Thinking in Finnish

[Woods]

What is expressing yourself in Finnish like? Does it feel completely different to think of everything in terms of a very different grammar?

[Varislintu]

What is expressing yourself in Finnish like? Does it feel completely different to think of everything in terms of a very different grammar?

For natives or for learners?

As a native speaker, I don't feel much of a difference to my other native language Swedish. Thinking in one's native language is too easy and "natural" to feel like anything in particular.

[Woods]

For both. Either way you'll be able to make the comparison, whether you've learnt another language after Finnish or Finnish after another language. I can only imagine yet. I was wondering if it looked like a different reality. Are your ways of expressing and analysing things the same?

I speak three languages. One of them is English and it's much better, but the other two are pretty much the same - they can only express the same things and you can translate everything from one of them to the other one. I was looking for something good to speak beside English and I thought Finnish might be that. But I have no idea. It just sounds beautiful.

[Lenguas]

I think you're too hung up on the fact that Finnish is of a different language family and the Sapir-Worf Whorf hypothesis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[corcaighist]

Seconded. Finnish is just another language. Learning it won't bring you to a higher plain.

[Pineslope]

Seconded. Finnish is just another language. Learning it won't bring you to a higher plain.

I don't want to be impolite... but: C'mon, isn't that a sad conclussion!
Why don't we all give up our efforts in learning another language alltogether

It's not so much in the grammar, but when you encouter a new language it will give you new associations.Think for instance of the finnish noun "maailma" (a/the "world"). That's a compound of the words "maa" ("earth") and "ilma" ("air"). When I realized that I also realized that the germanic noun "world"/"welt"/"värld" as a matter of fact is a compound too (although obscured by time): "The age of mankind". I've been thinking about this different point of views these words express for years - I still find it stimulating. So, Woods, give finnish a try, it will be rewarding. It will definetly open new horizons and new worlds (fi: "maailmoja") for you

[maeng]

Seconded. Finnish is just another language. Learning it won't bring you to a higher plain.

I don't want to be impolite... but: C'mon, isn't that a sad conclussion!
Why don't we all give up our efforts in learning another language alltogether

It's not so much in the grammar, but when you encouter a new language it will give you new associations.Think for instance of the finnish noun "maailma" (a/the "world"). That's a compound of the words "maa" ("earth") and "ilma" ("air"). When I realized that I also realized that the germanic noun "world"/"welt"/"värld" as a matter of fact is a compound too (although obscured by time): "The age of mankind". I've been thinking about this different point of views these words express for years - I still find it stimulating. So, Woods, give finnish a try, it will be rewarding. It will definetly open new horizons and new worlds (fi: "maailmoja") for you

I don't think the message of corcaighist was that don't study languages/Finnish. The OP had high-flown ideas and saying to him that learning Finnish won't bring him to a higher plain is perfectly valid. I don't believe the language you speak radically changes the way you think, rather it changes the way you verbalize it (rather obvious maybe but had to be said ).

However I think the point you are making with the analogy between the words maailma and world is something separate from what was originally discussed here and something that has given me a lot of joy over the years. And that is those connections between words in different languages.

For example when I was learning Russian and realized that зуб 'tooth' was actually etymologically the same word as the Finnish word for 'tooth' namely hammas (hammas being a Baltic loan of course, fi. hammas < Proto-Finnic *šampas < Proto-Baltic *žambas > latv. zobs) To me there's always a strong diachronic aspect to languages and that is what interest me the most.

[Pineslope]

However I think the point you are making with the analogy between the words maailma and world is something that has given me a lot of joy over the years. And that is those connections between words in different languages.

I believe we have a lot in common in our way to approach different languages – it’s a wonderful world out there and there are even more languages to inspire us ! Thanks for the explanation on the interconnectivity between зуб [ru] and hammas [fi] . I really enjoyed it! (I really wish I had a good book on Finnish ethymology in my possession...)

[...] I was wondering if it looked like a different reality. Are your ways of expressing and analysing things the same? [...] I was looking for something good to speak beside English and I thought Finnish might be that.

Did I understand you right, Woods, that you are looking for a good reason to learn Finnish? One possible reason being that it might enhance your way of thinking?

If so, the answer I tried to give you is (even if I didn’t express it very clearly): Yes, I think learning Finnish can accomplish that! But it’s not so much in the Finnish language, its grammar or syntax in itself. It’s more about what happens with the understanding of your own language (the means of your thoughts) when you study yet another language. Didn’t you experience something similar when you once started to learn Romance and Germanic languages?

These kind of “mental-explosions” are even more likely to occur when you study your first non-Indo-European language. At least that’s what I believe.

