Yeah he pronounces some things oddly, but that is only because his accent. He is used to pronounce things in a certain way, so it is not likely he will be able to pronounce everything "perfectly", that is because of our accents. Same as chinese, russian and japanese speak completely differently compared to finnish, not the words, but HOW you speak, our accent will fuck it up big time. Really surprised that his accent has adapted so well, that there were barely any words his accent modified to not sound native. A good example is how the letter R is pronounced in finnish, and then in english. That is where "rally english" mostly comes from, as our accent uses a hard R, and in english it is almost like a completely different letter, in the way it is pronounced "softly".
Don't worry it's similar with other languages. I learned most of the German grammar in Latin lessons. We are taught the grammar in German lessons, too, but you learn a lot more when learning another language and as Latin is pretty intense with grammar I learned it there.
The lack of gender in finnish language once lead to a funny situation for me once when I read a book that was originally written in english. I read the entire book without realizing that one character was female...
Sounds like a poor translation. Translating to Finnish easily leads to expression like "He looked the girl into her eyes" as one has to somehow express the gender and to avoid using same pronoun for the subject and the object.
Same, for a long time I thought Snape in Harry Potter was a woman. Also @Okaro X while it's true that if the translation didn't make a point of mentioning the gender when a character was introduced it's bad but I don't see how you'd bring up the gender of characters if the reader is already supposed to know it without it sounding weird and that avoiding repeating pronouns is the reason you'd do that often.
@@enrymion9681 "Same, for a long time I thought Snape in Harry Potter was a woman." Oh wow, glad to hear I'm not the only one. I'm pretty sure it was only in the second book where Snape was specifically referred to with the word "mies" in the Finnish translations, so for the entire way through the Philosopher's Stone and up until that particular part in the Chamber of Secrets I, too, was under the impression that Snape was a woman.
I noticed that Yoda thing as well :D It was very strikingly obvious when a sentence was written in english (but I've never thought of it when speaking finnish).
Finnish is a fun language for a native speaker, because the grammar is so flexible. The written language tends to glue words together and prefers endings to separate words when pointing out a quality or circumstance, but colloquial Finnish again tends to work more similarly to Indo-European languages (understandable due to the historical influence of Swedish and German). Then, like in the national epic of Finland, Kalevala, there are also forms of poetic Finnish, meaning you can change the words and in some cases even grammar to imply an art form. This is of course used in poems and songs. Some examples of this: "(someone) wants" in Finnish is "haluaa", but has a poetic form "halajaa" "Don't" in Finnish is "älä", but has a poetic form "ällös" "Battle" in Finnish is "taistelu", but has a poetic form "taisto" "to forget" in Finnish is "unohtaa", but has a poetic form "unhottaa" "a thought" in Finnish is "ajatus", but has a poetic form "aatos" These poetic versions of words are usually word variations from old dialects, words that have otherwise fallen out of use or have changed, but due to their presence in poetry and song have become words still used but only in that context.
This is not unique to Finnish. The flexibility of word forms also doesn't necessarily have that much to do with 'grammar', that's more morphological. Also, it's not just colloquial Finnish that has Indo-European flavour to it; we've retained a whole bunch of things from (Proto-)Indo-European.
A famous example of something similar in English is Jabberwocky. Apparently it uses a lot of (now obsolete) words from Cheshire dialect. Ironically, the word "vorpal" has actually been revived somewhat due to its use in the poem, though specifically in fantasy-gaming contexts.
@@perunasinko3341 uhh, "idea" means idea xD. Aatos is a name, but it's also an older synonym for the word "ajatus". You don't really ever hear people use it in regular speech anymore
This explains a lot. When native Finnish speakers are speaking English sometimes here in the USA, they sound a bit poetic. It's hard to describe. It's much more fluid in it's train of thought. Now I see why.
Without the psuedo examples, our language would be very diffucult.. it's diffucult for me too, even tho I'm finnish.. :D No one I've talked with, have no idea how my name is pronaunced.. It's said like the word "alien" , but replace the L with an N.. :D This Guy speaks finnish very well, without being finnish! :)
Two things. 1. I'm a native Finn but this video taught me more about our grammar than 10 years of school. 2. Your pronunciation is amazing. Best I've ever heard a foreigner do.
4:30 Katsotko venettämmekin? = Will you look at our boat, too? = Do you look at our boat, too? = Are you looking at our boat, too? ---> The clitic "-ko" isn't related to the future tense. It's related to question (I think). Anyway As a native Finnish speaker I can say that this one of the best videos about Finnish I have ever seen. Good job!
Thank you for the compliment! You are right, -ko is the question particle (as shown near the end), and the sentence "Katsotko venettämmekin?" could just as well be in the present tense. But since English requires questions to be formed with an auxilliary verb (will, do, are), there is a slight relation, so I chose to mark it as the best equivalent for the Finnish question particle, to make the example more elegant!
"Do you look?" I'm not a native speaker but this sounds a very unnatural wording in English. In English you'd probably say either "Are you looking?" or "Will you look?" if you want to translate "Katsotko?". Adam chose the latter translation. He could have chosen the former as well but it would have been just as an arbitrary choice without additional context.
Your color coding makes the prefixes and suffixes of the words very easy to understand. It's only semi-comparable to finnish, but I wish I had something like that while studying with the Wheelock's Latin book.
I always wondered why consonant gradation is the way it is. Every Finn I've talked to doesn't even know. So thank you for explaining this. It helps a lot!
I'm not sure why I'm watching this as I'm a native finn, but it's actually very informative to us too, even helps me understand some structural differences between finnish and english Also your finnish pronounciation is very good !!
