Questions about Finnish / Kysymyksiä suomen kielestä

[kisu]

Hyvää päivää everyone! :D

Unnettomuus = uni + onnettomuus?! (= sleep breakdown)

(If you know nice Suomi ethymological dictionary please give me a link! Or i would ask stupid things here for eternity :D)

[Linguaphile]

Hyvää päivää everyone!

Unnettomuus = uni + onnettomuus?! (= sleep breakdown)

(If you know nice Suomi ethymological dictionary please give me a link! Or i would ask stupid things here for eternity )

Unettomuus = uni + ton +‎ uus ( = sleep + without + noun-forming suffix)

[sa wulfs]

What's the most natural way to do third-person anaphoric reference with different referents in Finnish? For example, in English "she[person 1] said that she[p2] will come". I've read that in the spoken language this can be "Se[p1] sanoi, et hän[p2] tulee". How would the formal language handle this? In case of ambiguity (like in the English example), what are the most natural ways to resolve it in Finnish?

[Naava]

I've read that in the spoken language this can be "Se[p1] sanoi, et hän[p2] tulee".

It's actually the other way around:
"Se[p1] sanoi et hän[p1] tulee."

Hän indicates that this is a direct quote.

"Se sanoi et se tulee" can be either P1 & P1[indirect quote] or P1 & P2.

How would the formal language handle this? In case of ambiguity (like in the English example), what are the most natural ways to resolve it in Finnish?

I'd do the same as in spoken language: if the context is not enough to make it clear who we are talking about, I'd use names. For example, if P1 = Pekka and P2 = Anna:

1) We've been talking about Pekka.
> Hän sanoi, että Anna tulee.
He said that Anna is coming.

2) We've been talking about Anna.
> Pekka sanoi, että hän tulee.
Pekka said that she's coming.

3) In order to avoid any ambiguity:

> Pekka sanoi, että Anna tulee.
Pekka said that Anna's coming.

However, once you've mentioned two people, standard Finnish has a way to distinguish between P1 and P2 in the following sentence(s). I'm really bad at coming up with examples on my own so I'll copy this from here:

> Äiti[P1] lauloi lapselle[P2] unilaulua, ja lopulta tämä[P2] nukahti.
> Äiti[P1] lauloi lapselle[P2] unilaulua, ja lopulta hän[P1] nukahti.

(Mother sang a lullaby to a baby, and eventually she/the baby fell asleep.)

[sa wulfs]

Thank you, Naava! That was a great explanation

[Iván]

Moi! Tänään minä katsoin suomalaista sarja nimeltään Kimmo, jossa ihmiset puhuvat usein puhekieltä, mutten ole varma, olenko ymmärtänyt seuraavaa sanontaa oikein: "Sata kärpästä ei voi olla väärässä, paska on hyvää".

Olen googlettanut sitä sanontaa ja voin nähdä, että on ollut jo usein käyttänyt: 1, 2, 3

Tarkoittaako se, että joku asia on siis oikein, koska monet ihmiset tekevät sitä? Kiitos vastauksesta!

Ajattelin, että sanonta liittyi kansansatuun "Seitsemän yhdellä iskulla".

[Naava]

Moi! Tänään minä katsoin suomalaista sarjaa nimeltään Kimmo, jossa ihmiset puhuvat usein puhekieltä, mutten ole varma, olenko ymmärtänyt seuraavan sanonnan oikein: "Sata kärpästä ei voi olla väärässä, paska on hyvää".

Olen googlettanut sitä sanontaa ja voin nähdä, että on ollut jo usein käyttänyt (*): 1, 2, 3

Tarkoittaako se, että joku asia on siis oikein, koska monet ihmiset tekevät sitä niin? Kiitos vastauksesta!

(*) Muotoilisin tämän toisin, esim. "Googlasin sanonnan ja huomasin, että sitä on käytetty paljon". Imperfekti + perfekti sopii tähän mielestäni paremmin.

Tavallaan joo!

Määrään perustuva auktoriteetti eli enemmistöargumentti: "Ihmisten enemmistö uskoo, että Aurinko kiertää Maata. Aurinko siis kiertää Maata." Enemmistöargumentti kumotaan tyypillisesti ns. kärpäsargumentilla: ”Miljoona triljoonaa kärpästä ei voi olla väärässä. Siis paska on hyvää.”

