ihmisiä, jotka muuttavat heti pois kun on mahdollista. Kun jäin eläkkeelle, niin muutin heti espanjaan. Suomalaiset ovat kusipäitä pilkunviilaajia, erityistesti yksi kansanosa kunnostautuu tässä, eli virkamieskunta. Suomi hukkuu virkamiehiin. Vuonna 2013 tilastojen mukaan, Hollannissa oli yhtä monta virkamiestä lukumääräisesti kuin Suomessa, mutta Hollannissa oli silloin 16,3 miljoonaa asukasta. Miten ihmeessä Hollanti kykeni hoitamaan yhteiskuntaa 1/3 osalla (suhteellistettuna kansalaisten lukumäärään) suomalaiseen virkemieskuntaan verrattuna. Virkamiehet vihaavat suomalaisia, ja kaikki kynnelle kykenevät maahanmuuttajat saavat mitä ikinä keksivät pyytää. Mummoilla ei ole varaa lääkkeisiin, mutta somalipakolaisilla on varaa käydä Somaliassa lomalla, maassa josta lähtivät alun perin pakoon. Eikä tässä vielä kaikki. Virkamiehet tulkitsevat EU säädökset "AINA" suomalaisten vahingoksi. Tällä espanjassa osataan hyödyntää EU:ta. Koko kaupunkimme täällä on remontoitu EU-selviytymisrahaston avulla, ja kaupunki kiiltää kirjaimellisesti.
Your kitchen has very similar layout as my parents and it's tripping me out. The window is in the same place, the stove is in the same place, the sink is in the same place, the cabinets are similar (almost even the same color!) What's different tho is that were the microwave is there's fridge
No niin. Selvää.
Finnish is a very expressive language, yes. But it also means that sometimes you start a sentence and in the middle of it you realise you're going towards a structure that would sound awkward and clumsy and then you have to rephrase the whole thing.
My tactic is to just speak - most Finns are absolutely ecstatic that I at least try. It's also the best way for me to learn - just speak and don't be shy & worry about grammar mistakes. I make plenty when I speak English, so it's nothing new!
One thing you can do to sound more fluent in finnish is learning how to pronounce the letter y. A very common thing i see among english-speaking finnish learners is that the letter y sounds more like a u, which i also noticed from this video. Try to learn how to use y correctly, trust me once you figure it out your finnish will sound alot more professional :D
As you noticed there’s no sex discrimination in Finnish pronouns.👌
You should have mentioned that the stress is always in the first syllable! Common mistake for foreigners is the capital of Finland! It’s HELsinki👌… not HelSINki!😣 And the letters in the alphabet are pronounced the same independent of surrounding letters.👍 Stark contrast to English or French where there’s rules and exceptions to the rules and more exceptions!😳🙁
Another simple rule: one letter=short, two letters=long.👌Apply to consonants also.✌️
And you had one typo: kirjakieli(=book language)… not kirija… and it refers to the official grammatically formal language used official speeches as opposed to the informal everyday spoken language.
Good point about the first syllable
Your Finnish is amazing
Kiitos, onko suomalainen?
Good video, Nigel))) true
(It's Ruslan 😉)
Thanks! 😃
oops, oon pahoillani, vasta nyt huomasin, et se oot sä. Tavataanko Porissa kahvilla joku päivä? p.s. Mitä tykkäsit mun puhekieliosiosta videossa? 😉
If you are running in Finland, never cross the border. It’s the Finnish line. No pun intended.
I got a coworker with a Finnish last name.
Fact. Finnish is not related to any other European language except Hungarian.
Interesting video.
It’s certainly fascinating to think that the absence of grammatical gender might have had an impact on Finnish culture to be more egalitarian. The Uralic language family from which Finnish derives has never had gendered nouns whatsoever, whereas English and its relatives derive from the Indo-European family which historically has 3 genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Pretty good pronounciation, but some double vowels and consonants were too fast.
Tip for all: The slower you speak, the better it sounds.
And Ä and Ö. A and O come from front of mouth, with Ä and Ö you lift the middle part of tongue, and it comes more from the back of mouth. Oh and same with U and Y.
And stress is always on the first syllable. "ENG"lantia, not englan"TI"a.
Thanks for the tips - speaking slowly is always a good move.
Ei vaan päinvastoin. Ä, ö ja y ovat etuvokaaleja (front vowels), a, o ja u takavokaaleja (back vowels).
Pitääskö vääntää murtehella tähä jotai nii ristus notta ulukomaalaasten nupit menöö sekaasi :D
I was told that Finnish is one of the hardest languages too learn , this is what heard 👍
Watch the vid and you will find out
@@nigelwatson2750 The video has confirmed it .
@@susanw9630 Finnish has different levels on it, simplest is how kids talk then it gradually gets more complicated when you grow up, so it can be really easy on its simplest form.
most complex goes so far that even Finns have to think again to get it fully.
Impressive are you and the kids now fluent?
Our son is a bilingual native speaker. My wife always spoke Finnish with him from Day 1 - about 30 seconds after he was born - and I am not joking. I always spoke English to him. So he grew up learning two languages side by side. Maybe I should do a video on bilingualism?
Some Finnish language courses for immigrants first teach only the basic of form of verbs. A native speaker will understand sentences even without correct use of verbs. I took it as a sign that Finnish is a hard language to learn.
You actually pronounced more "äväin" and not "avain" as it should have. 😄 But I guess that biggest problems with pronouncing Finnish definitely relate to pronouncing vowels in the right way.
Yes, it works the other way too - hence Rally English
It's taken me 20 years & i still make mistakes😂
Niin minäkin
English people know how to say Ä when they say the word cat. The a in cat is the same as Ä.