Haha, same here...I am german, and once some finnish students, studying german, thought it would be helpful to ask me things about german language...we all quickly realized, If I had had to learn german in school, it would have been a nightmare.... Point is: their german was waaayy better than mine.....I had absolutely no idea we had 82 classes of verb conjugation, they knew them by heart and could tell me when to use which....*gulp *
@@paavobergmann4920 Same for french, we are a lot, even after the College, to just go by "it's like that, just work with it", because we can't remember all the case and exceptions. Futhermore for the orthographe, it's ironic how we can't do any reform to simplify it, because, we were so much forced to go with this mess, that any little change is take has an insult to the language en disturb us. Just an example, the government, in 1996, tried to pass a law to simplify the script, like the "f" sound, by allowing to write it with just "f", even when it was "ph" that was used ("Philosophe => filosofe", "Nénuphar=> Nénufar", etc...) or writting "Oignon => Ognon" (since we pronounce it "Ognon") for exemple. It was a huge uproar, even if it was just an alternative/tolerance, everyone lose their shit, talking about suiling the french language, even if NOBODY knew why we write the words like that (the ethimology). The "Ph", for exemple, is an heritage of Greek language, it's used to words comming from the greeks. It's nice, indeed, and original in it's script, but, did the French language really be "downgraded", if we no longer use it? The worst, it's when you see the Italian, that did those kind of reforms XD
@@pitioti haha, i can understand. I had french in school for 3years. I have to confess, it was an uphill battle....😉 I didn't know you also were thinking about these reform? Germany did pass them a few years ago, and yes, everyone got their knickers in a twist, as if the language suddenly stopped making sense when you are allowed to write "Fotografie" and "Delfin"...but of course, us being german and all, some things got more complicated after the reform... But: One thing I really cherish about the reform. It finally made sense of the total mess of our 4varieties to write the letter "s". the "long s", "l", was mercifully dropped some decades ago, but now there are rules for "s", "ss", and "ß" that actually make sense...at last...
It's typical for native speakers to not know much about the precise grammatical rules of their language. After all, you learn your native language naturally, by imitating. So a non-native speaker might know more about the rules but the native speaker will know better how to apply them.
This was a very good presentation of the Finnish grammar. I would like to add a small comment. There is no single colloquial language, and your example shows how they speak mainly in Helsinki region. Admittedly, this language has a tendency to be spread around the country via television and other kind of modern communication. Still, there is a variety of quite different colloquial languages in other parts of the country. Finnish is very rich in dialects, and the colloquial languages often have their roots in them. For instance, ‘Are you afraid of the police’ is in standard Finnish ‘Pelkäätkö sinä poliisia’, in Helsinki language ‘Pelkäätsä poliisii’ and in Oulu language ‘Pelekääkkö nää polliisia’.
It reminds me of some Native American Languages here. I can read more Finnish then I can speak at this point. That's why videos like this are important. I need to hear it used by a native speaker. Another trick I have learned to help grasp Finnish is to watch interviews. I like music and art so I look up documentary or news stories where people are being asked questions that you may hear everyday about the work they do. How was your trip? Did you have anything to eat? Are you going to be done soon? That is much better then some of the books we have here in the States. One I bought kept going on about feeding nuts to chipmunks or something. A whole chapter was about some guy named Kari having a tummy ache.
I've always been so fascinated with Uralic languages, specially Finnish. I would love to learn it so I can finally watch movies of Kaurismaaki without subtitles and maybe, if I'm brave enough, read the Kalavela.
Glad to hear you like our little language family! ,If you try Kalevala and don't understand it, don't feel bad about it. The language is so old even we native speakers understand only some of it. But it's fun to read anyway, because of the rythm of the octosyllabic structure suits the language well.
8:30 We have something similar in Hungarian: To shoot someone and kill them is *lelő* ['lεløː]. To shoot someone but not kill them is *meglő* ['mεgløː].
The example sentence at 4:50 can be translated as "Botumuzada bakacakmısın?" in turkish. Although formal spelling rules dictates that it should be written like "Botumuza da bakacak mısın?", those seperated words are not words alone but are suffixes. If we translate it back to pseudo-english it will be "BoatOurAtToo LookWillYou?".
I wish I had a finnish grammar book explaining things like this. The ones I've tried get so lost into details, that I have a hard time understanding. I mean, of course details are important, but I feel that I can only start from the big picture. Many thanks!!
And this is just the "official finnish". The country is littered with various dialects which make it even more complex. Like your example, "Katsotko venettämmekin", when spoken in my area it could be "Tuukkonäkattoo meijänkin venettä" or "Katokkonä meijänki venettä"
also especially the youth uses more spoken finnish instead of written finnish so for example it could also be ”tuuks kattoo meijä venettä”. this makes finnish really hard for someone who is trying to learn it and for example travels to finland - only to find that barely anyone speaks written finnish anymore
In southern finland it can be commonly said "Katotsä meiänkin venettä?" or Tuutsä kattoo meidänkin venettä?" or in Helsinki slang "käyks tsekkaa/tsiigaa meitsi(n) botskii/paattii" Fun for foreigners, I can tell
Yeah but that applies to pretty much EVERY LIVING LANGUAGE. Don't make Finnish seem super "special" because it's not. It's got its share of peculiarities and dialectal differences but what language doesn't?
My native tongue is Hungarian, so that obviously helps, even if I can’t actually understand the words themselves. Though undeniably a difficult language, Finnish - unlike English -seems structured and logical. It seems similar to Hungarian in that , yes it is more time-consuming to learn in the beginning, but once you get going , you don’t have to worry about the endless exceptions English seems to be in love with. Good video, clear and informative.
I’m trying to learn some Finnish because I’m in love with the country and I like challenges! However, as a native French/Italian speaker, there aren’t many available books to teach me the language. I guess I have to learn from English/Finnish books then. Thank you for the clear explanations!
One amazing channel teaching complex aspects of both the Swedish and Finnish languages? I feel like I need to pinch myself. Thank you so much for doing what you do, and for free.
Thank you for this video :D I'm not a native speaker but I have a dear friend that is. I'm learning Finnish to surprise her when she comes down to visit.
As a native finnish speaker, i find this really interesting. I never need to think about these things because finnish is my native language, so it's really cool to see all these grammar things
@ Juu kyl ne opetetaan mut emmä koskaan jaksanu niihin allatiiveihin ja essiiveihin ja partitiiveihin keskittyy. Vieläki nytte tiiän vaa kolme niistä jotka on nominatiivi, genetiivi ja partitiivi
Itekkii muistan olleeni siellä tunneilla ja otaneeni hyvin muistiinpanoja, mutta ei nytte lähtis ei millää. Ihan hyvin pärjää tällä että on kuullu ja lukenu koko ikänsä ja tulee intuitiivisti kaikki. Toisaalta sama ongelma näkyy mulla englannin opiskelussa, en pystyis perustelemaan kunnolla. Taitaa olla ihan ihmiskunnan laajunen juttu kaikissa kielissä kun tulee niissä tarpeeks hyväks, ku oon kuullu kavereiltaki ja täällä kommenteissa aika paljo.