(Lähde: "Tyypillisiä virhepäätelmiä")

Eli kärpäsargumentilla osoitetaan, että on väärin uskoa jokin asia todeksi vain siksi, että monet ihmiset pitävät sitä totena: paska ei muutu hyvänmakuiseksi, vaikka kaikki maailman kärpäset väittäisivät sinulle niin. Se tarkoittaa myös, että jos väittelet jonkun kanssa, sinun pitää käyttää faktoja sen sijaan, että vetoat siihen mitä "kaikki muut" ajattelevat tai tekevät.

Ajattelin, että sanonta liittyy kansansatuun "Seitsemän yhdellä iskulla".

(Tai: sanonta voisi liittyä)

Jaa, enpä oikein tiedä. Luin juonikuvauksen Wikipediasta, eikä se oikeastaan vastaa sitä, mitä kärpäsargumentilla tarkoitetaan. Veikkaisin, että on ihan sattumaa, että molemmissa puhutaan kärpäsistä.

[Iván]

Hei hei!

Täällä onhan hiljaista, toivon, että kaikilla menee hyvin. Minulla on kysymys ja kyse on Suomen murteet.

Minä katsoin tänään leffaa nimeltään "Kerron sinulle kaiken" ja elokuva on yhdestä naisesta, joka oli syntynyt miehenä ja on korjannut sukupuolensa naiseksi. Minä tykkäsin siitä tosi paljon, mutta minä huomaisin, että elokuvassa hän menee käymään tyttären, joka asui muussa kaupungissa (Elokuva tapahtuu Helsingissä) ja silloin kun he ovat yhdessä, he puhuvat murretta, mutten ole varma, mitä murretta he puhuvat.

https://areena.yle.fi/1-2407370 Tässä voisivat katsoa elokuvaa.

He sanoivat:

- Valemiina
- Onks sulla näläkä?
- Puhheet...

Voisiko olla savolainen murre?

Kiitän ja hyvää kesää!

[linguoboy]

My neighbour is doing Duolingo Finnish (now in beta) and is curious why velho is one of the first nouns they teach you. Is this just more Duloingo whimsy or does it perhaps have some slang or colloquial usages that justify teaching it to beginners?

[Linguaphile]

My neighbour is doing Duolingo Finnish (now in beta) and is curious why velho is one of the first nouns they teach you. Is this just more Duloingo whimsy or does it perhaps have some slang or colloquial usages that justify teaching it to beginners?

I think it's a little bit of all of that. It does have colloquial usage; for example, you can say that a person who is good with computers is a tietokonevelho, or if someone is good with something else, you can call them a wizard for that. "Olet aika velho!"
One of the main creators of the course says in the Duolingo forum (responding to someone who wrote "Sinä olet velho, Harry"), "We were actually thinking of a wizard called Väinämöinen. He is much more powerful than Harry, but nowhere near as nice, I'm afraid. Nor is his name as easy to spell."* I think Väinämöinen is more of a tietäjä, but there are other velhot elsewhere in the Kalevala, too.
On Duolingo's blog they introduce the Finnish course like this, which I think kind of gives an idea of what they were going for:

Finnish: A language to leave you spellbound
If you sat down and tried to dream up poetry from the dawn of time, what would those verses be like? If you wrote magic spells, what would those spells contain? If you were to imagine the language of immortals, how would it sound? For J.R.R. Tolkien, the answer was quite clear: it would be a lot like Finnish.
Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings saga, and for the language of the High Elves, who dwell with the gods, he was inspired by otherworldly Finnish. Tolkien was obsessed with Finland and Finnish, teaching himself the language from grammars and dictionaries and intensive study. And now, with the new Finnish course on Duolingo, you can be part of the Fellowship, too! In this blog post, we'll give you a little peek into the mad, wonderful world of Finnish and those who love it.
...
Finnish incantations
Finnish is unlike any language you’ll ever study, in almost every way. Finnish words will be almost wholly unfamiliar; the only Finnish word in regular use in English is sauna, and it shares little vocabulary with other European languages.
...
Aspiring High Elves
Students of Finnish are often quite different from your average language learners. When you launch into this language, you’ll instantly join a funny, enthusiastic, rambunctious, meme-loving community to support you and keep you going on your Finnish journey. It was the passion of the Finnish learner community that drew our attention to the language....
Studying Finnish means joining this learner community to celebrate both language learning in general and the magic of Finnish in particular. Camaraderie around Finnish might well be because of, and not despite, its linguistic complexities and the challenge it poses for English speakers. Finnish learners make a lot of jokes about the self-inflicted challenge they have chosen for themselves, and they clearly take great joy in the community around learning Finnish.

