How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

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Woods
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How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Woods » 2017-09-04, 12:15

Hi again :)

Naava, it seems you’re right that the genitive (or the possessive suffixes in this case) can be a bit problematic :) I haven’t actually even started to study the genitive yet, but I got stuck at the following:

I read that for some reason, the Finnish equivalent of the word ‘face’ occurs only in plural (actually, why is that? I kind of understand why the word ‘trousers’ would be a plural concept, as they’ve got two legs, but what’s the idea behind the face?) Then I tried to say ‘your face,’ but I found that the section on “possessive suffixes” in Karlsson’s grammar only relates to singular nouns. So I figured out how to conjugate singular nouns after all personal pronouns, but what should I do with words in the plural?

minun veljeni – my brother
sinun veljesi – your (sing.) brother
hänen veljensä – his/her brother
meidän veljemme – our brother
teidän veljenne – your (pl.) brother
heidän veljensä – their brother

But what about my/your/his/her/our/your/their brothers? Or my/your/his/her/our/your/their face?

I figured out something like the following, but I have no idea if it’s true:

minun kasvoini
sinun kasvoisi
hänen kasvoinsa
meidän kasvoimme
teidän kasvoinne
heidän kasvoinsa


(I removed the -t in kasvot and replaced it by an -i-, because otherwise adding the possessive suffixes didn’t sound right at all, and I also guess -t is the plural mark that is used only when there are no other suffixes added to the word, is it not the case?)

But have I guessed correctly?

Can it be that when the possessive suffixes are added, it cannot be determined otherwise than from the context if the word taking the suffix is a singular or a plural one (i.e. that ‘my brother’ and ‘my brothers’ will sound the same in Finnish)? This is what I also thought while looking through some of the examples in the book, but I hope I’m wrong :)

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-09-05, 16:51

Woods wrote:Naava, it seems you’re right that the genitive (or the possessive suffixes in this case) can be a bit problematic :)

Haha! :D We (native Finnish speakers) were all horrified in the lesson when we were taught Finnish grammar rules and especially the genitive. It made me feel pity for anyone trying to learn this randomness as a foreign language! But then again, don't all languages have their own quirks? :blush:

I read that for some reason, the Finnish equivalent of the word ‘face’ occurs only in plural (actually, why is that? I kind of understand why the word ‘trousers’ would be a plural concept, as they’ve got two legs, but what’s the idea behind the face?)

It used to be a true plural; if I remember it right, it used to mean 'cheeks'. You've got two cheeks, so plural was a logical choice. Then it changed to mean face and not just cheeks, but the plural stayed there.
FYI, there's another word for face which is less formal and more spoken language: naama. That's in singular. Mum has a funny story about 'face'. When she was in a hospital as a kid, she was asked to wash her kasvot. She had no idea what it meant. She had never even heard the word - everyone she knew said naama!

I think your reasoning with plural declination looks so good and, well, logical. Nice work! You're right that -t is used only in nominative. It's -i- (or -j-) elsewhere.

You're also right that there's no distinction between singular and plural possessives. That means that 'veljeni' can be either my brother or my brothers. However, it's quite common to drop the suffix in spoken language and say things like 'mun veli' (singular) and 'mun veljet' (plural). That's not a rule though, you can also hear 'mun veljeni' in spoken language and the 2nd person suffix -si is often kept there either as -si or -s (sun veljesi or sun veljes).

So, the correct way to add the possessive suffix to kasvot is:
minun kasvoni
sinun kasvosi
hänen kasvonsa
meidän kasvomme
teidän kasvonne
heidän kasvonsa

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Woods » 2017-09-06, 6:50

Kiitos uudelleen :)


Naava wrote: It made me feel pity for anyone trying to learn this randomness as a foreign language!

It’s really crazy. I’m starting to worry that it may take me forever to learn it :(


So, the correct way to add the possessive suffix to kasvot is:

minun kasvoni
sinun kasvosi
hänen kasvonsa
meidän kasvomme
teidän kasvonne
heidän kasvonsa

But where is the plural marker?

Actually, I googled ”kasvoini” and got some results, but mostly from the Bible – I guess it used to be like that :)

Are there other instances where the plural marker disappears?


You're also right that there's no distinction between singular and plural possessives. That means that 'veljeni' can be either my brother or my brothers. However, it's quite common to drop the suffix in spoken language and say things like 'mun veli' (singular) and 'mun veljet' (plural). That's not a rule though, you can also hear 'mun veljeni' in spoken language and the 2nd person suffix -si is often kept there either as -si or -s (sun veljesi or sun veljes).

How common is it to speak the ‘spoken’ language? Is it standard (like in France you’d say t’es instead of tu es basically everywhere, except when you’re talking to your teacher, but then you would also use the polite form vous êtes, so there’s no confusion at all. However, there can be some confusion with things like il n’est pas – since we’re all used to not saying the ne anymore, it could naturally be dropped even when speaking to a person you are on more official terms with. So even though my French teacher when I was fifteen would say how impolite it was to drop the ne in negations, I would say that it’s already become quite normal and sooner or later nobody would ever say it anymore.

And actually, are the possessive markers changing in spoken speech because it’s better to have a distinction between singular and plural? Like you’d rather know if the person has got one or two brothers?

I’ll definitely have to do some research on when and to what extent the spoken language is used, and ask some more questions :)

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-09-06, 9:22

Woods wrote:Kiitos uudelleen :)

Ole hyvä!

It’s really crazy. I’m starting to worry that it may take me forever to learn it :(

Maybe one day! :D

But where is the plural marker?

There isn't any. There's no distinction between singular and plural with possessive suffixes. Context helps: if someone is talking about 'veljeni', they'll probably use 'hän' or 'he' at some point and then you'll know if it was one or two brothers. Is this a good time to tell you there's a few verbs with no difference in future/present and past tenses?

Actually, I googled ”kasvoini” and got some results, but mostly from the Bible – I guess it used to be like that :)

Nah, I checked and I think the word is actually 'kasvojeni' - of my face aka genitive. It could be South Western dialect, that's what Agricola used in his translation of the Bible.

See:
-- sillä heidän pahuutensa on tullut minun kasvoini eteen = for their evilness has come in front of my face
-- on aina minun kasvoini edessä = is always in front of my face
-- hän on minun kasvoini apu ja minun Jumalani = he is the help of my face and my God

Btw, there is a difference between plural nominative + possessive suffix and plural genitive + possessive suffix: minun kasvoni vs minun kasvojeni, minun veljeni vs minun veljieni. However, there isn't any difference between singular nominative/genitive: minun veljeni (my brother) vs minun veljeni talo (my brother's house).

How common is it to speak the ‘spoken’ language?

Ok so.

First everyone spoke different dialects. Then people started to write stuff in Finnish. Basically everyone decided to use their own dialect, and eventually some kind of a 'standard' Finnish was born. Most of the writers were from the South West and West, so the written language followed the example of dialects spoken there. Eventually people started to demand more Eastern dialect features to the writing style; they felt it was not fair that a common language was developing from one dialect group while ignoring the other half of the country.

As a result, the standard Finnish was born. It is a Frankenstein's monster in a way: no one ever spoke it, it was not copied as a ready variety of language, but glued together from pieces from here and there. :D It was made for writing, and even today it's called 'book language' in Finnish. It's quite rare to hear anyone speaking it. However, news reporters and some members of parliament use it because it's A) very formal B) the 'common language', you can't identify where someone is from and everyone can understand it easily.

I'm not exactly sure where the spoken language came from; I think it was from the cities when lots of people moved there from different areas and their dialects got mixed up.

Anyway, now we get to the 'today'. :D There isn't One Common Spoken Language. It's more like a continuum from dialects to something that has shared features everywhere but takes a lot from the local dialects. For example, my friends from Helsinki who, in my opinion, do not use strong dialect/slang/etc but speak in spoken language often drop letters in locational cases: talost, taloon, talos, talolt, talol, talol. In my dialect, only -ssa is shortened, so people from there are more likely to say talosta, taloon, talos, talolta, talolle, talolla. (from, into, in, from, to, at house) People from East Finland are more likely to use 'mie' for 'I' even when they're not speaking in their dialect; and so on. Like I said, it's a continuum. The same person can go from very heavy dialect to coloured spoken language to a spoken language that hardly tells where s/he is from. Different people can have different mixtures of spoken language + dialect features. It's also up to the situation and the person how they speak. Some never stop using their dialects, some favour the spoken language even when at home.

All in all, spoken language is very common, but it's not the same for every speaker.

And actually, are the possessive markers changing in spoken speech because it’s better to have a distinction between singular and plural? Like you’d rather know if the person has got one or two brothers?

I don't think so, although it can be one reason. I think it's because 'mun veljet' is shorter than 'minun veljeni', and because it carries the same information anyway.

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Virankannos » 2017-09-14, 15:21

Just to clarify: When a possessive suffix is attached to a word, its nominative singular, genitive singular, nominative plural always look alike: minun koirani can be either "my dog" (koira), "of my dog" (koiran) or "my dogs" (koirat).

Also, with some word types (such as koira), illative and partitive singular look alike: minun koiraani can be either "my dog (part.)" or "(in)to my dog". This doesn't apply to most types of words, but mainly ones ending in a/ä, cf. minun taloani "my house (part.)" vs. minun talooni "(in)to my house"

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Woods » 2017-09-16, 19:34

Terve Naava ja Virankannos!

Paljon kiitoksiä jälleen!

