sa wulfs wrote:I edited my previous post because some sort of brain fart made me write -AA instead of -[V]A for type 1 verbs.
Woods wrote: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.
sa wulfs wrote: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".
Woods wrote: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?