This is an amazing introduction to Finnish grammar! I wish every language has as in depth a showcase of their grammar as you have given here. Grammar is truly one of the richest and most fascinating aspects of language.
I haven't even learned Swedish (and a bunch of other languages) properly yet now you make me want to learn Finnish! I'm especially enamored by its 'telic' features. I've always complained about Japanese particles but seeing this now, I realized they're not as complex as Finnish cases. Though I may be saying this now since I haven't dived into Finnish **yet**. Thanks for the video!
Great video! 4:14 Btw, here the English equivalent can be translated in to different ways: "Katsotko venettämmekin?" or "Katsotko meidänkin venettämme?". (our *boat*, too vs. *our* boat, too) Just pointing it out, since it sounded in English like the weight was on "us".
I have no other option than to laugh too as a Finnish language student. I tried to learN It on and off by myself for 10 years with no great outcome...haha, so now I started virtual classes with a native. Mutta nii, onpa tämä vaikeaa!
Am glad this is a RUclips video, something I can stop and start, as just trying to grasp these concepts in English is hard enough! The explanations are very fast!
The question particle (-ko/-kö) can be appended to most words. The question word formed this way is always in the beginning of a sentence. And the answer to a yes/no (kyllä/ei) question in Finnish is usually not "kyllä" or "ei", but that would have been confusing at this stage.
Vowel harmony is really significant. I was told that especially for older persons, who never learned a different language, loan words with mixed vowels were troublesome. So much so, that for a loanword like Olympia, he'd instead say "Olumpia". Also, Finnish language does not like double consonants at the beginning of a word, so school => skool => koulu, stool => tuoli); and most grammatical cases kind of need a vowel, so he turned my name Clemens to Lemenssi :)
I just started to learn Finnish. My teacher said I should watch this video to get a better understanding of grammar. I was full of enthusiasm at the beginning. Now I'm in tears.
I'm so sorry to hear that. But I'm sure once you take a bit more time to concentrate on each topic so briefly introduced here it won't be as intimidating. My Polish friend learned to speak conversational Finnish in a year, it's not as impossible as people make it out to be.
As a Swedish speaking Finn,put in a Finnish school in the early 70's,I can still remember what it felt like to be surrounded by a foreign language,only understanding a few words and sentences..but as a child you learn a new language so quickly,just by listening. I can still not understand how adults moving here from different far-away countries can/and have the patience, to learn Finnish...
Phenomenaly well explained and structured video my friend, I took a great pleasure following your thoughts and sent this to the people that needed encouragement to learn the language, bravo
This was an excellent introduction that made things very clear, particularly by using colour coding to match the equivalent components between the two languages.
The atelic "Söin omenaa" more specifically means "I was eating an unspecified amount of apples" which includes the eating of just a part of the apple that you mentioned. It's easier to understand with water. "I drank the water" is "minä join veden". There is a specified amount of water. "I drank water" is "minä join vettä". There is an unspecified amount.
I'd say no, If you said "söin kalaa" that would mean unspecified amount of fish from one or more fish. Omena is different as it is eaten as a separate fruit. If you eat more than one apple, you say "söin omenoita".
@@okaro6595 But if you slice the apples thinly, and then start to eat them, you'd say "söin omenaa". You would be unable to count if you ate under or over one apple. "Söin omenoita" implies that you ate more than one (Real number that is 1
@@ilesalmo7724 Well... more like partitive singular= more or less than one (may be a specified amount if following a number or similar expression) or is an atelic object. Nominative singular= exactly one. Partitive plural: lots of them/not counted one by one (there's just SO many of them -- stars) or maybe you have different sorts of whatever. Partitive nominative: All of them (may be specified somehow).
@@ilesalmo7724 You would say "söin omenaviipaleita" tai "söin viipaloitua omenaa". You would not use the word "omena" like yo would use "fish". Omena is seen as separate fruits.
The way you can just put a verb before a noun or clause and it means "While I was driving". Or "the bought by us apartment" is very similar to Japanese. 1. "Yonda hon wa tanoshikatta" (読んだ本は楽しかった) This sentence means "The book I read was enjoyable." It reads word for word "Read book was enjoyable". The word yonda is just the past tense of "to read" . It just goes in front of the word hon ("book") and that's it! So simple. 2. You can say "Kawa no soba ni suwatte, hon o yonda" (川のそばに座って本を読んで)。This means "I was reading a book while sitting by the river." Literally word for word "By the river sitting, I read a book." The sentence doesn't require a word like "While", you just put the first clause in front and use the word "sitting" and it's clear. I find it much easier to construct these types of sentences in Japanese than in English and cool to see Finnish is the same.
Fun fact: Because of vowel harmony Finnish people usually have problems to pronounce some loan words like "olympialaiset" (Olympic games). Usually people pronounce it "olumpialaiset"
This is so helpful! I'm finnish, but growing up in a different country I used the language less and less, to the point that I've lost the feel for the right words. Having a structure to follow is so comforting and motivates me to improve my finnish :) Edit: Maybe I shouldn't scream the country I live in into the internet😬
Really an excellent video. I hope that more such is coming soon. The speaker, who obviously was not a Finn, pronounced Finnish very well. With these kind of videos it is possible to break the myth of Finnish being a super difficult language. It is a challenging language for anyone, whose native language is not a Finno-Ugric one, but there are several languages, especially in Asia, which are much morre difficult than Finnish.
Thank you for saying so! I'm not going to deny that Finnish is a difficult language, but like you say, many other languages would be a lot harder to learn for speakers of IE languages. And above all, presenting Finnish grammar provided a good opportunity to try to nuance the common belief that cases and endings make languages more complicated/difficult in and of themselves.
"... there are several languages, especially in Asia, which are much morre difficult than Finnish..." Very true. I've studied languages all my life - even dabbling with Sanskrit before admitting defeat - and some of the Asian languages would break any foreigner. Tibetan might win the prize - the spoken language has drifted so far away from the written language it makes me wonder how the native speakers manage with it, let alone foreigners.