I took some time to reply because I wanted to have read the entire section on noun cases first. Well, that didn’t put an end to my confusion – on the contrary, but now at least I know approximately how much I will have to go through and then I’m moving to verb forms and after that I think I’ll be good to go :)



During your first winter here, you’ll realize that has already happened and your Finnish still begins with “moi” and ends with “moi moi.”

My first winter might indeed be this one; however, I’m afraid that if I book myself a flight (which I’m really considering!), then first of all the summer is almost over (which, I guess, means less people around and less economic activity, or am I wrong?), and second and most of all, I’m afraid that if I try to settle there, people will not take me seriously if I don’t speak the language and will tell me to go away and come back when I learn it :( Well, I know some Danish and very basic Swedish plus excellent English, but I’m not sure this will open doors for me :)

So I guess I’ll have to learn Finnish and maybe some winter after that I will book my flight to Finland… And if I stop doing what I did on the day I started writing this – planned to study Finnish for the whole day, but then met three friends and (almost) a fourth one – and stick to my plans instead, it may actually happen :D



So let’s get down to business…

Naava wrote:Is this a good time to tell you there's a few verbs with no difference in future/present and past tenses?

Yes, anytime :D

The verbs are next on my list :)



Naava wrote:Btw, there is a difference between plural nominative + possessive suffix and plural genitive + possessive suffix: minun kasvoni vs minun kasvojeni, minun veljeni vs minun veljieni. However, there isn't any difference between singular nominative/genitive: minun veljeni (my brother) vs minun veljeni talo (my brother's house).

Okay, it’s getting really complicated but I’m going to get over this I’m sure :D

So, let’s say the forms you just taught me will be used in phrases like minun kasvojeni hahmo (the shape of my face) and minun veljieni talo (my brother’s house) – I get that.

Can this -j- really be heard between an /l/ and an /i/? :doggy:



By the time you wrote this I didn’t yet realise that the possessive suffixes could also be combined with all the possible case endings in the same word (and it also looks very strange, from the perspective of a speaker of Indo-European languages only, to have the case before the possessive marker, but…) Let me try to make some examples for all cases in both singular and plural (then you can tell me how much I’ve messed it up :D)

The book is in the hands of my brother:
Kirja on veljeni käsissä.

From the hands of my brother to his teacher’s:
(Minun) velje(n?)stän käsistä häneen opettajaan. (I’m sure this one is wrong, but I have no idea how much and where, it’s just… so messed up I can’t figure out how to make it :)

The teacher put the book into my brother’s hands:
Opettaja on laittanut kirjan (minun) veljenssäni käsissäänni.

(Here is probably the right moment to ask: is there a rule that determines which case ending is put first? I mean, in this sentence, as far as I can imagine, the word needs three case endings (-ssä, -Vn and -n) and a possessive suffix. I get that the possessive goes to the end, but in what order should I place the other case endings?)

The freckles disappeared from my brother’s face:
Pisamat katosi (minusta) velestani kasvoista.

She put makeup on my brother’s face:
Hän laittoi meikkin minuun veljeeni kasvoihin.

(Well, I don’t know the difference in meaning between the perfekti and imperfekti yet, so I’m not sure which one to use…) :(

(I’m also not sure whether I should which case/s I should add to minun – the illative to show where the make-up has been placed, the genitive to show that this is his face, or something else?)

She removed that terrible makeup from my brother’s face:
Hän poisti täman kauhean meikkin minustani veljestäni kasvojestani.

(part.) She was looking at my brother’s face:
Hän oli katsonut minun veljeni kasvoja.

(I put the possessive pronoun and my brother in the genitive and his face in the partitive, but I don’t know if this is right.)

(acc.) She looked at my brother’s face and then went away:
Hän katsoi minun veljeni kasvot ja meni pois.

(gen.) This book is my brother’s:
Kirja on minun veljeni.

(essive) This mask serves as my brother’s face when I don’t want people to recognise me (doesn’t make much sense but I wanted to make a sentence with my brother’s face in the essive :D):
Maski soveltuu minun veljeni kasvoina jolloin en halua että ihmisiä tunnistaa minua.

(Well, I have no idea how to make the construction “somebody wants someone to do something…” Maybe you can help?

(transl.) The magician turned the frog into my brother:
Taikuri muuttui minun sammakkon minuksi veljeksini.

(Or should I write veljekseni, it sounds better?)

Well, this is already way too much, I’ll leave the plural for some other time! :shock:

Please also point out if I’ve used the wrong verbs in these contexts – I used several dictionaries until I found them, but my level is pretty low to make the right choices…



I found the theory about the disappearing consonants:

“The final consonant of a case ending is dropped when followed by a possessive suffix. This particularly applies to the genitive singular [-n], the genitive plural (…) [-iden ~ -itten ~ -en ~ -ten], the nominative plural (…) -t and the illative (…) -Vn ~ -hVn ~ -seen ~-siin.” (Finnish: An Essential Grammar, Routledge 1999, page 99).

Given the way the author writes, I would also ask – is the list exclusive?

I’ll try to write the missing endings just so I make sure I’ve gotten the idea:

The examples below are again taken from the book:

talotnne – your houses (nom. pl.)
laukkutsi – your bags (nom. pl.)
Veneetni ovat uudet. – My boats are new. (nom. pl.)

laivanni – my ships (gen. sing.)
tyttönmme – our girl’s (gen. sing.)
Veneenni nimi on Tarantella. (gen. sing.)
Oletko nähnyt veneenni? (agg./gen. sing.)

autoonni – into my car (ill. sing.)
maahannsa – into his country (ill. sing.)


I don’t get “Veneeni on uusi.” (nom. sing.) – why the double “e?”

I’ll try to write some more examples to exercise when I have time. So far I’ll just do it the one Naava mentioned:

minun kasvojenni (gen. pl.)



Naava wrote:I think it's because 'mun veljet' is shorter than 'minun veljeni', and because it carries the same information anyway.

But it also carries the information that the noun is a plural one :)

Aren’t there contexts where you’d rather know if the ‘possessed’ object is a plural or a singular concept and you miss this information?

This gets me thinking – it should be okay to take some non-standard grammar from spoken language and use it in cases like this one, in order to add extra meaning, even if I normally speak the written language, shouldn’t it?

Actually, will I come off totally unnatural if I speak the TV/literature language, or will it be okay? I guess I’ll have to add some jargon to my speech as soon as I can, or should I not?



More about the genitive:

According to the book, “[t]he ending -den can always be replaced by -tten – compare ma/i/den ~ ma/i/tten, este/i/den ~ este/i/tten, korke/i/den ~ korke/i/tten.” But again, it’s not exactly clear what the author means – are the two endings identical, or is there some difference? And if they are identical, which one is more common?

I went over the “Formation of the genitive” section and the ending -ten seems to be most problematic. The author says that it can be used “sometimes,” but that the ending -i/en can also be used in all of the examples. However, he says that the latter is “seldom” used “for most types,” but again, he doesn’t say which ones:

kiel/ten ~ kiel/ien
pien/ten ~ pien/ien
nuor/ten ~ nuor/ien
nais/ten ~ (nais/ien)
rutsalais/ten ~ (ruotsalais/ien)
ostos/ten ~ ostoks/ien
hammas/ten ~ hampa/iden
kallis/ten ~ kalli/iden
puhelin/ten ~ puhelim/ien
askel/ten ~ askel/ien
mies/ten ~ mieh/ien

(Finnish: An Essential Grammar, Routledge 1999, page 99).

It seems that there’s no need for a plural marker with this ending.

Also, no idea why he’s put the brackets around naisien and ruotsalaisien.

I’m also kind of curious where the plural marker -i- goes in the following examples:

ammati – ammatti/en
tunti – tunti/en
lasi – lasi/en

(because of the slash the author has put after the -i- and not before it.)



And about the “accusative”:

Is there such a thing as an accusative case in Finnish? According to the author, “The accusative is not a uniform morphological case form as such, but a collective name given to a certain set of cases (…) nominative singular (…) genitive singular (…) and the nominative plural.” However, he also says that “the accusative ending is usually -n,” and this cannot be genitive:

Ostan kirjan.
Tunsitko Olli Nuutisen?
Irma avaa ikkunan.
Pekka saa paikan.


(All examples are from the book.)

So, should we not say that there is an accusative case, but it occurs only for the singular object and personal pronouns, and has two possible endings: -n for nominals and -t for pronouns – rather than saying that the term “accusative” is a common denominator for a set of cases, one of which the genitive (there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the examples above and the concept of genitive, or is there one?)

Or we could conclude that the genitive endings are used as accusative in the nominative singular, and otherwise there’s no accusative outside of pronouns?



And one last question about consonant gradation, vowel reduction/compression or the other ways in which the word changes when inflected. The author constantly talks about “the inflectional stem.” Do you know what exactly this “inflectional stem” is – is it a permanent morpheme that remains the same in all cases / persons / numbers or does he mean an ever-changing “inflectional stem” that is particular to the case/person/number he’s giving examples about? I haven’t found a definition in the book yet and it’s not in the index.



As a conclusion, my head is turning after all this grammar :D

I’m really sorry for overwhelming the topic with one million questions! And I’m just at the very beginning of learning Finnish… Really, is this even possible :(

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-09-17, 12:07

Tervepä terve! :D
Paljon kiitoksia jälleen!

Ole hyvä! :)

If there's A, O, U in the word -> use A, O, U. Otherwise, use Ä, Ö and Y.
Eg. talo -> taloa
katse - katsetta
kieli - kieltä
syy - syytä
sääntö - sääntöä


then I’m moving to verb forms and after that I think I’ll be good to go

Brace yourself, the verbs are not going to be much easier... :D But you're right, then you've got most of the grammar done! You can do it!