So I think it's a little bit of all of what you mentioned above: Duolingo whimsy, cultural references and the fact that it can be used colloquially to describe people. You aren't going to talk about wizards all the time in Finnish, but it's at least a bit more useful than putting a sampo in the first lesson, for example**, and more useful than the sentence in the Japanese course that says 私はりんごです ("I am an apple").
There are several other culture-related words in the first few lessons, like sisukas, sauna, and kantele.


*In her profile, she says she's "in the process of forging the Finnish course out of milk, barley, and a feather of a whooper swan."
**Well, putting an actual sampo in the first lesson could be pretty useful. But I don't know how you'd get it in there. Just putting the word in the lesson wouldn't be nearly as useful as the actual sampo itself.

[sa wulfs]

I think every Duolingo course is like that with the whimsical phrases that are supposed to stick to you even if they have to teach you words that aren't exactly common (the Dutch course can't shut up about the neushoorns).

While we're at it, velho vs tietäjä vs taikuri?

[linguoboy]

One of the main creators of the course says in the Duolingo forum (responding to someone who wrote "Sinä olet velho, Harry"), "We were actually thinking of a wizard called Väinämöinen. He is much more powerful than Harry, but nowhere near as nice, I'm afraid. Nor is his name as easy to spell."*

At one point, she looked up at me and asked “What’s a kantele?” And I was like, “Omigod, they’re teaching you to read the Kalevala!” Turns out I wasn’t far wrong.

[Naava]

Hei hei!

Täällähän onhan hiljaista¹, toivon, että kaikilla menee hyvin. Minulla on kysymys ja kyse on Suomen murteista. [TAI: minulla on kysymys suomen murteista]

Minä katsoin tänään leffaa nimeltään "Kerron sinulle kaiken" ja elokuva on se kertoo yhdestä naisesta, joka oli syntynyt syntyi miehenä ja [paremmin: mutta] on korjannut sukupuolensa naiseksi. Minä tykkäsin siitä tosi paljon, mutta minä huomaisin, että elokuvassa hän menee käymään tyttärensä luona, joka asuu muussa toisessa kaupungissa (Elokuva tapahtuu sijoittuu Helsinkiin) ja silloin kun he ovat yhdessä, he puhuvat murretta, mutten ole varma, mitä murretta he puhuvat.

https://areena.yle.fi/1-2407370 Tästä/täältä voisivat katsoa elokuvan. [paremmin: elokuvan voi katsoa tästä/täältä]

He sanoivat:

- Valamiina
- Onks sulla näläkä?
- Puhheet...

Voisiko se/tämä olla savolainen murre savon murretta?

Kiitän ja hyvää kesää!

¹ täällähän on hiljaista = oh dear how quiet it is here [please speak up, what are you so quiet]
onhan täällä hiljaista = can you promise me it is quiet here? / it is indeed quiet here / but it IS quiet here / even though it's quiet here; admittedly it's quiet, but...
onpas täällä hiljaista = oh dear how quiet it is here! [just an observation]
täälläpäs on hiljaista = oh dear how quiet it is here [same as above but the focus is on "here"]

En katsonut koko elokuvaa, etsin ainoastaan sen kohdan, missä Maarit käy kylässä tyttärensä luona. Sen perusteella mitä näin on hankala sanoa mitään varmaa, mutta kokeillaan! (Laitan loppuun TL;DR:in, jos analyysit ei kiinnosta. )

Kuten itsekin huomasit, heillä on ns. välivokaali eli svaavokaali: valamiina, näläkä. Se on yleensä sama vokaali kuin ensimmäisessä tavussa (ilma > ilima), mutta joillain pohjalaispaikkakunnilla se voi olla jälkimmäisenkin tavun vokaali (ilma > ilama). Lisäksi Mikkelin ja Savonlinnan alueella vokaalina on E, O tai Ö riippumatta siitä, mitä vokaaleja muissa tavuissa on. Yritin kuunnella tarkasti, sanooko Maarit valemiina vai valamiina, ja minun korvaani se kuulosti enemmän A:lta kuin E:ltä.