/Pineslope

[Woods]

Something happened when I switched to French in everyday life - I could really do mental explosions while speaking Bulgarian or English afterwards, it felt like a release

But then I got used to it and no mental explosions happen anymore - I can just switch between the languages without noticing. However, I can still express less in French than in the other two - I don't know it the language is lame or I haven't learnt it well, even though I'm supposed to be proficient.

[maeng]

I believe we have a lot in common in our way to approach different languages – it’s a wonderful world out there and there are even more languages to inspire us ! Thanks for the explanation on the interconnectivity between зуб [ru] and hammas [fi] . I really enjoyed it! (I really wish I had a good book on Finnish ethymology in my possession...)

And the connections don't stop there. 'Comb' in Finnish is kampa, which supposedly is a Scandinavian loanword. The English word comb derives from Proto-Germanic *kambaz.
*kambaz is a cognate with the previously mentioned Baltic word *žambas and both can ultimately be derived from PIE *g̑ómbʰos 'tooth'. Finnish has borrowed the "same" word from two different branches with different meanings at different times. I find it interesting how this originally one word has found its way to different languages and how we can distinguish from which branch Finnish has borrowed each word by looking at the phonology and the semantics of these words.

[Pineslope]

Something happened when I switched to French in everyday life - I could really do mental explosions while speaking Bulgarian or English afterwards, it felt like a release

But then I got used to it and no mental explosions happen anymore - I can just switch between the languages without noticing. However, I can still express less in French than in the other two - I don't know it the language is lame or I haven't learnt it well, even though I'm supposed to be proficient.

No more mental-explosions?! That’s too bad! Sounds like a classical addiction-syndroma to me . Here are my two pieces of advice. Pick one choice: 1. Abstinence (“No more languages for you, lad. Here’s the number to the Betty Ford Clinic: 230-522-748”) OR: 2. Increase the dose (“Finnish is gooood stuff, man. Have some?”). I would pick the latter, after all yet another language won’t do you no harm, at least that’s what I’ve been told*.

French, a lame language? I can’t imagine that, but how would I know? I believe that the aim for any language is to make it possible to express any thought its speakers might have or will possibly have in the future. Different languages address this problem in different ways. E.g.:

English: Has a really rich vocabulary, based on words of different origin. Use of acronyms is also common practice to add new ways of expressing yourself, like AMD, Air Moving Device, for fan. (note: three letters in both cases!).

Swedish: The elementary vocabulary is quite poor, but there is a really creative use of compounds to create new words. As the components of compounds mostly are familiar to the receivers, they have a good chance of understanding a compound even if they never heard it before.

Finnish: Has a rich vocabulary and a extensive use of compounds. And put endings to existing stems to create words never heard before. Sometimes this is done to a high level of poetry, even in the most prosaic context. I’ve seen samples of that even in the comic Aku Ankka (Donald Duck - and: no, I'm not pulling your leg)!

*Ei sana tapa, eikä sanastoon voi hukkua (is this sentence correct?)
=a word won’t kill and you can’t drown in a vocabulary

Note:
Sana=a/the word
–sto indicating a collection of the item mentioned in the stem.
So: sanasto = vocabulary

[Pineslope]

And the connections don't stop there. 'Comb' in Finnish is kampa, which supposedly is a Scandinavian loanword. The English word comb derives from Proto-Germanic *kambaz.
*kambaz is a cognate with the previously mentioned Baltic word *žambas and both can ultimately be derived from PIE *g̑ómbʰos 'tooth'. Finnish has borrowed the "same" word from two different branches with different meanings at different times. I find it interesting how this originally one word has found its way to different languages and how we can distinguish from which branch Finnish has borrowed each word by looking at the phonology and the semantics of these words.

comb = tooth! Had no idea! As you probably might know the Swedes repeated this analogy later – those pins in a comb are called tänder [se], so the Swedish phrase min kam har tänder would then litterally mean: My tooth have teeth ! What are those pins called in Finnish anyway? Can someone fill in the gap in Kampani [...] ovat kaikki poikki?

This borrowing the same word twice (even if from the same branch) isn’t it something similar with the words juhla [festivity, party] and joulu [Christmas]: they are both derived from the common origin of the word jul [se]/ yule [en], aren’t they?

maeng, couldn’t you make some interesting posts to the etymology-thread...please [EDIT: the smiley is in this case supposed to mean nöyrä]? It sure needs reviving, there has been no new posts since November 2010. I’d be one of the most enthusiastic followers.

