Hey guys! Thanks for the views (100k???) and the comments so far! A couple of things that skipped my attention (big shout-out to the viewers who spotted them!): - "leipä" (bread) does not "derive from" but rather is "related to" Russian, as they both borrowed from the same ancient source. The main point here, though, is its similarity with other languages, rather than its etymology. - there's a "u" missing in "makuhuone" (bedroom), the correct spelling being "makuuhuone". Sorry for the inaccuracy there!
I've picked out some tongue twisters that finnish kids use when learning to pronounce the R and S "properly". For practicing S: Vesihiisi sihisi hississä For practicing R: Ärrän kierrän ympäri orren ässän pistän taskuun Also as a bonus a small finnish conversation about bonfire - Kokko, kokoo kokoon koko kokko. - Koko kokkoko? - Koko kokko. Also have you heard about the use of "No niin" heres a link to Ismo Leikola, finnish comedian who talks about the use of No niin th-cam.com/video/9EWMlCusxjQ/w-d-xo.html
There's Roman Schatz and that theater director whose name escapes me. Schatz does the "maamme-kirja" radio show (or at least used to do, if not anynore)
But Finnish children learn Finnish very easily, and they also learn to read and write in a flash at school. Many already can read and write when going to start the school.
For some reason, Finnish language is considered difficult based on some internet forums and social media discussions. No language itself is difficult to learn - that is just pure mumbo jumbo. Hence, it is just false argumentation to state that Finnish is one of the hardest languages for an English speaker to learn. Same myth: one 'cannot' learn mathemathics because math is difficult and it sucks. That just depends on one's own goals and attitude to the subject. It has nothing to do that some matters in life are more difficult to learn that others. Everyone can learn whatever they want; naturally, some of the people are more talented or intellegent -> some students gain results easier and quicklier with lesser efforts than most. Of course, a good and inspiring teacher can change a lot in language learning, for example.
it's interesting to see an outsider's point of view of the finnish language. So many rules and everything that a native speaker doesn't even think about when speaking. also, your pronounciation is hella good for a foreigner
Thanks so much for your interest and your comment! And believe me when I say that what I discussed in the video is just a fraction of what you have to be aware of when speaking Finnish as a foreigner xD But the cool thing is that it's possible, and that it's such a beautiful language that all the hard work really pays off :) Kiitos ja toivottavasti nähdään pian taas!
I was about to comment too that for a foreigner your pronounciaton is very good, most of the times foreigners speaking finish have a very strong accent
As a Finnish teacher I never talk to my students about how difficult Finnish is. Of course there are a lot of rules to study in the beginning, but after that learning gets easier. The beauty of Finnish is that there are so few irregularities. Once you learn the rules they apply always.Thank you for a professional, clear and easy to follow video!
What we are not taught enough of in Finnish lessons is sentence structures. There is a lot of focus on cases and even vocabulary, but combining those into actual sentences is where I think a lot of students struggle, because they don't have a sense of what order concepts might have in a sentence or the types of sentence. As an example, noun phrases in Finnish can be very heavy, and very front heavy too, such that identifying the main verb in a sentence can actually be quite difficult, though that is usually with written Finnish rather than spoken. I think it would be very useful to teach from the beginning the kind of filler stuff and how you pop those into sentences, thinks like totta kai or niinpä etc. In English, you might get start a conversation with things like 'the funny thing is....', or 'I was just wondering....', etc. They are kind of signposts that communicate your linguistic intentions, and being able to see how those things work in Finnish would be very useful, but I just don't see them taught in any systematic way.
@@512Squared Hey, you could flip coin with every word placing and just randomize word order and probably would be understood. ball kick goal vs kick ball goal. placing object to wrong place in sentence could make it confusing, but still understandable. With added context where sentence is used, more so.
@Sinä osaat! Suomen kieltä kaikille Mulla on espanjankielinen tyttöystävä joka kovasti haluaisi oppia suomea. Vaikka oon itse aika perfektionisti, ehkä vähän asperger jopa, ja selitän aika tarkasti sanojen etymologiat, ottaen huomioon jokaisessa selityksessä ne muutkin vaihtoehdot/poikkeukset ja siinä mielessä selitän asiat kokonaisvaltaisesti enkä siis yhtä yksittäistä asiaa kerrallaan, ei mulla kuitenkaan ole mitään pedagogista koulutusta, joten haluaisin löytää hänelle hyviä resursseja ja opettajia, jotka osaavat selittää asiat perusteellisesti ja ennenkaikkea kokonaisvaltaisesti. Pystytkö auttamaan tässä tavoitteessani?
The big problem when learning Finnish is having teachers being natives. They usually don't get where foreigners struggle... I didn't know what cases were (ablative etc) and several times i got teachers talking about cases like if it was an obvious thing...
I was born in Finland but my family moved to Canada when I was two. We lived in a Finnish enclave and in 50 years, my parents never learned to speak English. The changes (and lack of changes) to the language are interesting. I speak a dialect of central osteobothnia frozen in the late 50s combined with inclusion of English words - termed "Finliska", spoken by children of 1st generation immigrants in Canada and the United states. It is deemed "quaint" by Finnish listeners and attracts puzzlement and curiosity from the normally stoic Finns on trains and in restaurants. Thank you for an interesting video.
We live on a farm near Lake Thunderbird in central Oklahoma. A couple of years ago, I took off work for a heart scan at a clinic in Norman, a town not far to the south. In the waiting room, I overheard a middle-aged woman and an old woman speaking in Finnish. My wife had to grab my arm to keep me from going over and disturbing them with excited questions. It's amazing to unexpectedly hear spoken nearby a language that I've studied. I have several times even overheard tribal elders conversing in native-fluent Choctaw.
There Are somany Good TH-camrs to watch - so the suomi IS getting easier to learn ! You need just to listen like a " kid " - and You learn by time ! Start today - so already tomorrow You look much SMARTER !
The spruce is on fire = Kuusi palaa The spruce returns = Kuusi palaa The number six is on fire = Kuusi palaa The number six returns = Kuusi palaa Six of them are on fire = Kuusi palaa Six of them returns = Kuusi palaa Your moon is on fire = Kuusi palaa Your moon returns = Kuusi palaa Six pieces = Kuusi palaa Well
Great video. The reason why Finns have no trouble understanding "bad Finnish" is because the word positions aren't set in stone. ("Kiveen hakattu" would be the Finnish equivalent.) For example lets translate: "The word order isn't set in stone." You can say the following: Sanajärjestys ei ole kiveen hakattu. Ei sanajärjestys ole kiveen hakattu. Ei ole sanajärjestys kiveen hakattu. Kiveen ei ole sanajärjestys hakattu. Hakattu ei ole kiveen sanajärjestys. Ei kiveen ole sanajärjestys hakattu. And so on. Even when you try to make the weirdest possible order like "Ole ei sanajärjestys hakattu kiveen" it still makes enough sense to be understood.
I began learning Finnish in 1983 and it's been a lifelong pursuit. My paternal heritage is Finnish and I knew that I was privileged to be in Finland and had the great opportunity to learn about my ancestor's culture and language and so I really dedicated myself to the task. Even though Finnish is difficult I found I learned best as I mimicked how the Finns themselves spoke. After 18 months when my time in Finland was over, I felt very fluent and comfortable with the language. I could carry on a conversation on any topic and enjoyed constantly increasing my vocabulary. I found that I didn't worry so much about all the grammar and the rules, but instead, just listened to how the Finns spoke and tried my best to emulate them. It has been 36 years since I began learning the language and, living in Western Canada there are not many opportunities to speak Finnish. So, I listen to Finnish every day. I repeat in my mind what I am hearing. If I'm alone I repeat it out loud. I find myself translating things in my head. I always wonder how would you say that in Finnish. The biggest hurdle I encountered with learning Finnish was that my mother tongue is English and English tends to be very descriptive. Finnish is not nearly as descriptive so I had to really concentrate on being less "talky" and getting to the point quicker. My wife and I along with my two brothers and their spouses travelled to Finland for a Family History Tour this past summer 2018 and although I haven't spoken much Finnish for the past 36 years I was pleasantly surprised how I was able to converse and speak. I still think that most Finns speak better English than I do Finnish my Finnish friends would always default to speaking Finnish and I would have to translate for my family. What a great opportunity to have my family (who don't speak Finnish) with me in our Ancestral Homeland to experience the culture and people that I had grown to love. I once saw a post on Facebook that read, "I speak Finnish, what's your Superpower"?
"I speak Finnish, what's your Superpower", I have seen claims that reading or talking about unfamiliar topics in Finnish is easier than in other languages because words are often delivered from related words. That could be considered an advantage if there was more content in Finnish. book = kirja letter = kirje typeface/font = kirjasin to write = kirjoittaa literature = kirjallisuus library = kirjasto scribe = kirjuri envelope = kirjekuori (compound word from letter and shell/casing/skin/crust. In spoke language short form "kuori" is possible if we assume meaning is unambiguous from context) desk = kirjoituspöytä (compound word from to writing and table. Desk could be translated to different words if primary purpose is not writing and reading. Short form "pöytä" is possible like for envelope) typewriter = kirjoituskone (compound word from writing and machine. Again short form "kone" possible but would now days be likely interpreted as a computer or as we say the knowledge machine)
Craig Mäki - you describe the superpower of having learned the universal strategy for learning any language. Kudos! I feel knowing Finnish is my superpower, too, I just didn't have that excellent term for it! I am happy that you've found Finnish so rewarding!
Nice maybe we are relatives as i have had relatives moving in both US and Canada back in early 1800's. The way i learned English is simply from watching TV and playing games when i was a kid, so in a way it was similar strategy what you used learning Finnish. Just listen and try to repeat, i was actually pretty good with word tests when English started in 3rd grade because of this. Now after 20 years or so English is more or less my 2nd language(sorry Sweden i still can't understand you at all), i can watch everything without need of subtitles and read anything. It is extremely rare to encounter terms or words that i do not know or understand, but thanks to silent letters i do need to sometimes use translator to get typing right.
As a Finnish person, I must say that your pronunciation is very impressive, and probably the best I've ever heard from a foreigner. You'd easily pass as native Finn.
You must listen to Kari Tapio - Olen suomalainen - Video on TH-cam ! That IS a Song that everybody on Italy know by some other name ? Take a SEAT - and listen !
An amusing story about Finnish. My ancestors came from Finland to America in the late 1800's. Living in the wilderness of Upper Michigan our language was preserved as everybody in our little village spoke Finnish. When the airplane was invented, American Finns coined the word 'ilmalaiva' for it, while in Finland they coined the word 'lentokone' for it. But when the TV was invented, Finland simply called it 'televisio', while in America we called it 'nakyradio'. LOL When I visited Finland people would smile and say my Finnish, while fluent, sounded like I stepped out of a time machine.
Well it can mean many things depending on the context and dialect. Finnish is one of those languages which written form is actually just combination of 3 different languages (in Finnish case those are german, Latin and Swedish) and Finnish written language is different from vocal language, that's why context is VERY important in Finnish and saying correct words in wrong context can cause confusion. For example "Vedin hirsiä verstaalla" translates "I was sleeping in the cabin while" where "Vedin puu hirsiä verstaalla" means "I was pulling wood logs at the cabin". In Finnish, hirsi means log but also translates to sleeping, so adding word "puu" which means wood or tree will change the context of double words. oh and if you are wondering how verstaalla can mean both at the cabin and in the cabin the explanation is simple, in Finnish propositions are required only when context requires it or you wish to do so. If context itself doesn't require proposition, you can leave it out if you like
- Vetelin pulkkaa (eli jotain muuta) - Vetelin Kerttua (sitä ihtiään) - Vetelin Kyösti ja Rainer (terveisiä) - Vetelin (Vetelä, Vetelämpi, Vetelin) Voisin vedellä tähän lisääkin mutta you got the point.
Suomen kieltä on kivaa mutta todella vaikea. Toivon että tulevaisuudessa voin puhua hyvin. Minä tarvitsen harjoitella lisää Koska puhe kieli ja kirja kieli on eri ja suomalaiset puhuvat nopeasti. Katsotaan tulevaisuudessa. Minua pelotta tehdä väärin
Not bad at all. Easily understandable. Few grammar mistakes, but that doesn't disturb me. Like the first sentence: Suomen kieli on kiva, mutta vaikea. Or: Suomen kieli on kivaa, mutta vaikeaa. Second sentence is good, but I would say: Toivottavasti voin puhua hyvin tulevaisuudessa. Third sentence: Minun täytyy harjoitella lisää, koska puhekieli ja kirjakieli ovat erilaisia ja suomalaiset puhuvat nopeasti. Fourth sentence: perfect :-)
@@MrDefaulttiyes I need help 💪☺ you are my angel. Kyllä, olen Illoinen mutta en tiedä miten voidaan tehdä koska minä asun Forssassa ja se on kauan, ehkä sinä asut Helsingissä?
You pronunciation is amazing! We don't often get to hear our language spoken that clearly by a non-native speaker, thank you. Especially your "ä" sound, people have a hard time with that.
@@kisalli This is true. Especially Slavic people tend to pronounce it as an "i", as their y is just a slightly differently pronounced "i" (at least to me!). People also have problems pronouncing the long vocals, as one can hear when a Finnish person tries to imitate foreigners.
Great video! A surface-level view to the Finnish language, but covers many important aspects, and you got all your facts right. Your Finnish pronunciation is also excellent.
I was many years without wanting to learn Finnish, simply because it sounded boring and because many spoke English. Then I change my attitude and I wanted to really work and be part of the Finnish society. I learnt the language in just two years and that was the best i ve done in this country. My life became easier as the language is the key to success in the long term.