11:33 "Taloa vastaan" does not mean "towards the house", it means "against the house", which sounds silly. Towards the house would be "kohti taloa" or "taloa kohti". Edit: "vastaan" is used when someone is coming towards you, and you are coming towards they, like possibly meeting halfway through. You're moving "against" their direction, towards them. You never move "against" a stationary object, you are closing in on someone who is closing in on you. You don't have to be moving simultaniously, if someone is coming to your city with a train, you may come to meet them at the railway station, where you will wait. Then you say like "I'm coming against you at the railway station", meaning that I'll wait you there.
I like to think I know a lot about the grammar(better than speaking and listening unfortunately) but I did not know about the "invisible" 'q' thing. That is new to me.
Those types of things would usually only come up when talking about historical linguistics, which people won't usually know of unless they've studied Finnish linguistics at a university.
There is something similar in German. When a word begins with a vowel, they pronounce it separately, and they don't contract it with the previous word. You can hear this at the beginning of these words.
you have to go in more deph with this! this has been the first video of all i have watched what explanes the language, and the spoken language explanation would be awesome!
Amazing video, this probably took a lot of effort! Its really intresting to see how people learn my native language and it really opens up a whole new perspective to a thing I take for granted.
Another great video! Your comparisons are really, really good! Keep up the great work! I bet you make finnish much easier to understand with your videos!! Greetings from a native finnish speaker!
Welcome back to a another episode of why the heck is this in my recommended IN FINNISH: ja tervetuloa takaisin uuteen jaksoon: miksi helkkarissa tämä on minun suosituksissani
![Gunna - HIM ALL ALONG [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/w7Wf0h1Q8a4/mqdefault.jpg)
Why am I watching this. I'm a native speaker
Well, even if you're a pro at driving your car, you might be interested in knowing how the engine works as well :)
Academia Cervena haha but if I'm engineer already?;)
Suomi mainittu. Torilla tavataan.
Why am I watching this? I don't even learn Finnish :D
Perhaps you dream of becoming a teacher
Your pronounciation is the best for a foreign person I have ever heard!!
I suspect the narrator is a native.
Phoephoey he’s from Sweden actually
@@Phoephoey Nah, him not being a native is easy to spot.
Yeah he pronounces some things oddly, but that is only because his accent. He is used to pronounce things in a certain way, so it is not likely he will be able to pronounce everything "perfectly", that is because of our accents. Same as chinese, russian and japanese speak completely differently compared to finnish, not the words, but HOW you speak, our accent will fuck it up big time. Really surprised that his accent has adapted so well, that there were barely any words his accent modified to not sound native. A good example is how the letter R is pronounced in finnish, and then in english. That is where "rally english" mostly comes from, as our accent uses a hard R, and in english it is almost like a completely different letter, in the way it is pronounced "softly".
i thought he is finnish...but what do I know im just a german xDD
you know the language is complicated when native speakers learn new things from videos like this
The thing is, we're not taught all this stuff and terminology so thoroughly. We're just taught to speak and some more basic grammar stuff in school.
Don't worry it's similar with other languages. I learned most of the German grammar in Latin lessons. We are taught the grammar in German lessons, too, but you learn a lot more when learning another language and as Latin is pretty intense with grammar I learned it there.
@@anjagoller Aye, another Latin student! I'm studying Latin too :D
@@crossroads3 Nonono, that was like 20 years ago in school.
Moi enppuli :3
The lack of gender in finnish language once lead to a funny situation for me once when I read a book that was originally written in english. I read the entire book without realizing that one character was female...
+Blue Ocean Corporations
So what?
I once talked to a person and to this day I don't know if he/she was a man or a woman.
@@suaptoestIt just was a bit funny to discover that this person I had thought was a man was actually a woman.
Sounds like a poor translation. Translating to Finnish easily leads to expression like "He looked the girl into her eyes" as one has to somehow express the gender and to avoid using same pronoun for the subject and the object.
Same, for a long time I thought Snape in Harry Potter was a woman. Also @Okaro X while it's true that if the translation didn't make a point of mentioning the gender when a character was introduced it's bad but I don't see how you'd bring up the gender of characters if the reader is already supposed to know it without it sounding weird and that avoiding repeating pronouns is the reason you'd do that often.
@@enrymion9681 "Same, for a long time I thought Snape in Harry Potter was a woman."
Oh wow, glad to hear I'm not the only one. I'm pretty sure it was only in the second book where Snape was specifically referred to with the word "mies" in the Finnish translations, so for the entire way through the Philosopher's Stone and up until that particular part in the Chamber of Secrets I, too, was under the impression that Snape was a woman.
How to speak finnish
1. Learn finnish words
2. Speak engilsh like a yoda
3. Convert the yoda english to finnish words
I noticed that Yoda thing as well :D It was very strikingly obvious when a sentence was written in english (but I've never thought of it when speaking finnish).
@Coldheart What were you doing there? Waiting for someone who didn't show up perhaps? If you had some coffee, you say kahvilassa.
@The Chaperone sanottais että olin eilen kahvilalla
Almost six years ago already...
I really hope you come back with more videos on Finnish and Sámi, they're so well done and easy to follow!
Your pronunciation was good for foreing
Aleksi Tuononen ihan VITUN hyvä
Aleksi Tuononen opetellu varmaan sanoo noi kaikki ennen ku on tehny tän
* a foreigner; not foreing
The Gotham Goliath aar juu sure thät juu want tu gou daun on thät roud?
@@Jonsson95 Áj dont szink dát hi vud vánt tu dú dát.
There's things, that even I didn't know.. And I've spoken it about 35years.. :)
That's usually how it goes with our native languages! We speak them perfectly, but we don't necessarily know much about them :)
Academia Cervena true! :)
It is impressive.
easy for you to say
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
CONTINUE THIS SERIES PLEASE :(
I'm a brazilian and it's hard to find a video teaching finnish as didatic as yours
I agree!
I agree.
Finnish is a fun language for a native speaker, because the grammar is so flexible. The written language tends to glue words together and prefers endings to separate words when pointing out a quality or circumstance, but colloquial Finnish again tends to work more similarly to Indo-European languages (understandable due to the historical influence of Swedish and German).
Then, like in the national epic of Finland, Kalevala, there are also forms of poetic Finnish, meaning you can change the words and in some cases even grammar to imply an art form. This is of course used in poems and songs.