My first winter might indeed be this one; however, I’m afraid that if I book myself a flight (which I’m really considering!), then first of all the summer is almost over

We never had a summer this year. :roll: But yes, September is already an autumn month. If you want to see summer, try again in June-August. If you don't want to be depressed, avoid October-December (although Christmas time is nice when there's lights everywhere!) If you want to face the coldest it can get, consider January-February. If you want to experience all four seasons in the same week, consider March-May. :D (Ok, I'm half-joking here.)

Welcome, in any case! You could try to come for a holiday first if you can't move right away here. That way you would see what it is like here before actually living here - I've got the impression you haven't been to Finland before?

You'll survive with English with no problems. Danish doesn't help you at all, and basic Swedish is more useful than English only if you're going to the Swedish speaking coastal towns. :D May I ask you which city you're thinking of moving in?

So, let’s say the forms you just taught me will be used in phrases like minun kasvojeni hahmo (the shape of my face) and minun veljieni talo (my brother’s house) – I get that.

'Hahmo' is more like a silhuette, shape of some object/human/animal/etc. Like when I was a kid and I had to go to the bathroom at night, there was this huge palm tree in our living room. It was so dark and I couldn't see more than the black shape of the palm tree - the black hahmo scared me. :D

The word you're searching for is 'muoto'. 'Muoto' is the difference between triangles and squares.

Can this -j- really be heard between an /l/ and an /i/? :doggy:

Yep. Velieni sounds closer to veljeni to me. I think it's the rhythm of the word. I haven't really studied this so I can't say anything sophisticated, but I somehow... slow down at -ji- in veljieni if I compare it to velieni. I think it's because the syllable structure is different: vel-ji-e-ni vs ve-li-e-ni. There's also slightly more friction in -ji- in veljieni than in -i- in velieni.

Try google translate and listen to it - it sounds robotic, true, but otherwise it's ok.

is there a rule that determines which case ending is put first?

Yes, there is. I think I have the complete rule somewhere safe, but a quick rule of thumb could be
noun + plural + case endings + possessive + "decorations" like -kin ('also'), -ko (question), -han. (English doesn't really have a match for that clitic.)

I tried to test that quickly and it seems to work quite fine, but if someone sees a problem there or can give more detailed rule, please do! :D

Eg.
kissa-lle-ni-ko? - to/for my cat?
kirjo-i-ssa-mme-kin - in our books also

Also, I noticed you often did this mistake so I'll say this first before going to the translations. Only one case per one noun. I tried to think but I couldn't come up with any situation where you would have multiple cases. If someone can, please correct me!

So, if you have a genitive (minun veljeni), the only thing changing is veljeni which doesn't yet have any case:

minun veljelleni
minun veljelläni
minun veljekseni
minun veljeäni

and so on.

The book is in the hands of my brother:
Kirja on veljeni käsissä.

I think it should be 'kädessä'. Maybe someone else can help with this one. I can't really explain why I'd use the singular, except that it's often used with hands and legs. 'Käsissä' doesn't sound extremely wrong either, but I can't tell if there's some difference in the meaning or what.

From the hands of my brother to his teacher’s:
(Minun) velje(n?)stän käsistä häneen opettajaan.

Veljeni kädestä hänen opettajansa käteen.
or in plural
Veljeni käsistä hänen opettajansa käsiin.

The teacher put the book into my brother’s hands:
Opettaja on laittanut kirjan (minun) veljenssäni käsissäänni.

Hmm, I think I'd use 'to give' here rather than 'to put'.
Opettaja antoi kirjan veljeni käteen / käsiin.
You could also use 'pistää' which is closer to 'to put':
Opettaja pisti kirjan veljeni käsiin.
There I would use the plural, and again, I don't know why. :lol:

The freckles disappeared from my brother’s face:
Pisamat katosi (minusta) velestani kasvoista.

Pisamat katosivat minun veljeni kasvoista.

Pisamat - plural, so you need plural verb, too.

She put makeup on my brother’s face:
Hän laittoi meikkin minuun veljeeni kasvoihin.

Hän laittoi meikkiä minun veljeni kasvoihin.

'Kasvoille' is also possible.

(Well, I don’t know the difference in meaning between the perfekti and imperfekti yet, so I’m not sure which one to use…) :(

It's the same as in English, at least most of the time. There are a few exception here you use imperfect in Finnish but perfect in English and so on, but most of the time you can copy it from English. :D

She removed that terrible makeup from my brother’s face:
Hän poisti täman kauhean meikkin minustani veljestäni kasvojestani.

Hän poisti sen kauhean meikin minun veljeni kasvoista.

(part.) She was looking at my brother’s face:
Hän oli katsonut minun veljeni kasvoja.

Now you said 'she had been looking at my brother's face' or 'she had looked at my brother's face'.

'She was looking' would be 'hän katsoi veljeni kasvoja'. You can add something like 'for a long time' or something if you want to stress that it wasn't just a quick glance.

(I put the possessive pronoun and my brother in the genitive and his face in the partitive, but I don’t know if this is right.)

It is!! Congrats! Well done! :D

(acc.) She looked at my brother’s face and then went away:
Hän katsoi minun veljeni kasvot ja meni pois.

Hän katsoi minun veljeni kasvoja ja meni pois.

If you want to say that she didn't look at the face for long, you can say 'vilkaisi' which means 'to look for a short time, to glance', or 'katsoi veljeäni kasvoihin'.

(gen.) This book is my brother’s:
Kirja on minun veljeni.

All's fine here, congrats! :)

(essive) This mask serves as my brother’s face when I don’t want people to recognise me (doesn’t make much sense but I wanted to make a sentence with my brother’s face in the essive :D):
Maski soveltuu minun veljeni kasvoina jolloin en halua että ihmisiä tunnistaa minua.

Oh I see you had to go the hard way! :lol:
Ok let's try.

Tämä naamio toimii veljeni kasvoina silloin, kun en halua ihmisten tunnistavan minua.

I think naamio is a better choice than maski because it's more common, but it's not wrong to say maski either.

Did you try to say that you use a mask that looks like your brother's face when you don't want people to see your own face? I'm not sure if that's what you get from the Finnish translation but I can't come up with a way to say that while still using essive, and because you were more interested in how the essive would work in the first place, I'll leave it here. :D

Soveltua - hmm my dictionary translates it as "suit, fit, apply, be suited". It also has a Finnish explanation, which roughly translates as "to be suited (for some task or way of usage)".

With the mask example, you could say something like "this mask is for a masquerade, but you can use it during Halloween as well" - tämä maski/naamio on naamiaisiin, mutta se soveltuu käytettäväksi myös halloweenina. Sounds kinda formal though! :lol: And there you got your essive again!

(Well, I have no idea how to make the construction “somebody wants someone to do something…” Maybe you can help?

'Joku tahtoo jonkun tekevän jotain.'
Minä tahdon sinun siivoavan huoneesi. - I want you to clean your room.
Sinä tahdot koiran menevän ulos. - You want that the dog goes out.
You can replace 'tahtoa' with 'toivoa' (to wish) and so on.

I'm sure you'll meet the -va/vä forms when you read more about the verbs, so I'm just leaving it be for now.

(transl.) The magician turned the frog into my brother:
Taikuri muuttui minun sammakkon minuksi veljeksini.

Taikuri muutti minun sammakkoni minun veljekseni.

muuttua - to change by yourself or change yourself
muuttaa - to change someone or something

muutun - muutan (I'm changing / I change something)
muutut - muutat
muuttuu - muuttaa
muutuin - muutin (imperfect)
muutuit - muutit
muuttui - muutti

Taikuri muuttui minun sammakokseni - the magician turned into my frog
Taikuri muutti minun sammakkoni - the magician turned my frog into something else

There's more pairs like this, but I think it's best you read the verb section first. :P

(Or should I write veljekseni, it sounds better?)

That's right! :)

Given the way the author writes, I would also ask – is the list exclusive?

No idea, if someone else can answer this, I'll leave it to them. :D The examples are all right though.

I don’t get “Veneeni on uusi.” (nom. sing.) – why the double “e?”

Because it used to end with a consonant (cf. 'boat' is venes in my dialect). It used to be 'veneheni', but the H has been lost. This is how it works with almost every noun ending with -e. Exceptions are 'new' loans, but it might be quite a job to figure out when something is 'old' and when it's not.

Eg. vene - veneen, veneessä, veneestä...
hame - hameen, hameessa, hameesta (skirt)
Häme - Hämeen, Hämeessä, Hämeestä (Tavastiain English)

but
nalle - nallen, nallessa, nallesta (teddy bear)

Aren’t there contexts where you’d rather know if the ‘possessed’ object is a plural or a singular concept and you miss this information?

Maybe, but aren't all languages vague at times? For example, you can't tell if there's two or six brothers when you say 'brothers'. Some languages have duals, but I haven't really missed them in any of the languages I speak. I guess it's about what you're used to.

This gets me thinking – it should be okay to take some non-standard grammar from spoken language and use it in cases like this one, in order to add extra meaning, even if I normally speak the written language, shouldn’t it?

I'd say don't do that. It's important you learn the standard Finnish if you want to work here. It's a big no-no if you use spoken language in formal letters and such, and if you start to mix spoken and standard features now, there's a great chance you can't tell the difference later on.
Also, I think it sounds even stranger than just speaking standard Finnish. :lol: That's a personal opinion though, I can't say if others think so too.

Actually, will I come off totally unnatural if I speak the TV/literature language, or will it be okay? I guess I’ll have to add some jargon to my speech as soon as I can, or should I not?

