Finnish 101: The 30 Minute Crash Course in Finnish

Johanna Lahti

44 Weeks from today…

…you will have:

General Professional Proficiency in Speaking Finnish (S3)

and

General Professional Proficiency in Reading Finnish (R3)

Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours)Languages closely related to English

Afrikaans, Danish, DutchFrench, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese,Romanian, Spanish,Swedish

Category II: 30 weeks (750 hours)Languages similar to English

German

Category III: 36 weeks (900 hours)Languages with linguistic and/or cultural differences from English

IndonesianMalaysianSwahili

Language Difficulty Rankinghttp://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

Category IV: 44 weeks (1100 hours)Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English

Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese,Croatian, Czech, *Estonian, *Finnish, *Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, *Hungarian, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Latvian Lithuanian, Macedonian, *Mongolian,Nepali, Pashto, Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik), Polish, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Tagalog, *Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, *Vietnamese,Xhosa, Zulu * Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category.

Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours)Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers

ArabicCantonese (Chinese)Mandarin (Chinese)*JapaneseKorean

* Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category.

Finnish? Easy...

...even squirrels can read it!

Finnish from times immemorial...

ANTEDILUVIAN TIMES

oral language: Finnish

business: Middle Low German

administration: Swedish

religious activities: Latin

1500’s

Mikael Agricola, Father of the Finnish

language

comprehensive writing system and Finnish

language literature.

1800’s

J.V. Snellman

modernization

improve the status of Finnish

Elias Lönnrot

development of modern vocabulary

Kalevala

...till present

Approximately 6 million speakers,

roughly 5 million live in Finland

Billions of squirrels

around the world

&

Sigurd Wettenhovi-Aspa:Kalevala and Egypt, the Golden Book of Finland II (1935)

• All civilization originates from Finland

• Using intuitive permutationwanted to prove that many foreign names and wordscan be derived fromthe Finnish language

• Fennoegyptology

Common features in Finno-Ugrian languages(Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Sami...)

1. Absence of gender ( he, she = ‘hän’)

2. Absence of articles

3. Long words due to the structure of the language

4. Numerous grammatical cases

5. Personal possessions expressed with suffixes (koirani, koirasi, koiransa…)

6. Postpositions in addition to prepositions

7. No equivalent of the verb ‘to have’

September 23Autumnal equinox7:06 am

Vocabulary and word formation

• Since Finnish is Finno-Ugric and not Indo-European, its central vocabulary is different from that of more common European languages:

English German French Finnish

mother Mutter mère äiti

sun Sonne soleil aurinko

Finnish Finnisch finlandais suomalainen

person Person personne ihminen

• Therefore, it is often difficult to guess what an unknown word means.

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

October 10,Day of FinnishLiterature,American Voices!7:48 am

LainasanaLoan word

• pizza/pitsa

• pasta

• television/TV

• radio

• auto

• psykologia

• teoria

• laboratorio

• sinfonia

• ooppera

• rokki-musiikki

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

Numerals

1 yksi – one

2 kaksi – two

3 kolme – three

4 neljä – four

5 viisi – five

6 kuusi – six

7 seitsemän – seven

8 kahdeksan – eight

9 yhdeksän – nine

10 kymmenen – ten

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

November 27,Thanks Giving Day8:49 am

Finnish is a concise language

lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilasairplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

December 6,Finnish IndependenceDay9:07 am

Why Finnish words are so long 1: Compounding

• Words look longer in Finnish because compounds are always written together as one word:

puhelinluettelo telephone directory

matkapuhelin mobile phone

matkakortti travel card

• Compounding is much more common in Finnish than in English, and Finnish uses a compound in many cases where English has a separate word:

sanakirja (word+book) dictionary

• It helps to learn the basic words that make up these compounds (puhelin, kirja, kortti…) so you can identify them and get a better idea of what the whole word means.

• Words generally stay in their basic forms when part of a compound, and tend to be in the same order as they would be in English.

Why Finnish words are so long 2: Agglutination

• Long words are due to a process called agglutination: grammatical markers and endings are joined to a word stem.