[maeng]

And the connections don't stop there. 'Comb' in Finnish is kampa, which supposedly is a Scandinavian loanword. The English word comb derives from Proto-Germanic *kambaz.
*kambaz is a cognate with the previously mentioned Baltic word *žambas and both can ultimately be derived from PIE *g̑ómbʰos 'tooth'. Finnish has borrowed the "same" word from two different branches with different meanings at different times. I find it interesting how this originally one word has found its way to different languages and how we can distinguish from which branch Finnish has borrowed each word by looking at the phonology and the semantics of these words.

comb = tooth! Had no idea! As you probably might know the Swedes repeated this analogy later – those pins in a comb are called tänder [se], so the Swedish phrase min kam har tänder would then litterally mean: My tooth have teeth ! What are those pins called in Finnish anyway? Can someone fill in the gap in Kampani [...] ovat kaikki poikki?

This borrowing the same word twice (even if from the same branch) isn’t it something similar with the words juhla [festivity, party] and joulu [Christmas]: they are both derived from the common origin of the word jul [se]/ yule [en], aren’t they?

maeng, couldn’t you make some interesting posts to the etymology-thread...please [EDIT: the smiley is in this case supposed to mean nöyrä]? It sure needs reviving, there has been no new posts since November 2010. I’d be one of the most enthusiastic followers.

The tänder are called piikki (piikit in plural) I guess (I'm bald nowadays so combing is not something I do very regularly ^^), which in turn might be derived from pii which is the original Uralic word for teeth (although the word piikki also has a convincing Germanic etymology).

That's right. juhla is an older loan while joulu is a newer one. The original IE word meant somekind of a circle I think and it's also present in the word cyclops (in the original Greek word that is). In another thread I think I mentioned that rengas and rinki are also an example of this kind of "dual" borrowing.

Well I think I could write something, it's just hard to think of something of the top of one's head.

[Pineslope]

comb = tooth! Had no idea! [...] What are those pins called in Finnish anyway? Can someone fill in the gap in Kampani [...] ovat kaikki poikki?
[...]
maeng, couldn’t you make some interesting posts to the etymology-thread...please [EDIT: the smiley is in this case supposed to mean nöyrä]? It sure needs reviving, there has been no new posts since November 2010. I’d be one of the most enthusiastic followers.

The tänder are called piikki (piikit in plural) I guess (I'm bald nowadays so combing is not something I do very regularly ^^), which in turn might be derived from pii which is the original Uralic word for teeth (although the word piikki also has a convincing Germanic etymology).
[...]
Well I think I could write something, it's just hard to think of something of the top of one's head.

.

Just to make an easier entry for you I just posted a question to the etymology thread, you possibly know the answer of. Feel free to correct any language error I might (probably) have done.
Btw: Minullakaan ei ole tukkaa, elikkä ei ole paljon väliä siitä että kampani piikit ovat kaikki poikki . Kiitos avusta, maeng!

[Woods]

Well the harm is that it takes time and Finnish is so sweet that I may have to leave my entire life behind in order to learn it. Wouldn’t it be more useful to study mathematics instead? I would like to swallow both, but I don’t know what is the right order. What if I spend a year studying Finnish and don’t learn something more important instead? Is it worth it?

I don’t know about French. Yesterday I listened to some guy say that he would never teach in France because they had a law that stated that in language everything had to be exact and fixed and he thought language must be vague, because if it’s exact then people follow commands and can’t learn new things. He’s right and I find it hard to express my thoughts, generated in English, in French. I also think that the use of a certain language is restricting – someone above called it the so-and-so hypothesis and I think it’s the true one – we search through our vocabulary before we express our thoughts, we can say less if we use a language that is more restricting and once we say something in a certain way, even if it’s different that we originally meant, we have to deal with it as it is and thus we depend on our language.

As you describe it, Finnish seems to be a good choice. I’m also interested about what one thinks about Russian (if there are any speakers here).

[Pineslope]

[...] Wouldn’t it be more useful to study mathematics instead? I would like to swallow both, but I don’t know what is the right order. What if I spend a year studying Finnish and don’t learn something more important instead? Is it worth it?

[...] Yesterday I listened to some guy say that he would never teach in France because they had a law that stated that in language everything had to be exact and fixed and he thought language must be vague, because if it’s exact then people follow commands and can’t learn new things.[...]

He’s right and I find it hard to express my thoughts, generated in English, in French. I also think that the use of a certain language is restricting – someone above called it the so-and-so hypothesis and I think it’s the true one – we search through our vocabulary before we express our thoughts, we can say less if we use a language that is more restricting and once we say something in a certain way, even if it’s different that we originally meant, we have to deal with it as it is and thus we depend on our language. [...]