When someone is speaking in standard Finnish, what I think is that
A) they're being posh
B) they're in a place where it's expected (news, politicians*, formal speeches etc)
C) they're excited about being interviewed on television or something and are overly conscious of the way they speak, that is, trying to sound formal
D) they're foreign

When it comes to non-Finns speaking in Finnish, I don't think anybody cares how you speak because omg they can speak FINNISH this is a miracle. What I've seen, people are actually more surprised/almost confused if a foreign person can speak fluent spoken or dialectal Finnish than if they speak in standard Finnish.

*there's at least one politician who doesn't care about this. I think it was kinda funny to hear him speak because it was so different from what I've used to!

If I were you, I would first learn the standard Finnish until I'm around B1-2. I could read about spoken language so that I would understand people better, but I would try to avoid using it myself. I mean, it's quite a job to learn the Finnish grammar and words. Why would you want to add spoken grammar and words to that? :D

After feeling somewhat confident with the language, I would start to learn the spoken language in the form it is spoken in my home town. I would definitely study the dialect of the area too, because it will shape the spoken language and because you'll always meet someone who speaks in a dialect.

I would do this and in this order especially because I don't think there's a (good) grammar book or dictionary of spoken Finnish. There are comparisons, charts, studies and such about spoken Finnish, but I think they are all in Finnish so you'd need to know the standard language first.

However, I think it's safe to learn and use some words and such from the spoken language when speaking. In writing, I would rely on standard language until I knew that I wouldn't forget standard language and that I wouldn't use spoken language in a place where most people wouldn't use it.

Nice things to know are, for example,

1) personal pronouns:
minä - mä
sinä - sä
hän - se
he - ne
2) using we + passive:
me olemme - me ollaan
me haluamme - me halutaan
me sanomme - me sanotaan
3) the shortened forms of some verbs:
minä menen - mä meen
minä tulen - mä tuun
minä olen - mä oon
minä näen - mä nään

But again, it depends on where you live. In East Finlad, personal pronouns are often 'mie' or 'miä' and 'sie' and 'siä' instead of 'mä' and 'sä', though I think you can hear those too. Some areas use 'hän' more than others; the rules for using 'hän' vs 'se' are not the same everywhere.

TL;DR: it's your choice. You should think of 1) why you are learning Finnish, where do you need it 2) where are you planning to live 3) how much time you can (or want to) spend learning Finnish. If you're planning to move here for 'some time' and need Finnish for working, focus on standard Finnish. If you are planning to say for years and integrate into the society, you kinda have to learn spoken Finnish at some point unless you want to sound foreign or different forever.

According to the book, “[t]he ending -den can always be replaced by -tten – compare ma/i/den ~ ma/i/tten, este/i/den ~ este/i/tten, korke/i/den ~ korke/i/tten.” But again, it’s not exactly clear what the author means – are the two endings identical, or is there some difference? And if they are identical, which one is more common?

They're identical. I guess -den is more common, but I don't think anyone would even notice if you used -tten. I checked with google and got

esteiden - 236 000 hits
esteitten - 6 070 hits
korkeiden - 180 000
korkeitten - 5 280
teiden - 937 000
teitten - 13 100

So -den is clearly more common, but you can't say -tten would be rare either.

The author says that it can be used “sometimes,” but that the ending -i/en can also be used in all of the examples. However, he says that the latter is “seldom” used “for most types,” but again, he doesn’t say which ones:

-ien is taken from the Eastern Finnish dialects. I think -ten was from the Western dialects, but I need to check this because I'm not sure.

Both are acceptable in standard language, but sometimes one variant has become more common than the other.

kielten - 758 000
kielien - 47 900
miesten - 11 500 000
miehien - 27 200

but:
hammasten - 21 200
hampaiden - 1 230 000
lammasten - 31 200
lampaiden - 144 000

I think this is why naisien and ruotsalaisien were in brackets:

naisten - 15 400 000
naisien - 21 500

ruotsalaisten - 260 000
ruotsalaisien - 607

It seems that there’s no need for a plural marker with this ending.

I need to check my notes from the history of Finnish language course. I can't remember the details, but at least one of them actually has a plural marker. I think it was -ien (i+en) but yeah I have to check.

I’m also kind of curious where the plural marker -i- goes in the following examples:

ammatti – ammatti/en
tunti – tunti/en
lasi – lasi/en

I think it's merged with the -i in the stem.

Is there such a thing as an accusative case in Finnish?

People don't agree about this. What they do agree is that there used to be an accusative case which marker was -m. I've heard people speaking of this as "genitive and nominative", "accusative" and also "genitive-like accusative and nominative-like accusative".

I like to call it (genitive/nominative-like) accusative because
- it makes more sense than saying 'we sometimes use genitive with objects'
- it explains why it's sometimes genitive, sometimes nominative
- it used to be different from genitive
- personal pronouns with their -t

Also, accusative-partitive forms a pair, so I think it's easier to say that objects can be in partitive or in accusative, which looks like genitive/nominative than that objects can be in partitive, genitive or nominative, but there's no difference in meaning with genitive and nominative.

But it's up to you what you prefer. Whatever makes it easier for you to learn and remember! :mrgreen:

And one last question about consonant gradation, vowel reduction/compression or the other ways in which the word changes when inflected.

I'll be surprised if this is gonna be your one last question about these for real! :lol:

The author constantly talks about “the inflectional stem.”

It's the stem used when you add stuff to the nouns. So... " a permanent morpheme that remains the same in all cases / persons / numbers". :)

But notice that it doesn't remain same: there's the difference betweek weak and strong grade stems.
Eg. poika has
- strong grade stem: poika-
- weak grade stem: poja-

I’m really sorry for overwhelming the topic with one million questions! And I’m just at the very beginning of learning Finnish… Really, is this even possible :(

I love to answer to questions because it makes me think. There's so much in Finnish that I never really pay any attention to because it's all so natural and simple and clear, but when a non-native asks 'why is it like that, why isn't it like this instead?' it makes me stop and think how this language really works :D

If it helps, I've heard someone say that learning English is like an upside-down pyramid: you learn so much in such a short time, and after just a moment of studying, you can say a lot in English. Whereas Finnish is a pyramid: it takes so long before you get through the grammar and lexicon, but then the rest is easier. :D

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Woods » 2017-09-20, 14:56

Naava wrote:If there's A, O, U in the word -> use A, O, U. Otherwise, use Ä, Ö and Y.

I know this, but I’ve overlooked the o, I think :)


Naava wrote:I've got the impression you haven't been to Finland before?

Never! But I think I’m going to like it a lot! :)


Naava wrote:May I ask you which city you're thinking of moving in?

Well, Helsinki :face:

Cause it’s the biggest (indeed, I would even go to a bigger one, but it doesn’t exist in Finland :)

I’ve also considered Tampere, but it seems too small, so I’m not sure to find enough things to do.

A friend of mine (a Finnish guy) tried to convince me to go to Jyväskylä or Oulu, but the first is out of the question because I don’t like the subjects in the university, and the second one is even smaller.


Naava wrote:I love to answer to questions

Lucky me! :)


Naava wrote:
And one last question about consonant gradation, vowel reduction/compression or the other ways in which the word changes when inflected.

I'll be surprised if this is gonna be your one last question about these for real! :lol:


Yes, you’re right. Yesterday I sat confidently and said to myself “okay, if I read and learn the section on ‘consonant gradation’ and understand it completely, half of my problems with learning Finnish will be solved! So let’s do it.” Well… no! First, the author has had such a huge problem sorting out his thoughts and the whole doesn’t follow any logic, so I just stared at the paper for a few hours trying to organise it logically, but that really wasn’t enough. Well, he says that what he calls “consonant gradation” (the other book talks of “consonant compression,” which seems more logical to me) applies only to the letters p, t and k, as well as their doubles. Well, later on he gives examples of the reverse, i.e. missing k turns back to k, p is turned back to pp etc. Well, maybe he forgot to tell that he was already talking about the reverse process, I said to myself, but since it’s logically the same thing, just in the other direction, that’s okay.

But after reading the entire section, I spotted the following examples and realised things are really not alright with this book:

vesi – vedestä
ihminen – ihmisestä
avain – avaimessa
ajatus – ajatuksessa


None of the letters changing here is p, t or k! And I can assure you that nowhere in the section dedicated to consonant changes he’s talking of alterations of s and n :angry:

Maybe these are some very rare cases and there aren’t many more cases when consonants are changing other than p, t and k?

And this is again something happening in reverse, I guess:

tiede – tieteestä



Naava wrote:Hän laittoi meikkiä minun veljeni kasvoihin.

what if the action is already done, i.e. the make-up is already on my brother’s face, why still the partitive and not the genitive?


Naava wrote:'Kasvoille' is also possible.

And maybe even better?


Naava wrote:Only one case per one noun.

Taikuri muutti minun sammakkoni minun veljekseni.

Okay, so what I get from the examples so far, is that a case ending needs to be used only once in an object phrase consisting of a determiner and a noun. I tried to put all these cases because I read somewhere that all needed to be declined, but I think this applied only to nouns and their adjectives then.

What if I add an adjective, will the ending that is added to the noun also be added to the adjective:

Taikuri muutti minun sammakkoni minun kaunikseni veljekseni.

or ”kauniksi veljekseni.?


Naava wrote:Kirja on minun veljeni.

All's fine here, congrats! :)

The easiest one. But thanks :D


Naava wrote:
(essive) This mask serves as my brother’s face when I don’t want people to recognise me (doesn’t make much sense but I wanted to make a sentence with my brother’s face in the essive :D):
Maski soveltuu minun veljeni kasvoina jolloin en halua että ihmisiä tunnistaa minua.

