Introduction to Finnish Grammar

A brief overview of the grammar of Finnish. In this video I’ll go through the central pieces of Finnish grammar—phonological processes, case inflection, verbal forms, word order and much more—to give you an understanding and a feeling for how Finnish grammar functions on a more systematic level. After watching this, you should be well prepared to take on the more specific details of Finnish grammar in your further studies!

ERRATA
- At 01:29, the 'e' in 'tulevaisuus' should be colored gold, as it's a neutral and not a back vowel.
- At 12:37, one negative form is given as 'tietä'. This should of course be 'tiedä', like the rest of them.
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CREDITS
‘Forest silhouette’ image by Freepik

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FOLLOW / SUPPORT
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:23 Phonological features of grammar
00:33 Vowel harmony
01:58 Consonant gradation
04:01 Overall structure
05:23 Features of Finnish grammar
05:54 The case system
07:33 Telicity (accusative vs partitive)
09:18 Word order
10:40 Possessive suffixes
11:16 Prepositions/Postpositions
11:38 Verbal conjugation
12:04 The negative verb
12:44 "Compact" verb forms
14:04 Enclitic particles (-ko, -pa, -kin)
14:48 Written vs spoken language

[jereseilo]

Why am I watching this. I'm a native speaker

[blueoceancorporations]

The lack of gender in finnish language once lead to a funny situation for me once when I read a book that was originally written in english. I read the entire book without realizing that one character was female...

[jonikyro]

How to speak finnish
1. Learn finnish words
2. Speak engilsh like a yoda
3. Convert the yoda english to finnish words

[TheNikzrrr]

Your pronounciation is the best for a foreign person I have ever heard!!

[ember_falls]

you know the language is complicated when native speakers learn new things from videos like this

[aleksituononen]

Your pronunciation was good for foreing

[benvanzon]

Almost six years ago already...
I really hope you come back with more videos on Finnish and Sámi, they're so well done and easy to follow!

[crossroads]

Two things.
1. I'm a native Finn but this video taught me more about our grammar than 10 years of school.
2. Your pronunciation is amazing. Best I've ever heard a foreigner do.

[Torsteen-pd]

Finnish is a fun language for a native speaker, because the grammar is so flexible. The written language tends to glue words together and prefers endings to separate words when pointing out a quality or circumstance, but colloquial Finnish again tends to work more similarly to Indo-European languages (understandable due to the historical influence of Swedish and German).

Then, like in the national epic of Finland, Kalevala, there are also forms of poetic Finnish, meaning you can change the words and in some cases even grammar to imply an art form. This is of course used in poems and songs.

Some examples of this:
"(someone) wants" in Finnish is "haluaa", but has a poetic form "halajaa"
"Don't" in Finnish is "älä", but has a poetic form "ällös"
"Battle" in Finnish is "taistelu", but has a poetic form "taisto"
"to forget" in Finnish is "unohtaa", but has a poetic form "unhottaa"
"a thought" in Finnish is "ajatus", but has a poetic form "aatos"

These poetic versions of words are usually word variations from old dialects, words that have otherwise fallen out of use or have changed, but due to their presence in poetry and song have become words still used but only in that context.

[diegosilva]

CONTINUE THIS SERIES PLEASE :(

I'm a brazilian and it's hard to find a video teaching finnish as didatic as yours

[botvirus]

4:30
Katsotko venettämmekin?
= Will you look at our boat, too?
= Do you look at our boat, too?
= Are you looking at our boat, too?
---> The clitic "-ko" isn't related to the future tense. It's related to question (I think).

Anyway

As a native Finnish speaker I can say that this one of the best videos about Finnish I have ever seen. Good job!

[rzeka]

The pseudo-english examples help a lot for me, thanks

[einienj]

There's things, that even I didn't know.. And I've spoken it about 35years.. :)

[fmmsavesyourmom]

Your color coding makes the prefixes and suffixes of the words very easy to understand. It's only semi-comparable to finnish, but I wish I had something like that while studying with the Wheelock's Latin book.

[wolfish-berry]

I always wondered why consonant gradation is the way it is. Every Finn I've talked to doesn't even know. So thank you for explaining this. It helps a lot!

[shagbarelads]

me: *has a single finnish friend*

YouTube: hey wanna learn finnish even though all your friends can speak and write in extremely fluent English

[ucanihl]

The example sentence at 4:50 can be translated as "Botumuzada bakacakmısın?" in turkish. Although formal spelling rules dictates that it should be written like "Botumuza da bakacak mısın?", those seperated words are not words alone but are suffixes. If we translate it back to pseudo-english it will be "BoatOurAtToo LookWillYou?".

[sunterry]

Your pronunciation is stellar for a foreign speaker!

[MCmedia]

Im finnish thinking I could never learn this

[jerrimenard]

It reminds me of some Native American Languages here. I can read more Finnish then I can speak at this point. That's why videos like this are important. I need to hear it used by a native speaker.
Another trick I have learned to help grasp Finnish is to watch interviews. I like music and art so I look up documentary or news stories where people are being asked questions that you may hear everyday about the work they do.
How was your trip?
Did you have anything to eat?
Are you going to be done soon?
That is much better then some of the books we have here in the States. One I bought kept going on about feeding nuts to chipmunks or something. A whole chapter was about some guy named Kari having a tummy ache.