Why Finnish Is One of The EASIEST Language [7 Reasons]

Is Finnish really that hard? Many Finnish learners stumble and struggle with the complexity. However, many things make Finnis actually an easy language compared to others. Today, we will find those out.

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[jopeteus]

Finnish is pronounced exactly like it's written. It can't get any easier than that

[overse]

As a serb who's main language has 7 cases, gendered nouns, a lot of tenses and a special vocal change system, i have to say that this video really encouraged me to start learning

[Shckmaster]

I've been using Dualingo to get my head around the fundamentals of Finnish. Despite their very strange sentence structure of the examples they use, I can now at least introduce myself in Finnish and recognise a lot more words when I hear it spoken aloud. Kiitos for another great video mate.

[haelidh]

I studied Finnish many years ago. Getting started was difficult, because the grammar is so different from Indo-European languages and I had to wrap my head around that. It was also difficult to get started with the vocabulary, because many of the root words could not be related to any other word that I already knew.
But once I got past that, it was actually very easy. The grammar is very regular and if you know some basic vocabulary, many difficult words are based on the same roots and easy to learn. :-)

[watermelon]

Hi Aleksi, very good! I'm Hungarian and we have the same problem - the language comes at you quite scary first, just to say a simple sentence you have to know so many endings, rules etc. But Finnish and Hungarian are "grateful" languages: once you have learnt the rules, the language will keep them, and after some time you just need to learn new words. We also write what we say, no gender, present tense is used for future etc.
This is such an honest and helpful video, exactly what we like about Finns!

[nataliem]

I love the "Finnish no bullshit attitude"!👍👍👍👏👏👏

This has been a really helpful video - kiitos, Aleksi!🎉

[Kuutamon]

I started studying Finnish last year October when I left Suomi, and I felt instant koti-ikävä.
Now I returned two weeks ago and practiced speaking and it feels so good to understand stuff and to be able to talk a few basic sentences. Especially I really love how people felt touched that I am learning their language :)
Tosi hyvä video! Pidän!

[ainyc]

It’s my dream to learn Finnish. Since I first heard this language many years ago I felt like it’s my lost long forgotten native language. I can’t explain the feeling. But the peace and love that I feel listening to it is unbelievable. P.S I’m Serbian

[bro-yqhj]

Finnish language is hard not because it has any hard words, grammar, etc.
-There are only ~~6 million people in the world whose speak it - it's hard to find a friend for having conversations, practice (I mean FOR SPEAKING, not for having lessons)
-It's very hard to find a Finnish movie/cartoons - For example, in yle areena a lot of movies are blocked outside Finland.
-2 languages in 1. Even Finnish government says, that this is a problem. Like, "for old and very young fins is hard to understand fast Puhekieli".

That's what I noticed while been learning it.

[mariajosemartinez]

As a spaniard I would like to add that most of the sounds are easy to pronounce. Not all of them, but I think it's an easy language to speak if you are a spanish speaker, just when it comes to pronunciation of course.

[miaow]

I've been learning Finnish for a couple of years and I absolutely love it. Several features that make it easy to learn:

1) *REGULARITY* . However complex the Finnish grammar is, it is in fact exceedingly regular and predictable. Whichever exceptions may be there in the inflections of nouns, verbs, syntax, etc. are very few.

2) *VIRTUALLY 100% TRANSPARENT SPELLING*, as you said. Every single letter is always pronounced, 1 letter = 1 sound, and it's always pronounced in precisely the same way. This is cross-linguistically a very rare feature (not even Slavic languages have this transparent spelling) and facilitates learning enormously.

3) *REGULAR WORD STRESS* . Finnish always has stress on the 1st syllable of the word (if it's a compound word, then the primary stress is always on the first syllable of each of the component words). Again, this makes learning 200% easier – 500% easier if you compare it with English. (:D)

4) *NO ARTICLES & NO GENDER*, as you have aptly said.

5) *FEW CROSS-LINGUISTICALLY RARE SOUNDS* . Finnish only has a couple of rare phonemes — essentially only those behind the Finnish "y" and "ö" are rather rare; the other sounds of the Finnish phonological inventory are pretty common and therefore don't pose too much of a challenge for learners of Finnish.

