Naava wrote:SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:Naava wrote:Also, I don't know what it's like to study Finnish as a second/foreign language.
You could find out by trying to learn Hungarian
. #SmilingButIReallyDoMeanIt
I doubt it because that would not really help me with knowing what kind of questions speakers of Indo-European languages have when they learn Finnish, what kind of things they find hard or easy to grasp, or what kind of rules of thumb they come up with that help them with grammar and vocabulary.
Since you said that you prefer reading over watching videos, I'd like to summarize them, as already mentioned in another thread. For those who aren't named Naava
(or even if they are named Naava, but it wouldn't be their username, or it would be their username on another forum only, if applicable ): I am talking about those three Finnish-related videos mentioned in that thread (above), made by that Alpha Centaurian Balabolka (Russian word) called SGP. He was speaking about his personal experience with Finnish, and about learning it coming from an Indo-Germanic background.
- When I didn't know a single thing about Finnish, I was pondering on which word in a sentence relates to which word in a translation. So I had to get started with Grammar Decoding. Because Suomi isn't like English (i.e. rather close to German), it took me some time to even vaguely have an idea of which word (in a FI sentence) relates to which word in a DE translation.
Example: Akku on rikki.
And yes, I do know its meaning. Something like: the battery is defunct. However, I am citing it as an example of something that wasn't too easy in the beginning. Because I didn't know what "on" and "rikki" mean, and what their function in the sentence is. "Akku" is easy, because we also have it in German. Same spelling even. But it is more common for "the Akku of a cell phone" rather than "an MP3's player AA/AAA battery".)
- Agglutination is a bit difficult to get used to. However, I already got used to it when I was learning some Swahili. So when I started with Finnish, that concept (i.e. agglutination) already was familiar.
- As for the very simply noun agglutination (combing one noun with another one, as in ruokakauppa): wasn't difficult at all to me, because we do it in German aaaall the time.
- Another aspect: Finnish doesn't sound too familiar to people with a Germanic background. Except, maybe, and to some extent only, to natives of NO/DA/SV (and also Icelandic). But at least after some time, words like ruokakauppa simply started to stick.
- But it is much closer to e.g. German in a certain regard than e.g. French or Portuguese, because there no nasal vowels in Suomi.
- Cases? German has four of them anyway. Not too difficult. As for someone with an e.g. Native of English background, it could differ. But even for them... it shouldn't be too hard either, I'd say. There still are remainders of cases in English. Mine = of me. This book's = of this book. Etc.
- But still, I do know some Suomi! In the end of the video, I said "hei hei".