Verb-type classification

[Woods]

Is it generally accepted that Finnish verb types should be classified as follows:

type 1: ending in two vowels
type 2: -da
type 3: -lla / -nna / -rra / -sta
type 4: -ata / -ota / -uta
type 5: -ita
type 6: -eta

(and each of those's front-vowel counterparts)?


For my understanding, I've been thinking of them as:

type 1: two vowels
type 2: -ata / -ota / -uta
type 3: -da
type 4: -lla / -nna / -rra / -sta
type 5: -ita
type 6: -eta


But I can see Fred Karlsson assigns them a group number closer to the first set.

And I think we talked about them with Virankannos long time ago and he had arranged them similarly?


Any idea about what percentage of commonly-used verbs enter in each category?

[sa wulfs]

I've only ever seen the first system being used and I don't think it's useful to choose a different standard, since any given system will work fine by itself so why go against the grain and make it more confusing to yourself when consulting other sources. Karlsson does list -tA verbs ('HUOMAT/A verbs') right after -[V]A verbs ('ANTA/A verbs'), but he seems to very conspicuously refrain from making this into a formal classification system. Reading it now, it sounds like one of those attempts to dumb down grammar in the belief that it'll make it more accessible

My impression is that types 1 (-[V]A) and 4 (-tA) are the most common ones, since they include some very productive suffixes (like -ttAA for type 1, and, well, -tA for type 4). Type 2 (-dA) has a few extremely common verbs (saada, jäädä, tuoda, syödä, etc), but also a bunch of more modern derivatives with the suffix -OidA (tupakoida, ikävöidä and the like). Type 3 (-llA/-nnA/-rrA/-stA) is perhaps not quite as common as types 1 and 4 but there's no shortage of frequentative verbs in -ellA and -illA.

Types 5 (-itA) and 6 (-etA) are less common. The list of type 5 verbs seems to be relatively short, but it does include some pretty common ones, including tarvita if you're using kirjakieli (I wonder what class people would consider the puhekieli version tarvi- belongs to, if they ever think about this? Maybe type 4 in the present but with a defective preterite from a colloquial type 1 verb tarttea?). Type 6 is again not extremely common, there's probably a reason why it's the last verb type that students learn, but as a way to make verbs out of adjectives it is pretty handy and some verbs from this class are pretty common.

Anyway, this is just my impression of relative frequencies, I'm no native speaker or anything and I could be WILDLY wrong. No idea about more precise percentages. In my experience, all verb types are common enough that you need to be familiar with all of them

[Woods]

Karlsson does list -tA verbs ('HUOMAT/A verbs') right after -AA verbs ('ANTA/A verbs'), but he seems to very conspicuously refrain from making this into a formal classification system.

Yeah that's the problem with Karlsson - there's no consistency whatsoever in his explanations and it takes ten times as much to systematise what he's writing about than to understand and learn it.

I've only ever seen the first system being used and I don't think it's useful to choose a different standard, since any given system will work fine by itself so why go against the grain and make it more confusing to yourself when consulting other sources.

I am namely looking for the standard grouping because I want to avoid having a different one. So I'm trying to find out if the first set is standard or there is not really a standard. If there isn't, I would make the groups by order of frequency; and you're suggesting that's what Karlsson is trying to do in spite of an established agreement to classify the verbs otherwise? Let us wait for someone more familiar with Finnish grammar to confirm then.

Reading it now, it sounds like one of those attempts to dumb down grammar in the belief that it'll make it more accessible

I'm not sure what you mean with "to dumb down grammar" - you mean to change the conventional order of the groups?

If the first set is the convention, any ideas why they are arranged this way?

[Naava]

Any idea about what percentage of commonly-used verbs enter in each category?

There's firstly two things we need to make clear: 1) are we speaking about kirjakieli or spoken language? 2) what verb classification system are we using?