Oh I see you had to go the hard way! :lol:

What do you mean?? :wondering:


Naava wrote: Did you try to say that you use a mask that looks like your brother's face when you don't want people to see your own face?

I have no idea :D I think I just wanted to make a sentence where my brother is both in the genitive and translative :D (didn’t know yet that wouldn’t be possible) :)


Naava wrote:Taikuri muuttui minun sammakokseni – the magician turned into my frog
Taikuri muutti minun sammakkoni - the magician turned my frog into something else

There's more pairs like this, but I think it's best you read the verb section first. :P

I’m halfway through it (well, skimming, not reading – but that’s what I’ve been able to do so far!)


Naava wrote:If I were you, I would first learn the standard Finnish until I'm around B1-2. I could read about spoken language so that I would understand people better, but I would try to avoid using it myself. I mean, it's quite a job to learn the Finnish grammar and words. Why would you want to add spoken grammar and words to that? :D

After feeling somewhat confident with the language, I would start to learn the spoken language in the form it is spoken in my home town. I would definitely study the dialect of the area too, because it will shape the spoken language and because you'll always meet someone who speaks in a dialect.

I would do this and in this order especially because I don't think there's a (good) grammar book or dictionary of spoken Finnish. There are comparisons, charts, studies and such about spoken Finnish, but I think they are all in Finnish so you'd need to know the standard language first.

I’ve got another nice book to learn vocabulary and phrases from, but it focuses strongly on dialect: Colloquial Finnish (Daniel Abondolo, 2012). I haven’t even started using it yet, but when I skim through it, it’s even scary how much it focus on the spoken language while staying away from the official rules.

And I don’t even know which type of dialect it teaches (maybe the author mentions, but I guess not.)


Naava wrote:
(Well, I don’t know the difference in meaning between the perfekti and imperfekti yet, so I’m not sure which one to use…) :(

It's the same as in English, at least most of the time. There are a few exception here you use imperfect in Finnish but perfect in English and so on, but most of the time you can copy it from English. :D

Could you think of some examples when it’s not the same as in English?


I’ll tried to read my own examples and your corrections later on and maybe I’ll have more questions :)


Naava wrote:If it helps, I've heard someone say that learning English is like an upside-down pyramid: you learn so much in such a short time, and after just a moment of studying, you can say a lot in English. Whereas Finnish is a pyramid: it takes so long before you get through the grammar and lexicon, but then the rest is easier. :D

It’s so different and time-consuming that at the end I think it’s going to feel like a big achievement. When I compare to the way it felt when I was learning French/English (and German, Danish, Swedish which I’m still learning), it really used to feel like I was learning another version of my own language. Whereas this is totally different!

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-10-04, 9:37

Took long enough from me to answer! I hope I didn't get tired or confused at any point and said something that's not true. If you find any illogical explanations, please point them to me and I'll try to figure out what I've been thinking. :lol:

Well, Helsinki :face:

Cause it’s the biggest (indeed, I would even go to a bigger one, but it doesn’t exist in Finland :)

I’ve also considered Tampere, but it seems too small, so I’m not sure to find enough things to do.

A friend of mine (a Finnish guy) tried to convince me to go to Jyväskylä or Oulu, but the first is out of the question because I don’t like the subjects in the university, and the second one is even smaller.

Helsinki is a nice place, and the buses and trams and trains work well. There's also quite a lot of immigrants, exchange students and others with a foreign background so you wouldn't be the only one.

The down side is that Helsinki is expensive, especially when it comes to living. Rents are high as sky*, so you need to do some maths to find the right place to live where the rent is ok for you and the transportation isn't too difficult or expensive.
*I mean, the difference is really big if you compare it to smaller towns and cities.

If you think Tampere is small, I'd really like to see what you like Jyväskylä or Oulu. :D I've never been to either but I've always thought they're somewhat small cities.

About consonant gradation:

Long ago, it affected K, P, T when they were in the final syllable of the stem. The rule was
- open syllable = strong grade
- closed syllable = weak grade

That's why you get poi-ka, kuk-ka, pu-ku but po-jan, ku-kan, pu-vun.

But remember that it does't mean the last syllable in the word: po-jal-le has weak grade because that -jal- is a closed syllable.

As time went by, some consonants were lost, and that's why this rule doesn't work 100% perfectly anymore. However, it's still quite useful if you need to choose either weak or strong grade and can't check it anywhere. The only case where this doesn't work and which comes to my mind is the illative: poi-kaan, kuk-kaan, ta-paan. I think there might be more exceptions like this but yeah like I said, I can't remember any of them now. :D

The rule works with the plurals just the same: po-jat, ku-kat, ta-vat. It also works with verbs: vaa-ti-a, vaa-din.

Originally, the 'pairs' of strong and weak grades were 'double K, P, T > single K, P, T' and 'single K, P, T > fricative ɣ, β, ð'. Double to single -rule is still ok, but the fricatives have been lost. They've been replaced by quite a lot of different things. /β/ is usually /v/, /ð/ in standard language is /d/ and /ɣ/ is often lost or replaced by a glide. For example,

tapa > tavan
salpa > salvan
katu > kadun
sata > sadan
märkä > märän
poika > pojan
puku > puvun
jälki > jäljen

You probably noticed that K is kinda wild, changing to nothing or to /j/ or /v/ at times. This is because the standard language has sometimes picked up the eastern variant (härkä > härän), and sometimes the western variant (jälki > jäljen).

There's also variation with D in spoken language and dialects. The phoneme /d/ was kinda loaned from Swedish, so almost all of the dialects have something else there instead. In west, it's usually /r/ or /ɾ/. In east and north, it's often dropped out and then there might be a glide to make the pronunciation easier. In south, I've noticed that they sometimes have /d/, sometimes they drop it. I guess a famous example could be Lahti, because people there say they are 'Lahesta', not Lahdesta.

And spoken language can have any of these. Some have /d/ always, some drop it (almost?) always, and I've noticed I have a tendency to use a flap even when reading aloud texts in standard Finnish.


Well, more about lost sounds.

There has been a change, sometimes called T-S-change, sometimes TI-SI-change. Basically every /ti/ became /si/. For example, käsi and vesi used to be käti and veti. That is why they still have the consonant gradation, even though you can't see the T there anymore. However, see the words 'watery', vetinen, and 'to shake hands', tellä, which still have the original /t/ there.

We've got loan words after this change, which explains why you can find words with /ti/ in them. Also, some imperfects still have the /ti/ because of reasons, but I'm not explaining that right now because I don't have the time for it. :D

And this is again something happening in reverse, I guess:

tiede – tieteestä

This is also because of lost stuff.

Lots of -e ending words used to have a consonant after the last vowel. I'm not going to give a lecture of Finnish history here so let's just mark this lost consonant with C so you see what happens:

1) tie-deC
2) tie-te-Ces-tä

In 1), you have -deC, which is a closed syllable = weak grade.
In 2), you have -te-, which is an open syllable = strong grade.

You don't really see 1) anymore except in South Ostrobothnian dialect and even then in a few words only, and it's becoming rare even there but you occasionally meet 2) in poems in the form tietehestä. Some dialects have that /h/ too, although it's not always in its original place.

avain – avaimessa
ajatus – ajatuksessa

I don't think either of these are consonant gradations.

You see, consonant gradation has the (not so well working) rule of 'closed syllable - weak grade, open syllable - strong grade'. Avain has M everywhere else except the nominative:
avaimen, avaimessa, avaimeen, avaimella, avaimet...

It's assimilation or something. Maybe it used to be avaim but the -m changed to -n because I guess it's easier to pronounce. That's at least what happened to sydän, which originally was sydäm.

I don't know why some -s ending words have -ks-, though.

what if the action is already done, i.e. the make-up is already on my brother’s face, why still the partitive and not the genitive?

Partitive vs genitive is not only about whether the action is completed or not, but also if the object is 100% consumed/used/etc or not. It's hard to take 100% of uncountable things, which is why they are often in partitive, no matter what.

So, because s/he didn't use ALL of his/her makeup, we use partitive. Makeup here is uncountable. You can't say they've got one makeup, two makeups, and so on.

I think it is possible to say 'hän laittoi meikit veljeni kasvoihin'. Then it would refer to the result aka what my brother has on his face, rather than the lipsticks and eyeshadows themselves. A bit like you can count water glasses although you can't count water.

However, it can't be 'laittoi meikin' because meikki itself is uncountable. You need to have it in plural to make it countable.

This was my theory, so if someone knows better than me or has another explanation for this, feel free to speak. :D

'Kasvoille' is also possible.

And maybe even better?

Nah, both are ok but kasvoille sounds like anglinicism to me. You often do something into things, as in knock on the door - knock in the door, write on the paper - write in the paper, and so on. The 'on' variant has been getting more and more common, and while I think people still knock 'in' the door, most of them write 'on' the paper nowadays.

What if I add an adjective, will the ending that is added to the noun also be added to the adjective:

Taikuri muutti minun sammakkoni minun kaunikseni veljekseni.

or ”kauniksi veljekseni.?

Taikuri muutti minun sammakkoni minun kauniiksi veljekseni.

Looks like 'kaunis' has identical singular and plural translative. Funny. Usually adjectives don't do this, eg. minun iloiseksi veljekseni vs iloisiksi veljikseni.

What do you mean??

This:
I have no idea :D

I don't know either what you tried to say but at least you got the answer you wanted! :lol:

I’ve got another nice book to learn vocabulary and phrases from, but it focuses strongly on dialect: Colloquial Finnish (Daniel Abondolo, 2012). I haven’t even started using it yet, but when I skim through it, it’s even scary how much it focus on the spoken language while staying away from the official rules.