I found it interesting that once you started speaking finnish in this video you started to pronounce some words in english with a finnish accent. You really are a language master.
Moi! Just found this video, amazing! I'm Brazilian and i am studying Finnish . I am loving it. I have two Finns friends, they help me a lot, sending me materials, hearing my pronounciation, writing me in Finnish...really really kind people. Thank you so much for this video! I will be always here to learn with you too. Kiitos! Moikka!
Sun suomen kielen lausuminen on todella todella hyvää! ^_^ On todella harvinaista, että ei-syntyperäinen suomalainen lausuu noin hyvin. Yleensä suomalaiset erottaa heti äänestä, jos puhuja ei ole syntyperäinen. Jopa suomenruotsalaisten puheessa kuulee vivahde-eron. Mutta sun lausuminen on todella lähellä täydellisyyttä! Voit olla todella ylpeä sun taidoista! :) Kiitos inspiroivista videoista!
Samaa mieltä, erittäin hyvää ääntämistä. Suurin virhe mun korvaan oli "pankki", missä tapahtui yleinen virhe, eli lausuttu kuin "panki". Tuplakonsonantin ääntäminen tuntuu olevan vaikeaa ulkomaalaisille, ja oon itte koittanu opettaa sen niin että pitää lyhyen tauon siinä välissä, mutta niin että melkein nielaisee ensimmäisen konsonantin pois. Esim tässä tapauksessa olisi että "pan(g) -ki".
I lived in Finland for one year when I was 28 and I did manage to learn to speak pretty well. I went to the university in Helsinki 3 times a week and lived with a Finnish family who didn't speak any English. Total immersion! Yes, Finnish is difficult, no getting away from that. But there is a certain order to the language that you pick up as you're learning. And I 100% agree that the Finns are terrific! They WILL help you!! I made lots of mistakes, and some of those mistakes were hilarious, but they gently corrected me and I would learn. So I would like to say to the Finnish people - Kiitos kaikesta!!! Maanne on kaunista!
Your accent is perfect. So rarely we get to hear such mastery of the flatness. There's no extra "h" sound that usually pushes through. Great job! I mean it!
I live in Finland, moved here 3 years ago, and I so agree with all your said. It's difficult to understand when people are speaking to me using their spoken language, while I understand when I read things in written language, but little by little it get easier to understand. When finnish people speak to me, and they know that I don't understand murre so much, then they speak slowly and they use words than I understand, but when they don't know than i don't understand murre it gets complicated. Hopefully one day I'll fully understand 😱 great video! My Italian family and friends often ask me how is it possible that I still don't speak fluently finnish after 3 years, next time it happens I'll show them this video
Hi Valentina, thank you so much for your comment and for sharing your experience! I was in that phase as well, it's perfectly normal when you've learnt written Finnish (as everybody does) but you face "puhekieli". As you confirmed, it gets clearer little by little. One day you will find yourself using those structures without even noticing :) Keep going!
linguaEpassione non in effetti quel libro non lo conosco, gli darò un occhiata, grazie :) si chattando e parlando piano piano sta andando meglio, serve tempo e costanza
Treat spoken language as a separate language. It's probably easier that way. Written Finnish is supposed to be logical and verbose "ideal Finnish", spoken Finnish is just lazy, often drunk Finns muttering whatever using the least amount of syllables possible.
Oh, how pleasant it is to hear you talking in fluent English - and then switch it to smoooooth Finnish! Your Finnish pronunciation is quite beautiful and very pleasant to listen. You have done a great job and how nice of you to share your views and knowledge of Finnish language to help others. 👏🏻😄 It is also interesting to us, who speak Finnish as a native tongue, to see how Finnish language is viewed by others. I have always thought that one of the perks of Finnish language is that words are pronounced as they are written, there is no silent letters or rules that some vowels should be pronounced in different way after some consonants etc. It is very honest language in that regard. 😊 Hope you are well! Happy summer! ☀️😎
I think a big reason why you're getting so many compliments on your pronunciation is that the stress and pitch and the relative lengths of the vowels and consonants sound *completely* natural and I'm having a hard time finding any foreign influence there. Usually when people learn languages they focus on grammar and the phonemes, but as a Finn I'm sure I make grammar mistakes all the time and lately I've come to think that there's probably quite a lot of acceptable variation in how you pronounce consonants and vowels. However, messing up the stress and pitch is almost immediately noticeable and I'm not sure that language learning resources generally put enough emphasis on that aspect of pronunciation.
Well, kiitos for one of the best compliments I've received in here, oon sanaton... It's true they don't put enough emphasis on that aspect, that's probably because it's so difficult to assess, while people (and schools, etc.) usually want gradable results.
Finnish has a lot of grammar but it's regular, there's not many exceptions. And it's pronounced as written and of course, lots of vowels that help in pronunciation. Your pronunciation is good!
@@linguaEpassione Computers were created in the U.S. in the 1940s to do calculations. These were done by people whose professional title was "computer". They created an electronic version and called it "electronic computer" which later was shortened just to "computer." When computers were introduced to Finland in the late 50s early 60s the focus had switched to processing large amounts of data instead of raw calculations. This division between super computers and mainframes still exist. The first computer was installed in a bank in 1958 and its first uses was to enable paying wages directly to bank accounts. As I understand Americans still handle pay checks.
Finnish people appreciate anyone taking the effort to learn finnish, because for a finnish person it's as difficult to learn other languages. Then again modern day finns often speak many languages, because when you learn one foreign language, learning a second one gets easier. Finnish is a logical language and my studies in philosophy of religion did make it apparent to me that finnish can be used to express things very precisely where other languages may result in long, complex sentences. While finnish words can be long, sentences can be one word. Translating sentences to finnish often makes them shorter and translating sentences from finnish makes them longer. As a songwriter finnish is a good language for expression as sentences can be packed with meaning and different interpretations, and creating all new words and meanings by combining words is also possible in a way that is still understandable to others. Finnish language has a lot of word play and rhymes and we even have our own measure for poems, the Kalevala-mitta :)
Finns are actually quite good at learning other languages when compared to many other countries. Maybe it's the educational system, or maybe it's the drive to make ourselves understood because hardly anyone out of 7 billion people on Earth understands Finnish.
I think we Finns are also exposed to lot of languages and that helps us learn them. For example the TV shows are not dubbed (unless they are for small children). From there we hear languages like Spanish, German, French and so on... A portion of our citizens use Swedish (our second official language) as their main language and we hear it all the time during our lives. From very young age we are dealing with English in TV, movies, music and on the internet and we start to learn it in school at around 9 years of age. Being exposed to a language, hearing it and actually trying to use it always makes learning a new language easier and us Finns are very well exposed, I'd say!
And if someone instructs or corrects a person learning Finnish, it is actually only a compliment (you are doing WELL, you have hope ;). Certainly not to strike down or to say "aha! this is what you still got wrong!", rather revealing whatever still remains secret or unknown, what would be the logical linear next step to comprehend, or just to provide examples to certify that whatever has thus far been learned, is indeed correct. Nice video.
Thanks for a great video! I think it's little bit funny how when you said "tapaamme" you had a slight accent but right after when you said "tavataan", you said it like any native speaker. Really shows how we prefer "tavataan" over "tapaamme", when foreigners are able to learn to say the first one without an accent but not the later.
Wonderful, thank you. I love the Finnish language even though I don't speak or understand it, except for a couple words. Some of the vowels are similar to Hungarian, (Finno-UGRIC, duh). I met the group Värttinä when my band opened for them way back in the 90s in Chicago and ever since then when I hear Finnish I recognize it and listen carefully. I may even want to be a Finn in my next life.
Todella hyvin puhuttu. Olen itse kyllä syntynyt suomessa, mutta vanhempani ovat intiasta. Mutta en voinut edes kuvitella, kuinka hyvä aksentti sinulla on ja otit vastaan yhen maailman vaikeimmista kielistä. BRAVO!
A huge thing is what the vowel harmony, as in words are written and spoken the exact same way. Finns find this when they study Japanese. A vowel is always the same. A is a, e is e, it's always the same. If you understand vowel harmony, you can read Finnish text out loud properly without even knowing a word of Finnish. When the rule sinks into you, learning and understanding it becomes much easier.
I'm not even 7 minutes in, and I already think this is the best brief explanation on Finnish that I've ever seen. BTW, consonant gradation is something that children born in Finland may struggle with some words. Mine don't get some fairly easy ones right because they're confused by other similar words working seemingly in a different way.
Thank you so much! Yep, I know, I also witnessed some very funny "mistakes" by children such as: - Parent: "Tää on miehen nimi", - Child: "Ah, sitten tää on miehi!" :D
Holy shit this is cool. I'd like to see you exploring the finnish language further and especially some of the extra-hard or unusual rules which this language has :)
I like Finnish because it retains words so well. For example "kuningas" "kuningaz*" in Proto-Germanic which means "king"; or "kampa", PG "kampaz", "comb". Proto-Germanic was spoken thousands of years ago and look how well these words have kept their shape!
One must remember that proto-languages are reconstructed and always come with a certain amount of uncertainty. Ie. we have no written records or audio recordings of these.
It's eye opening to see the obstacles that us native speakers just about never even think of, but you can clearly hear these difficulties when listening to some non native finnish speaker :) Keep it up! (also excellent pronunciation!) Will be sharing this to my dutch friend who is thinking about moving to Finland :)
Instead of "ilman Stefanoa", you can also say "Stefanotta". Which one you use depends a lot on context. A cake baked without milk would usually be "maidoton kakku", whereas if you were going to a dinner without a spouse it would more usually be "ilman a". Also, as to the shortening of words (makuuhuone -> makkari etc), there's a lot of different ways for shortening words in local dialects all over Finland, so we might not even understand each other all the time. :)
Kiitos Niko mielenkiintoisesta kommentista!! Musta tuntuu että nykyään abessiivi (eli -tta/ttä) ei enää käytetä kuin tietyille imaisuille kuten esim. "ongelmitta", "vaivatta", "maksutta" jne sekä tietenkin verbien kanssa niin kuin "sanomatta mitään", "ajattelematta", "olla olematta" ja niin pois päin. Mut et suurin osa ajasta ihmiset käyttää "ilman" paljon enemmän kuin -tta/ttä.
Excellent analysis!! Your pronunciation is also exceptionally good. I do agree (and feel it isn't stressed enough in the teaching context) with your point about the discrepancies between spoken and written language. Your examples were somewhat tame, though, but I guess that was intentional just to get the point across. I'd imagine there is a lot of trouble ahead when you get involved with regional dialects, as something as trivial as "menemmekö me tuonne juoksemaan?" becomes "mennääks me ton juoksee?" in various dialects. Keep up the good work!!
Thank you SO much, Verneri! I swear I would give your comment 80 thumbs up if I could. The puhekieli vs. kirjakieli thing is so much deeper than what I touched upon in this video, and I agree with you that my examples were reeeeally weak here :D:D:D I just couldn't add anything better for pure lack of time and I regret it, there would have been so much more to say! This is going to be the main topic of my next Finnish-related video for sure. Your example sentence is perfect: with your permission I'll use it :) I was thinking also about some shorter groups such as: "oletko sinä ...?" --> "ooksä ...?" :D
@@linguaEpassione by all means, please use it! "Ooksä" is an excellent example too, and even that can be (depending on the region) be "ooksie" or even "ookkonää" ! Thanks for the kind words and do keep up the good work! P.S. it's very kind for you to reply to most (all?) comments! Really appreciate it.
That's so interesting! A lot of crazy rules and so, but after all well... It seems logical! Once you wrote me that you gonna be learning Georgian, and, to be honest, as you already know Finnish and you find yourself in it's grammar labirynth, you are going to speak Georgian faster than me! 😄
Heheh I really don't know about Georgian, that's so different that I guess it could be a completely different story... We'll see! :) Thanks so much for your nice comment! Anzi, parli benissimo l'italiano, quindi: apprezzo molto che tu sia passato di nuovo a trovarmi!
Awesome video, Stefano! :) it reminded me of me ages ago, trying to learn some Finnish and giving up after two weeks, after I found out the word for "email" had... how many letters? :D :D I really like your way of describing the language! Liebe Grüße aus Nürnberg! :)
Email comes from electricity + mail; exactly like sähköposti. But you will be understood if stack with email. "Meili" for e-mail is commonly used in spoken language.
Two weeks - I would say that - You won't learn any Language in two weeks ! Learning something - IS to forget something else ! In a Year - puhuisit suomea ! Suomessa asuessa oppii paljon nopeammin ! Alles Gut aus Nürnberg ?
Really happy to see stuff like this. As a finn I keep repeating how difficult the language is, but this has really helped me grasp what the major obstacles and challenges are. It's also great to see the things I always use as an example of the positive sides of finnish, the lack of genders in the spoken language, be expanded upon and to see other positive sides brought up. Hieno video, kaikin puolin!
Vautsi, on tosi jees lukea tällaisia kommentteja, koska näitten kautta näen kuinka siitä, mitä teen, voi olla hyötyä sekä suomen kielen opiskelijoille että ihan suomalaisille :)) KIITOS!
I have just starting my journey in learning Finnish and I have found it difficult but it's motivated me more to learn it. I'm very hungry to learn it but the way it's taught in Finland is really hard from a English speaker. I'm in the Finnish language class where the teacher only speaks Finnish even if you ask a question they will tell you the answer in Finnish and it's nearly impossible to know what the f is happening. I have learnt more from YT from people like linguaEpassione.