Tämän perusteella heidän pitäisi olla tummanvioletilta alueelta:


Toista huomaamaasi piirrettä kutsutaan konsonanttien geminoitumiseksi eli kahdentumiseksi. Se tarkoittaa sitä, että yksi konsonantti vaihtuu kahdeksi, jos sitä seuraa pitkä vokaali: puheet > puhheet, sisään > sissään. Tästä on olemassa kolme erilaista alalajia, jotka näkyvät kartalla. Elokuvan perusteella voi sanoa varmaksi, että ainakaan Maarit ja Pinja eivät olleet Lounais-Suomessa, koska siellä sanottaisiin puheet, sisään.

Sen sijaan on hankalampi sanoa, onko Maarit ja Pinja tummanvioletilta vai pinkiltä alueelta. Maarit sanoo valamiina, mutta pinkillä alueella sanottaisiin valammiina. Pitää kuitenkin muistaa, että 1) kaikki eivät puhu vahvinta mahdollista murretta 2) näyttelijät eivät välttämättä puhu omaa murrettaan tässä(kään) elokuvassa 3) käsikirjoittaja ei ehkä hänkään puhu murretta, jota on halunnut elokuvassa käyttää. Murreosuuksissa voi olla virheitä.



Kun kartat yhdistää, näiden kahden piirteen perusteella Maarit ja Pinja saattoivat olla keski-, pohjois- tai peräpohjalaismurteen tai savon murteen puhujia.

Lisäksi huomasin, että Maarit sanoo mää - mulle, sää - sulle. Näitä käytetään Etelä- ja Länsi-Suomessa aina pohjoispohjalaismurteissa asti. Maaritin puhe sopisi siis keski-/pohjoispohjalaisiin murteisiin (mutta ei enää peräpohjalaisiin, missä sanotaan mie - miulle, sie - siulle). Voi silti olla, että Maaritin on tarkoitus puhua savoa, mutta että mää ja sää lainautuvat puhekielestä. (Yleensä savoksi sanottaisiin mie - mulle, sie - sulle, mutta mä ja sä ovat levinneet sinnekin. Pitkät mää ja sää eivät ole ihan yhtä yleisiä, mutta ei ole mahdotonta, että joku savolainen niitäkin käyttäisi.) Savoon sopisi sekin, että Maarit näkyy tekevän aika nopean reissun tyttärensä luokse: savon murrealue on huomattavasti lähempänä Helsinkiä kuin pohjalaismurteiden alueet. Toisaalta tytär on voinut muuttaa jostain muualta lähemmäs Helsinkiä/Helsinkiin. Silloin sillä ei olisi väliä, miten kaukaa he ovat tulleet. (Kuten sanoin, en ole nähnyt koko elokuvaa, joten en tiedä missä he tapasivat.)

TL;DR: Maaritin puhe sopisi parhaiten keski- tai pohjoispohjalaisiin murteisiin, mutta voisi se olla savoakin. Murre ei ole kovin vahva, eikä Maaritin näyttelijä todennäköisesti ole itse murteen puhuja. En esim. kuule savolaista tai pohjoispohjalaista aksenttia, ja geminaatiota ja svaavokaalia lukuun ottamatta puhe on aika yleispuhekielistä. Tämän takia on vaikea päätellä, mitä murretta elokuvassa käytetään.

[Naava]

So I think it's a little bit of all of what you mentioned above: Duolingo whimsy, cultural references and the fact that it can be used colloquially to describe people. You aren't going to talk about wizards all the time in Finnish, but it's at least a bit more useful than putting a sampo in the first lesson, for example**, and more useful than the sentence in the Japanese course that says 私はりんごです ("I am an apple").
There are several other culture-related words in the first few lessons, like sisukas, sauna, and kantele.

I think every Duolingo course is like that with the whimsical phrases that are supposed to stick to you even if they have to teach you words that aren't exactly common (the Dutch course can't shut up about the neushoorns).

I agree with you. I've been doing the course to see what it's like (so I know if and to whom I can recommend it) and I thought it's just one of the random words you find in Duolingo courses. I also thought it could be a reference to Väinämöinen because they use the male name Väinö and teach the word kantele.