Some examples of this:
"(someone) wants" in Finnish is "haluaa", but has a poetic form "halajaa"
"Don't" in Finnish is "älä", but has a poetic form "ällös"
"Battle" in Finnish is "taistelu", but has a poetic form "taisto"
"to forget" in Finnish is "unohtaa", but has a poetic form "unhottaa"
"a thought" in Finnish is "ajatus", but has a poetic form "aatos"
These poetic versions of words are usually word variations from old dialects, words that have otherwise fallen out of use or have changed, but due to their presence in poetry and song have become words still used but only in that context.
This is not unique to Finnish. The flexibility of word forms also doesn't necessarily have that much to do with 'grammar', that's more morphological. Also, it's not just colloquial Finnish that has Indo-European flavour to it; we've retained a whole bunch of things from (Proto-)Indo-European.
A famous example of something similar in English is Jabberwocky. Apparently it uses a lot of (now obsolete) words from Cheshire dialect.
Ironically, the word "vorpal" has actually been revived somewhat due to its use in the poem, though specifically in fantasy-gaming contexts.
Ahem just saying Aatos is a name but it also means idea as well but name is More common
@@perunasinko3341 uhh, "idea" means idea xD. Aatos is a name, but it's also an older synonym for the word "ajatus". You don't really ever hear people use it in regular speech anymore
This explains a lot. When native Finnish speakers are speaking English sometimes here in the USA, they sound a bit poetic. It's hard to describe. It's much more fluid in it's train of thought. Now I see why.
The pseudo-english examples help a lot for me, thanks
When used in the right way, I find there's a lot of educational potential in such pseudo-translations!
Without the psuedo examples, our language would be very diffucult.. it's diffucult for me too, even tho I'm finnish.. :D No one I've talked with, have no idea how my name is pronaunced.. It's said like the word "alien" , but replace the L with an N.. :D This Guy speaks finnish very well, without being finnish! :)
Academia Cervena Couls you please make/post new videos about:
a) Icelandic.
b) Faroese.
c) Old Norse.
@@einienj3281 I could pronounce your name with ease
Two things.
1. I'm a native Finn but this video taught me more about our grammar than 10 years of school.
2. Your pronunciation is amazing. Best I've ever heard a foreigner do.
4:30
Katsotko venettämmekin?
= Will you look at our boat, too?
= Do you look at our boat, too?
= Are you looking at our boat, too?
---> The clitic "-ko" isn't related to the future tense. It's related to question (I think).
Anyway
As a native Finnish speaker I can say that this one of the best videos about Finnish I have ever seen. Good job!
Thank you for the compliment! You are right, -ko is the question particle (as shown near the end), and the sentence "Katsotko venettämmekin?" could just as well be in the present tense. But since English requires questions to be formed with an auxilliary verb (will, do, are), there is a slight relation, so I chose to mark it as the best equivalent for the Finnish question particle, to make the example more elegant!
"Do you look?"
I'm not a native speaker but this sounds a very unnatural wording in English. In English you'd probably say either "Are you looking?" or "Will you look?" if you want to translate "Katsotko?". Adam chose the latter translation. He could have chosen the former as well but it would have been just as an arbitrary choice without additional context.
Your color coding makes the prefixes and suffixes of the words very easy to understand. It's only semi-comparable to finnish, but I wish I had something like that while studying with the Wheelock's Latin book.
Your pronunciation is stellar for a foreign speaker!
I always wondered why consonant gradation is the way it is. Every Finn I've talked to doesn't even know. So thank you for explaining this. It helps a lot!
Sun suomen kieli on aika hitsin hyvä
Aika hitsi? Semmosesta hitsistä en oo kuullutkaan.
Jack _ oletko tietoinen konseptista huumori?
"aika hitsi" on sellainen, joka valmistuu sitten aikanaan
@Jack _ sama vois sust sannoo
lil jes oletko vitun ärsyttävä äpärä
me: *has a single finnish friend*
RUclips: hey wanna learn finnish even though all your friends can speak and write in extremely fluent English
Well, are you speaking suomea now?
Meanwhile i'm finnish and i got this in my recommendedXD
Oof
Man, this is gold! Thank you very much, now I'm much less scared to pick up Finnish at some point in my life
Nicolás Espíndola you should still be scared af…
Good luck.
Same here :)
JUST DO IT
I'm not sure why I'm watching this as I'm a native finn, but it's actually very informative to us too, even helps me understand some structural differences between finnish and english
Also your finnish pronounciation is very good !!
I love your country
Im finnish thinking I could never learn this
Yeah its convenient for finns to be able to just have the feel for it
Haha, same here...I am german, and once some finnish students, studying german, thought it would be helpful to ask me things about german language...we all quickly realized, If I had had to learn german in school, it would have been a nightmare....
Point is: their german was waaayy better than mine.....I had absolutely no idea we had 82 classes of verb conjugation, they knew them by heart and could tell me when to use which....*gulp *
@@paavobergmann4920 Same for french, we are a lot, even after the College, to just go by "it's like that, just work with it", because we can't remember all the case and exceptions. Futhermore for the orthographe, it's ironic how we can't do any reform to simplify it, because, we were so much forced to go with this mess, that any little change is take has an insult to the language en disturb us.
Just an example, the government, in 1996, tried to pass a law to simplify the script, like the "f" sound, by allowing to write it with just "f", even when it was "ph" that was used ("Philosophe => filosofe", "Nénuphar=> Nénufar", etc...) or writting "Oignon => Ognon" (since we pronounce it "Ognon") for exemple.
It was a huge uproar, even if it was just an alternative/tolerance, everyone lose their shit, talking about suiling the french language, even if NOBODY knew why we write the words like that (the ethimology).
The "Ph", for exemple, is an heritage of Greek language, it's used to words comming from the greeks. It's nice, indeed, and original in it's script, but, did the French language really be "downgraded", if we no longer use it?
The worst, it's when you see the Italian, that did those kind of reforms XD
@@pitioti haha, i can understand. I had french in school for 3years. I have to confess, it was an uphill battle....😉
I didn't know you also were thinking about these reform? Germany did pass them a few years ago, and yes, everyone got their knickers in a twist, as if the language suddenly stopped making sense when you are allowed to write "Fotografie" and "Delfin"...but of course, us being german and all, some things got more complicated after the reform...
But: One thing I really cherish about the reform. It finally made sense of the total mess of our 4varieties to write the letter "s". the "long s", "l", was mercifully dropped some decades ago, but now there are rules for "s", "ss", and "ß" that actually make sense...at last...