I think one thing that also could help learning Finnish is that we have pretty small vocabulary compairing to English example. That can make it a challenge too though since one word can be used in so many ways and you have to pick the meaning from where it is used. But we often have the one basic word and everything that is connected to it uses it as part of the new word. Like if you take word book which is kirja in Finnish. Library is kirjasto, bookcase is kirjahylly etc. So when you know the system you already know the start of the word in many cases. With my quest to trying to learn English this is something I have had to face in opposite way because in English there is often ten different words to one thing and what you use changes the shade of the meaning sometimes just little bit but enough to make you misunderstood if you pick wrong word. Where in Finnish I don't have to worry about that most of the time because we have just one way to say it. That probably also is why Finns are said to be blunt and direct. Part of that comes from our language and it translates to other languages when we use them too, and part of that is because of the culture too. But getting back to that English. It has been also interesting to notice that on these days I also get sometimes frustrated with Finnish language because I can not give those little nuances with my words that I can in English. There is things that you can not say in Finnish because we simply don't have words to express the things and that is also good thing to remember. Sometimes it is not because you don't know the language sometimes it is because there just is no language what to use.
Your pronunciation is so great! It always makes me happy when i hear people from other countries speak my language! (though it might be difficult). Kiitos!
Actually, leipä does not come from russian, but from Proto-Finnic *laipa, which was borrowed from Proto-Germanic. The slavic word was also borrowed from that same source.
@@NotOrdinaryInGames Finnish has hundreds of words loaned from Proto-Germanic still in use, so it's more probable that "Leipä" is also borrowed from there, since Finnish doesn't really have loanwords from Russian
@@Torsteen-p3d : But spoken Finnish especially around Helsinki has a lot of slang words derived from either Russian or Swedish. The original 'Stadin slangi' is slowly disappearing though, and the spoken language overall is rapidly changing.
Deeply impressed of your 99,5% perfect pronunciation of my beloved language. I hope our southern neighbors don't mind me saying, your finnish sounds more "native" than I have heard anyone else speaking. Loistava suoritus!
This is the most amazing thing ever, literally you read my mind with the last quote :), the only reason why I like to watch videos about people learning my language is that thing.
This is so fun to watch! when I was learning Finnish spoken and written really messed me up! I study for like 9 weeks before I got to Finland and I quickly felt like I learned the wrong language 😂😂
Astonishing, to say the least! - Well done! - You have totally nailed the Finnish language. What a nice video. - I stumbled upon it by happenstance, but I can safely say that it made my day. Entertaining, heart-warming and crammed with accurate information. Kiitos Sinulle, ja oikein hyvää jatkoa!
Menemme & me mennään = we are going / we'll be going, but also let's go = menkäämme -> mennään. Suuri osa kirjakielen ja puhekielen eroista on sanojen lyhentämistä, ja lempinimien (nickname) antamista sanoille käyttäen suomen päätteitä. (televisio -> telkkari -> telkka, tv on myös "töllö", tulee sanasta töllötin, johdettu verbistä töllöttää - tuijottaa hölmönä)
Noinhan se menee. Sen ansiosta puhuttuun suomeen tulee uniikki rytmi ja soljuvuus. Suomen puhekieli ei oo niin paljon sääntöihin kuin intuitioon perustuvaa. Puhekielessä sanat vaan väännetään sellaiseen muotoon mikä soljuu hyvin puheen kanssa. Kirja- ja puhekielen mukaan vois laskea myös kirjoitetun kielen, joka on sellanen väliinputoaja formaaliudessa noihin toisiin verrattuna.
Some time ago I started loving this language, and the fact that is so difficult to manage made it even more attractive to me.. it has a very unique and lovely melody to my ears.. To start, I completed it in Duolingo and keep on practicing there, but because of puhekieli I feel like I have to learn almost two languages in one from now on.. that's very interesting and I understand it may frustrate.. Thank you for your video, the way you could made Finnish yours, it's a great inspiration!
It is mathematically clear that a complicated system can contain more information than a simple system can. This means that the complex Finnish grammar offers a great number of different possibilities to say the same thing, each with a different "colour". The simple English grammar often has no similar possibilities. There is a well-known Finnish translator, Kersti Juva, who says that Finnish is a three-dimensional language. She says that often, when translating from English, she must think very carefully which one of the number of possibilities offered by Finnish she should choose.
Voi sanoa joko "opin kieltäni" tai "opin omaa kieltä". Molemmat on oikein. Sijamuoto taitaa olla genetiivi, joka ilmenee sanan lopussa -ni tai eri sanana "omaa". "Omaa kieltäni" on oikeastaan tupla genetiivi ja väärin, noin kieliopin kannalta. Kyllähän kaikki ymmärtää molemmat, mitä niillä tarkoitetaan. Puhekielihän ei paljon kieliopista välitä :D. Itse en tosin ole koskaan ollu hyvä kieliopissa, joten voin olla väärässä. :)
Moi Stefano, hieno video, kiitos paljon! Mä opiskelen suomea, koska rakastan suomen kansallismusiikkia ja minusta suomi on kaunein kieli maailman. Tosi vaikea, mutta niin kiinnostava! Tervehdys Madridista :)
'Mennään', 'tavataan', 'ollaan', etc. are not only spoken variants of plural first person, they are also spoken and written forms of _indefinite_ person, sometimes also called asubjective. In some older grammars that form can be called also passive, but indefinite person is different category and doesn't easily translate into varieties of Indo-european passive voice. A main difference is that Finnish sentence does not require grammatical subject, and asubjective sentence in indefinite person can consist only of a verb, e.g.: Ollaan. This ability to speak before subject-object division arises makes Finnish philosophically interesting, we could e.g. claim that Finnish can speak naturally Buddhism /advaita.
You explained everything so well and your pronunciation is so good! Keep it up! Aina jännittävää ja mukava kuulla, kun joku jaksaa tätä kieltä opiskella jostain mysteerisestä syystä. Onnea opiskeluihin! :)
I live in Finland and I speak finnish. 8:44 spoken language is not only thing that effects words, dialect, everyone Finland speaker uses different dialect. I do not say "makuuhuonei" I say "makkari", I do not say "telkkari" or "televisio" I say "TV"(teevee), I do not say "mahis" I say "mahdollisuus", I. And dialect changes in different parts of country, so that makes learning finnish even more difficult. Nobody here in Finland actually speaks literary language But everyone understands it. Basically 2 Finns speaking to each other, they do not fully understand each other, because they speak with different dialects, But it is very rare that they do not understand each other. 12:38 We Finns actually understand if you do not use every case correctly, it just sounds weird but can be understanded. We call it "huono suomi" that means bad finnish :), and in some dialect "huano suami"
Well I say "makkuuhuone", "telekkari" and "mahollissuus". Also Finnish is very contextual language many words have more than one meaning and even that can vary between dialects.
Great explanation! I guess that before trying learning this language I would do Basque, since the challenge is kinda similar but with the difference that I'm Spanish haha. I've studying and I'm studying exotic difficult languages but never this difficult I think haha, Very good video my friend ;D
Hey there, thanks for stopping by and for your comment! I think Basque can actually pose as much of a challenge as Finnish, considering how different it is (being an isolate). Difficulty in this case is very much synonymous with difference, isn't it? Even Finnish is pretty easy for... Estonians! :)
Sinun kannattaisi olla kieltenopettaja koulussa, uskoisin että oppisivat tekniikallasi :) Suomen kieli on niin rikas, ettei kaikkia sanontoja voi edes kääntää esim englanniksi.
Had to bookmark this video for future reference. You explain the different aspects of the language really well, and point out things native speakers never think about, but just innately know. Next time I need to explain this to a foreigner, this video will be of huge value.
I am a Swedish person with a Finnish mom. I have learned a little bit of Finnish, but yes, it is a pretty hard language. It can be quite hard to communicate with the Finnish side of my family sometimes.
Hej Stefan, thank you for sharing this - the good thing though is that usually Finnish people are very willing to use Finnish with you if they see you're making an effort to learn and use the language, well at least in my experience obviously
And the final question in "who want to be a millionaire" tonight. You still have all lifelines with you. You are ready, lets do it! Q: If you heard some one say this in Finnish "hän rakastaa häntä", what does it mean correctly? A: He loves her B: She loves him C: He loves him? D: She loves her?
All of them AND E: he loves him, F: she loves her. Case in point is a very short Finnish advertisement: Hänelle. With a picture of whatever it's selling. Chocolate, jewelry, clothes, books... Allative of the singular third person pronoun. Nothing more. Teens and older still get the full message: Buy this for your Significant Other. And no fuss about any assumptions of gender or relationship.
Wondering how you know so much of Fin language and who is your teacher! Every Finnish word you say in this video was spot on like native. Slang words changes every 30 miles you cross in Finnland, so just focus in basics and the rest will come like a freebie.
Moikka ja kiitos, että jaksoit katsoa :) Mulla ei koskaan ollut opettajaa, suomi on ainoa kieli, jota opiskelin pelkästään itseopiskelijana. Mut joo, puhekieli tulee opittua pikkuhiljaa, se on pitkä prosessi
6:20 - 6:23 the reason why the verb stem changes ('water' - vesi:vet-:vede-:vete- the last being the oldest) is not simply to adapt to the ending. It's true the t cahnges to d, to adapt to the ending, the way in English life changes to live- with the -s ending, the plural marker. It's a softening effect, basically. But, it mainly shows the sound change history. The e in the end of *vete (*alleged original ancient form) changed to i, when in another word group or cluster a final consonant disappeared, producing those words that now end in an e. That had a domino effect to the words that ended in -e before, them changing to -i ending words. One of the best and quite easy examples is the name of the country (and language) itself: Suomi:Suome- (suomi:suome- for the language). The old form Suome- is used with all the endings (if not getting the plural marker -i-). Just the name has changed to Suomi. This case is called nominative: it only nominates the word, gives it its name. You could remember this with a metaphor. The process works like with your clothes: the ones ou wear more, they wear out more. So in the case of a Finnish word with its cases, the nominative case is likely the one used the most (for most of the words) - so it has the risk of being worn out the most. Which why i's very misleading to call the nominative case the 'basic' case. Because in the words than change a lot with the endings, it's not always the starting point So in the case of of the word vesi ('water'), the form vesi is the one that has chnaged the most! Vete is the oldest form, in vettä, vet- is remaining of the original. That -tä is the ending of the artitive case, marking 'partiality'. The preposition 'of' is sometimes a fitting translation for it, but not the only option- nor always even the corrct one. So from vete to vet-, the e has dropped - compare managEment, judgment/judgement in English. Then in vede- the t has changed to t, a softening developement happening with most Finnish words, when a consonantal ending is added, the consonant being a syllable ending one. Like: vedellä 'on (a/the) water, with (a/the) water', or vedet '(the) waters ('total' plural: usable with 'all', but not many or a lot - then you the partitive case in plural, or singular)' etc. Vesi is the most changed form. It has the same 'e changed to i' in the end as the word Suomi. Also it has behaved like the English words nation, station etc., which are said more like 'nayshon, stayshon' etc. In Finnish the i has changed the t to s - in English the t & i have fused together to a sh sound. The French have also a s sound in the spot, it being said a bit like 'nasYAWN' the end heavily through the nose. Compare also the Italian nazione with the Latin word nation. Many European languages use the word 'nation', sometimes with a slight change in the pronunciation and/or spelling. The sound i easily has a changing effect on the consonants before it, if they are dental, or alveo-dental. Meaning they are made close were the i is made in your mouth: near the soft ridge in your mouth, behind the teeth.
Um, the original vete- is actually in genitive plural, such as vete+vana in estonian. In finnish that would be veten? Thus vesi is (and was?) singular, while vete is and was plural. Analogous to vedelik and vesine. Thus while finnic does not have gender, it does have some sort of singular-plural classification of nouns or at least bits or rudiments of it where it helps to discriminate between different contexts. Thus the change you were writing about was actually a switch from a noun describing plurality to a one of singularity. Vedelik is a divisible good, but vesine is not divisible (I am speculating here), ok, 'vettinud' seems to contradict my suggestion although 'vettinud' might describe that an item that has become soaked wet has become wet by many/much multiple waters and that is what made it "soaked" wet. Another example might be 'jalus' - as a singular it is a frame into which one puts one's foot (in singular), for example ski clamps or a single stirrup when riding on a horse. But 'jalus' (a short from jalgus / jalkoissa) in plural means "something is caught between your legs and it is hindering your movement, possibly tripping you down". The singular for a leg is 'jalg', the plural is 'jalad'. The singular for a shoe is 'jalats' ('jalatsid' in plural), while 'jaluts' is a platform for resting one's feet in plural (and there is a plural of plural: 'jalutsid'). I am probably rambling, but I am pretty sure there was an idea somewhere in my post.
