Finnish 101: The 30 Minute Crash Course in Finnish

Johanna Lahti

30 minutes from now: You will know how to recycle!

44 Weeks from today…

General Professional Proficiency in Speaking Finnish (S3)

and

General Professional Proficiency in Reading Finnish (R3)

…you will have:

Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours) Languages closely related to English Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch French, 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 Indonesian Malaysian Swahili

Language Difficulty Ranking http://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 Arabic Cantonese (Chinese) Mandarin (Chinese) *Japanese Korean * 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

Roughly 5 million live in Finland

Billions of squirrels around the world

&

Approximately 6 million speakers

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

from Finland • Using intuitive permutation wanted to prove that many foreign names and words can be derived from the 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’

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:

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

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPr-fGm8l9k (1.39)

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

Lainasana Loan 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 = the number six is on fire, the number six returns, six

pieces, six of them are on fire, six of them return, the spruce is on fire, the spruce returns, your moon is on fire, your moon returns

7 seitsemän – seven 8 kahdeksan – eight 9 yhdeksän – nine 10 kymmenen – ten The primary stress of every Finnish word falls on the first syllable.

kuusi palaa

Finnish is a concise language www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPr-fGm8l9k (3.23)

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

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 house talo-ssa in the house talo-i-ssa in the houses talo-i-ssa-ni in my houses talo-i-ssa-ni-kin also in my houses talo-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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPr-fGm8l9k (1.51)

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.

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.

Consonant / vowel length as a distinctive feature

• 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.

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

Kierrätys - Recycling jäätee

jäte

pullonpalautus / palautusautomaatti

Lasinkeräys tai sekajäte

kyllä

ei

Biojäte

Juo jäätee, kierrätä jäte

paperi kartonki, pahvi

lasi metalli

Suomen kielen kursseja Finnish launguage courses

Language courses and online courses (CIMO) www.cimo.fi/programmes/finnish_language_and_culture/summer_courses

_in_finland/other_finnish_language_courses Summer Universities www.kesayliopistot.fi/koulutustarjonta/finnish_language_courses/calendar_

finnish_language_courses www.finnishcourses.fi

Tietoa kierrätyksestä Info about recycling

www.infopankki.fi/en/living-in-finland/housing/waste-management-and-recycling