About number 1: it's difficult to say anything about spoken language because I doubt this has ever been studied. I would imagine the percentages are similar to kirjakieli but I know there are verbs that are either difficult to classify or belong to different categories in different dialects. For example, tarvita is a type 5 verb in standard Finnish, but in spoken language you have tarttea with several stems (tarvi-, tarvii-, tartte-), like sa wulfs already said; and tupakoida is type 2 in standard language, but e.g. in my dialect it can be either type 2 or (IMO more commonly) type 5. How would you count these? How about verbs like 'to wallpaper' that can be either type 2 (= tapetoida) or type 4 (= tapiseerata)? Would you count them as two different verbs or would you somehow take into account which one is more common? (These are all rhetorical questions to demonstrate why I think it would be more challenging to estimate the frequencies of verb types in spoken language/dialects than in kirjakieli.)

About number 2: the verb classification systems differ in how many verb types they list. Some have six, some have five, some have only four. The difference isn't big though, they mostly just merge the last verb types into one category - but it does affect the frequencies of each verb type.

So, my answer: I cannot say anything about spoken language, but I do have some interesting statistics about kirjakieli. Unfortunaly I cannot comment on the groups 4-6 because the source I'm using uses the verb classification that has only four verb types. That being said, this is the number of verbs in each verb type in Suomen kielen perussanakirja ("basic dictionary of Finnish", I suppose):

Verb type 1:
(end of the stem - example - number of times it was found in the dictionary)

O, U	kertoa, kysyä	2228
i	etsiä, miettiä	402
e	lukea, potea	31
A	nukahtaa, elättää	2714
	huutaa : huusi	318
	ajaa : ajoi	51
	yltää : ylti ~ ylsi	7
	kaartaa : kaartoi ~ kaarsi	3
Total:		~5500

Verb type 2:

Oi	valikoida	681
Oi ~ Oitse	luennoida	49
monosyllabic	saada, voida	15
Total:		~750

Verb type 3:

le	tulla, opiskella	1329
se	nousta, puraista	272
kse	juosta, piestä, syöstä	3
ne, re	mennä, panna, purra, surra, pierrä	5
Total:		~1600

Verb types 4-6:

AA	hypätä, hakata	885
UA, OA, eA	haluta, kadota, katketa	170
iA	hävitä, pehmitä	12
HÄIRITÄ-type	häiritä, tarvita	49
PAETA-type	paeta, kalveta	143
Total:		~1300

There is also this:

Lekseemimäärältään suurin on kertoa-taivutustyyppi eli yksivartaloiset lyhyeen vokaaliin päättyvät verbit: noin 5700 sanakirjalekseemiä. Näissä erityisen suuria ryhmiä ovat ttA- ja U-vartaloiset verbit kuten kiehuttaa ja kiehua. Tulla-taivutustyypissä suuria ryhmiä ovat le-verbit kuten surffailla ja (A)ise-verbit kuten vikistä ja imaista (yli 1300). Myös supistumaverbejä kuten bodata (yli 1100) ja Oi-vartaloisia verbejä kuten priorisoida (n. 700) on paljon.

If measured by the number of lexemes, the biggest group are the kertoa-type verbs (one stem, ends in short vowel): about 5700 lexemes. Within these, especially big groups are verbs with ttA and U stems, e.g. kiehuttaa, kiehua. In the tulla-type, the big groups are le-verbs, e.g. surffailla, and (A)ise verbs, e.g. vikistä, imaista (more than 1300 lexemes). There are also many contraction verbs (supistumaverbit), e.g. bodata (more than 1100), and verbs with Oi-stem, e.g. priorisoida (about 700).

These are not percentages nor frequencies, but I hope it helps anyway! If you wish to know how common each verb within these types is, I suppose you could try using a corpus for that. I don't have any facts about that to give to you, but what it's worth, IMO each verb type has both high and low frequency words in them.

[Woods]

There's firstly two things we need to make clear: 1) are we speaking about kirjakieli or spoken language?

Well, I'm still at the stage where I'm trying to understand the basic grammar structures that are prescribed for speaking good Finnish.

I've noticed that the spoken and the prescriptive languages are miles apart, but does it also apply to verb conjugation?