@@oojaa2 Let's just take the vesi - jalka (Est jalg) has different sound change, though it belongs to the k-p-t alternation. You can't solve these only with your own studies and guessing - better study the tymology of your language, and of Finnsih and maybe some other related languages. Some of them, like the ti (older te) changing to si can't be seen from the surface immedaitely. But you can notice it, if you put next to each other all the possible forms, especially in singular. I studied these in the university. So here comes a bunch. I need to go in details, because you're now confusing people with guessing like a 'kitchen philosopher' :) Vete- is the most original form in Finnish. The line in the end means it doesn't exist separately, only with endings. Dictionary form doesn't mean that's the original, alright? :) That vete would most typically be written vede in Estonian. Now, there's a slight differnece we have to keep in mind between Estonian and Finnish. Finnish has 2 grades for k-kk, t-tt, p-pp while Estonian has 3: g-k-kk (piga-pika-pikka), d-t-tt, b-p-pp. That d, b or g are not really voiced as in Latin or English, it's maybe semivoiced. But it' really a voiceless consonant, like mäg is mäki in Finnish (mäke original) or mäk in some dialects, at least in some positions. Estonian k is a bit doubled, shorter thsn th Finnish kk, bot longer than the Finnish (or global) k. That Estonian vete is a bit like in German Wette. And then the Estonian kk is bit longer than the Finnish kk, plus you can sayit in the word end - pikk - which is impossible in Finnish :) The vete is plural Genitive in ESTONIAN, not in Finnish (and it would sound mostly like vede to your ears). In Finnish that plural genitive would be vetten - Estonian has dropped that genitive n (- but do you say mun, or mu as 'my'). That version is old now, ostly found in frozen expression, or as a poetic style - now we say vesien, because other plural forms have that s version too. Notice that vetten goes in the same cathegory as lasten, naisten, miesten - the -ten is the plural genitive ending. I think it's so in estonian too, just if a t meets t, you'll fuseio it like that vete. But the t is still somewhat loner then if starting a word - like Tartu the 1st t is shorter than the 2nd. Now, if you compare how vesi, lauta and maito behave with different endings, you'll noice they all had 1 t as the original, alternating now with d. Estonian has dropped the d sound (which was more like the sound th in the English word the) in the history of our languages. Eastern and Southern Finnish do this also, mostly. So - officially lauta laudan, but spoken: lauta - laua(n) Like Estonian laud - laua. But, in official Finnish: vesi, lauta & maito, plural: vedet, laudat & maidot. Inessive case (=in, 'at in'): vedessä, laudassa & maidossa. Illative case ( =(in)to ): veteen, lautaan & maitoon. Well, this last one Estonians says veesse, lauasse & 'piimasse' - so it doesn't help that much. Estonian harmonized the ending with -ssa (now -s? As in spoken Finnish often), which also rhymes nicely with -lle, -lla (-l) etc. But Finnish carries the older formation pattern from -sen > -hen > -hVn (V = vowel) > - Vn/hVn/seen. So in Estonian the -sen >> sse, either via -se or -ssen. Like the -lle used to be -llen. Some Finnish dialects and old songs still show that form. Like in general: If Finnish has a longer version than Estonian, it almost always means that i's the older one, which was later shortened in Estonian. Because the shortening often happens the same way in spoken Finnish. Those words like paita ( paid?), lauta laud prove it, because they have the same t-d gradation - in Estonain d-0 (=zero), as in spoken Finnish (in most dialects) t-0. Vedelik is formed the the same way as the Finnish vetelä (Estonian would write vedela, and say 'vetela' in Finnish ears) Vesinen vesine in Finnish is maybe used in compounds - at least in dialects - but now can't remember any from thestandard Finnish. But normally it's the older vetinen - Estonian would have vedinen, and nowadays vedine. IF such form exists. Don't think too much of the meanings of derivations - they may change even one generation. Or stay the same for thousands of years :) But those forms with the endings that you translate with prepositions in English, keep their meaning about the same. At leat as long a our languages use endings, and they are still far from disappearing - though some of that developemenyt is going on. And more in Estonian.
@@oojaa2 Vettinud is vettynyt in Finnish. And that's easy to derive from the partitive case: vettä. Is it vett in Estonian? Nagu väha vett. (?) But that also starts from the original t in the end of the core word. Or at least t as the last consonant. From the word for 'hand' käsi, partitive is 'kättä' (Estonian kätt?). This gives as a verb kätellä 'to shake hands'. The original form is kättele - it's used with all the personal froms, and it's shortened in the infinitive form because of the syllable ending l sound/letter. Like katto - katolla 'on the roof'. The i sound after the t is the game changer. It happens even with the verb like lentää - lensi ('to fly - flew'). So it happened like in English: native but nation ''nayshon'. Or more like in French, where the t is really an s, like 'nasjoon' in Finnish or Estonian. It does the same in many European languages, and even elsewhere in the world - I've heard some Western Africans say quality as 'qualitsy', or 'qualits' :) Like in German Nazion (nation). I'm not guessing these: I teach these in my work, and I have studied the language history.
@@timomastosalo , Vesi would best be compared with käsi, because; vesi - vee, veed - vete; käsi - käe; käed - käte. If you claim that the original singular for vesi was vede, then do you also claim that the original singular for käsi was käde? Is the context of kätevä more related to singular or plural? Language rules are what you make of it. Language rules are what we all collectively and individually make of it. One interpretation does not necessarily rule out the other. Simply some rules have been more dominant than some others, but even the relative dominance can be time-specific (edit: and location-specific). For example - mehestuma and mehistuma - both seem to mean the same thing and both are legit. But the difference is that one means 'becoming a man by himself', while the other means 'becoming a man among true men'. Or mahutama and mahitama. Both derive from maht (volume) / mahti (power), something about "filling the power vacuum". Mahutama means to fill the space / volume. Mahitama basically means to play a puppet master for the power structures (structures possibly in plural) of an organisational entity. So I'd still argue that there are divisible goods / things and there are indivisible goods / things. Like püksid are in plural. While vesi+püks is in singular. And the rules help to accommodate those contextual differences, sometimes by the rules on singular - plural, sometimes by some other rules. And there has never been a compact proto-baltic-finnic within the same compact time and space. Or if there ever was, it was probably in Saaremaa alone (but I don't believe it was). edit. PS. Kohanimeregister (placename registry) gives only: vedel / vedela or vedeski. No other vede- in any placename. And no käde- whatsoever. edit2. Kohanimeregister gives käät- placenames, such as käätso or kääti, but it is not clear whether that has something to do with käde and whether those placenames are depicting something in singular or plural. And all the 3 largest finno-ugric languages have the käs- form for singular. Basically all the other finno-ugric tribes can be disregarded except mordvinic and mari who both have been large tribes and are not very north and are on the possible path of the langauge dispersal from the Volga-Kama confluence. Mari and mordvinic are given as kid and ked, likely for singular. edit4. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vesi#Finnish en.wiktionary.org/wiki/k%C3%A4si#Finnish Note that for both nouns the singular and plural forms are mixed up. Are there any other such similar examples? edit5. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/katkoidak Katkoa / katkuda needs both hands, thus it describes plural. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/k%C3%A4ske%C3%A4 Käskeä / käskida describes a 1:many activity where one ruler tells one or many subordinates how to behave. So the root seems to be related to singular, the ruler is singular but the ruled might sometimes be plural. Both of these have so-called proto-finnic forms. And käskeä goes back to proto-uralic, thus this might support the uralic singular käs- form. But even if it doesn't, there are still arguments towards both ways (uralic singular käs- or singular käd-) and if you are unable to provide any other probability figure besides 100% or 0% then you do not fully know what you are talking about.
Huvittavaa että kaikki suosituimmat videosi kanavallasi liittyvät jollain tavalla Suomeen. Tästä huomaa miten kiinnostuneita me suomalaiset olemme siitä miten ulkomaalaiset näkevät tämän maan :D Jotkut Tubettajat ovat luoneet koko kanavan tämän teeman ympärille koska tietävät että suomalaiset kyllä katsovat innoissaan.
To extend your example on consanant gradation and spoken Finnish vs. standard Finnish: "vedellä" ("with water") could be substituted for "veellä", which in Standard Finnish would mean "with the letter v", but totally makes sense to most people I think.
Your Finnish pronunciation is truly amazing! It's funny when sometimes I used to think Finnish to be the only "real" language. This was because I thought that "auto", in English "a car" really is an auto, not a car. This is hard to explain, but I think some Finnish people may get the idea :D. But yea, Finnish is easy when you're Finnish. Olen suomalainen.
Awesome pronunciation. Really. Wow. Some people might learn to write and read finnish really good but always their pronunciation sounds little foreigner, but still fairly understandable. But you, you really sound exactly like typical finnish guy. Wow. Be proud of yourself.
Nyt oli kyllä hyvä koonti pääasioista - ihan mahtava video! :) I´ve heard a that finnish might be easier if you are good at mathematics or "that" mathematical sort of thinking, because in the forming the words and creating them to sentences you need the same sort of thinking. Btw palindromes in finnish are always so in writing, but at the same time in the spoken language. For fun you can try reading some examples on a tape, and then playing them from the end to start: "Elli, viiliä jäi liiville", "Ai! Voi! Salaa mallimimmi Milla maalasi ovia". :D
Hey guys! Thanks for the views (100k???) and the comments so far!
A couple of things that skipped my attention (big shout-out to the viewers who spotted them!):
- "leipä" (bread) does not "derive from" but rather is "related to" Russian, as they both borrowed from the same ancient source. The main point here, though, is its similarity with other languages, rather than its etymology.
- there's a "u" missing in "makuhuone" (bedroom), the correct spelling being "makuuhuone".
Sorry for the inaccuracy there!
"Makuhuone" sounds like a nice name for confectionery.
@@tyynymyy7770 Hahah yep, that would be a good idea! xD "The taste room"
Flavour room
@gam er I would add Korean into that group
I've picked out some tongue twisters that finnish kids use when learning to pronounce the R and S "properly".
For practicing S: Vesihiisi sihisi hississä
For practicing R: Ärrän kierrän ympäri orren ässän pistän taskuun
Also as a bonus a small finnish conversation about bonfire
- Kokko, kokoo kokoon koko kokko. - Koko kokkoko? - Koko kokko.
Also have you heard about the use of "No niin" heres a link to Ismo Leikola, finnish comedian who talks about the use of No niin th-cam.com/video/9EWMlCusxjQ/w-d-xo.html
Actually the easiest part of speaking Finnish is that you don't have to say a word. Just stay silent and everybody thinks you're a Finn.
😂😂😂😂
It's because all the Finnish expressions are so gay and awkward that it's best to just keep quiet around strangers.
I think easiest part is to be Finn 🇫🇮
Or better yet, learn "perkele" really well and scream it loud...once. Now everyone is SURE you're a Finn...
This is more true than you'd think :D
We've found it, the first foreigner to be fluent in Finnish
There's Roman Schatz and that theater director whose name escapes me. Schatz does the "maamme-kirja" radio show (or at least used to do, if not anynore)
Oh c'mon, that's far from the truth!
Guys, it's a joke, calm down
Yupp, lived in Finland my entire life and speak like shit
We have accepted him to the pack. Welcome.
Sometimes life is like Finnish grammar.
Hard and with no future.
The future is now.
That was very Finnish humor.
Would've, could've, should've...
Suomenkieli(kö) tullee kuolemaan(ko)? Eehkä... Sääli...
Yea since today it’s cool to act non-patriotic and hate your own country if you’re a Finn... :/ It’s sad
They joke saying that Finnish is the language we all will speak in Heaven, because it takes an eternity to learn it.
But Finnish children learn Finnish very easily, and they also learn to read and write in a flash at school. Many already can read and write when going to start the school.
I'm having a hard time to comprehend you are native Italian speaker. Your finnish is so flawless and fluent.
Wow, your pronunciation is probably the best I've heard from a foreigner, even from ones living here. Great job!
Omg thank you so much! Oh and lovely dog btw :)
funny, I just watched this and was going to say the same thing!
Same here 😁
For some reason, Finnish language is considered difficult based on some internet forums and social media discussions.
No language itself is difficult to learn - that is just pure mumbo jumbo. Hence, it is just false argumentation to state that Finnish is one of the hardest languages for an English speaker to learn. Same myth: one 'cannot' learn mathemathics because math is difficult and it sucks. That just depends on one's own goals and attitude to the subject. It has nothing to do that some matters in life are more difficult to learn that others. Everyone can learn whatever they want; naturally, some of the people are more talented or intellegent -> some students gain results easier and quicklier with lesser efforts than most.
Of course, a good and inspiring teacher can change a lot in language learning, for example.
Can't agree more, your pronounciation is just brilliant.
it's interesting to see an outsider's point of view of the finnish language. So many rules and everything that a native speaker doesn't even think about when speaking.
also, your pronounciation is hella good for a foreigner
Thanks so much for your interest and your comment! And believe me when I say that what I discussed in the video is just a fraction of what you have to be aware of when speaking Finnish as a foreigner xD But the cool thing is that it's possible, and that it's such a beautiful language that all the hard work really pays off :) Kiitos ja toivottavasti nähdään pian taas!
I was about to comment too that for a foreigner your pronounciaton is very good, most of the times foreigners speaking finish have a very strong accent
Hyvä hella.
As a Finnish teacher I never talk to my students about how difficult Finnish is. Of course there are a lot of rules to study in the beginning, but after that learning gets easier. The beauty of Finnish is that there are so few irregularities. Once you learn the rules they apply always.Thank you for a professional, clear and easy to follow video!
What we are not taught enough of in Finnish lessons is sentence structures. There is a lot of focus on cases and even vocabulary, but combining those into actual sentences is where I think a lot of students struggle, because they don't have a sense of what order concepts might have in a sentence or the types of sentence. As an example, noun phrases in Finnish can be very heavy, and very front heavy too, such that identifying the main verb in a sentence can actually be quite difficult, though that is usually with written Finnish rather than spoken.
I think it would be very useful to teach from the beginning the kind of filler stuff and how you pop those into sentences, thinks like totta kai or niinpä etc. In English, you might get start a conversation with things like 'the funny thing is....', or 'I was just wondering....', etc. They are kind of signposts that communicate your linguistic intentions, and being able to see how those things work in Finnish would be very useful, but I just don't see them taught in any systematic way.
@@512Squared Hey, you could flip coin with every word placing and just randomize word order and probably would be understood. ball kick goal vs kick ball goal. placing object to wrong place in sentence could make it confusing, but still understandable. With added context where sentence is used, more so.