It's true you can use it to describe a skilled person, but it can also be used sarcastically and I don't think it's very common. Definitely not among the top 10 most useful words for a beginner!

While we're at it, velho vs tietäjä vs taikuri?

Taikuri is a magician, someone who does magic tricks especially for entertainment.

Velho vs tietäjä is a trickier one. They both mean a person who can use magic.

Tietäjä is literally 'the one who knows'. They were the men and women of the village who knew the poems, stories, and spells, and their knowledge was also the source of their powers (although they could have innate magical abilities too). This makes sense because in Finnish mythology, you could control something/someone if you told it/them what its/their 'birth' or mythological origin was. For example, here's a rune describing the origin of iron with English subtitles:
https://youtu.be/Zf9I8CIMOFM

Tietäjä can also be a velho. However, velho doesn't have any reference to the person's knowledge. Velho can also be used in a negative sense, like in the proverb katehia kaikki kansa, velhoja joka veräjä - all the people are evil kades*, there's velhos at every gate.

Speaking of magic users, the word noita goes in the same category with tietäjä and velho: it refers to a man or a woman who can use magic. Lönnrot says the difference between tietäjä, noita, and velho is that tietäjäs use their magic for good, whereas noitas and velhos use it for evil deeds (either to gain something for themselves or help someone else have a revenge). However, in some poems a tietäjä calls themself a noita. There's also the proverb "noitia joka norolla, joka tiellä tietäjiä, kateita kaikin paikoin” - there are noitas at every rivulet, tietäjäs on every street, kades in every place. Here tietäjä is listed among noitas and velhos, as if all of them were equally bad (or at least annoying. The point of the proverb is to say "you never know who you can trust, anyone can have magic powers and if you piss them off, you're in trouble). In other words, it looks like the terms were used more or less interchangeably.

*kade was a person who used magic to cause misfortunes and bad luck to others, especially when they felt envious of something. Cf. spoken Finnish kade ('envious', 'jealous') and standard Finnish kateus ('envy'), kateellinen ('envious', 'jealous').

In fantasy literature and in translated texts, velho is usually a wizard (typically man), noita is a witch (typically woman), and tietäjä is a shaman (but there is also the loan word shamaani/samaani that is sometimes used). Note that this system is copied from other languages/cultures and does not reflect how the words were used in Finnish mythology. However, I think this might be closer to how people perceive the words nowadays because it's much more common to talk about fantasy literature/films than about mythology.

*In her profile, she says she's "in the process of forging the Finnish course out of milk, barley, and a feather of a whooper swan."

No rye bread though? No wonder it's taken so long!

**Well, putting an actual sampo in the first lesson could be pretty useful. But I don't know how you'd get it in there. Just putting the word in the lesson wouldn't be nearly as useful as the actual sampo itself.

I'm ready to go to any lesson if I get a free sampo with it!

[Linguaphile]

*In her profile, she says she's "in the process of forging the Finnish course out of milk, barley, and a feather of a whooper swan."

No rye bread though? No wonder it's taken so long!

You're right, that explains it!

[linguoboy]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! She found it helpful and I found it interesting--especially the discussion of velho, noita, and tietäjä.

(Incidentally, they also teach you the word "shamaani". Because that's something people talk about in casual conversation with strangers.)

[Linguaphile]

This makes sense because in Finnish mythology, you could control something/someone if you told it/them what its/their 'birth' or mythological origin was. For example, here's a rune describing the origin of iron with English subtitles:
https://youtu.be/Zf9I8CIMOFM

I didn't watch the video at your link until just now. Thanks for posting it! It turns out this version of the origin of iron is the same as the one in Veljo Tormis's famous Raua needmine ("Curse upon iron").
It's in Estonian, so I'm posting an English translation by Eero Vihman below. (It is quite an amazing song as it covers everything from the mythical origin of iron from bogs and breast milk to the use of nuclear weapons and "brand-new and up-to-date technology, the ultimate word in electronics", basically, criticizing iron for all of the evil it has brought to the world over the ages.) The part that is most similar to the one you posted above is at 1:50 (second stanza in the translation below). Also, here too the knowledge of its origin is the basis for being able to curse it ("Damn you, wretched iron! I know your birth, I know well your source, you villain!")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhjPGGSuuNM

► Show Spoiler

Ohoy, villain! Wretched iron!
Wretched iron! Cursed bog ore!
You flesh-eater, gnawer of bones,
You spiller of innocent blood!
Scoundrel, how did you get power?
Tell how you became so haughty!
Damn you, bastard! Wretched iron!
I know your birth, you purblind fool,
I know well your source, you villain!