In any case I would like to hear about both


I was looking at the verb löhötä for example - it's one of only three -ötä verbs included in Kielitoimiston Sanakirja. To my positive surprise, it follows the patterns of -ota verbs perfectly. I would assume other arkikielinen verbs also follow a certain kirjakielinen verb pattern?

For example, tarvita is a type 5 verb in standard Finnish, but in spoken language you have tarttea with several stems (tarvi-, tarvii-, tartte-), like sa wulfs already said; and tupakoida is type 2 in standard language, but e.g. in my dialect it can be either type 2 or (IMO more commonly) type 5. How would you count these?

Could you write full conjugations of some of those verbs - in present, present negative, praeteritum and past negative at least? The spoken version of "tarvita" would be a good one, because I hear it all the time ("En tarvi, kiitos!"), and I don't know how it works.

(Just so you know, I still speak English with vertually everyone - I think I should make more efforts to change that, but there's always other things higher up in the priorities list).

But if we get a very much diverging conjugation with a different infinitive, shoudln't we think of it as another verb, rather than a version of the same one?

How about verbs like 'to wallpaper' that can be either type 2 (= tapetoida) or type 4 (= tapiseerata)?

I think those definitely count as two different verbs, albeit with the same meaning, conjugated each according to the rules of its group.

For the record, tapiseerata is not in Kielitoimiston Sanakirja, so I guess it's a newer invention mimicking a foreign word?



How would you explain the literary/spoken language split and the relationship between them? There seems to be a huge difference, more so than in other languages I'm familiar with.

In French, it's common to shorten some words (p'ti déj instead of petit déjeuner), but people would normally write the full forms except for the severely abbreviated word even when texting casually (petit déj). The grammar stays the same and verbs are written as prescribed, otherwise it counts as illiteracy.

In Bulgarian, we shorten some words (кво instead of какво, единайсе instead of единадесет). In the first example, it used to be seen as rude and discrespectful but it's becoming more common. In the second, it is totally all right and the disagreement is whether to write it as pronunced (I say absolutely not) or fully in spite of pronouncing it otherwise.

In Danish, 1/3rd of what's written is pronounced, but people don't think of it as slang or a different kind of language but just as a feature of pronunciation. People write as prescribed with few exceptions.

In Swedish, it's a similar situation but everybody writes as they please and the spelling is periodically updated to match the pronunciation.

So what is Finnish doing - agreeing that language should stay as prescribed while speaking in a totally different way and rarely including a spoken word in the official dictionaries? What is the final purpose - that everybody speaks as prescribed even though nobody does? Or that everybody keeps their dialect while abiding to a common standard in writing?

Coming up with separate words for each and every thing and verb forms that follow different conjugation patterns seems like much more than the usual differences between prescriptive and spoken language.

[sa wulfs]

I edited my previous post because some sort of brain fart made me write -AA instead of -[V]A for type 1 verbs.

I'm not sure what you mean with "to dumb down grammar" - you mean to change the conventional order of the groups?

No, I didn't mean changing the conventional order (which is way less universal than I thought, judging from what Naava wrote), I meant that it looked like a conscious effort to avoid grammatical terms and classifications, like saying "Type 1" would be too confusing but somehow saying "Antaa-verbs" would be easier. Like the way using specialized terminology has sorta become passé in many circles because of this notion that children don't learn by consciously learning grammatical stuff so it's irrelevant. I don't know if Karlsson really does this, as I haven't sit down to read his grammar all the way through, and with a language like Finnish there are limits to how much you can do it anyway (you'd be hard pressed to find a simpler alternative to just using the case names, for example). Karlsson probably doesn't do it at all and I'm just reading too much into it, but it was a passing remark and not meant to stand up to closer scrutiny anyway.

But if we get a very much diverging conjugation with a different infinitive, shoudln't we think of it as another verb, rather than a version of the same one?

Not necessarily, if they're suppletive verbs. I've read that the tarvi(i)- forms for example are sometimes replaced by tarttea forms in the imperfect, at least by some speakers. With tupakoida, if speakers who say tupakoitsen also used tupakoita as the first infinitive then yeah, you could argue that it's just a different verb, but if they still use tupakoida then it's trickier and you might argue you're dealing with a suppletive paradigm.