@Sinä osaat! Suomen kieltä kaikille Mulla on espanjankielinen tyttöystävä joka kovasti haluaisi oppia suomea. Vaikka oon itse aika perfektionisti, ehkä vähän asperger jopa, ja selitän aika tarkasti sanojen etymologiat, ottaen huomioon jokaisessa selityksessä ne muutkin vaihtoehdot/poikkeukset ja siinä mielessä selitän asiat kokonaisvaltaisesti enkä siis yhtä yksittäistä asiaa kerrallaan, ei mulla kuitenkaan ole mitään pedagogista koulutusta, joten haluaisin löytää hänelle hyviä resursseja ja opettajia, jotka osaavat selittää asiat perusteellisesti ja ennenkaikkea kokonaisvaltaisesti. Pystytkö auttamaan tässä tavoitteessani?
Beauty and finnish language ia an oxymoron
The big problem when learning Finnish is having teachers being natives. They usually don't get where foreigners struggle... I didn't know what cases were (ablative etc) and several times i got teachers talking about cases like if it was an obvious thing...
finnish people dont care of the mistakes you say.they will honor you for even trying!
höpö höpö
I was born in Finland but my family moved to Canada when I was two. We lived in a Finnish enclave and in 50 years, my parents never learned to speak English. The changes (and lack of changes) to the language are interesting. I speak a dialect of central osteobothnia frozen in the late 50s combined with inclusion of English words - termed "Finliska", spoken by children of 1st generation immigrants in Canada and the United states. It is deemed "quaint" by Finnish listeners and attracts puzzlement and curiosity from the normally stoic Finns on trains and in restaurants. Thank you for an interesting video.
Kittos 🙂
We live on a farm near Lake Thunderbird in central Oklahoma. A couple of years ago, I took off work for a heart scan at a clinic in Norman, a town not far to the south. In the waiting room, I overheard a middle-aged woman and an old woman speaking in Finnish. My wife had to grab my arm to keep me from going over and disturbing them with excited questions.
It's amazing to unexpectedly hear spoken nearby a language that I've studied. I have several times even overheard tribal elders conversing in native-fluent Choctaw.
Would love to hear what that would sound like? ( I speak Finnish)
There Are somany Good TH-camrs to watch - so the suomi IS getting easier to learn ! You need just to listen like a " kid " - and You learn by time ! Start today - so already tomorrow You look much SMARTER !
The spruce is on fire = Kuusi palaa
The spruce returns = Kuusi palaa
The number six is on fire = Kuusi palaa
The number six returns = Kuusi palaa
Six of them are on fire = Kuusi palaa
Six of them returns = Kuusi palaa
Your moon is on fire = Kuusi palaa
Your moon returns = Kuusi palaa
Six pieces = Kuusi palaa
Well
Okei XD Nyt pitää vähän miettiä omaa kieltä! Suomi on oudompi ja koomisempi kun tajusinkaan :D
Eikö tuon "Six of them are on fire" voi suomentaa että "kuusi heistä palaa"? Kysyn vain
@@Jokke22 Ei välttämättä, jos puhuu esim. Esineistä tai tavaroista
@@onnipirinen8645 mutta eikös sitte vois sanoo että "kuusi niistä palaa"? Tai emmää tiiä :D Suomihan on vaikee ku alko aattelee xd
Soitapa palokunnalle ja kysy mitä ne tekis, jos lähetät tuollaisen hätäviestin....
Great video. The reason why Finns have no trouble understanding "bad Finnish" is because the word positions aren't set in stone. ("Kiveen hakattu" would be the Finnish equivalent.) For example lets translate: "The word order isn't set in stone." You can say the following: Sanajärjestys ei ole kiveen hakattu. Ei sanajärjestys ole kiveen hakattu. Ei ole sanajärjestys kiveen hakattu. Kiveen ei ole sanajärjestys hakattu. Hakattu ei ole kiveen sanajärjestys. Ei kiveen ole sanajärjestys hakattu. And so on. Even when you try to make the weirdest possible order like "Ole ei sanajärjestys hakattu kiveen" it still makes enough sense to be understood.
I began learning Finnish in 1983 and it's been a lifelong pursuit. My paternal heritage is Finnish and I knew that I was privileged to be in Finland and had the great opportunity to learn about my ancestor's culture and language and so I really dedicated myself to the task. Even though Finnish is difficult I found I learned best as I mimicked how the Finns themselves spoke. After 18 months when my time in Finland was over, I felt very fluent and comfortable with the language. I could carry on a conversation on any topic and enjoyed constantly increasing my vocabulary. I found that I didn't worry so much about all the grammar and the rules, but instead, just listened to how the Finns spoke and tried my best to emulate them. It has been 36 years since I began learning the language and, living in Western Canada there are not many opportunities to speak Finnish. So, I listen to Finnish every day. I repeat in my mind what I am hearing. If I'm alone I repeat it out loud. I find myself translating things in my head. I always wonder how would you say that in Finnish. The biggest hurdle I encountered with learning Finnish was that my mother tongue is English and English tends to be very descriptive. Finnish is not nearly as descriptive so I had to really concentrate on being less "talky" and getting to the point quicker. My wife and I along with my two brothers and their spouses travelled to Finland for a Family History Tour this past summer 2018 and although I haven't spoken much Finnish for the past 36 years I was pleasantly surprised how I was able to converse and speak. I still think that most Finns speak better English than I do Finnish my Finnish friends would always default to speaking Finnish and I would have to translate for my family. What a great opportunity to have my family (who don't speak Finnish) with me in our Ancestral Homeland to experience the culture and people that I had grown to love. I once saw a post on Facebook that read, "I speak Finnish, what's your Superpower"?
Fantastic story, thank you for sharing it!
Where did you start with learning finnish?
"I speak Finnish, what's your Superpower",
I have seen claims that reading or talking about unfamiliar topics in Finnish is easier than in other languages because words are often delivered from related words. That could be considered an advantage if there was more content in Finnish.
book = kirja
letter = kirje
typeface/font = kirjasin
to write = kirjoittaa
literature = kirjallisuus
library = kirjasto
scribe = kirjuri
envelope = kirjekuori (compound word from letter and shell/casing/skin/crust. In spoke language short form "kuori" is possible if we assume meaning is unambiguous from context)
desk = kirjoituspöytä (compound word from to writing and table. Desk could be translated to different words if primary purpose is not writing and reading. Short form "pöytä" is possible like for envelope)
typewriter = kirjoituskone (compound word from writing and machine. Again short form "kone" possible but would now days be likely interpreted as a computer or as we say the knowledge machine)
Craig Mäki - you describe the superpower of having learned the universal strategy for learning any language. Kudos! I feel knowing Finnish is my superpower, too, I just didn't have that excellent term for it! I am happy that you've found Finnish so rewarding!
Nice maybe we are relatives as i have had relatives moving in both US and Canada back in early 1800's. The way i learned English is simply from watching TV and playing games when i was a kid, so in a way it was similar strategy what you used learning Finnish. Just listen and try to repeat, i was actually pretty good with word tests when English started in 3rd grade because of this.
Now after 20 years or so English is more or less my 2nd language(sorry Sweden i still can't understand you at all), i can watch everything without need of subtitles and read anything. It is extremely rare to encounter terms or words that i do not know or understand, but thanks to silent letters i do need to sometimes use translator to get typing right.
As a Finnish person, I must say that your pronunciation is very impressive, and probably the best I've ever heard from a foreigner. You'd easily pass as native Finn.
I was just thinkin about that! Mä mietin ihan samaa!
He IS Italian - and Suomi and Italian Are very close to talk ! Finns Can speak Italian too - Thanks to similarities to speak out !
You must listen to Kari Tapio - Olen suomalainen - Video on TH-cam ! That IS a Song that everybody on Italy know by some other name ? Take a SEAT - and listen !
An amusing story about Finnish. My ancestors came from Finland to America in the late 1800's. Living in the wilderness of Upper Michigan our language was preserved as everybody in our little village spoke Finnish. When the airplane was invented, American Finns coined the word 'ilmalaiva' for it, while in Finland they coined the word 'lentokone' for it. But when the TV was invented, Finland simply called it 'televisio', while in America we called it 'nakyradio'. LOL When I visited Finland people would smile and say my Finnish, while fluent, sounded like I stepped out of a time machine.
Ruth Gedenberg Hahahahaha
Vedellä also means to repeatedly pull 😁 (base verb vetää)
Niinpä onkin! Hahah :D
Well it can mean many things depending on the context and dialect. Finnish is one of those languages which written form is actually just combination of 3 different languages (in Finnish case those are german, Latin and Swedish) and Finnish written language is different from vocal language, that's why context is VERY important in Finnish and saying correct words in wrong context can cause confusion.
For example "Vedin hirsiä verstaalla" translates "I was sleeping in the cabin while" where "Vedin puu hirsiä verstaalla" means "I was pulling wood logs at the cabin". In Finnish, hirsi means log but also translates to sleeping, so adding word "puu" which means wood or tree will change the context of double words.
oh and if you are wondering how verstaalla can mean both at the cabin and in the cabin the explanation is simple, in Finnish propositions are required only when context requires it or you wish to do so. If context itself doesn't require proposition, you can leave it out if you like
- Vetelin pulkkaa (eli jotain muuta)
- Vetelin Kerttua (sitä ihtiään)
- Vetelin Kyösti ja Rainer (terveisiä)
- Vetelin (Vetelä, Vetelämpi, Vetelin)
Voisin vedellä tähän lisääkin mutta you got the point.
Uncle Ham Vedellä sammuu
Vedellä
=on the water
Suomen kieltä on kivaa mutta todella vaikea.
Toivon että tulevaisuudessa voin puhua hyvin.
Minä tarvitsen harjoitella lisää Koska puhe kieli ja kirja kieli on eri ja suomalaiset puhuvat nopeasti.
Katsotaan tulevaisuudessa.
Minua pelotta tehdä väärin
Not bad at all. Easily understandable. Few grammar mistakes, but that doesn't disturb me.
Like the first sentence: Suomen kieli on kiva, mutta vaikea. Or: Suomen kieli on kivaa, mutta vaikeaa.
Second sentence is good, but I would say: Toivottavasti voin puhua hyvin tulevaisuudessa.
Third sentence: Minun täytyy harjoitella lisää, koska puhekieli ja kirjakieli ovat erilaisia ja suomalaiset puhuvat nopeasti.
Fourth sentence: perfect :-)
@@MrDefaultti thanks for your help. You can not imagine how it's too important for me.☺💪
@@patrickbakankumu7410 No problem. I can help you more if you want me to. I'm no teacher, but anyways :-)
@@MrDefaulttiyes I need help 💪☺ you are my angel.
Kyllä, olen Illoinen mutta en tiedä miten voidaan tehdä koska minä asun Forssassa ja se on kauan, ehkä sinä asut Helsingissä?
@@patrickbakankumu7410 Juu. Asun Helsingissä, Suomenlinnassa. Kirjoituksissa voin auttaa sähköpostitse
Your pronounsiation of finnish is impeccable 👌🏻 Nice work!
Suomen kielen lausuntasi on moitteetonta! 👌🏻 Hienoa työtä!
Kiitos Jere!
Sun suomi o iha spessuu!👌🏻 Mahti duunii!
You pronunciation is amazing! We don't often get to hear our language spoken that clearly by a non-native speaker, thank you. Especially your "ä" sound, people have a hard time with that.
Thank YOU for watching and for the super-nice comment!
But in fact Ä sound (phoneme) exists even in English, for example in "cat". Y is the tricky one
@@kisalli found the 'Y' to be easy actually i just say 'ew'. As in 'ew i just stood in s....' . Tough one is the 'R' as we don't have a hard 'R'.
@@tjdemigod but Y is very different from ew. However - it is identical to German Ü and similar to French U
@@kisalli This is true. Especially Slavic people tend to pronounce it as an "i", as their y is just a slightly differently pronounced "i" (at least to me!). People also have problems pronouncing the long vocals, as one can hear when a Finnish person tries to imitate foreigners.
Great video! A surface-level view to the Finnish language, but covers many important aspects, and you got all your facts right. Your Finnish pronunciation is also excellent.
Wasn't expecting you here !
I was many years without wanting to learn Finnish, simply because it sounded boring and because many spoke English.
Then I change my attitude and I wanted to really work and be part of the Finnish society. I learnt the language in just two years and that was the best i ve done in this country. My life became easier as the language is the key to success in the long term.
Hienoa - että opettelit kielen ! Many foreigners say that They Dont speak in Finland !
This man really said "epäjärjestelmällisyydellänsäkäänköhän" with ease. Even I can't do that and I'm Finnish 😂
I found it interesting that once you started speaking finnish in this video you started to pronounce some words in english with a finnish accent. You really are a language master.
Moi! Just found this video, amazing! I'm Brazilian and i am studying Finnish . I am loving it.
I have two Finns friends, they help me a lot, sending me materials, hearing my pronounciation, writing me in Finnish...really really kind people.
Thank you so much for this video! I will be always here to learn with you too. Kiitos! Moikka!
Kiitos Laís! :) Tudo de bom pra você!
@Henry of Monmouth e vc é o que? Chinês?
Sun suomen kielen lausuminen on todella todella hyvää! ^_^ On todella harvinaista, että ei-syntyperäinen suomalainen lausuu noin hyvin. Yleensä suomalaiset erottaa heti äänestä, jos puhuja ei ole syntyperäinen. Jopa suomenruotsalaisten puheessa kuulee vivahde-eron. Mutta sun lausuminen on todella lähellä täydellisyyttä! Voit olla todella ylpeä sun taidoista! :) Kiitos inspiroivista videoista!
Kohtuu hyvää. Tuli sillä toki virheitäkin noista muutamasta sanasta.