It's typical for native speakers to not know much about the precise grammatical rules of their language. After all, you learn your native language naturally, by imitating. So a non-native speaker might know more about the rules but the native speaker will know better how to apply them.
This is the best video I could find on RUclips about the Finnish language
This was a very good presentation of the Finnish grammar. I would like to add a small comment. There is no single colloquial language, and your example shows how they speak mainly in Helsinki region. Admittedly, this language has a tendency to be spread around the country via television and other kind of modern communication. Still, there is a variety of quite different colloquial languages in other parts of the country. Finnish is very rich in dialects, and the colloquial languages often have their roots in them. For instance, ‘Are you afraid of the police’ is in standard Finnish ‘Pelkäätkö sinä poliisia’, in Helsinki language ‘Pelkäätsä poliisii’ and in Oulu language ‘Pelekääkkö nää polliisia’.
I was looking for this comment
It reminds me of some Native American Languages here. I can read more Finnish then I can speak at this point. That's why videos like this are important. I need to hear it used by a native speaker.
Another trick I have learned to help grasp Finnish is to watch interviews. I like music and art so I look up documentary or news stories where people are being asked questions that you may hear everyday about the work they do.
How was your trip?
Did you have anything to eat?
Are you going to be done soon?
That is much better then some of the books we have here in the States. One I bought kept going on about feeding nuts to chipmunks or something. A whole chapter was about some guy named Kari having a tummy ache.
These videos are everything I ever wanted in regards to how languages are described and taught
I've always been so fascinated with Uralic languages, specially Finnish. I would love to learn it so I can finally watch movies of Kaurismaaki without subtitles and maybe, if I'm brave enough, read the Kalavela.
Shoaib M Thats how Finnish works.
Glad to hear you like our little language family! ,If you try Kalevala and don't understand it, don't feel bad about it. The language is so old even we native speakers understand only some of it. But it's fun to read anyway, because of the rythm of the octosyllabic structure suits the language well.
After that you should learn the Finnish dialects :D There's quite a lot of them and most of them are like a new language so good luck
@@alegoggi mut pohojanmaan murre onhan paras
*Kaurismäki *Kalevala
8:30 We have something similar in Hungarian:
To shoot someone and kill them is *lelő* ['lεløː].
To shoot someone but not kill them is *meglő* ['mεgløː].
Propably becajse finnish and hungarian languages are relative to each other like long lost rother or cousin
hi brother
same language group
are they different verbs or is it an affixation thing in Hungarian?
This is very intresting...
The example sentence at 4:50 can be translated as "Botumuzada bakacakmısın?" in turkish. Although formal spelling rules dictates that it should be written like "Botumuza da bakacak mısın?", those seperated words are not words alone but are suffixes. If we translate it back to pseudo-english it will be "BoatOurAtToo LookWillYou?".
As someone who wants to learn Finnish, I found this VERY instructive. Thank you for the work you've put in this! I'd give you 100 likes if I could.
How’s it going?
I started learning Finnish 2 years ago and still often struggle with the grammar. This Video gave me motivation again 😂
I wish I had a finnish grammar book explaining things like this. The ones I've tried get so lost into details, that I have a hard time understanding. I mean, of course details are important, but I feel that I can only start from the big picture. Many thanks!!
And this is just the "official finnish". The country is littered with various dialects which make it even more complex. Like your example, "Katsotko venettämmekin", when spoken in my area it could be "Tuukkonäkattoo meijänkin venettä" or "Katokkonä meijänki venettä"
Asukko nää oulussa, mulla on koko sukuni sielläpäi!
also especially the youth uses more spoken finnish instead of written finnish so for example it could also be ”tuuks kattoo meijä venettä”. this makes finnish really hard for someone who is trying to learn it and for example travels to finland - only to find that barely anyone speaks written finnish anymore
Kai mä voin teiä paattii tsiigaa
In southern finland it can be commonly said "Katotsä meiänkin venettä?" or Tuutsä kattoo meidänkin venettä?" or in Helsinki slang "käyks tsekkaa/tsiigaa meitsi(n) botskii/paattii"
Fun for foreigners, I can tell
Yeah but that applies to pretty much EVERY LIVING LANGUAGE. Don't make Finnish seem super "special" because it's not. It's got its share of peculiarities and dialectal differences but what language doesn't?
This was very helpful to someone who, as a Finn, teaches Finnish to foreigners! Great job!
My native tongue is Hungarian, so that obviously helps, even if I can’t actually understand the words themselves. Though undeniably a difficult language, Finnish - unlike English -seems structured and logical. It seems similar to Hungarian in that , yes it is more time-consuming to learn in the beginning, but once you get going , you don’t have to worry about the endless exceptions English seems to be in love with.
Good video, clear and informative.
I’m trying to learn some Finnish because I’m in love with the country and I like challenges! However, as a native French/Italian speaker, there aren’t many available books to teach me the language. I guess I have to learn from English/Finnish books then. Thank you for the clear explanations!
DONT LEARN FINNISH ITS NOT WORTH UR TIME AND EFFORT I SWEAR🙏🏻🙏🏻
kekekekke more kekeke if he wants to learn then let him:)
One amazing channel teaching complex aspects of both the Swedish and Finnish languages? I feel like I need to pinch myself. Thank you so much for doing what you do, and for free.
matilda :] well thanks but i might stick out a bit sitting in a 6th grade classroom. ;)
"Eivät tietä" is actually "eivät tiedä", just like all the others. Don't know if that was a typo or not, but pointing it out just in case.
It's a stupid typo that I somehow managed to miss :'( It's already up in the errata list in the description :)
Thank you for this video :D
I'm not a native speaker but I have a dear friend that is. I'm learning Finnish to surprise her when she comes down to visit.
He actually pronounced finnish words correctly...
I hope you continue this series one day. It was really educational to watch!
Oikein hyvä selitys näytettäväksi englanninkielisille tutuille. Very good explanation to show for the english speeking friends.
Tuttu is acquaintance
friend is ystävä
Fantastic video. Looking forward to more.
As a native finnish speaker, i find this really interesting. I never need to think about these things because finnish is my native language, so it's really cool to see all these grammar things
oh man its been 5 years i wish you guys had continued the series
Olen puhunut suomea koko ikäni, mutten ole koskaan alkanut ajatella mitään näistä, koska kaikki tulee tietenkin aivan luonnostaan :))
Kyllä näistä suurin osa taidetaan äidinkielentunneilla opettaa, mutta tietty vähän eri tavalla kuin englanninkielisille tarkoitetulla videolla.