As for the relationship between spoken and written language, it's not that the spoken forms split from the literary language, it's that they were in use before anyone came up with a standard literary language. It's not people coming up with different verbs, it's the folks who codified the literary language consciously picking one spoken variant that was already in use and enshrining it as the standard, and often picking an archaic form either because they thought it was more proper and more prestigious or because it was the only way to somewhat accommodate the many diverging dialects that existed. If anything, I would imagine there's been significant convergence between the puhekieli and the kirjakieli since the introduction of the latter? The difference between Finnish and all those languages you list, I wager, is that the Finnish standard is much younger.

[Naava]

I edited my previous post because some sort of brain fart made me write -AA instead of -[V]A for type 1 verbs.

I'm not sure what you mean with "to dumb down grammar" - you mean to change the conventional order of the groups?

No, I didn't mean changing the conventional order (which is way less universal than I thought, judging from what Naava wrote),

I'd say the order is pretty much the same, but different sources disagree on whether the type 4-6 verbs form one, two, or three groups.

like saying "Type 1" would be too confusing but somehow saying "Antaa-verbs" would be easier. Like the way using specialized terminology has sorta become passé in many circles because of this notion that children don't learn by consciously learning grammatical stuff so it's irrelevant.

Some people (myself included!) do find it easier to learn through examples than names of categories. This can be true especially for people who haven't had any formal education before migrating to Finland. IMO the best solution is to give both: there's no need to choose between "type 1" and "antaa-verbs" when you can just say "type 1, the antaa-verbs".

How would you explain the literary/spoken language split and the relationship between them? There seems to be a huge difference, more so than in other languages I'm familiar with.

If anything, I would imagine there's been significant convergence between the puhekieli and the kirjakieli since the introduction of the latter? The difference between Finnish and all those languages you list, I wager, is that the Finnish standard is much younger.

Well, you could argue it's done the opposite, since the earliest forms of kirjakieli were heavily based on how people spoke in South West coast at the time. When written non-religious texts became more popular and available, people complained that a written form of the language that should belong to everybody cannot be based on one dialect only. In the end, what we have now is a compromise: a mixture of different dialects and some (quite random) decisions that were made to please everyone (and calm people down. The time period is known as "the battle of the dialects" for a reason). This form of language has always been first and foremost a written language (that is why we call it kirjakieli, book language) and as a written language, it has had different needs than speech: there's a need for equality so that one dialect isn't favoured over others; there needs to be regulation to stop people from creating localised variants; there is no need for repetition (you can always go back and read again if need be); you can use longer sentences and more complex grammar (because you can always go back and read again if need be); and so on. These needs shaped kirjakieli into what it is today. It is still mostly reserved for writing.

Puhekieli is a mixture of dialects that was born in cities due to industrialisation (and which was later shaped and spread by TV and Internet), as people from all around Finland moved to the same place and started interacting with each other. Because this was not a regulated process and because a spoken form of language has different needs than a written one*, it is quite different from kirjakieli even though both are based on the same dialects. Moreover, spoken versions of languages tend to change fast. You get new innovations that come out of the blue and often disappear just as suddenly, but sometimes some of them may stick (e.g. me ollaan, mennään, tehdään, where a passive is used with the 1st person plural, was originally found in Eastern dialects only. It then entered the spoken language, spread, and has now become the norm everywhere in Finland).

* For example, a spoken language typically favours effectiveness: short words and sentences make it faster to speak and process speech; repetition is sometimes a hindrance (takes time and energy, but doesn't add anything new) but sometimes it's a helpful tool (makes processing speech and sentences easier, gives the speaker extra time to choose their words and formulate sentences); localised versions create a sense of belonging and strengthen the group identity; and so on. Moreover, spoken language is often used in different contexts than written language. Since puhekieli is the default language for most of the spoken communication, it has gained more informal vocabulary than kirjakieli. Note though that this is not called slang in Finnish! There is a completely different speech form called Stadin slangi or slangi for short that was born in the 1890s. It is a mixture of puhekieli, Helsinki area dialect, Swedish, Russian, nowadays also English, and some other languages. Some of the vocabulary has spread outside of Helsinki at least to an extent that people recognise what the words mean, but most of it is still markedly capital area variety.