And I don’t even know which type of dialect it teaches (maybe the author mentions, but I guess not.)

Uh, I don't think it teaches any dialect. Colloquial Finnish is another term for spoken Finnish, which isn't a dialect.
My uni library seems to have this book so I could go an check it if I have time in the future / if I remember.
Could you think of some examples when it’s not the same as in English?

No. :lol: There aren't many of those.
When I compare to the way it felt when I was learning French/English (and German, Danish, Swedish which I’m still learning), it really used to feel like I was learning another version of my own language. Whereas this is totally different!

I'm surprised you think Germanic languages were similar to Bulgarian. I've studied Russian and it was nothing like English or Swedish imo. :D I would've thought Bulgarian was like Russian. Can you explain or give examples of what made you think that they weren't so different? Maybe we were paying attention to different things. (And maybe I can't really speak Russian more than a few phrases... :lol:)

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby ainurakne » 2017-10-05, 10:25

Woods wrote:So, should we not say that there is an accusative case, but it occurs only for the singular object and personal pronouns, and has two possible endings: -n for nominals and -t for pronouns – rather than saying that the term “accusative” is a common denominator for a set of cases, one of which the genitive (there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the examples above and the concept of genitive, or is there one?)
But why leave out -t endings and no endings for nominals? :hmm:

(or collectively, accusative forms that look like nominative - both plural and singular)


Now, if I would know all the rules of Finnish :mrgreen: I would probably try to remember things like this (illustrating it with your example of "Ostan kirjan."):

In addition to having special pronouns, accusative can look like genitive (ostan kirjan), except in case of:
- plural objects: Ostan kirjat. (I (will) buy (all) the books)
- imperative mood: Osta kirja! (Buy a/the book!)
- passive: Ostetaan kirja. (A/the book is / will be bought)
- some infinitive verb forms :?:

And of course, if I forgot something or did any mistakes (which I'm sure I did), then please do correct me!


Nice thread, by the way! As a native Estonian speaker, I really enjoyed reading it. And many thanks to Naava for all the in-depth explanations and other interesting bits about everything.
:D
Eesti keel (et) native, English (en) I can manage, Suomi (fi) trying to learn, Pусский (ru)&Deutsch (de) unfortunately, slowly fading away

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-10-05, 15:31

ainurakne wrote:- passive: Ostetaan kirja. (A/the book is / will be bought)
- some infinitive verb forms :?:

I'd say kirja ostetaan because ostetaan kirja sounds like "let's buy a book!"

Of course, the word order is quite free in Finnish so ostetaan kirja is possible in the sense of 'a book is bought', too. For example, kaupasta ostetaan kirja (a book is bought in a shop).

Nominative is used with 'must' verbs: olla pakko tehdä, täytyä tehdä, on tehtävä, pitää tehdä. For example, minun on pakko lukea kirja / minun täytyy lukea kirja / minun on luettava kirja / minun pitää lukea kirja.

- imperative mood: Osta kirja! (Buy a/the book!)

Btw, 3rd person imperative has partitive & genitive-like object:
(hän) lukekoon kirjaa / kirjan
(he) lukekoot kirjaa / kirjan

Moreover, you can use partitive in all of the cases ainurakne listed:
- plural objects: luen kirjoja (I read books / I'm reading (the) books)
- imperative mood: lue kirjaa! (Read the book!)
- passive: kirjaa luetaan. (A/the book is being read; it can also be a fact-like statement that books are read, not eaten or something.)

+ the 'must' verbs: minun pitää lukea kirjaa, minun on pakko lukea kirjaa... and so on.

Nice thread, by the way! As a native Estonian speaker, I really enjoyed reading it. And many thanks to Naava for all the in-depth explanations and other interesting bits about everything.
:D

You're welcome! :D Feel free to ask if you have any questions, too! ...because I'm the last person who could say 'don't take the topics created by others and use them for your own questions. :p

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby ainurakne » 2017-10-05, 20:24

Thank you! :D

Naava wrote:Nominative is used with 'must' verbs: ...

Btw, 3rd person imperative has partitive & genitive-like object: ...
I did not know that! Thanks!

Naava wrote:Feel free to ask if you have any questions, too! ...because I'm the last person who could say 'don't take the topics created by others and use them for your own questions. :p
I'll keep that in mind. :yep:
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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Woods » 2017-10-07, 9:33

Hi Naava,

Thanks for your very detailed and highly appreciated answer!

Kiitos paljon yksityiskohtanestasi vastaustasi! On suuresti arvostettu!


I’ll start with answering your question about similarities in Indo-European languages, because replying to your answers regarding my questions will require more time and effort :D

Naava wrote:
Woods wrote: When I compare to the way it felt when I was learning French/English (and German, Danish, Swedish which I’m still learning), it really used to feel like I was learning another version of my own language. Whereas this is totally different!

I'm surprised you think Germanic languages were similar to Bulgarian. I've studied Russian and it was nothing like English or Swedish imo. :D I would've thought Bulgarian was like Russian. Can you explain or give examples of what made you think that they weren't so different?



Well, all the words, first and foremost…

вода – water – eau – vatten – Wasser
майка – mother – mère – mor – Mutter
река – river – fleuve/rivière – flod – Fluss
ябълка – apple – pomme – äpple – Apfel

You cannot always recognise the stem, but most of the time there’s at least something that distantly reminds you we’re talking about the same object and helps you memorise the word in the new language.


Then, the grammar:

When it comes to nouns, Bulgarian has no cases (Russian does), but whatever is left can be seen very clearly in pronouns:

кой – who – qui – vem – wer/was/wie (if I didn't mess something up with the German ones)
кого – whom – que – vem – wem
кому/на кого – to whom – à qui – vem – wem

That means, if you’ve got a command of Bulgarian pronouns, you will very easily understand German and Russian noun cases.


Gender exists in all the Indo-European languages I speak, except for English generally speaking, and most often coincides. In cases when it doesn’t, it strikes you so hard that you do remember the difference. Well, English has no gender and Swedish has a simplified version of it. French has two genders and Bulgarian has three. So, if you look at it that way, Bulgarian is the most difficult, and then you simplify by learning French (what is Neuter in Bulgarian will most often be masculine in French), and then you simplify even more by moving to English, and finally, if you want to take on Swedish, you turn everything that is masculine or feminine into a “common” gender and the remainder is still “Neuter” – pretty easy :D Well, if you had to go the other way around in your case, I will understand what you mean if you say that this was different and difficult :)


We’ve also gotten all the scientific language and terms (and not only) directly from Greek and Latin. So has German. So has French. (And I guess Swedish more or less?) And the words are exactly the same.

We’ve also loaned many other words from French and German – the two languages were very popular until English took on. So has Russian, I think. So I knew these words already when learning French, and later on with English – it had itself far more French words inside than Bulgarian has ever had, so it was a no-brainer.


Pronouns themselves:

аз – I /aj/ – je – jag (sounds really similar) – ich
ти – ти – tu – du – du
те – they – ils – de – sie


And when it comes to tenses:

Pronominal verbs exist in Bulgarian, French and German (and I’m pretty sure in Swedish as well), so no need to understand the concept again:

представям си – jeg forestiller mig (Danish, donno what the Swedish verb is) – ich stelle mir vor

Past tenses In Bulgarian and French are very similar in meaning and in structure (and from there also in English, as English has gotten them from the French, I guess (except the perfect)).

Indeed, they are also similar in Finnish. Strangely, this distant language has not figured out a totally different way to lay out these concepts? I think I will have to learn a different language if I want to experience a totally different way to lay out temporal concepts, as Uralic will not work :D


And most of all (I can’t really think of examples out of the blue, but) concepts are the same – even when words are different. Maybe the word has changed so much from ancient times that you can’t recognise it or it’s a different one, but then you find out that in the language you’re trying to learn there’s a word or concept that means exactly the same and is made the exact same way (a big warning to those who use bilingual dictionaries: it’s not always the case!)

Even proverbs and metaphoric expressions that are said in Bulgaria remarkably exist in Danish (I guess they are not Bulgarian proverbs/expressions then, but old Indo-European ones):

мечешка услуга – bjørnetjeneste




Back to Finnish…

Naava wrote:
What do you mean??

This:
I have no idea :D

I don't know either what you tried to say but at least you got the answer you wanted! :lol:

Many thanks :D


I will have to read your answer a few more times in order to understand everything in it :)

This thing with the open vs. closed syllable seems to be crucial, but is hardest to grasp. I really can’t make sense of it at that moment, but I’ll try again and again :)

So far I’ll just write down in my memory your rule:

closed syllable = weak grade
open syllable = strong grade

But to be honest, I’m having a very hard time discerning what is open and what is closed, and also where the syllable ends and the next one begins, among so many long and short consonants and long and short vowels :(

I found something else – some verbs have the weak grade in first and second person both singular and plural, whereas they have the strong in the third person. Let me see if your rule will apply to such a verb:

sinä kerrot
hän kertoo

me kerromme
he kertovat


Really, what makes one syllable open and the other one closed?


Naava wrote:There has been a change, sometimes called T-S-change, sometimes TI-SI-change. Basically every /ti/ became /si/.

That’s a very good piece of information that is missing in my book – now it makes sense :)


Naava wrote:We've got loan words after this change, which explains why you can find words with /ti/ in them.

?? :oops:


Naava wrote:Also, some imperfects still have the /ti/ because of reasons, but I'm not explaining that right now because I don't have the time for it.