Samaa mieltä, erittäin hyvää ääntämistä. Suurin virhe mun korvaan oli "pankki", missä tapahtui yleinen virhe, eli lausuttu kuin "panki". Tuplakonsonantin ääntäminen tuntuu olevan vaikeaa ulkomaalaisille, ja oon itte koittanu opettaa sen niin että pitää lyhyen tauon siinä välissä, mutta niin että melkein nielaisee ensimmäisen konsonantin pois. Esim tässä tapauksessa olisi että "pan(g) -ki".
Oletko koskaan opetellut italiaa ?
Ei onneks oo tullu raumankieli vastaan olis varmaa loppunu suomen oppinen siihen.
Sama jos ois yrittäny ymmärtää Pori murret :D
Turkuu kummiski ny kaik ossaa kuunnel sujuvast.
Nojuu, raumaa nyt ei ymmärrä suomalainenkaan
Ei se niin vaikeeta oo. Sit ku sen oppii. 🤣Eihän sitä aina ymmärrä minäkään, mut kyl se siitä. Siinä on aika paljo ruotsin tyylisiä sanoja.
@Mike erittäin syvässä humalassa
I lived in Finland for one year when I was 28 and I did manage to learn to speak pretty well. I went to the university in Helsinki 3 times a week and lived with a Finnish family who didn't speak any English. Total immersion! Yes, Finnish is difficult, no getting away from that. But there is a certain order to the language that you pick up as you're learning. And I 100% agree that the Finns are terrific! They WILL help you!! I made lots of mistakes, and some of those mistakes were hilarious, but they gently corrected me and I would learn. So I would like to say to the Finnish people - Kiitos kaikesta!!! Maanne on kaunista!
Haetaan lakkaa satamasta, kun lakkaa satamasta.
Hahah tuo on aika hyvä!
En tajunnu tota lakkaa satamasta
Kukin munkki tunki kumitunkin kunkin munkin tunkkiin.
Cloudberries or lacquer?
@@HVM_fi Lacquer makes more sense in this case
Your accent is perfect. So rarely we get to hear such mastery of the flatness. There's no extra "h" sound that usually pushes through. Great job! I mean it!
I live in Finland, moved here 3 years ago, and I so agree with all your said. It's difficult to understand when people are speaking to me using their spoken language, while I understand when I read things in written language, but little by little it get easier to understand. When finnish people speak to me, and they know that I don't understand murre so much, then they speak slowly and they use words than I understand, but when they don't know than i don't understand murre it gets complicated. Hopefully one day I'll fully understand 😱 great video! My Italian family and friends often ask me how is it possible that I still don't speak fluently finnish after 3 years, next time it happens I'll show them this video
Hi Valentina, thank you so much for your comment and for sharing your experience! I was in that phase as well, it's perfectly normal when you've learnt written Finnish (as everybody does) but you face "puhekieli". As you confirmed, it gets clearer little by little. One day you will find yourself using those structures without even noticing :) Keep going!
You Have to Forget Your Italian ! Uuno Turhapuro metod / start with an Empty table !
linguaEpassione non in effetti quel libro non lo conosco, gli darò un occhiata, grazie :) si chattando e parlando piano piano sta andando meglio, serve tempo e costanza
Treat spoken language as a separate language. It's probably easier that way. Written Finnish is supposed to be logical and verbose "ideal Finnish", spoken Finnish is just lazy, often drunk Finns muttering whatever using the least amount of syllables possible.
@@Tinavvv Many People / Have spoken / some other Language / in Their Youth ! IT Comes Back / Dont worry !
Sun videot on ihan mahtavia! Jatka samaan malliin :)
Oh, how pleasant it is to hear you talking in fluent English - and then switch it to smoooooth Finnish! Your Finnish pronunciation is quite beautiful and very pleasant to listen. You have done a great job and how nice of you to share your views and knowledge of Finnish language to help others. 👏🏻😄
It is also interesting to us, who speak Finnish as a native tongue, to see how Finnish language is viewed by others.
I have always thought that one of the perks of Finnish language is that words are pronounced as they are written, there is no silent letters or rules that some vowels should be pronounced in different way after some consonants etc. It is very honest language in that regard. 😊
Hope you are well! Happy summer! ☀️😎
Kiitos Jenny ihanasta kommentista! :)
Ja hauskaa kesää itsellesi!
I think a big reason why you're getting so many compliments on your pronunciation is that the stress and pitch and the relative lengths of the vowels and consonants sound *completely* natural and I'm having a hard time finding any foreign influence there. Usually when people learn languages they focus on grammar and the phonemes, but as a Finn I'm sure I make grammar mistakes all the time and lately I've come to think that there's probably quite a lot of acceptable variation in how you pronounce consonants and vowels. However, messing up the stress and pitch is almost immediately noticeable and I'm not sure that language learning resources generally put enough emphasis on that aspect of pronunciation.
Well, kiitos for one of the best compliments I've received in here, oon sanaton... It's true they don't put enough emphasis on that aspect, that's probably because it's so difficult to assess, while people (and schools, etc.) usually want gradable results.
Finnish has a lot of grammar but it's regular, there's not many exceptions. And it's pronounced as written and of course, lots of vowels that help in pronunciation. Your pronunciation is good!
Tietokone = informationmachine
And I love it! :))
@@linguaEpassione Computers were created in the U.S. in the 1940s to do calculations. These were done by people whose professional title was "computer". They created an electronic version and called it "electronic computer" which later was shortened just to "computer." When computers were introduced to Finland in the late 50s early 60s the focus had switched to processing large amounts of data instead of raw calculations. This division between super computers and mainframes still exist. The first computer was installed in a bank in 1958 and its first uses was to enable paying wages directly to bank accounts. As I understand Americans still handle pay checks.
Salmonsnake=Lohikäärme=Dragon.
Or knowledge, or info. Tieto means many things.
@@jessejones1102 info is short for information
Kiitos mielenkiintoisesta ja hyvin tehdystä videosta! Grazie per il video molto interessante e ben fatto!
Kiitos itsellesi, että jaksoit katsoa! :) Grazie mille a te per la visione!
Finnish people appreciate anyone taking the effort to learn finnish, because for a finnish person it's as difficult to learn other languages. Then again modern day finns often speak many languages, because when you learn one foreign language, learning a second one gets easier.
Finnish is a logical language and my studies in philosophy of religion did make it apparent to me that finnish can be used to express things very precisely where other languages may result in long, complex sentences. While finnish words can be long, sentences can be one word. Translating sentences to finnish often makes them shorter and translating sentences from finnish makes them longer.
As a songwriter finnish is a good language for expression as sentences can be packed with meaning and different interpretations, and creating all new words and meanings by combining words is also possible in a way that is still understandable to others. Finnish language has a lot of word play and rhymes and we even have our own measure for poems, the Kalevala-mitta :)
Eipä se nyt niin iso asia ole että minä esim arvostaisin
Ei tietenkään kaikki arvosta, mutta pääsitpähän pätemään :)
En ole pätenyt kerroin vaan että en nää sitä itse hirmu isona asiana
Finns are actually quite good at learning other languages when compared to many other countries. Maybe it's the educational system, or maybe it's the drive to make ourselves understood because hardly anyone out of 7 billion people on Earth understands Finnish.
I think we Finns are also exposed to lot of languages and that helps us learn them. For example the TV shows are not dubbed (unless they are for small children). From there we hear languages like Spanish, German, French and so on... A portion of our citizens use Swedish (our second official language) as their main language and we hear it all the time during our lives. From very young age we are dealing with English in TV, movies, music and on the internet and we start to learn it in school at around 9 years of age.
Being exposed to a language, hearing it and actually trying to use it always makes learning a new language easier and us Finns are very well exposed, I'd say!
And if someone instructs or corrects a person learning Finnish, it is actually only a compliment (you are doing WELL, you have hope ;). Certainly not to strike down or to say "aha! this is what you still got wrong!", rather revealing whatever still remains secret or unknown, what would be the logical linear next step to comprehend, or just to provide examples to certify that whatever has thus far been learned, is indeed correct. Nice video.
Your pronounciation is absolutely spot on. This is something many foreigners don't ever get right, even if their grammar is correct.
Thanks for a great video! I think it's little bit funny how when you said "tapaamme" you had a slight accent but right after when you said "tavataan", you said it like any native speaker. Really shows how we prefer "tavataan" over "tapaamme", when foreigners are able to learn to say the first one without an accent but not the later.
Thank you, too!
Wonderful, thank you. I love the Finnish language even though I don't speak or understand it, except for a couple words. Some of the vowels are similar to Hungarian, (Finno-UGRIC, duh). I met the group Värttinä when my band opened for them way back in the 90s in Chicago and ever since then when I hear Finnish I recognize it and listen carefully. I may even want to be a Finn in my next life.
When Do You Start - Your NEXT LIFE ?
Todella hyvin puhuttu. Olen itse kyllä syntynyt suomessa, mutta vanhempani ovat intiasta. Mutta en voinut edes kuvitella, kuinka hyvä aksentti sinulla on ja otit vastaan yhen maailman vaikeimmista kielistä. BRAVO!
A huge thing is what the vowel harmony, as in words are written and spoken the exact same way. Finns find this when they study Japanese. A vowel is always the same. A is a, e is e, it's always the same. If you understand vowel harmony, you can read Finnish text out loud properly without even knowing a word of Finnish. When the rule sinks into you, learning and understanding it becomes much easier.
I am definitely interested in your uploading more videos on Finnish. You have a excellent presentation skills. Thank you so much for the video.
Thank you, Rosa, for the super kind comment! I will do my best to keep it up!
I'm not even 7 minutes in, and I already think this is the best brief explanation on Finnish that I've ever seen.
BTW, consonant gradation is something that children born in Finland may struggle with some words. Mine don't get some fairly easy ones right because they're confused by other similar words working seemingly in a different way.
Thank you so much! Yep, I know, I also witnessed some very funny "mistakes" by children such as: - Parent: "Tää on miehen nimi", - Child: "Ah, sitten tää on miehi!" :D
Holy shit this is cool. I'd like to see you exploring the finnish language further and especially some of the extra-hard or unusual rules which this language has :)
Thank you so much!!! Got it, I will make more videos and explore deeper - it's gonna be fun! :)
I like Finnish because it retains words so well. For example "kuningas" "kuningaz*" in Proto-Germanic which means "king"; or "kampa", PG "kampaz", "comb". Proto-Germanic was spoken thousands of years ago and look how well these words have kept their shape!
Tai sitten vaan kingi, kunkku, ja tietty runkuksikin kutsutaan noita ihmisturhuuksia jotka kaipaavat suuresti ihailua.
One must remember that proto-languages are reconstructed and always come with a certain amount of uncertainty. Ie. we have no written records or audio recordings of these.
It's eye opening to see the obstacles that us native speakers just about never even think of, but you can clearly hear these difficulties when listening to some non native finnish speaker :) Keep it up! (also excellent pronunciation!) Will be sharing this to my dutch friend who is thinking about moving to Finland :)
Great stuff! Kiitos, Ville!
Instead of "ilman Stefanoa", you can also say "Stefanotta". Which one you use depends a lot on context. A cake baked without milk would usually be "maidoton kakku", whereas if you were going to a dinner without a spouse it would more usually be "ilman a".
Also, as to the shortening of words (makuuhuone -> makkari etc), there's a lot of different ways for shortening words in local dialects all over Finland, so we might not even understand each other all the time. :)
Kiitos Niko mielenkiintoisesta kommentista!! Musta tuntuu että nykyään abessiivi (eli -tta/ttä) ei enää käytetä kuin tietyille imaisuille kuten esim. "ongelmitta", "vaivatta", "maksutta" jne sekä tietenkin verbien kanssa niin kuin "sanomatta mitään", "ajattelematta", "olla olematta" ja niin pois päin. Mut et suurin osa ajasta ihmiset käyttää "ilman" paljon enemmän kuin -tta/ttä.
Suomalaisena sanoisin, että Stefanotta kuulostaa kummalliselta. En itse sanois noin.
@@itsJPhere Oon samaa mieltä :)
Excellent analysis!! Your pronunciation is also exceptionally good.
I do agree (and feel it isn't stressed enough in the teaching context) with your point about the discrepancies between spoken and written language. Your examples were somewhat tame, though, but I guess that was intentional just to get the point across. I'd imagine there is a lot of trouble ahead when you get involved with regional dialects, as something as trivial as "menemmekö me tuonne juoksemaan?" becomes "mennääks me ton juoksee?" in various dialects.
Keep up the good work!!
Thank you SO much, Verneri! I swear I would give your comment 80 thumbs up if I could. The puhekieli vs. kirjakieli thing is so much deeper than what I touched upon in this video, and I agree with you that my examples were reeeeally weak here :D:D:D I just couldn't add anything better for pure lack of time and I regret it, there would have been so much more to say! This is going to be the main topic of my next Finnish-related video for sure. Your example sentence is perfect: with your permission I'll use it :) I was thinking also about some shorter groups such as: "oletko sinä ...?" --> "ooksä ...?" :D
@@linguaEpassione by all means, please use it! "Ooksä" is an excellent example too, and even that can be (depending on the region) be "ooksie" or even "ookkonää" !
Thanks for the kind words and do keep up the good work!
P.S. it's very kind for you to reply to most (all?) comments! Really appreciate it.
That's so interesting! A lot of crazy rules and so, but after all well... It seems logical!
Once you wrote me that you gonna be learning Georgian, and, to be honest, as you already know Finnish and you find yourself in it's grammar labirynth, you are going to speak Georgian faster than me! 😄
Heheh I really don't know about Georgian, that's so different that I guess it could be a completely different story... We'll see! :) Thanks so much for your nice comment! Anzi, parli benissimo l'italiano, quindi: apprezzo molto che tu sia passato di nuovo a trovarmi!