• In many places where English uses small words like conjunctions and prepositions, Finnish attaches suffixes directly onto the word:

talo housetalo-ssa in the housetalo-i-ssa in the housestalo-i-ssa-ni in my housestalo-i-ssa-ni-kin also in my housestalo-i-ssa-ni-kin-ko also in my houses ?

talo - i - ssa - ni - kin - ko

also in my house-s?

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

December 22,Winter solstice9:25 am

Phonetic language

• Neat one-to-one correspondence between sound and spelling

• Spelling bees are useless

• Memory and concentration contests

• Speaking-while-inhaling contests

www.tyoehtosopimuksenyleissitovuudenvahvistamislautakunta.fi

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

January 30,Midway, week 22!8:39 am

Nouns and their cases (don’t panic!)

• The case system is one of the most important distinguishing features of Finnish.

• Cases are a series of 15 endings that attach to nouns (and adjectives) and perform different functions.

March 21,Vernal equinox6:19am

Nouns and their cases (really, don’t panic!)

Here are all 15 cases of Finnish on the noun talo ’house’:

Nominative talo basic form, subject

Accusative talon object

Genitive talon same as ’’s’ or ’of’

Partitive taloa indefinite, ’some’

Inessive talossa same as ’in’

Elative talosta same as ’out of’

Illative taloon same as ’into’

Adessive talolla same as ’on’

Ablative talolta same as ’off of’

Allative talolle same as ’onto’

Translative taloksi change of state

Essive talona similar to ’as’

Instructive taloin similar to ’by means of ’

Abessive talotta same as ’without’

Comitative taloineen same as ’with’, rare

The good news:

• You will never have to remember their names (Finnish people can’t either).

• People will still understand you if your object has no -n on it by mistake.

• The ones on the bottom are really, really rare (comitative = 0.1%).

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

When you are about to face a noun

Stay calm, please do not panic:

• Is it possible to avoid using the noun?

• Yes -> then don’t use

• No -> self confidence is your key to success

Good sounding language

No restrictions to the number of consecutive vowels!

Köyliöläisen yötyöläisen hääyöaie. A wedding night intention of a night-time worker from Köyliö.

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

May 1,vappu5:16 am

Consonant / vowel length as a distinctivefeature

• Kokoa kokoon koko kokko!

• Koko kokkoko?

• Koko kokko!

Minä tapaan sinut huomenna.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

Minä tapan sinut huomenna.

I’ll kill you tomorrow.

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

June 21,Summer solstice3:54am

July 3, 2015, 4:03 am!1. järki = reason, sense, intelligence2. järjestää = organize3. järjestelmä = organization4. järjestelmällinen = organized5. järjestelmällistyttää = organizationalize6. epäjärjestelmällistyttää = unorganizationalize7. epäjärjestelmällistyttämätön = having unreflectional attention

to antiunorganizationalize8. epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyys = unreflectional attention to

antiunorganizationalize9. epäjärjestelmällistyttämättomyydellä = with unreflectional

attention to antiunorganizationalize10. epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellään = with his unreflectional

attention to antiunorganizationalize11. epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänkö = is it with his

unreflectional attention to antiunorganizationalize?12. epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänköhän = I wonder if it is

possible, with his unreflectional attention to antiunorganizationalize?

13. epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänköhänkään? = I wonder if it is possible, even with his unreflectional attention to antiunorganizationalize?

Missä on suomen kurssi?Where is (the) Finnish course?

Language courses and online courses (CIMO)

http://www.cimo.fi/programmes/finnish_language_and_culture/summer_courses_in_finland/other_finnish_language_courses

Summer Universities

http://www.kesayliopistot.fi/koulutustarjonta/finnish_language_courses/calendar_finnish_language_courses

www.finnishcourses.fi

Minä haluan puhua suomea

Minä haluaisin puhua suomea. I’d like to speak Finnish.

Voisitko puhua suomea?Could you speak Finnish, please?

The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

Reads immediately,never speaks

Couple yrs of practice before speaks,nearly 7 years before reads

Orava Johanna Prof. Aikhenvald

More than 10 yrs

Learners of Finnish

Fulbrighters

44 weeks

Learners of Finnish