:sad:


Naava wrote:
avain – avaimessa
ajatus – ajatuksessa

I don't think either of these are consonant gradations.

You see, consonant gradation has the (not so well working) rule of 'closed syllable - weak grade, open syllable - strong grade'. Avain has M everywhere else except the nominative (…)

It's assimilation or something.

Indeed, how should we define “consonant gradation/reduction” then – a change in consonants that happens consistently throughout all Finnish vocabulary and prevails over the word stem, based on whether the syllable is open or closed?


Naava wrote:I don't know why some -s ending words have -ks-, though.

Well, maybe -ks- closes the syllable (i.e. makes it a closed one) more effectively than a long s? :hmm:

It will be good if someone can confirm where the s - ks alteration comes from.


Naava wrote:
I’ve got another nice book to learn vocabulary and phrases from, but it focuses strongly on dialect: Colloquial Finnish (Daniel Abondolo, 2012). I haven’t even started using it yet, but when I skim through it, it’s even scary how much it focus on the spoken language while staying away from the official rules.

And I don’t even know which type of dialect it teaches

Uh, I don't think it teaches any dialect. Colloquial Finnish is another term for spoken Finnish, which isn't a dialect.

You got me confused again. If spoken language is different everywhere, how can it not be dialect?


I’ve got one new question: :D

What kind of word is tällaista – why does it not have vowel harmony?


And I found one more consonant alteration, which is unexplained: mies-mieheksi :wink:


In any case thanks once again for the very nice and detailed explanations about everything!


P.S. Oh, Indeed I remember I had one more question yesternight: I read in the grammar book that the potential is a rare mood and thus not important - is that true? Does the author mean that it's not often people express probability and possibility, or that other ways of doing so are preferred - i.e., do you have other ways of saying "probably" and "may possibly be" that are more in tune with the present?

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Virankannos » 2017-10-15, 21:20

Most of these questions would deserve their own threads in my opinion, but let's delve right in anyway.

1) Syllable closeness/openness

The distinction can be made easily, provided that one knows how to divide words into syllables. There are a couple of rules: Finnish syllables generally begin with one or zero consonants (recent loanwords being the exception) and don't tolerate more than two consonants in the coda, i.e. the end of the syllable. So, the verb forms of kertoa would be syllabified like this:

sinä ker-rot
hän ker-too
me ker-rom-me
he ker-to-vat


Open syllables are those that don't have a consonant in the coda, thus not "closing" it but leaving it open, and closed syllables are those that have. As you can see, in kerrot and kerromme the second syllables are closed, which causes the word-internal consonants to be in the weak grade. Conversely, in kertoo and kertovat the second syllables are open and consequently the grade is strong.

2) TI-SI change

I assume Naava means words like tina 'tin', kutista 'to itch' and vaatia 'to demand' which have ti in them (and not si). It just means these words came into the language after the historical sound change had stopped being active.

3) Other consonant alterations

Consonant gradation refers to the conditioned alteration of certain consonants and consonant clusters inside the word, usually on the boundary of the first and second syllable (sometimes between second and third). Alterations like avain : avaimen and ajatus : ajatuksen are not classified as gradation but other alterations that are often the result of different historical developments. The first example is due to the fact that at some point in history, the word-final /m/ sounds turned to /n/. This applied to nominative singular but not (most of) the other cases where the /m/ was word-internal. The second example is similar: the earlier singular nominative form was *ajatuks, which at some point was reduced to ajatus because such word-final clusters were not permitted anymore in the language.

4) Spoken Finnish

The spoken Finnish taught in Colloquial Finnish is most likely what linguists call yleispuhesuomi "Common spoken Finnish" which despite its label is heavily based on the variety spoken in the South, especially in the Helsinki area. This variety has developed when speakers from many different areas of Finland moved to the coast that was originally inhabited by Swedish speakers. The variety is known and understood in most of Finland because it has spread through media (TV, radio etc.). This is one reason it is considered "neutral" by some and often used in materials that teach spoken Finnish to foreigners, despite the fact that there are other local varieties specific to a certain area, as well. Only these traditional local varieties are called "dialects".

5) tällainen

The word was originally a compound word, i.e. two words, tämän + lainen 'this' + 'kind of' but was later contracted to tänlainen and then tällainen. Compound words don't follow vowel harmony, which is why we have words like lukkoseppä 'locksmith', comprised of lukko + seppä

6) Potential mood

Potential is rare in most places (it was originally known only in Eastern dialects but was later accepted into standard written Finnish and thus known in the West too). The author means that this verbal mood is not used often, but it is replaced with other ways to express the notion, e.g. by using adverbs of possibility and probability.

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-10-16, 13:12

More about the spoken Finnish:

I think there's a continuum from a dialect to the spoken Finnish. It's not like you would need to choose between a dialect and the spoken language and use either or; instead, you can speak so that nobody can tell where you are from, or with a heavy local dialect so that everyone knows where you are from, or somewhere between the two.* As far as I know, there aren't any written rules or standardization either, which makes it even harder to tell which features belong to the spoken language and which do not.
Eg. are the locative case endings shortened in spoken language or not? (eg. maassa - maas, maalla - maal) Is someone not using spoken language if they do or don't shorten the endings? How about if someone speaks otherwise in a non-dialectal way but says 'maasa' and 'maala' - is that dialect or spoken language? Can you say that you speak in the spoken language except with locative cases where you switch to the dialect? I don't think there are any answers to these. I would say it's all spoken language that was influenced by the local dialect or standard Finnish, but someone else could very well disagree with me.

*For example, I speak in (somewhat) dialect when at home, but not when I'm in Tampere where I'm currently living. My Tampere-friends have commented my speech by comments ranging from "well it's easy to tell you're not from here!" and "I could hear right away you're from there" to "you don't sound like you'd be from South Ostrobothnia though". When I was told that last comment, I switched to the heaviest dialect I could when I answered to her. Her reaction was like I had revealed a superpower I had kept hidden until that point. :lol:


The spoken Finnish is not a dialect of its own because the dialects are direct descendants of Proto-Finnic language. The spoken Finnish was born from the dialects, like Virankannos explained.

Also, the spoken language in Helsinki is not identical with the spoken language elsewhere; I can hear if someone is from Helsinki. One tell-tale sign is this pitää tekee phrase instead of pitää tehdä, which I haven't (yet) heard outside of the capital area. That's what I mean when I say that the spoken language is not one uniform variety that everyone would use in the same way. The local dialects have had an influence on it, and because it is on a continuum, it's up to the speaker what they really sound like. However, the possible differences in the spoken language are not as great as between the dialects.

About Bulgarian:


You cannot always recognise the stem, but most of the time there’s at least something that distantly reminds you we’re talking about the same object and helps you memorise the word in the new language.

I see what you mean. You're right that it does help with learning and memorising!

That means, if you’ve got a command of Bulgarian pronouns, you will very easily understand German and Russian noun cases.

Okay, I don't speak German, and there isn't much left of the cases in Swedish and English. That's why Russian didn't remind me of them. :D

Gender exists in all the Indo-European languages I speak

I see. We were never taught that en and ett are basically genders. I've heard it later on, and I can see the point of course, but I easily forget it. So again, I never saw anything in common with Russian genders and Swedish en and ett. I don't know if there's similar 'cheats' as what you've used aka does the nouns in Russian have same gender as in Swedish. :hmm: Wouldn't really help me even if they were, because I never truly learnt the genders of Swedish nouns. I went with what sounds the best and when in doubt, everything was always en + -er.

We’ve also gotten all the scientific language and terms (and not only) directly from Greek and Latin. So has German. So has French. (And I guess Swedish more or less?) And the words are exactly the same.

As far as I know, quite a lot of them can be found in Finnish too. There are some translations though, and oh how I love it when I've first learnt the terms in English and then I see them again in another course, but this time in Finnish... :roll: The first course I had about Finnish was called 'äänne- ja muoto-oppi'. Turns out that's 'phonology and morphology', although it is possible to say fonologia and morfologia, too. I don't know why they didn't use the latter, because I think I've seen them more often than äänneoppi or muoto-oppi in scientific texts.

We’ve also loaned many other words from French and German – the two languages were very popular until English took on.

I don't know about French, but we have German loans as well as Swedish and Russian ones. (The German loans tend to be quite old, though, so it might not help you very much.)

Pronouns themselves:

аз – I /aj/ – je – jag (sounds really similar) – ich
ти – ти – tu – du – du
те – they – ils – de – sie

I read somewhere that some of the Finnish pronouns are likely very old loans from some Indo-European language, btw. Compare
me, mich, min, мой etc - mi
du, ты, tu - sinä, originally ti
мы - me, although I'm not sure if this one is just coincidence

If you're studying the spoken Finnish, you might've read that se is used for humans, animals and objects. My friend once explained that Russian 3rd person pronouns had a similar story, that they originally meant 'that' or 'this' or something like that. Is it the same in Bulgarian? Do you have separate pronouns for humans vs animals or inanimate vs animate?

Pronominal verbs

Could you give me a link somewhere where this is explained? (Or if you can summarize it, go ahead! :D) I'm not sure if I know what you mean.

Indeed, they are also similar in Finnish. Strangely, this distant language has not figured out a totally different way to lay out these concepts?

Distant? We're right next to Swedish and quite close to German! :wink: It's not always about language families, sometimes geographical distances matter, too. If I remember correctly, there used to be only two tenses: present and past. Then the past was divided into subcategories, and I think it was (proto-something-)German that was the model for it.
There's also a future construction that is like a calque from Swedish kommer att vara - tulee olemaan.