Anyway, you should keep in mind that regulation does not mean the strongest form of prescriptivism, where one group of people would decide what is correct and what is incorrect, and everyone else would have to conform to that. Instead, our kirjakieli is in constant dialogue with its users: The language specialists observe how language is used in Finland. Then they propose a rule. If the users do not accept a rule, the rule is changed. This has happened f.ex. with the phrase alkaa tehdä ~ tekemään (you could compare it to English to start to do ~ to start doing). Originally, a rule said that only one of the two was acceptable in kirjakieli. When people kept using both infinitives despite the rule, the rule was updated, and now both are correct. This is also very common with vocabulary: the language specialists recommended roll-on deodorants be called kieppo but language users rejected it and preferred deodorantti, which then became shortened to dödö in speech. When it became apparent that people had found a word they preferred, kieppo was removed from dictionaries. A newer example would be the drones. There was a competition where you could suggest Finnish names for a drone. The aim was to find a translation or a new coinage for the word, but in the end, people seem to have collectively decided that we should call it drooni. These were both examples of people disagreeing with the suggestions, but I don't mean to imply that'd be how it always goes: for example, cookies were accepted as evästeet (eväs being a light meal you take with you for a trip) without resistance. Sometimes we start with a loan word, then introduce (either people themselves or language specialist) a Finnish name that is used side-by-side with the loan, and finally disregard the loan in favour of the new name. For example, I remember a time when it was still common to speak about printteri, but I can't remember hearing it all that much lately - tulostin has become the default word. In any case, no matter what the end result is, language specialists follow these developments and then update the dictionaries and recommendations accordingly.

You shoud also keep in mind that the lack of regulation does not mean lack of rules. Spoken language has rules - it probably has even more rules than the kirjakieli because there are different versions of puhekieli depending on the region and the speaker. The regional differences often stem from the local dialects; IMO there is a continuum from a variant of puhekieli that is hard to pin down on a map to a very strong local dialect. (Although I doubt there'd be a form of puhekieli that would have no traces of regionality in it. If nothing else, people tend to have different accents depending on where they grew up.) For example, people often use the local words for "you" and "I" even when speaking in puhekieli. (As a sidenote, I've heard that the Eastern variants mie and sie have been gaining popularity in the capital area. It'll be interesting to see if this is just a trend that will pass or if it becomes part of the local puhekieli in future.)

Now, I said kirjakieli is for writing and puhekieli (and dialects, and a combination of puhekieli and dialects) is for speaking. While it is true, it is a very black-and-white way of putting it. There are some exceptions.

Firstly, sometimes kirjakieli is used in speech. We call the spoken form of kirjakieli yleiskieli. You can hear it f.ex. in news broadcasts, the parliament, and speeches (possibly because these are all contexts where people plan on paper what they wish to say before speaking). Yleiskieli tends to sound very formal. It is also commonly used by people who learn(t) Finnish as a second language because textbooks usually focus on teaching kirjakieli.

Secondly, you can sometimes see puhekieli written down. This is common in contexts where you don't wish to sound formal and stiff, but where you also don't want to show a strong local identity: forums, SMS, Whatsapp and other forms of texting, comments in different platforms; also in dialogues in novels, to name a few. There is also an age gap, where older people seem to prefer kirjakieli for any kind of writing, while younger people use puhekieli. I suppose this is because older people have lived majority of their lives surrounded by formal texts (e.g. letters) and so have learnt that you should always use kirjakieli when writing. (This is a not strict rule though. There are young people who never use anything but kirjakieli in text, and older people who use puhekieli when appropriate.)