Once there walked three nature spirits,
three fiery daughters of the sky.
They milked their swelling breasts to earth,
they squeezed their milk onto the fens.
From the first maid spurted black iron,
this turned into soft wrought iron.
White milk squirted the second maid,
this was the source of tempered steel.
The third maid spouted blood-red milk,
this gave birth to bog iron ore.

Ohoy, villain! Wretched iron!
Wretched iron! Cursed bog ore!
Then you were not high and mighty,
not yet mighty, not yet haughty,
when you sloshed in swamps and marshes,
when in bogholes you were trampled.
Damn you, bastard! Wretched iron!
I know your birth, you purblind fool!
I know well your source, you villain!

A wolf then ran across the fen,
a shambling bear walked in the moor.
And the swamp stirred in the wolf tracks,
under the bear's paws moved the moor.
And there sprouted iron seedlings
in the traces of the wolf’s claws,
in the hollows of the bear tracks.
Ohoy, iron! Child of boghole!
Swamp's red rust and gentle smooth milk!
Tell me, who made you so baleful!
Who decreed your works of evil?

Death was riding through the marshes,
plague was on a winter journey.
Seedling steel it found in swampland,
rusty iron in a boghole.

The great death then began to talk,
the killer plague then spoke and said:
In a pine grove on a hillside,
in a field behind the village,
far beyond the farmers' granges,
right here will be the forge of death.
Here I'll build the forge's furnace,
here I'll place the widest bellows,
here I'll start to boil the iron,
fan and blast the rust-red bog ore,
hammer anger into iron.

Iron, poor man, shivered, trembled,
shivered, trembled, shuddered, quavered,
when he heard the call for fire,
heard the plea for flaming anger.

Ohoy, villain! Wretched iron!
Then you were not high and mighty,
not yet mighty, not yet haughty,
moaning in the white-hot furnace,
whining under beating hammers.

Droned the old man on the oven,
groaned the greybeard from the furnace:
Iron stretches, spreads like blubber,
Trickles, flows like dripping spittle,
oozing from the blazing furnace,
flowing from the scorching fire.

Iron, you're still soft and gentle.
How have you yet to be tempered
to make steel from harmless iron?
Get the spittle from an adder!
Bring the venom from a viper!
For iron wouldn't harbor evil
without spittle from a serpent,
without venom from a black snake.

Droned the old man on the oven,
groaned the greybeard from the furnace:
Shelter us, supreme Creator!
Keep us safe now, God Almighty!
So that mankind would not perish,
mother's child vanish without trace
from the face of the earth, from life,
from existence, God's creation.

New eras. New gods and heroes.
And cannons and airplanes
and tanks, and guns.
New steel and iron.
Brand-new, intelligent,
precise, powerful killers,
equipped with automated guiding devices,
armed with nuclear warheads.
Missiles invulnerable to defensive rocketry.

Knives and spears,
axes, halberds, sabers,
and slings and tomahawks and boomerangs,
bows and arrows, rocks and warclubs,
and claws and teeth, sand and salt,
dust and tar, napalm and coal.

Brand-new and up-to-date technology,
the ultimate word in electronics,
ready to fly in any direction,
stay undeflected on its course, hit the target,
paralyze, and knock out of action, obliterate,
render helpless and defenseless,
harm and hurt, cause unknowable loss,
and kill, kill with iron and with steel,
with chromium, titanium, uranium, plutonium,
and with a multitude of other elements.

Ohoy, villain! Evil iron!
Blade of the sword, mother of war!
Boghole ore's the golden guardian,
but you, steel, are kin to evil!
Damn you, bastard! Wretched iron!
We are kinsmen, of the same breed,
of the same seed we have sprouted.

You are earth-born, I am earth-born,
in the black soil we are brethren.
For we both live on the same earth
and in that earth we two will merge.
There will be land enough for both.