Uralic might work, though. I don't know what Ugric languages are doing with their tenses.

And most of all (I can’t really think of examples out of the blue, but) concepts are the same – even when words are different. Maybe the word has changed so much from ancient times that you can’t recognise it or it’s a different one, but then you find out that in the language you’re trying to learn there’s a word or concept that means exactly the same and is made the exact same way (a big warning to those who use bilingual dictionaries: it’s not always the case!)

What?

мечешка услуга – bjørnetjeneste

...karhunpalvelus, literally bear's service/favour

Proverbs and stories tend to be loaned from neighbours, not necessarily inherited from some ancestor language.

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Woods » 2017-10-19, 15:51

Virankannos, thank you for your clear and concise answers!

I'll think them over as I keep studying, especially the one about breaking the word into syllables.


Naava wrote:I read somewhere that some of the Finnish pronouns are likely very old loans from some Indo-European language

One thing that struck me right away when I started learning Finnish was a very close similarity between Bulgarian and Finnish present tense plural verbal endings:

minä menen – аз отивам
sinä menet – ти отиваш
hän menee – той отива
me menemme – ние отиваме
te menette – вие отивате
he menevät – те отиват

The Finnish ones are more similar to Bulgarian than those of any other language that I’ve studied. My first thought when I heard them was a recollection of a history lesson where one of my teachers was explaining that there were eighteen theories about the origin of proto-Bulgarians, and one of them was that they were Finno-Ugrians. I haven’t delved further into that…


Pronominal verbs:

Pronominal verbs are ones where the construction is like the subject does something to themselves. Like in the examples I've given:

English: I imagine
French: J'imagine
German: Ich stelle mir vor
Danish: Jeg forestiller mig
Bulgarian: представям си

I'm not doing anything to myself, but that's what the verb looks and sounds like.

It exists in French too, though not with this verb:

French: Je me tais
English: I'm silent
Bulgarian: мълча (си) (it can be both pronominal or not, мълча is more like I'm not saying anything, and мълча си - more like I'm not saying something I should)

Here's the Wikipedia article about this type of verbs (they call them reflexive verbs in there):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexive_verb


If you're studying the spoken Finnish, you might've read that se is used for humans, animals and objects. My friend once explained that Russian 3rd person pronouns had a similar story, that they originally meant 'that' or 'this' or something like that. Is it the same in Bulgarian? Do you have separate pronouns for humans vs animals or inanimate vs animate?

I have no idea about such a thing in Russian – but I speak this language probably no more than you speak Estonian.

But pronouns in Bulgarian always concord with gender:

Personal nominative 3rd person singular: той, тя, то
Personal accusative 3rd person singular: него, нея, него
Personal dative/genitive 3rd person singular (archaic): нему, на нея (I’m not sure if there’s a dative/genitive one for the feminine, if there is one it’s so archaic that I can’t even think of it now), нему
Demonstrative nominative 3rd person singular: този, тази, това
There are no accusative or other than nominative demonstratives in contemporary Bulgarian.
Interrogative nominative 3rd person singular: кой, коя, кое
Interrogative accusative 3rd person singular: кого, коя, кое
Interrogative dative/genitive 3rd person singular (archaic): кому, на коя, на кое

(Basically since the goal seems to have been to get rid of the cases, the tendency has been to use nominative pronouns instead of the accusative ones and a preposition plus an accusative or nominative pronoun instead of the dative/genitive. But there are still traces of inflection, so you see why having the same endings attached to nouns in Russian would be a no-brainer. Well, they have other cases too… but for a person who hasn’t really studied Russian it seems very easy :D)


If I remember correctly, there used to be only two tenses: present and past. Then the past was divided into subcategories, and I think it was (proto-something-)German that was the model for it.

That’s really interesting…

It seems that modern German has lost the distinction in meaning between the perfect and the preterite though. As far as I know, the meaning of the German perfect is the same as that of the Finnish past tense (imperfekti), and the simple past (Präteritum) is only used in writing, like in French (am I wrong?) Maybe if it worked like in English and Finnish in proto-Germanic, then it has only been conserved in the Northern Germanic languages and in English? (I've got no idea about Dutch...)


There's also a future construction that is like a calque from Swedish kommer att vara - tulee olemaan.

Is it common?


Proverbs and stories tend to be loaned from neighbours, not necessarily inherited from some ancestor language.

Could be, even though we're not neighbours with Denmark (or Finland) :)


Woods wrote:And most of all (I can’t really think of examples out of the blue, but) concepts are the same – even when words are different. Maybe the word has changed so much from ancient times that you can’t recognise it or it’s a different one, but then you find out that in the language you’re trying to learn there’s a word or concept that means exactly the same and is made the exact same way (a big warning to those who use bilingual dictionaries: it’s not always the case!)

What?

Well, I mean that abstract concepts are oftentimes the same, even when the word is different and you wouldn’t necessarily expect that. I can’t think of examples right now, but I’m kind of certain the chance of finding that some idea of something that is not an object is described exactly the same way in another language you’re studying is greater if that language is from the same group as yours. Maybe we can talk about it again when I’ve learnt some more Finnish :)


Got one more question: how are Bulgaria, bulgarian, bulgarialainen, bulgaari pronounced - /'pul,karia/, /'pul,karian/, /'pul,karia'lainen/, /'pul,kaari/ or /'bul,garia/, /'bul,garian/, /'bul,garia'lainen/, /'bul,gaari/? Do the sounds /b/ and /g/ even exist in Finnish?

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Iván » 2017-10-20, 8:54

Woods wrote:Got one more question: how are Bulgaria, bulgarian, bulgarialainen, bulgaari pronounced - /'pul,karia/, /'pul,karian/, /'pul,karia'lainen/, /'pul,kaari/ or /'bul,garia/, /'bul,garian/, /'bul,garia'lainen/, /'bul,gaari/? Do the sounds /b/ and /g/ even exist in Finnish?

Bulgaria

bulgarialainen

bulgaaria pronounced in "Puhun bulgaaria":

/g/ does exist in Finnish and you can find it words such as kengät, kuningas, gambialainen, genetiivi, etc.
Minkä nuorena oppii, sen vanhana taitaa.

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-10-20, 9:31

Iván wrote:
Woods wrote:Got one more question: how are Bulgaria, bulgarian, bulgarialainen, bulgaari pronounced - /'pul,karia/, /'pul,karian/, /'pul,karia'lainen/, /'pul,kaari/ or /'bul,garia/, /'bul,garian/, /'bul,garia'lainen/, /'bul,gaari/? Do the sounds /b/ and /g/ even exist in Finnish?

/g/ does exist in Finnish and you can find it words such as kengät, kuningas, gambialainen, genetiivi, etc.

No, kengät and kuningas do not have /g/: they are pronounced /keŋŋæt/ and /kuniŋŋas/. The /ŋ/ does not have its own letter in Finnish, so it's written with <ng> instead. A single /ŋ/ can be found before /k/, and it's written <nk>. For example, kenkä /keŋkæ/ - kengät /keŋŋæt/.

/g/ itself is a foreign sound in Finnish (except some dialects). It can be found in words with foreign origin, such as Bulgaria or genetiivi. However, it is possible to replace it with /k/, which for example I do quite a lot. I've noticed that people in the capital area* are more likely to pronounce it as /g/, maybe because of their slang that has voiced stops. I don't think the slang itself is spoken as much as it used to be, but it could've had an influence on the phonology. Same is true with /b~p/.
*a very personal opinion though. I haven't travelled across Finland gathering data for a research. :lol:

So Bulgaria, bulgarian, bulgarialainen and bulgaari would be
/'bulgaria/ - /'pulkaria/
/'bulgarian/ - /'pulkarian/
/'bulgaria,lainen/ - /'pulkaria,lainen/
/'bulgaari/ - /'pulkaari/

The stress is always on the first syllable and then on every second syllable, although there are a few exceptions. The second and the last syllable are always without a stress.
The syllables here are Bul-ga-ri-a, bul-ga-ri-an, bul-ga-ri-a-lai-nen, and bul-gaa-ri. I think there could be a stress on the -ri- syllable in each of these words (except bulgaari), but at least when I say these words, it's much weaker than the stress on -lai- syllable in bulgarialainen. I think it could be because the following syllable, -a, is so short.


This person says "puhun bulgariaa", not bulgaaria. Bulgaari is the name of the people, not the language. :)

I also think his /b/ in "bulgariaa" sounds pretty much the same as the /p/ in "puhun". Do you hear them as different sounds? :hmm:


Btw, this person pronounces Bulgaria as /bulgaaria/. Sometimes the original stress of a loan word is "represented" by a long vowel in Finnish.

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Iván
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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Iván » 2017-10-20, 9:52

Naava wrote:I also think his /b/ in "bulgariaa" sounds pretty much the same as the /p/ in "puhun". Do you hear them as different sounds? :hmm:

I do hear them as different sounds, but it is true that they sound pretty much the same.

This is me saying "Puhun bulgariaa" with the two different sounds. The first one would be puhun pulkariaa and the second one would be puhun bulgariaa.
Minkä nuorena oppii, sen vanhana taitaa.

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Re: How do you say “your face” in Finnish?

Postby Naava » 2017-10-20, 10:11

Iván wrote:This is me saying "Puhun bulgariaa" with the two different sounds. The first one would be puhun pulkariaa and the second one would be puhun bulgariaa.

That's interesting - I hear them as exactly the same. :shock:

//Edit: I found this article about b, d ang g in Finnish! Sadly there isn't an English translation of it, and because it is quite long, I don't have time to summarize it at the moment. :/


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