An interesting fact is that the way people write in puhekieli is not always the same way they speak in real life. This is because puhekieli is a neutral way of speaking. You can (and people do) write in dialects, but this gives you a strong local identity whether you want it or not, and at worst it might even be difficult for outsiders to understand. That's why dialects tend to be used only in contexts where everyone has the same background (e.g. local Facebook groups, books whose target audience are the speakers of that dialect) or when you want to show your local identity. As a sidenote, this is also why many people switch between a dialect and puhekieli in speech: when they're in their home region or speaking with people from that region, they use a dialect, but when they move to a different region or speak to people who don't know the dialect, they may prefer puhekieli. (Not all do this, though. This is just one way of using the language, but not the only one. The question of how you speak in different context is more complicated than this!)

You can also see the formal vs neutral language division in Disney films. Usually the characters speak in kirjakieli*, but if the dubbers have wanted to show that a certain character has a less serious attitude or is more friendly, more open, or more relaxed than the others, they've dubbed these characters in puhekieli. For example, here's Mushu from Mulan when they meet:

Mulan: Olet...
Mushu: Pelottava? Kauhistuttava?
Mulan: Pieni!
Mushu: Tietysti! Mä oon matkakokoa mukavuussyistä. Jos mä olisin oikeaa kokoa niin tää sun lehmäs sais slaagin!

(The same in standard Finnish: Tietysti! Olen matkakokoa mukavuussyistä. Jos olisin oikean [lohikäärmeen] kokoinen, sinun lehmäsi järkyttyisi. See also how Mulan in contrast says olet instead of sä oot or sä olet.)

Another example is what they did in Frozen. Anna is a bubbly, friendly character. She's speaking in puhekieli. Elsa is more reserved, cold, serious character. She's speaking in kirjakieli. Olaf is a bit silly, friendly character. He's speaking in puhekieli. For example, here's their discussion when Anna finds Elsa's ice palace:

► Show Spoiler

Anna: Elsa! Minä täällä, Anna!
Elsa: Anna?
Anna: Oho, Elsa, sä oot... erilainen. Hyvällä tavalla! Ja tää paikka... on uskomaton!
Elsa: Kiitos. En tiennyt, että pystyisin tällaiseen.
Anna: Mä pyydän anteeksi tapahtunutta, jos oisin tiennyt...
Elsa: Ei, ei, ei, ei hätää. Ei tarvitse pyytää anteeksi. Mutta voisitko poistua, ole kiltti.
Anna: Juurihan mä tulin.
Elsa: Sinä kuulut Arendelliin.
Anna: Niin sinäkin.
Elsa: En, Anna, minä kuulun tänne. Yksin. Voin olla oma itseni satuttamatta ketään.
Anna: Siitä puheen ollen...
Olaf: Viiskasi, viisysi... kuuskyt!
Elsa: Hetki, mikä tuo oli?
Olaf: Hei! Mä oon Olaf ja pidän lämpimistä haleista!
Elsa: Olaf?
Olaf: Sä teit mut... Muistatko?
Elsa: Ja sinä elät?
Olaf: Siltä tuntuu...
Anna: Ihan kuin se, joka tehtiin lapsena.
Elsa: Niin.
Anna: Me oltiin aina yhdessä, ja voidaan olla taas!

A few things you can notice here even if you don't speak Finnish very well yet:
- Elsa is dropping the personal pronouns (en tiennyt, pystyisin, voisitko, voin olla) whereas Anna and Olaf tend to keep them (sä oot, mä pyydän, mä oon, sä teit)
- Elsa only uses "minä / sinä", whereas Anna and Olaf use both "mä / sä" and "minä / sinä"
- the way Olaf counts: viiskasi, viisysi, kuuskyt vs. kirjakieli viisikymmentäkahdeksan, viisikymmentäyhdeksän, kuusikymmentä
- Anna uses the passive with 1st person pronoun (me oltiin, voidaan olla vs. me olimme, voimme olla)

* I think this could be inherited from old films made in the 1940s-1950s, where the characters spoke in kirjakieli unless you wanted to give them a regional identity, but I'm not sure.

So what is Finnish doing - agreeing that language should stay as prescribed while speaking in a totally different way and rarely including a spoken word in the official dictionaries? What is the final purpose - that everybody speaks as prescribed even though nobody does? Or that everybody keeps their dialect while abiding to a common standard in writing?

