Why is Finnish language very different?

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Giselberga
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Why is Finnish language very different?

Postby Giselberga » 2018-04-21, 11:16

I heard that Learning Finnish is very hard
Finnish Grammar and vocabulary are different with a lot of major language And very hard
Why is Finnish very difficult?

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TheStrayCat
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Re: Why is Finnish language very different?

Postby TheStrayCat » 2018-04-21, 17:39

It is different because it doesn't belong to the Indo-European family and hence shares very little vocabulary with other European languages, and even loanwords are not always recognizable (Russian lozhka - Finnish lusikka, Swedish stol - Finnish tuoli).

Why is it difficult? Well:
► Show Spoiler

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Naava
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Re: Why is Finnish language very different?

Postby Naava » 2018-04-21, 17:42

TheStrayCat wrote:Why is it difficult? Well:

I approve of this answer. It's one of my favourite jokes. :lol:

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Re: Why is Finnish language very different?

Postby エヴァルダス » 2018-06-23, 15:08

Jumping from one language family from another is usually very hard, mostly because of vocabulary and grammar.

But what about Finnish syntax? I suspect it should somewhat resemble Baltic / Slavic languages, and way less (or even not at all) Germanic / Romance languages.

A couple of years ago one of my Estonian translator colleagues at work said he prefered Latvian as a source language instead of English, because it avoided him the hassle of completely reshaping sentences.

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Re: Why is Finnish language very different?

Postby JackFrost » 2018-06-23, 15:32

TheStrayCat wrote:very little vocabulary with other European languages

I'd disagree. It's been surrounded by IE languages and dominated by IE speakers for many centuries, so there are indeed a lot of IE loanwords.

Finnish may be very heavily inflected, but it differs from other IE languages that it generally only has only one ending for each case. That's prolly a huge relief to IE speakers very used to different endings for a given case due to grammatical gender classes. It's the sound changes triggered by inflections (vowel changes and consonant gradation) that make it a major pain-in-the-ass.

Then to add to the difficulty, Finnish speakers don't really talk exactly like it's written down. There are healthy dialects and slangs that they use daily, so the Finnish you see in writing is reserved to formal situations such as media, speeches, books, newspapers, etc. Even IE languages are like that as well such as French.

But what about Finnish syntax? I suspect it should somewhat resemble Baltic / Slavic languages, and way less (or even not at all) Germanic / Romance languages.

I'd say similar enough to Baltic and Slavic languages because, thanks to inflections, the syntax is very flexible (as in the word order). Many times, you need to use a certain word order to specifically mean something such as definiteness and indefiniteness (Finnish has no articles) as well as possession ("to have"). Etc. etc. etc.
Neferuj paħujkij!

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Re: Why is Finnish language very different?

Postby korhonen » 2018-08-28, 14:00

That meme must be the funniest of them all! :)
As a Finn, I obviously didn't consider the language to be different, but learning new languages it indeed showed its complexity.
I found some good articles related to that from here https://finnishteacher.com

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Re: Why is Finnish language very different?

Postby kman1 » 2018-09-03, 0:28

Lol at that meme! Makes me want to get back into learning Finnish again!


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