Can you be bad at languages? | Learn Finnish by listening!

[@wowjef]

Thank you for the simultaneous Finnish and English sub-titles. It really does help when you are still a learner

[@finnished]

I'm happy to hear it's helpful!

[@richard-riku]

@@finnished it took me a while to realise that the subtitles must not be set to "auto translate" in youtube because then there are two lines for many of the sentences with two versions of the same thing, both in english. The finnish version you wrote is translated to english along with the english version that you translated yourself! Uploading two lines of finnish+english as "finnish language" subtitles gets things a bit confused.I don't know why this affected only some of your videos, because others (without changing any settings) did display as one line finnish plus one line english.

[@slhttnsngl]

This is awesome and really helpful! So good to find this channel, suomalainen nainen:) Kiitos!!

[@finnished]

So glad to hear that! Good luck with your studies 😊

[@miaow8670]

Kiitos paljon mahtavasta videosta, Lotta! ^^ I've had some linguistic courses at the university, and although about the so-called "language(-)learning aptitude" you mentioned I personally don't know much because I only had a single course in Second Language Acquisition, I feel positive that linguists in general would disagree with the presumption that some people are simply somehow inherently "bad" at language learning (except if they have a learning disability, brain damage, etc.). As you suggested, it's much more complicated, plus there are a lot of further significant factors influencing language learning, such as the measure of similarity between your native language and your target language, which is actually one of THE most crucial factors in this regard; by the way, if anyone wished to research this particular area further, the key term here is "cross-linguistic influence" aka CLI, also called "language transfer" - the influence that one's knowledge of one (or more) language(s) has on that person's learning, and/or use, of another language. It's a very interesting phenomenon, complex, but definitely worth learning more about 😉One quite useful publication about CLI is "Crosslinguistic Influence in Language and Cognition" by Scott Jarvis and Aneta Pavlenko (2008), I worked with it while creating a presentation about CLI and can definitely recommend this book. Also, in response to your remark that Finnish in particular is kind of problematic in terms of the (desired) similarity to the learner's native language in order to enable faster learning - "problematic" because Finnish isn't related to almost any more widely spoken language -, I'd like to point out that your target language doesn't necessarily have to be _related_ in the strict sense to your native language, i. e. doesn't necessarily have to belong to the same language family or sub-family, for there to be significant similarities between the two languages. Even between two languages from entirely different language families, there are often a number of helpful similarities that facilitate language learning (although, naturally, such similarities are likely to be much more numerous and more easily identifiable if the two languages fall into the same family). To give an example with Finnish, I keep finding more and more features that are also found - in a nearly or even completely identical form - in my native language, Czech; for instance: ● the highly transparent orthography (→ "one sound - one, and always the same, letter" principle); ● the phonemic inventory - curiously, literally like 95% of phonemes that Finnish uses are also found in Czech, so that I have very little difficulty reading Finnish words (except for those that contain the letters "ä", "ö", and "y", whose corresponding phonemes aren't found in Czech); ● fixed stress on the 1st syllable of words; ● formally distinguished infinitives of verbs - in Czech, any verb necessarily ends in "-t" (in Finnish, it's either "-a" or "-ä", although from the linguistic point of view, it would be more accurate to say that the actual Finnish endings of the 1st infinitive are "-A", "-dA", "-tA", or "[double consonant] + A"); ● relatively free word order; ● the "it, that" construction - as in "suurin syy, miks ihmiset sanoo olevansa huonoja kielissä on SE, ETTÄ...", literally "the biggest reason why people say they are bad at languages is IT, THAT..."; this very construction is also widespread in Czech, and therefore feels so very familiar to me whenever I come across it; ● the syntactic construction of certain participle-clause premodifiers, where you put the participle's objects and/or adverbials before the participle, rather than after it, as in "pihalla seisova auto", lit. "in-the-yard staying auto", or "viime syksynä ilmestyneet kirjat", lit. "last autumn published books" - this way of arranging such elements is also possible in Czech, although it doesn't occur so frequently and is often considered quite highly literary and/or poetic. And there are also parallels between Finnish and other non-Uralic languages than Czech - for example: ► in Russian, possession is - in certain contexts - expressed without the use of the verb "to have", but instead via a construction of the type "at me is X", just like in Finnish (compare "minulla on kirja"); ►English, just like Finnish, has the present perfect, which is actually quite rare cross-linguistically and therefore native speakers of languages in which the present perfect doesn't occur - such as Czech - might struggle with its correct use in Finnish; ► German, just like Finnish, is famous for its uber-capacity for nominal compounding, and therefore all the long Finnish nominal compounds must feel very familiar to Germans. In contrast, for example in Czech compounding is a relatively minority pattern of word-formation (except in slang) and, in result, it takes a while to adjust yourself to the frequency and complexity of Finnish compounds and the way they are created.