Well, I wouldn’t go so far I claimed that learning any of the languages spoken in the Nordic countries is useful from a strictly utilitarian aspect. These languages have relatively few speakers and practically everyone here speaks English anyway. And mathematics is after all called the universal language, so off course it seems more useful – no matter where in the world you choose to live in the future. But I can only say what any good grandmother would say: The decision is yours only – follow your heart.

I have never really studied any language – at the university or so - myself. But languages do give me a lot of joy, both when I use them and when I spend my spare time to understand more about them. And languages can be learned even by attending evening classes, can’t they?

If what this guy said about French is anything near the truth, then it surely would be horrifying. Sounds awfully similar to Newspeak in the George Orwell novel 1984! But I’m not qualified to have an opinion since I don’t know any French and haven’t been in France since I was a child. So I rest my case .

Two opposite theories about the connection between the language you speak and your cognition has been mentioned here. Be it either way: Finnish can be a really interesting choice. And: It’s not about to be extinct, so you have plenty of time to wait for a better occassion .

[Woods]

How do you learn it – what exactly do you do? Do you learn 10 words a day, or read books, or watch movies? I would do it, I just don’t want to spend five years and not learn it, but I also want to speak it very much. I’ve only seen a few Finns in my entire life but it would be amazing to start speaking Finnish to them next time I see one

[Narbleh]

I don’t know about French. Yesterday I listened to some guy say that he would never teach in France because they had a law that stated that in language everything had to be exact and fixed and he thought language must be vague, because if it’s exact then people follow commands and can’t learn new things. He’s right and I find it hard to express my thoughts, generated in English, in French. I also think that the use of a certain language is restricting – someone above called it the so-and-so hypothesis and I think it’s the true one – we search through our vocabulary before we express our thoughts, we can say less if we use a language that is more restricting and once we say something in a certain way, even if it’s different that we originally meant, we have to deal with it as it is and thus we depend on our language.

It's common to be down on your own language, familiarity breeds contempt and all that. I've found instances where I knew an ideal French word but had to search a moment to express the thought in English. Does that mean English is somehow more restrictive as well? This whole idea seems absurd to me. The words may be put together differently but that doesn't change our shared human experience.

[Woods]

I don't know, maybe it's about personal experience.

French is not my language, even though I'm fluent. Yesterday some French told me I spoke like a native French. However I don't feel it like a native language.

[Pineslope]

How do you learn it – what exactly do you do? Do you learn 10 words a day, or read books, or watch movies? I would do it, I just don’t want to spend five years and not learn it, but I also want to speak it very much. I’ve only seen a few Finns in my entire life but it would be amazing to start speaking Finnish to them next time I see one

Here are some suggestions that might make initial learning of basic Finnish easier for you (i.e. less “scary”):

As literates we are obsessed of writing – sometimes this makes learning other languages more difficult. But go out to a café in Paris, close your eyes and listen to spoken language (preferably I language you can’t write). You don’t hear the gaps between words expressed with spaces in script, do you? It’s just an endless row of syllables put together.

The majority of Finnish endings express location, direction or are used instead of pronouns. Their perfect equivalents in languages you all ready know of are normally separate words. So as an initial approach you can think of Finnish endings in terms of glossary rather than of grammar (even if the “words” sometimes are spelled oddly, e.g. –ssa (-ssä) meaning the English preposition in. Example:

Olit talossani=
Oli.t talo.ssa.ni=
were.you house.in.my=
You were in my house

Let’s add yet other two “words” to your vocabulary: Ole- = am/are/is, auto= a/the car. I’m convinced of that you by now can write your first[?] Finnish sentence meaning: "You are in my car".

It wasn’t that hard, was it? So after a while, encouraged by the progress you made with this first approach, you can start to deal with grammar. You like mathematics, right? Mathematics, isn’t it a set of rules that when applied give a distinct result? Then you just might find Finnish grammar appealing. It’s far more regular compare to e.g. English. So once you learned a new rule you can fool around with it and combine it with the glossary and rules you already learnt. In most cases – I guess – your results will be fairly satisfying on a beginner's level.

But nothing beats practicing IRL. There are a plenty of Finnish students and tourists in Paris (a hint: you recognize them by the Finnish flag tattooed on their foreheads ). Besides, Finland is a really neat country in the summer.

As to resources for learning Finnish (tutorials, dictionaries, grammar resources etc) I have to pass this question over to someone who learnt Finnish in a conscious age. I was taught Finnish as a infant, so my experience doesn’t really count here.