Awesome video, Stefano! :) it reminded me of me ages ago, trying to learn some Finnish and giving up after two weeks, after I found out the word for "email" had... how many letters? :D :D I really like your way of describing the language! Liebe Grüße aus Nürnberg! :)
Danke Marija! Do you mean "sähköposti"? It is quite long but there's much worse :)) Liebe Grüße aus Mailand (im Urlaub!!!) :)
Email comes from electricity + mail; exactly like sähköposti. But you will be understood if stack with email. "Meili" for e-mail is commonly used in spoken language.
Two weeks - I would say that - You won't learn any Language in two weeks ! Learning something - IS to forget something else ! In a Year - puhuisit suomea ! Suomessa asuessa oppii paljon nopeammin ! Alles Gut aus Nürnberg ?
Your pronunciation is amazing!
8:08 those are the passive forms of those verbs
Really happy to see stuff like this. As a finn I keep repeating how difficult the language is, but this has really helped me grasp what the major obstacles and challenges are. It's also great to see the things I always use as an example of the positive sides of finnish, the lack of genders in the spoken language, be expanded upon and to see other positive sides brought up. Hieno video, kaikin puolin!
Vautsi, on tosi jees lukea tällaisia kommentteja, koska näitten kautta näen kuinka siitä, mitä teen, voi olla hyötyä sekä suomen kielen opiskelijoille että ihan suomalaisille :)) KIITOS!
I have just starting my journey in learning Finnish and I have found it difficult but it's motivated me more to learn it. I'm very hungry to learn it but the way it's taught in Finland is really hard from a English speaker. I'm in the Finnish language class where the teacher only speaks Finnish even if you ask a question they will tell you the answer in Finnish and it's nearly impossible to know what the f is happening. I have learnt more from YT from people like linguaEpassione.
I think one thing that also could help learning Finnish is that we have pretty small vocabulary compairing to English example. That can make it a challenge too though since one word can be used in so many ways and you have to pick the meaning from where it is used. But we often have the one basic word and everything that is connected to it uses it as part of the new word. Like if you take word book which is kirja in Finnish. Library is kirjasto, bookcase is kirjahylly etc. So when you know the system you already know the start of the word in many cases. With my quest to trying to learn English this is something I have had to face in opposite way because in English there is often ten different words to one thing and what you use changes the shade of the meaning sometimes just little bit but enough to make you misunderstood if you pick wrong word. Where in Finnish I don't have to worry about that most of the time because we have just one way to say it. That probably also is why Finns are said to be blunt and direct. Part of that comes from our language and it translates to other languages when we use them too, and part of that is because of the culture too. But getting back to that English. It has been also interesting to notice that on these days I also get sometimes frustrated with Finnish language because I can not give those little nuances with my words that I can in English. There is things that you can not say in Finnish because we simply don't have words to express the things and that is also good thing to remember. Sometimes it is not because you don't know the language sometimes it is because there just is no language what to use.
I just watched the video and I learned a lot! Thank you teacher! :) Jan
Hahah thank you for watching, pupil! :D
Your pronunciation is so great! It always makes me happy when i hear people from other countries speak my language! (though it might be difficult). Kiitos!
Ihan mahtavaa lausumista, props to you for learning to do it so well!!
your pronounciation is AMAZING!
Perfect! I find it very cool that you are an inspiration for everyone to try and learn new languages.
Actually, leipä does not come from russian, but from Proto-Finnic *laipa, which was borrowed from Proto-Germanic. The slavic word was also borrowed from that same source.
Thank you for pointing this out! I shouldn't have said "derived from", here, but rather "similar / related to" - kiitos!
It could be either, since the indo-european waters are murky.
It's a good guess anyhow
@@NotOrdinaryInGames Finnish has hundreds of words loaned from Proto-Germanic still in use, so it's more probable that "Leipä" is also borrowed from there, since Finnish doesn't really have loanwords from Russian
@@Torsteen-p3d : But spoken Finnish especially around Helsinki has a lot of slang words derived from either Russian or Swedish. The original 'Stadin slangi' is slowly disappearing though, and the spoken language overall is rapidly changing.
Deeply impressed of your 99,5% perfect pronunciation of my beloved language. I hope our southern neighbors don't mind me saying, your finnish sounds more "native" than I have heard anyone else speaking. Loistava suoritus!
This is the most amazing thing ever, literally you read my mind with the last quote :), the only reason why I like to watch videos about people learning my language is that thing.
I just started learning finnish on duolingo 😀
Great to hear that! Remember to mix it up with other resources after a while though :)
@@linguaEpassione Do you have any tips for other resources? Thanks
Fantastic video. Thanks for making it (by the way, you're not a native English speaker but you held your own and did brilliantly)!
This is so fun to watch! when I was learning Finnish spoken and written really messed me up! I study for like 9 weeks before I got to Finland and I quickly felt like I learned the wrong language 😂😂
hahaha
Astonishing, to say the least! - Well done! - You have totally nailed the Finnish language. What a nice video. - I stumbled upon it by happenstance, but I can safely say that it made my day. Entertaining, heart-warming and crammed with accurate information. Kiitos Sinulle, ja oikein hyvää jatkoa!
Great video! I started learning Finnish with Duolingo about 2 weeks ago. I look forward to more videos from you. Kiitos ja paljon onnea! Jee!
Menemme & me mennään = we are going / we'll be going, but also let's go = menkäämme -> mennään.
Suuri osa kirjakielen ja puhekielen eroista on sanojen lyhentämistä, ja lempinimien (nickname) antamista sanoille käyttäen suomen päätteitä. (televisio -> telkkari -> telkka, tv on myös "töllö", tulee sanasta töllötin, johdettu verbistä töllöttää - tuijottaa hölmönä)
Noinhan se menee. Sen ansiosta puhuttuun suomeen tulee uniikki rytmi ja soljuvuus. Suomen puhekieli ei oo niin paljon sääntöihin kuin intuitioon perustuvaa. Puhekielessä sanat vaan väännetään sellaiseen muotoon mikä soljuu hyvin puheen kanssa. Kirja- ja puhekielen mukaan vois laskea myös kirjoitetun kielen, joka on sellanen väliinputoaja formaaliudessa noihin toisiin verrattuna.
Some time ago I started loving this language, and the fact that is so difficult to manage made it even more attractive to me.. it has a very unique and lovely melody to my ears.. To start, I completed it in Duolingo and keep on practicing there, but because of puhekieli I feel like I have to learn almost two languages in one from now on.. that's very interesting and I understand it may frustrate.. Thank you for your video, the way you could made Finnish yours, it's a great inspiration!
Thank you Edu, I appreciate it!
It is mathematically clear that a complicated system can contain more information than a simple system can. This means that the complex Finnish grammar offers a great number of different possibilities to say the same thing, each with a different "colour". The simple English grammar often has no similar possibilities. There is a well-known Finnish translator, Kersti Juva, who says that Finnish is a three-dimensional language. She says that often, when translating from English, she must think very carefully which one of the number of possibilities offered by Finnish she should choose.
Very nicely put indeed, thank you so much for sharing!
Kiitos paljon! Hieno video! :D
Kiitos itsellesi katsomisesta, Esa!
Awesome video and you have very clear way to pronounce english and finnish both, it is very easy to understand and follow :) Greetings from Finland
Opin omaa kieltä tästä😂
Kiva kuulla! ;)
Hukeli Opin omaa KIELTÄNI tästä !
Mäkin opin oppia opista. Opiskellessani oppipoikana.
Voi sanoa joko "opin kieltäni" tai "opin omaa kieltä". Molemmat on oikein. Sijamuoto taitaa olla genetiivi, joka ilmenee sanan lopussa -ni tai eri sanana "omaa". "Omaa kieltäni" on oikeastaan tupla genetiivi ja väärin, noin kieliopin kannalta. Kyllähän kaikki ymmärtää molemmat, mitä niillä tarkoitetaan. Puhekielihän ei paljon kieliopista välitä :D. Itse en tosin ole koskaan ollu hyvä kieliopissa, joten voin olla väärässä. :)
Jari Seppälä Minäkään en ole erityisen hyvä kieliopissa 🙄
Moi Stefano, hieno video, kiitos paljon! Mä opiskelen suomea, koska rakastan suomen kansallismusiikkia ja minusta suomi on kaunein kieli maailman. Tosi vaikea, mutta niin kiinnostava! Tervehdys Madridista :)
Moi Alberto, kiitos viestistä! Olen samaa mieltä sun kanssasi, terkkuja Madridiin! (Toivon, että voit hyvin ja olet turvassa)
Your pronounciation is very good! :O Interesting things I haven't even thought about before :D
Thank you man, this is reeeally great to hear! More of these coming up then!
Excellent pronounciation and video overall. Thank you Stefano!
Kiitos itsellesi katsomisesta! :)
I never could have guessed, that it would be so interesting to watch videos about my own language. Thanks!
Helppoa se on jos on suomalainen
Kaikki on suhteellista, after all :D Kiitos katsomisesta, myös koiralle!
Jorisee vaa menemää. Jo lapsena osasin
emmä osaa viäkää
@@gJonii ismo
@@jussivalter harmi
'Mennään', 'tavataan', 'ollaan', etc. are not only spoken variants of plural first person, they are also spoken and written forms of _indefinite_ person, sometimes also called asubjective. In some older grammars that form can be called also passive, but indefinite person is different category and doesn't easily translate into varieties of Indo-european passive voice.
A main difference is that Finnish sentence does not require grammatical subject, and asubjective sentence in indefinite person can consist only of a verb, e.g.: Ollaan. This ability to speak before subject-object division arises makes Finnish philosophically interesting, we could e.g. claim that Finnish can speak naturally Buddhism /advaita.
Any kind of discomfort
*Exists*
A fin: vittu perkele saatana helvetti
You explained everything so well and your pronunciation is so good! Keep it up!
Aina jännittävää ja mukava kuulla, kun joku jaksaa tätä kieltä opiskella jostain mysteerisestä syystä. Onnea opiskeluihin! :)
Voi että, kiitti!!
WOW!! Your pronunciation is amazing!! I'm a Finn living in Germany and you just gave me lots of motivation to learn German, kiitos!!
I live in Finland and I speak finnish. 8:44 spoken language is not only thing that effects words, dialect, everyone Finland speaker uses different dialect. I do not say "makuuhuonei" I say "makkari", I do not say "telkkari" or "televisio" I say "TV"(teevee), I do not say "mahis" I say "mahdollisuus", I. And dialect changes in different parts of country, so that makes learning finnish even more difficult. Nobody here in Finland actually speaks literary language But everyone understands it. Basically 2 Finns speaking to each other, they do not fully understand each other, because they speak with different dialects, But it is very rare that they do not understand each other. 12:38 We Finns actually understand if you do not use every case correctly, it just sounds weird but can be understanded. We call it "huono suomi" that means bad finnish :), and in some dialect "huano suami"
"Hianoo"! ;D Thank you so much for watching and leaving your nice comments!
Well I say "makkuuhuone", "telekkari" and "mahollissuus". Also Finnish is very contextual language many words have more than one meaning and even that can vary between dialects.
Töllö se on. Käyttäkää sitä nimeä, niin me muut töllöt täällä kahtellaan kauhusta jäykkänä.
Great explanation! I guess that before trying learning this language I would do Basque, since the challenge is kinda similar but with the difference that I'm Spanish haha.
I've studying and I'm studying exotic difficult languages but never this difficult I think haha, Very good video my friend ;D
Hey there, thanks for stopping by and for your comment! I think Basque can actually pose as much of a challenge as Finnish, considering how different it is (being an isolate). Difficulty in this case is very much synonymous with difference, isn't it? Even Finnish is pretty easy for... Estonians! :)
@@linguaEpassione Yep, I've study exotic languages and the problem is always how different they are, but that's also the challenge :D
Sinun kannattaisi olla kieltenopettaja koulussa, uskoisin että oppisivat tekniikallasi :) Suomen kieli on niin rikas, ettei kaikkia sanontoja voi edes kääntää esim englanniksi.
Congratulations for mastering our language! Onnittelut, upeaa kuulla että joku osaa noin hyvin kielemme! :)
Had to bookmark this video for future reference. You explain the different aspects of the language really well, and point out things native speakers never think about, but just innately know.
Next time I need to explain this to a foreigner, this video will be of huge value.
Just learn how to say this and what it means and you'll be good
*''No niin''*
Tää oli Ismolta hyvä veto. Tuosta tuli hyvin ilmi miten yksi sana tai lause voi toimia tilanteessa kuin tilanteessa pelkästään äänensävyä muuttamalla.
@@criticalmass3993 jep
No niin no
@@damiengates7581 Niinpä
I am a Swedish person with a Finnish mom. I have learned a little bit of Finnish, but yes, it is a pretty hard language. It can be quite hard to communicate with the Finnish side of my family sometimes.
Hej Stefan, thank you for sharing this - the good thing though is that usually Finnish people are very willing to use Finnish with you if they see you're making an effort to learn and use the language, well at least in my experience obviously
And the final question in "who want to be a millionaire" tonight. You still have all lifelines with you. You are ready, lets do it!
Q: If you heard some one say this in Finnish "hän rakastaa häntä", what does it mean correctly?
A: He loves her
B: She loves him
C: He loves him?
D: She loves her?
The answer is all of them.
All of them AND
E: he loves him,
F: she loves her.
Case in point is a very short Finnish advertisement: Hänelle.
With a picture of whatever it's selling. Chocolate, jewelry, clothes, books...
Allative of the singular third person pronoun. Nothing more.
Teens and older still get the full message: Buy this for your Significant Other. And no fuss about any assumptions of gender or relationship.
Can't go wrong ay
Yes
Wondering how you know so much of Fin language and who is your teacher! Every Finnish word you say in this video was spot on like native. Slang words changes every 30 miles you cross in Finnland, so just focus in basics and the rest will come like a freebie.