[Linguaphile]

I've been doing the course to see what it's like (so I know if and to whom I can recommend it)

What do you think of it? I'm doing the same; there are some funny sentences there, like Väärä jäätelö on vihreää. Um, okay, so the strawberry ice cream is green instead of the mint? I think I'm even less likely to need to say that than I am likely to talk about velho's.
It's not bad, but the fact that it's a beta version is obvious. Also, I do think I heard a few words mispronounced. For example, I think I heard limonadia pronounced as limoneidia or something close to that, and islantia pronounced as ailantia.

I guess maybe the grammar is also not explicit enough because when I started looking at the comments in the discussions, I see lots of people saying "XYZ should be accepted as a translation too! That needs to be fixed!" but offering a translation that entirely changes the meaning, based on some grammar point having gone over their heads (especially concerning the use of partitive objects).
There are lots of places where "XYZ should be accepted as a translation too" is a valid point and it will probably be added to the course later, but the course's beta status seems to have made people overconfident about offering additional translations where they aren't correct. One I just came across is En osaa puhua venäjää, where someone wanted "I don't speak Russian" to be added as an accepted answer. Yeah, we might say "I don't speak Russian" in English, but its translation would be En puhu venäjää. Translating En osaa puhua venäjää as "I don't speak Russian" entirely misses the point of osaa, which, I assume, was the point the course creators were trying to make with that sentence.

[linguoboy]

For example, I think I heard limonadia pronounced as limoneidia or something close to that

I noticed this on the slowed-down pronunciation, but not at regular speed.

There are lots of places where "XYZ should be accepted as a translation too" is a valid point and it will probably be added to the course later

I noticed this a lot in the English versions. I feel like every course has its own version of "Duospeak", which is the precise English wording that corresponds to what the course designer expects. Sometimes it makes sense from a paedological point-of-view. (For instance, when she found out that hän is common gender, my friend asked, "Why don't they just use 'they'." And I explained that they are trying to teach you to differentiate hän from he and using "they" for both would confuse the issue.) And sometimes it just shows a lack of understanding of English--as when they get persnickety about adverb placement in circumstances where native speakers don't perceive a difference in meaning.

I've pushed through to the end of the tree and I'm kind of surprised what they don't teach. For instance, the imperfect. The only imperfect form I noticed was oli and that only at the very end. Part of the reason I keep unlocking new lessons was that I wanted to see when they taught you how to say "like"--and they never do! You can "want" something and you can "love" it, but you never learn to just "like" it. I get that this is a beta module and an abbreviated course, but that's something every other module I've ever done includes.

In related news, this prompted me to unearth my old paperback copy of Teach Yourself Finnish and it's even more bonkers that I remembered. Like I recall bouncing off of it because it was so grammar-heavy and frontloaded with vocabulary, but I did not remember that Lesson Three has a full seven pages of new vocabulary to memorise. The revised TY books generally introduce a new grammatical point, like a case ending, with a brief overview of its most salient use and add more in later lessons. Not Whitney's book! He gives you the complete rundown right off the bat. So chapter three also introduces the partitive along with no fewer than 18 different uses of it (all numbered (i)-(xviii) so he can refer back to them again later). Then you get another list--going up to (xix)--of the various different stem formations. It's not a textbook so much as a reference grammar with characters and dialogue.

But I think one of the oddest things is that, in the exercises, you never translate into Finnish, only out of it. He's essentially teaching you Finnish as a dead language. That might make some sense to me if Finnish was a language people learned mostly for the literature. (My old university had a popular reading course in German, for instance, for graduate students who just needed to read research publications and didn't care about speaking to anyone.) But was this true in 1956? Epäilen tuota.

[Linguaphile]

For example, I think I heard limonadia pronounced as limoneidia or something close to that

I noticed this on the slowed-down pronunciation, but not at regular speed.

Maybe they have fixed it then. I definitely heard in the regular speed sentences, but not in the nominative form, just specifically with partitive singular limonadia. I'm not sure about slowed-down pronunciation, because I'm not sure how to get a page that has slowed-down pronunciation as on option (other than just going through that part of the course again and waiting for the right words to come up).

But you can also still hear it here too, in the main entry and all of the sentences below it - until they fix it (but they haven't yet as of right now)

Same with islantia (partitive) and Skandinaviassa (inessive) and jano (nominative)

(I didn't know how to find and post those links when I posted before)
There were a couple others, but I don't remember which words they were. I did report them to Duolingo.

I've pushed through to the end of the tree

Entä nyt? Tee puu uudelleen! Se oli hauskaa!