Learning Finnish: My First Steps

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.

[Torkmatic]

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.

[koomaj]

It is beautiful to see a talented linguist learning a new language. Cheers from Finland!

[TheErorr]

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.

[MikkoRantalainen]

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.

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!

[okaro]

"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.

[Rubbaduk]

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").

[Sidni]

Branching out of Indo-European into the Uralic languages. Really cool.

[corinna]

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.

[robinviden]

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”).

[davidmcdonald]

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.

[ElekhtroLT]

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.

[Mrrafngard]

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."

[laurheik]

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.

[dumvivimus]

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.

[Fat-Gnome]

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.

[ksbrook]

Modelling life-long learning. 🙂

Appreciate the discussion on learning Finnish and points to be aware of.

[thomashaapalainen]

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.

[dasmysteryman]

There should be a video playlist about Jackson's adventures abroad and it should be called "Jackson Crawford's Nordic Saga".

[sunshinesilverarrow]

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