Moikka ja kiitos, että jaksoit katsoa :) Mulla ei koskaan ollut opettajaa, suomi on ainoa kieli, jota opiskelin pelkästään itseopiskelijana. Mut joo, puhekieli tulee opittua pikkuhiljaa, se on pitkä prosessi
6:20 - 6:23 the reason why the verb stem changes ('water' - vesi:vet-:vede-:vete- the last being the oldest) is not simply to adapt to the ending. It's true the t cahnges to d, to adapt to the ending, the way in English life changes to live- with the -s ending, the plural marker. It's a softening effect, basically. But, it mainly shows the sound change history.
The e in the end of *vete (*alleged original ancient form) changed to i, when in another word group or cluster a final consonant disappeared, producing those words that now end in an e. That had a domino effect to the words that ended in -e before, them changing to -i ending words. One of the best and quite easy examples is the name of the country (and language) itself: Suomi:Suome- (suomi:suome- for the language). The old form Suome- is used with all the endings (if not getting the plural marker -i-). Just the name has changed to Suomi. This case is called nominative: it only nominates the word, gives it its name.
You could remember this with a metaphor. The process works like with your clothes: the ones ou wear more, they wear out more. So in the case of a Finnish word with its cases, the nominative case is likely the one used the most (for most of the words) - so it has the risk of being worn out the most. Which why i's very misleading to call the nominative case the 'basic' case. Because in the words than change a lot with the endings, it's not always the starting point
So in the case of of the word vesi ('water'), the form vesi is the one that has chnaged the most!
Vete is the oldest form, in vettä, vet- is remaining of the original. That -tä is the ending of the artitive case, marking 'partiality'. The preposition 'of' is sometimes a fitting translation for it, but not the only option- nor always even the corrct one. So from vete to vet-, the e has dropped - compare managEment, judgment/judgement in English.
Then in vede- the t has changed to t, a softening developement happening with most Finnish words, when a consonantal ending is added, the consonant being a syllable ending one. Like: vedellä 'on (a/the) water, with (a/the) water',
or
vedet '(the) waters ('total' plural: usable with 'all', but not many or a lot - then you the partitive case in plural, or singular)'
etc.
Vesi is the most changed form. It has the same 'e changed to i' in the end as the word Suomi. Also it has behaved like the English words nation, station etc., which are said more like 'nayshon, stayshon' etc. In Finnish the i has changed the t to s - in English the t & i have fused together to a sh sound. The French have also a s sound in the spot, it being said a bit like 'nasYAWN' the end heavily through the nose. Compare also the Italian nazione with the Latin word nation. Many European languages use the word 'nation', sometimes with a slight change in the pronunciation and/or spelling.
The sound i easily has a changing effect on the consonants before it, if they are dental, or alveo-dental. Meaning they are made close were the i is made in your mouth: near the soft ridge in your mouth, behind the teeth.
Um, the original vete- is actually in genitive plural, such as vete+vana in estonian. In finnish that would be veten?
Thus vesi is (and was?) singular, while vete is and was plural. Analogous to vedelik and vesine. Thus while finnic does not have gender, it does have some sort of singular-plural classification of nouns or at least bits or rudiments of it where it helps to discriminate between different contexts. Thus the change you were writing about was actually a switch from a noun describing plurality to a one of singularity. Vedelik is a divisible good, but vesine is not divisible (I am speculating here), ok, 'vettinud' seems to contradict my suggestion although 'vettinud' might describe that an item that has become soaked wet has become wet by many/much multiple waters and that is what made it "soaked" wet. Another example might be 'jalus' - as a singular it is a frame into which one puts one's foot (in singular), for example ski clamps or a single stirrup when riding on a horse. But 'jalus' (a short from jalgus / jalkoissa) in plural means "something is caught between your legs and it is hindering your movement, possibly tripping you down". The singular for a leg is 'jalg', the plural is 'jalad'. The singular for a shoe is 'jalats' ('jalatsid' in plural), while 'jaluts' is a platform for resting one's feet in plural (and there is a plural of plural: 'jalutsid').
I am probably rambling, but I am pretty sure there was an idea somewhere in my post.
@@oojaa2 Let's just take the vesi - jalka (Est jalg) has different sound change, though it belongs to the k-p-t alternation.
You can't solve these only with your own studies and guessing - better study the tymology of your language, and of Finnsih and maybe some other related languages. Some of them, like the ti (older te) changing to si can't be seen from the surface immedaitely. But you can notice it, if you put next to each other all the possible forms, especially in singular.
I studied these in the university. So here comes a bunch. I need to go in details, because you're now confusing people with guessing like a 'kitchen philosopher' :)
Vete- is the most original form in Finnish. The line in the end means it doesn't exist separately, only with endings. Dictionary form doesn't mean that's the original, alright? :) That vete would most typically be written vede in Estonian.
Now, there's a slight differnece we have to keep in mind between Estonian and Finnish. Finnish has 2 grades for k-kk, t-tt, p-pp while Estonian has 3: g-k-kk (piga-pika-pikka), d-t-tt, b-p-pp.
That d, b or g are not really voiced as in Latin or English, it's maybe semivoiced. But it' really a voiceless consonant, like mäg is mäki in Finnish (mäke original) or mäk in some dialects, at least in some positions.
Estonian k is a bit doubled, shorter thsn th Finnish kk, bot longer than the Finnish (or global) k. That Estonian vete is a bit like in German Wette. And then the Estonian kk is bit longer than the Finnish kk, plus you can sayit in the word end - pikk - which is impossible in Finnish :)
The vete is plural Genitive in ESTONIAN, not in Finnish (and it would sound mostly like vede to your ears). In Finnish that plural genitive would be vetten - Estonian has dropped that genitive n (- but do you say mun, or mu as 'my'). That version is old now, ostly found in frozen expression, or as a poetic style - now we say vesien, because other plural forms have that s version too.
Notice that vetten goes in the same cathegory as lasten, naisten, miesten - the -ten is the plural genitive ending. I think it's so in estonian too, just if a t meets t, you'll fuseio it like that vete. But the t is still somewhat loner then if starting a word - like Tartu the 1st t is shorter than the 2nd.
Now, if you compare how vesi, lauta and maito behave with different endings, you'll noice they all had 1 t as the original, alternating now with d. Estonian has dropped the d sound (which was more like the sound th in the English word the) in the history of our languages.
Eastern and Southern Finnish do this also, mostly. So - officially lauta laudan, but spoken: lauta - laua(n) Like Estonian laud - laua.
But, in official Finnish: vesi, lauta & maito, plural: vedet, laudat & maidot. Inessive case (=in, 'at in'): vedessä, laudassa & maidossa. Illative case ( =(in)to ): veteen, lautaan & maitoon.
Well, this last one Estonians says veesse, lauasse & 'piimasse' - so it doesn't help that much. Estonian harmonized the ending with -ssa (now -s? As in spoken Finnish often), which also rhymes nicely with -lle, -lla (-l) etc.
But Finnish carries the older formation pattern from -sen > -hen > -hVn (V = vowel) > - Vn/hVn/seen. So in Estonian the -sen >> sse, either via -se or -ssen. Like the -lle used to be -llen. Some Finnish dialects and old songs still show that form.
Like in general: If Finnish has a longer version than Estonian, it almost always means that i's the older one, which was later shortened in Estonian. Because the shortening often happens the same way in spoken Finnish.
Those words like paita ( paid?), lauta laud prove it, because they have the same t-d gradation - in Estonain d-0 (=zero), as in spoken Finnish (in most dialects) t-0.
Vedelik is formed the the same way as the Finnish vetelä (Estonian would write vedela, and say 'vetela' in Finnish ears) Vesinen vesine in Finnish is maybe used in compounds - at least in dialects - but now can't remember any from thestandard Finnish. But normally it's the older vetinen - Estonian would have vedinen, and nowadays vedine. IF such form exists.
Don't think too much of the meanings of derivations - they may change even one generation. Or stay the same for thousands of years :) But those forms with the endings that you translate with prepositions in English, keep their meaning about the same.
At leat as long a our languages use endings, and they are still far from disappearing - though some of that developemenyt is going on. And more in Estonian.
@@oojaa2 Vettinud is vettynyt in Finnish. And that's easy to derive from the partitive case: vettä. Is it vett in Estonian? Nagu väha vett. (?) But that also starts from the original t in the end of the core word. Or at least t as the last consonant.
From the word for 'hand' käsi, partitive is 'kättä' (Estonian kätt?). This gives as a verb kätellä 'to shake hands'. The original form is kättele - it's used with all the personal froms, and it's shortened in the infinitive form because of the syllable ending l sound/letter. Like katto - katolla 'on the roof'.
The i sound after the t is the game changer. It happens even with the verb like lentää - lensi ('to fly - flew'). So it happened like in English: native but nation ''nayshon'. Or more like in French, where the t is really an s, like 'nasjoon' in Finnish or Estonian. It does the same in many European languages, and even elsewhere in the world - I've heard some Western Africans say quality as 'qualitsy', or 'qualits' :) Like in German Nazion (nation).
I'm not guessing these: I teach these in my work, and I have studied the language history.
@@timomastosalo , Vesi would best be compared with käsi, because; vesi - vee, veed - vete; käsi - käe; käed - käte. If you claim that the original singular for vesi was vede, then do you also claim that the original singular for käsi was käde? Is the context of kätevä more related to singular or plural?
Language rules are what you make of it. Language rules are what we all collectively and individually make of it. One interpretation does not necessarily rule out the other. Simply some rules have been more dominant than some others, but even the relative dominance can be time-specific (edit: and location-specific).
For example - mehestuma and mehistuma - both seem to mean the same thing and both are legit. But the difference is that one means 'becoming a man by himself', while the other means 'becoming a man among true men'.
Or mahutama and mahitama. Both derive from maht (volume) / mahti (power), something about "filling the power vacuum". Mahutama means to fill the space / volume. Mahitama basically means to play a puppet master for the power structures (structures possibly in plural) of an organisational entity.
So I'd still argue that there are divisible goods / things and there are indivisible goods / things. Like püksid are in plural. While vesi+püks is in singular. And the rules help to accommodate those contextual differences, sometimes by the rules on singular - plural, sometimes by some other rules.
And there has never been a compact proto-baltic-finnic within the same compact time and space. Or if there ever was, it was probably in Saaremaa alone (but I don't believe it was).
edit. PS. Kohanimeregister (placename registry) gives only: vedel / vedela or vedeski. No other vede- in any placename.
And no käde- whatsoever.
edit2. Kohanimeregister gives käät- placenames, such as käätso or kääti, but it is not clear whether that has something to do with käde and whether those placenames are depicting something in singular or plural.
And all the 3 largest finno-ugric languages have the käs- form for singular. Basically all the other finno-ugric tribes can be disregarded except mordvinic and mari who both have been large tribes and are not very north and are on the possible path of the langauge dispersal from the Volga-Kama confluence. Mari and mordvinic are given as kid and ked, likely for singular.
edit4.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vesi#Finnish
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/k%C3%A4si#Finnish
Note that for both nouns the singular and plural forms are mixed up. Are there any other such similar examples?
edit5.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/katkoidak
Katkoa / katkuda needs both hands, thus it describes plural.
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/k%C3%A4ske%C3%A4
Käskeä / käskida describes a 1:many activity where one ruler tells one or many subordinates how to behave. So the root seems to be related to singular, the ruler is singular but the ruled might sometimes be plural.
Both of these have so-called proto-finnic forms. And käskeä goes back to proto-uralic, thus this might support the uralic singular käs- form. But even if it doesn't, there are still arguments towards both ways (uralic singular käs- or singular käd-) and if you are unable to provide any other probability figure besides 100% or 0% then you do not fully know what you are talking about.
Huvittavaa että kaikki suosituimmat videosi kanavallasi liittyvät jollain tavalla Suomeen. Tästä huomaa miten kiinnostuneita me suomalaiset olemme siitä miten ulkomaalaiset näkevät tämän maan :D Jotkut Tubettajat ovat luoneet koko kanavan tämän teeman ympärille koska tietävät että suomalaiset kyllä katsovat innoissaan.
@Mahtava Tuhoaja Katos Katos, TH-cam vissiin suositellut sulle samoja videoita kun mulle :D
To extend your example on consanant gradation and spoken Finnish vs. standard Finnish: "vedellä" ("with water") could be substituted for "veellä", which in Standard Finnish would mean "with the letter v", but totally makes sense to most people I think.
But in Western Finland, especially in Pohjanmaa, it would be "verellä", which also means "with blood".
Your Finnish pronunciation is truly amazing! It's funny when sometimes I used to think Finnish to be the only "real" language. This was because I thought that "auto", in English "a car" really is an auto, not a car. This is hard to explain, but I think some Finnish people may get the idea :D. But yea, Finnish is easy when you're Finnish. Olen suomalainen.
I think I do get what you mean :) Hauskaa!
Awesome pronunciation. Really. Wow. Some people might learn to write and read finnish really good but always their pronunciation sounds little foreigner, but still fairly understandable. But you, you really sound exactly like typical finnish guy. Wow. Be proud of yourself.
Nyt oli kyllä hyvä koonti pääasioista - ihan mahtava video! :) I´ve heard a that finnish might be easier if you are good at mathematics or "that" mathematical sort of thinking, because in the forming the words and creating them to sentences you need the same sort of thinking.
Btw palindromes in finnish are always so in writing, but at the same time in the spoken language. For fun you can try reading some examples on a tape, and then playing them from the end to start: "Elli, viiliä jäi liiville", "Ai! Voi! Salaa mallimimmi Milla maalasi ovia". :D