So far, there have been only 2 things about Finnish that are really challenging — because they're unpredictable:

1) the so-called rections (= a phenomenon whereby a specific noun or verb requires its related word, like a noun or adjective, to be in a specific word case, but it doesn't necessarily have any meaningful reason — for example, the Finnish way of saying "I like it" is basically "I like away from it"; or, "this sounds interesting" is basically "this sounds off interesting"; or, "nice to meet you" in Finnish is basically "nice to meet into you") — you simply have to memorise which nouns and verbs require which rections;

2) the object cases — the object in Finnish can be either in nominative, genitive, accusative, or partitive, and there are complex rules underlying the correct choice of the object case (and it is even intertwined with rections, so that in many scenarios, everything suggests that the object should be in genitive but no, it will be in partitive because the verb is one of those that require its object to be in partitive, according to rections).

[movierepeater]

As a native Chinese speaker, I think Finnish has a lot similarities with Chinese, in Chinese language there is no time tense too and also a character could usually have at least two or more meanings depending on situation. Thank you, this video boost my courage to learn Finnish.

[Xoruam]

Having finished Japanese major, it's interesting to see some similarities between Japanese and Finnish.
Lack of gendered nouns is one thing, but the Aorist/Present-future tense, as well as the agglutinative nature of the language.

The example with Studying/Studying tomorrow can be transcribed almost word for word, as
Benkyou Suru = (is) studying (lit. (is) doing study)
Ashita Benkyou Suru = Tomorrow (will be) studying (lit. Tomorrow (will be) doing study)

I wonder if Finnish is as regular as Japanese, though. I absolutely love Japanese for its regularity, where, as long as you know a suffix and how to identify consonant/vowel verbs, you can mix and match any suffix with almost any verb, and in most cases it should be correct grammar.

[FinGreek]

The truth is that the Finnish language isn't hard. The hard point is to understand the language. But first...what language? Kirjakieli, puhe kieli, mure? I study Finnish about a year at Rovaniemi. At the school we learn from Suomen Mestari but in my opinion- ans some teachers opinion also- isn't a good book. When you go out for work, the spoken Finnish is at 50% different. For example the "partitiivi" that used only in Finnish and German language. The total different is the Finnish people. Finnish people are happy when see you that try to speak, and also are very polite. And as we can say, when there is a will, there is a way. When i came to Finland i went to Ajovarma to register my car. The lady at the service she doesn't speak English at all. I left the office after half an hour, totally satisfied and happy. Aleksi as you said in a an old video, the Finnish language is a language that you must learn with your heart. I'm absolutely satisfied for my choose to come to Finland, and thank's again for your help. P.S verbi syödä, mme ja tte se on painvastoin :)

[teijaflink]

I'm boen in Sweden but my first language is Finnish so it comes naturally to me. When starting to learn other languages in school I always found the gendered words difficult and specially with German, I just can't with that language. I love that Finnish is so logical even if I never have had to really think about that as it's the first language I spoke. Many outsider find Finnish difficult because it's so different but it probably will help when you start realising how logical it is.

[syamakosha]

I love the idea that the first "layer" is more difficult than those which go after❤ That sounds encouraging. I'm on the way to A1 and studying is painful at times😫

[rygd]

As a native Spanish speaker (Dominican 🇩🇴), I think is a Lot easier for me to learn Finnish. BTW, your channel is super awesome and usefull.

[serdip]

Paljon kiitos tälle videolle. Luulen että Suomea on varmasti vaikea kieli mutta se on myös niin kaunis ja mielenkiintoinen. Anteeksi minulle for making so many mistakes! 😊

[trianapark]

I studied a lot of languages, but Finnish my favorite one. I obsess about finnish culture and especially nature, but more I obsess about pronunciation and a such softness in talking of language. Hope maybe one day I visit Finland for practice in language.
With love from Ukraine 🥰

[troybastman]

I grew up from the upper peninsula of Michigan where we had a lot of Finnish people. I am half Finnish. I am glad to hear the language from you!