I hope after reading what I wrote above you've come to the conclusion that the answer is the latter: what we call "standard Finnish" in English has always been meant as the shared, unbiased form of language for writing.

Coming up with separate words for each and every thing and verb forms that follow different conjugation patterns seems like much more than the usual differences between prescriptive and spoken language.

The difference isn't luckily quite that drastic! There are different words for many things, and some verbs (also nouns) have different conjugation patterns in different regions, but it doesn't apply on every single word and verb and noun. Moreover, the distinction between kirjakieli and puhekieli vocabulary isn't strict. Some words are only used in puhekieli and some are only used in kirjakieli, but then there are words that can be used in either kirjakieli or puhekieli, and words that are technically part of kirjakieli but can be used in puhekieli if you wish, and so on.

You could go to the translation subforum and check the posts there. I've added a translation to kirjakieli and my dialect to most of the threads, so you could compare how far away they are. (Note though that due to the history, kirjakieli tends to be closer to my dialect than to e.g. the Eastern dialects.) Puhekieli would be somewhere between the two. For example, "s/he is a teacher" could look like this:

kirjakieli: Hän on opettaja.
puhekieli: Se on ope.
my dialect: Soon opettaja.

But like I said, there isn't one set of rules for puhekieli like there is for kirjakieli. You could also say "hän on opettaja" or "se on opettaja" or "hän on ope" depending on where you live and what your personal preferences are. (For example, most of my friends from Tampere say they feel hän is more respectful than se. This could be a Tavastian thing because I've heard quite many other non-Tampere people say hän feels pretentious or passive-aggressive. It's difficult to say though because the usage of 3rd person pronouns in Finnish is quite complicated.)

For the record, tapiseerata is not in Kielitoimiston Sanakirja, so I guess it's a newer invention mimicking a foreign word?

Kielitoimiston sanakirja lists kirjakieli vocabulary. Tapiseerata is a dialectal word, so you won't be able to find it there. You need to look from somewhere else, like here or here or here or here.

I don't think it's exactly a newer invention because wallpapers haven't been common for long in Finland, and neither has kirjakieli. Perhaps a corpus could tell us the answer, but I'd guess tapiseerata and tapetoida are both equally old. (By the way - generally speaking, if you keep in mind that kirjakieli was mostly created in the 19th and 20th centuries whereas dialects have been spoken ever since the Proto-Finnic period ended, the dialectal words may very well be older than the kirjakieli ones! )

You're right though that tapiseerata is borrowed from Swedish tapetsera, which is why you can also find it in Meänkieli. The Swedish speaking Finns live right next to the area where my dialect is spoken, so we've got a lot of influence from them. Compare also organiseerata vs kirjakieli organisoida (or even better, järjestellä / järjestää).

I was looking at the verb löhötä for example - it's one of only three -ötä verbs included in Kielitoimiston Sanakirja. To my positive surprise, it follows the patterns of -ota verbs perfectly. I would assume other arkikielinen verbs also follow a certain kirjakielinen verb pattern?

I'm not actually sure. I've never studied dialects that extensively, nor have I paid much attention to verb conjugation. I'd say that if there is a difference, it's usually the result of sound changes (either in the dialect or kirjakieli or both). And like I said earlier, there are some verbs that are conjugated according to a different type than what you'd expect, but it's not quite as wild as you're probably imagining; my dialect tends to favour the type 5 for -dA-verbs, but that's about it. (E.g. imuroida -> imurootten, tupakoida -> tupakootten, haravoida -> haravootten vs. kirjakieli imuroin, tupakoin, haravoin. Note though that tupakoitsen is also possible in kirjakieli, but IMO it's not as common as in my dialect.)

Could you write full conjugations of some of those verbs - in present, present negative, praeteritum and past negative at least? The spoken version of "tarvita" would be a good one, because I hear it all the time ("En tarvi, kiitos!"), and I don't know how it works.