[@finnished]

Thank you, I find this so interesting!!!

[@MeitingLiu-p5j]

So refreshing to know these things! For me, compounds extremely speed up my process of remembering Finnish vocabulary. Actually it took much shorter time for me to learn Finnish vocabulary than English vocabulary, because Chinese words or phrases, consists of several characters, work almost the same way as compounds. For me the hardest part is the same as in English, aikamuoto! I don’t even know the English word for this, maybe tense?😅 This is how Finnish vocabulary is much easier for me!

[@dersu46]

ihana viesti kiitos! Olet tosi hyvä tässä youtubessa esiintymään.

[@finnished]

Kiitos!! Tsemppiä opintoihin :)

[@GoodJujuOnly]

Olipa mielenkiintoinen video! 🥰👌🏻

[@powerpig99]

That way I look at it is that the reason people thinks a foreign language is hard or being bad at learning foreign languages is to give themselves a reason not to learn it. They just don’t want to do it. Nothing is easy if you don’t want to do it, and nothing is too hard if you want to do it, especially for a language which plenty of people with a variety of capabilities can speak.

[@finnished]

I totally agree, it's like an excuse to prevent themselves from failing!

[@marin_1441]

3:55 i don't know about others but mine motivation is babbling In Finnish language it may sounds weird but it kind of fun when i used among friends who doesn't know what's language am i speaking and they listen me like i am wise person even though i know less than few words

[@finnished]

Hahaha that's so funny :D

[@learnalanguagewithleslie]

😊 My sister thinks she is 'bad' at languages (or rather, she compares herself to me and thinks I'm "good"). But I think it's all down to effort and finding an appropriate learning method.

[@finnished]

Exactly! Also, some people are just more interested in learning languages

[@Annie_MC]

Thank you sooo much for these videos! It's very very helpful 🤧🌹🌹

[@finnished]

Thank you so much, I'm happy to hear that!!!

[@marin_1441]

2:52 i thinks at that point am i exception or not? But i guess not because i often fail in grammar part even in my mother language lol. But yeah i remember that you told that your school grade has nothing to do with Finnish

[@ramantsishuk5363]

Thank you for your work!

[@finnished]

Kiitos! Good luck for your studies :)

[@marin_1441]

4:45 i guess your learning methods is good because you don't have to write or care much about grammar just listen the video 3-4 times and remember transcription without watching it. It kind of suit me for lazy people like me

[@finnished]

hahah weeeeelllll it's not that simple either I'd say 😄

[@anttifin4710]

Kiitti videosta 🙃

[@GypsieSeeker]

Someone got a tan 😁

[@finnished]

Awww thanks for noticing my desperate efforts to get tanned! :'D

[@oqqaynewaddingxtwjy7072]

olen klika 101 pitää Entä jos ihmiset pakotettaisiin puhumaan eri kieltä saamelaiset ja japanilaiset ainut venäjänkielisiä Ukrainassa Maidanin syntyperäisten Yhdysvaltain pakkoruotsin jälkeen

[@kamrulhasan-gn8qk]

Kaunis