@ Juu kyl ne opetetaan mut emmä koskaan jaksanu niihin allatiiveihin ja essiiveihin ja partitiiveihin keskittyy. Vieläki nytte tiiän vaa kolme niistä jotka on nominatiivi, genetiivi ja partitiivi
Itekkii muistan olleeni siellä tunneilla ja otaneeni hyvin muistiinpanoja, mutta ei nytte lähtis ei millää. Ihan hyvin pärjää tällä että on kuullu ja lukenu koko ikänsä ja tulee intuitiivisti kaikki. Toisaalta sama ongelma näkyy mulla englannin opiskelussa, en pystyis perustelemaan kunnolla. Taitaa olla ihan ihmiskunnan laajunen juttu kaikissa kielissä kun tulee niissä tarpeeks hyväks, ku oon kuullu kavereiltaki ja täällä kommenteissa aika paljo.
Lauri Härsilä Joo, tää juttu videon iha alussa opiskellaan meidän 9lk tunneilla
This is an amazing introduction to Finnish grammar! I wish every language has as in depth a showcase of their grammar as you have given here. Grammar is truly one of the richest and most fascinating aspects of language.
I haven't even learned Swedish (and a bunch of other languages) properly yet now you make me want to learn Finnish! I'm especially enamored by its 'telic' features. I've always complained about Japanese particles but seeing this now, I realized they're not as complex as Finnish cases. Though I may be saying this now since I haven't dived into Finnish **yet**.
Thanks for the video!
JJin ジン 찐
Nice. If you need any help with something, i might be able to explain it
Thank you for this video. It is by far the best and most informative basic Finnish grammar video that I have seen.
Very interesting and well-explained video, thank you!
I'm really addicted to Finnish grammar videos for foreigners even though I am a native speaker. I have never thought of this kind of stuff :D
Beautiful language! I'm in love
Why
Great video!
4:14 Btw, here the English equivalent can be translated in to different ways: "Katsotko venettämmekin?" or "Katsotko meidänkin venettämme?". (our *boat*, too vs. *our* boat, too) Just pointing it out, since it sounded in English like the weight was on "us".
In the middle of the video I just started laughing because I realized how hard my language actually is
I have no other option than to laugh too as a Finnish language student. I tried to learN It on and off by myself for 10 years with no great outcome...haha, so now I started virtual classes with a native. Mutta nii, onpa tämä vaikeaa!
Okay, wow. That was both fascinating and overwhelming. Thank you for such a comprehensive video. (American; native english speaker here).
Thank you! Please do more Finnish videos.
Am glad this is a RUclips video, something I can stop and start, as just trying to grasp these concepts in English is hard enough! The explanations are very fast!
The question particle (-ko/-kö) can be appended to most words. The question word formed this way is always in the beginning of a sentence. And the answer to a yes/no (kyllä/ei) question in Finnish is usually not "kyllä" or "ei", but that would have been confusing at this stage.
Vastaisinkokinkohan tuohon mitään?
Vowel harmony is really significant. I was told that especially for older persons, who never learned a different language, loan words with mixed vowels were troublesome. So much so, that for a loanword like Olympia, he'd instead say "Olumpia".
Also, Finnish language does not like double consonants at the beginning of a word, so school => skool => koulu, stool => tuoli); and most grammatical cases kind of need a vowel, so he turned my name Clemens to Lemenssi :)
As a Finnish person, I can confirm that everything in this video is correct. Good job at figuring Finnish out! :)
I would never say "Ostan paitaa". "I'm buying a shirt" = "Olen ostamassa paitaa".
I just started to learn Finnish. My teacher said I should watch this video to get a better understanding of grammar. I was full of enthusiasm at the beginning. Now I'm in tears.
I'm so sorry to hear that. But I'm sure once you take a bit more time to concentrate on each topic so briefly introduced here it won't be as intimidating. My Polish friend learned to speak conversational Finnish in a year, it's not as impossible as people make it out to be.
Awesome video!!! I'm looking forward for other videos about finnish!
Your Finnish pronunciation is totally flawless to the point I'm more than gobsmacked!
I am grateful that I don't have to learn Finnish from the beginning.
Sincerely yours,
A Finn
You are the best outsider that speaks finnish!
Can you please make more videos about learning finnish? This is helping me a lot! Thanks to this video! 😊😊😊
As a Swedish speaking Finn,put in a Finnish school in the early 70's,I can still remember what it felt like to be surrounded by a foreign language,only understanding a few words and sentences..but as a child you learn a new language so quickly,just by listening. I can still not understand how adults moving here from different far-away countries can/and have the patience, to learn Finnish...
I'm a native Finnish speaker but this was quite interesting! Also, your pronunciation is good!
Phenomenaly well explained and structured video my friend, I took a great pleasure following your thoughts and sent this to the people that needed encouragement to learn the language, bravo
Super comprehensive! Thank you!
I am looking forward to the next intermediate video!!
This was an excellent introduction that made things very clear, particularly by using colour coding to match the equivalent components between the two languages.
The atelic "Söin omenaa" more specifically means "I was eating an unspecified amount of apples" which includes the eating of just a part of the apple that you mentioned. It's easier to understand with water. "I drank the water" is "minä join veden". There is a specified amount of water. "I drank water" is "minä join vettä". There is an unspecified amount.
I'd say no, If you said "söin kalaa" that would mean unspecified amount of fish from one or more fish. Omena is different as it is eaten as a separate fruit. If you eat more than one apple, you say "söin omenoita".
@@okaro6595 But if you slice the apples thinly, and then start to eat them, you'd say "söin omenaa". You would be unable to count if you ate under or over one apple. "Söin omenoita" implies that you ate more than one (Real number that is 1
@@ilesalmo7724 Well... more like partitive singular= more or less than one (may be a specified amount if following a number or similar expression) or is an atelic object. Nominative singular= exactly one. Partitive plural: lots of them/not counted one by one (there's just SO many of them -- stars) or maybe you have different sorts of whatever. Partitive nominative: All of them (may be specified somehow).