Sure, I'll do it, but I don't have time for it right now. I'll be back! But could you tell me what you mean by praeteritum first, please? Finnish tenses are usually named as preesens (present), imperfekti (past tense), perfekti (present perfect) and pluskvamperfekti (past perfect). Did you mean the present and past perfects?

[Woods]

Hello! Thank you for the detailed explanation again - you'll make the best Finnish teacher!

This is very interesting - I've never heard anyone talk about the different stages the Finnish language went through so far.

I wanted to answer to everything with quotes etc. but it seems I'll never have time for that.

You are making an interesting point that dialects and puhekieli is not the same. So one should not only distinguish between two types of language (kirjakieli and puhekieli), but between three different ones (kirjakieli, puhekieli and dialect). I wasn't aware of that.

Kielitoimiston Sanakirja often lists entries as "ark." - which I found means "arkikielinen." I assumed this is a more formal word for "puhekieli?"

So where does the border lie between puhekieli and dialect? (and how is the latter called?) Do I understand correctly that puhekieli is understood by everyone everywhere, and it's basically slang which has reached bigger cities and it's become so popular that it might be on its way to replacing the kirjakieli norms?

you can sometimes see puhekieli written down. This is common in contexts where you don't wish to sound formal and stiff, but where you also don't want to show a strong local identity: forums, SMS, Whatsapp and other forms of texting, comments in different platforms; also in dialogues in novels

Hm, that is strange - wouldn't it be nicer to try recreate the type of language the character is using? As long as it's understandable.

Speaking of forums and informal language, what regiser do you think is appropriate to use when writing Finnish here? I think you normally use kirjakieli - should I also always do so or is it good to sometimes use some other forms?

battle of the dialects

How is that in Finnish? :)

the earliest forms of kirjakieli were heavily based on how people spoke in South West coast at the time. :) When written non-religious texts became more popular and available, people complained that a written form of the language that should belong to everybody cannot be based on one dialect only. In the end, what we have now is a compromise: a mixture of different dialects and some (quite random) decisions that were made to please everyone (and calm people down. The time period is known as "the battle of the dialects" for a reason). This form of language has always been first and foremost a written language (that is why we call it kirjakieli, book language) and as a written language, it has had different needs than speech: there's a need for equality so that one dialect isn't favoured over others; there needs to be regulation to stop people from creating localised variants; there is no need for repetition (you can always go back and read again if need be); you can use longer sentences and more complex grammar (because you can always go back and read again if need be); and so on. These needs shaped kirjakieli into what it is today. It is still mostly reserved for writing.

I think don't know enough Finnish to fully grasp what you're saying, but an example from the days when I first started studying Finnish came to mind: "minun veljeni". It feels very repetitive to me. I think most people around here would say "mun veli" - that definitely sounds less repetitive, but also I think the general consensus is that this is bad Finnish and one is not supposed to (speak or at least) write like that. Every time, I'm wondering why people would not just say "veljeni" - thus making it as short as the spoken form while sticking to the formal register at the same time?

So what is Finnish doing - agreeing that language should stay as prescribed while speaking in a totally different way and rarely including a spoken word in the official dictionaries? What is the final purpose - that everybody speaks as prescribed even though nobody does? Or that everybody keeps their dialect while abiding to a common standard in writing?

I hope after reading what I wrote above you've come to the conclusion that the answer is the latter: what we call "standard Finnish" in English has always been meant as the shared, unbiased form of language for writing.

All right, so at the end we will have one of these situations - like Germany, Norway and Italy - when there's one official norm for everyone and many local ones for people who belong to a certain group. Not like in France and Bulgaria - everything being modelled on how they speak in Paris or Sofia and other ways of speaking disappearing - an exception being made for occasional dialect words that become popular and reach the capital area somehow.


praeteritum = imperfekti :)

[Naava]

Hi, just wanted to say that I've started to draft a reply to you (and I've managed to do about half of it by now), but I don't think I can finish it before Christmas. December is always a busy month, but I'll be back hopefully soon enough!

[Woods]

I understand! I was in that same state for twenty days

Enjoy the holidays