As in Äiti - that's how I remember it
Hungarian (another Finno-ugric language) also has genderless personal pronouns. But they have more strictly defined gender roles.
English is the same family as Swedish so if its easier learn those letters first and then sound less gay(imagine a gay man"swe" and then a mans man"fin", has nothing to do with reality but fits perfectly when comparing languages even if the swedes are a bit gay and bad at hockey :D ) and much tougher when you use the letters in finnish. U O Å in Swe so Fin U = Swe O Fin O = Swe Å Fin KS = Swe X, like most of the letters are the same(Like Fin UO is similar to GER UO). It was a FinSwe that wrote down the language so they are pretty similar. Like search for your inner bear when you speak Fin. Then learn Turkuu, its simpler when you just add some letters to everything :D
For the Y, Fin Y = Swe Y. Yö is a bad word to learn the letter with, like take Yksi(much clearer in this word) or Yyteri(should help you find the sound because its only 1 sound) instead. Like in Yö the sounds melt together while with the t or k it breaks.
When you say Juhannus you need a longer n sound, its not a speed competition(heard the same thing when you said olemme, theres 2 m so use em both). Poriin you said both ii but you are too soft still(be the bear :D).
Overall you handle the language very well, I am not a linguist and a video can make things sound different. My point is that my mother tongue is FinSwe but I can go to Tampere and listen to them speak about Hurri's without them even knowing that they are speaking about me(The H word is a bit like the N word in USA if a white person says it). Learned it fluently after the age of 20 so its possible, I knew the language before that but any Fin speaking person would have noticed my FinSwe before that.
Swedes are bad at hockey. I am also very pleased that Porin Ässät have decided to change coach for next season. I take the point on Yö, but I love all the songs that feature this word. Like this one ua-cam.com/video/rP6Wi4K60hI/v-deo.html. Thanks so much for your help with pronunciation - going to work hard on the Karhu, rather than just drinking it. I love the aggressive rolling of the Rs that the Porilainen do. Thanks so much for your comment: Hyvä Suomi!
Is it similar to Hungarian?
Apparently - similar grammatical structure.
Like Nigel said grammatically, but would not be able to understand a word if I as a Finn were to listen. Only languages Finnish has mutual intelligibility with are Estonian, Ingrian, Veps & Karelian.
@@nigelwatson2750 thank you
@@xYarbx thank you
Karjalia - yes, we will drink it back, bottle by bottle. @@xYarbx
Are you sure that "Y" is pronounced "YÖ"? As long as I have heard Finnish and spoken Finnish I say say Y without "Ö"
Yö means night in Finnish -)
Yes, so it's written yö instead of y.@@nigelwatson2750
Years ago finnish eurosport reporter was interviewing Jesus Puras between rally stages. He said what's up Jesus, pronouncing his name same way you pronounce name of the Jesus Christ. Jesus said nothing, closed his window and drove away.
Onko suomalainen?
Is it hard? yes. Even this pre-prepared introduction contained grammatical errors
The basics might be easy to learn, but to get anywhere past intermediate level is extremely difficult. It requires and insane amount of dedicated work to learn Finnish to a level that it is in anyway usable with Finnish people or that you can understand even dumped down Finnish conversation
While the grammar is in a way kind of predictable and systematic, you have to be able to make dozens of grammatical adjustments even in a single basic sentence at a natural talking speed which is very fast for Finns, where as a non-native speaker will have to process it all, since unless they started learning the language as a child, this part will never become fully automatic and flawless
(Interestingly, due to the way Finnish language works, the understandability and enunciation doesn't suffer at all no matter how fast you speak.)
Not only does the Finnish language stack an insane amount of grammatical magic on top of each other to form very complex and long words, but we sometimes also alter the stem of the word as well and by making minor adjustments to the grammar, you can change word order to anything you wish.
However, while this insane flexibility comes naturally to Finns, it is insanely difficult to master as a non-native speaker. And even if you can get by without using most of this freedom and grammar-magic, not only will you sound like a toddler to Finns, but Finns use it all the time without even realizing it. This makes understanding naturally spoken Finnish extremely challenging for non-native speakers, since they are freely changing word order and grammar on the fly to suit their mood and the context of the conversation
It is very very very rare to hear a non-native Finnish speaker to speak even remotely passable Finnish that doesn't immediately want to make you switch to English, since it is so hard to understand what they are saying, since they are either messing up the grammatical cases or not using them at all, and are just using basic Finnish words without any grammatical cases.
It is not impossible ofc, but after the intermediate level it gets insanely hard and requires a lot of effort and proper language study to learn
0:45 Yes, this is because Finnish language is totally different from Latin and Germanic languages that the alphabet was made for, Finnish language is actually syllable based phonetic language (similar to Japanese hiragana), even though we do use letters to write it, we actually learn to read and write by splitting the words into these syllables (tavutus) and that is how we are actually pronouncing and using the language.
The alphabet was "forcibly" introduced into Finnish language by Michael Agricola and he had to make changes to make it work, but it is not a "natural" part of Finnish language at all
ps. I highly recommend getting some sort of stand for your camera, the shakiness is making me motion sick and have to watch the video in bursts and really takes away from the otherwise good quality of the video
I used to be a teacher - the main thing that affects learning is the motivation of the student. If they don't think that they'll do it, they won't.
True, motivation and interest are the most crucial parts in learning @@nigelwatson2750
Me olemme > Ollaan. Olen > Oon.
Do you speak Pori?
some, i have family in there.@@nigelwatson2750
@@nigelwatson2750 When i was for 2 weeks with these Pori dialect people, i started to speak fluent Pori dialect.
Coo when the lgbtq get started on Finnish pronouns 🤪 !
Very good - that got a laugh from me!
We don't do 'woke' in Pori.@@DitoCom