@@ilesalmo7724 You would say "söin omenaviipaleita" tai "söin viipaloitua omenaa". You would not use the word "omena" like yo would use "fish". Omena is seen as separate fruits.
The way you can just put a verb before a noun or clause and it means "While I was driving". Or "the bought by us apartment" is very similar to Japanese.
1. "Yonda hon wa tanoshikatta" (読んだ本は楽しかった) This sentence means "The book I read was enjoyable." It reads word for word "Read book was enjoyable". The word yonda is just the past tense of "to read" . It just goes in front of the word hon ("book") and that's it! So simple.
2. You can say "Kawa no soba ni suwatte, hon o yonda" (川のそばに座って本を読んで)。This means "I was reading a book while sitting by the river." Literally word for word "By the river sitting, I read a book." The sentence doesn't require a word like "While", you just put the first clause in front and use the word "sitting" and it's clear.
I find it much easier to construct these types of sentences in Japanese than in English and cool to see Finnish is the same.
Fun fact: Because of vowel harmony Finnish people usually have problems to pronounce some loan words like "olympialaiset" (Olympic games). Usually people pronounce it "olumpialaiset"
This is so helpful! I'm finnish, but growing up in a different country I used the language less and less, to the point that I've lost the feel for the right words.
Having a structure to follow is so comforting and motivates me to improve my finnish :)
Edit: Maybe I shouldn't scream the country I live in into the internet😬
Really an excellent video. I hope that more such is coming soon. The speaker, who obviously was not a Finn, pronounced Finnish very well. With these kind of videos it is possible to break the myth of Finnish being a super difficult language. It is a challenging language for anyone, whose native language is not a Finno-Ugric one, but there are several languages, especially in Asia, which are much morre difficult than Finnish.
Thank you for saying so! I'm not going to deny that Finnish is a difficult language, but like you say, many other languages would be a lot harder to learn for speakers of IE languages. And above all, presenting Finnish grammar provided a good opportunity to try to nuance the common belief that cases and endings make languages more complicated/difficult in and of themselves.
"... there are several languages, especially in Asia, which are much morre difficult than Finnish..."
Very true. I've studied languages all my life - even dabbling with Sanskrit before admitting defeat - and some of the Asian languages would break any foreigner. Tibetan might win the prize - the spoken language has drifted so far away from the written language it makes me wonder how the native speakers manage with it, let alone foreigners.
Finnish grammar in a nuttshell
Written: vihreä
Pronounced: vihreä
THANK YOU! I'm a native English and German speaker and Finnish has been pretty trying for me. You're saving my life right now
11:33 "Taloa vastaan" does not mean "towards the house", it means "against the house", which sounds silly. Towards the house would be "kohti taloa" or "taloa kohti".
Edit: "vastaan" is used when someone is coming towards you, and you are coming towards they, like possibly meeting halfway through. You're moving "against" their direction, towards them. You never move "against" a stationary object, you are closing in on someone who is closing in on you. You don't have to be moving simultaniously, if someone is coming to your city with a train, you may come to meet them at the railway station, where you will wait. Then you say like "I'm coming against you at the railway station", meaning that I'll wait you there.
Taloa vasten=against the house
@@RaspiRoope That's when something is leaning against the house, like a bicycle or a ladder.
Also "Facing the house" is "Taloa vastapäätä"!
"vastaan" also means "I'll answer" AND "I answer"
I do not know why I'm watching this as a native speaker but I'm enjoying this.
I like to think I know a lot about the grammar(better than speaking and listening unfortunately) but I did not know about the "invisible" 'q' thing. That is new to me.
Those types of things would usually only come up when talking about historical linguistics, which people won't usually know of unless they've studied Finnish linguistics at a university.
There is something similar in German. When a word begins with a vowel, they pronounce it separately, and they don't contract it with the previous word. You can hear this at the beginning of these words.
Very informative and precise. Kiitos
Thank you, so much. Really interesting. Full similarity with Turkish grammar.
Your pronunciation is god tier
In Chinese, we don’t use articles quite often either.
kiitos paljon Ｊapanista.
opiskelen suomea vuosia sitten.
@@mandelbrotsugee *opiskelin
You gotta use an imperfect on that case.
In Russian we don’t use any articles
you have to go in more deph with this! this has been the first video of all i have watched what explanes the language, and the spoken language explanation would be awesome!
0:56 "Silmä" is "szem" in Hungarian. 5:35 "Koira" is "kutya". 10:25 "Lehti" is "levél". 11:34 "Alla" is "alatt". 11:44 "Tiedän" is "tudom".
Köszönöm nagyon érdekes. If that is right. I didn't know that we had this many similar words.
Isn't "vesi" (water) "vez" and "käsi" (arm) "kez" in Hungarian?
Amazing video, this probably took a lot of effort! Its really intresting to see how people learn my native language and it really opens up a whole new perspective to a thing I take for granted.
Currently learning Finnish as a native English speaker and this helps a lot.
Another great video!
Your comparisons are really, really good! Keep up the great work! I bet you make finnish much easier to understand with your videos!!
Greetings from a native finnish speaker!
I just realized how frustrating the difference between written and spoken Finnish must be to people learning it.
So fun to watch this as someone who fluently speaks finnish
The grammatical cases in Finnish seem quite logical and easy to grasp, unlike some parts of the Swedish grammar. *wink* *wink*
Yeah and we have to learn that shit. Thank god its a dying language in Finland.
You pronounce finnish words incredibly well for a foreinger. Very good video.
Please more videos like this on finnish!!! :D
Please add more videos, these are so helpful for Finnish learners!
Welcome back to a another episode of why the heck is this in my recommended
IN FINNISH:
ja tervetuloa takaisin uuteen jaksoon: miksi helkkarissa tämä on minun suosituksissani
No, minä olen joka tapauksessa iloinen että näit sen, koska sen jälkeen opetit minulle sanan 'helkkari' 👍
@@AcademiaCervena fun fact, "mee helkkariin" means "go to heck" but it is a shortened version of "mene helvettiin" meaning "go to hell"
@@SilverGamingFI ja "painu helvettiin" lienee käytetyin muoto.
A great summary of the features of Finnish language. Concise and with good examples.
Very good pronunciation!
I never relized how muchni progress when speaking normally. Man!
It’s soooo weird to hear foreigners talk in finnish, but I like that they try though
I can sit and listen to people speak Finnish all day. what a fun language.