Why is Finnish so difficult to learn? | Learn Finnish by listening!

[@barrysteven5964]

My experience with other languages is that the beginner level goes quite quickly and then it takes ages to go from beginner to intermediate/advanced. With Finnish it was the other way round. It took me a long time to master the basics and get a good vocabulary. But once I did going from that to an intermediate/advanced level was quite quick because higher register Finnish words are constructed so logically that it becomes easy to work out what the words mean. They are so often just basic words you already know put together to form longer words.

[@finnished]

Thanks for the comment, that's really interesting and probably gives hope to other beginner learners!

[@AJBonnema]

For me the hard part of Finnish is not the grammar or the vocabulary, but the lack of immediate translation in my mind. When I listen to a broadcast, what I generally hear is a string of words, in stead of a sentence with meaning. So, in stead of getting the message, I get a list of words of which some I know well and some I know, but .... not immediately. I have to strain to consciously hear the inessive, adessive, ablative or abessive and especially realize what it means in this particular sentence. When reading a text, I still have this problem, but less, as I have infinite time and -- if necessary -- I can translate. Transposing this to my own language, I realize that I always get the message, immediately. I never have to put effort into understanding the structure of the sentence. It would be nice to reach this level of comfort in Finnish: I could finally start enjoying broadcasts of any kind, even if I don't know all words. Thanks for the video.

[@finnished]

I think the solution to this is to listen a lot - and not focus on the cases etc, just try to understand the message :)

[@davidkennedy8703]

Lol I been over 20 years in Helsinki and still not speaking...yet. This Finnished channel is a game changer. Best Content creator in this space. IMO.

[@finnished]

Thank you so much!

[@MeitingLiu-p5j]

You’re so on point! People talk about how easy English is, while they don’t know many Asians struggle learning English because it’s so different from our language systems. And they don’t count the fact that most of us start to learn English very early in schools. It’s compulsory subject for most students in the world. The time you talk about how easy English is, you already learnt maybe more than 10 years of English. You get used to the sound the grammar.

[@finnished]

This is so true!!!

[@ana.tomasovic]

This is very well put and motivated me to not give up when something feels more difficult. In my experience, learning Finnish can feel like two steps forward, three steps back sometimes, but it takes time to "know things by ear" so these types of videos are truly helpful! In my own experience, my native language is Croatian, which makes it easier to recognize cases (nominative, genitive...) but I struggle with cases which are not in my native language (such as partitive). But, when I listen someone who is not a native Croatian speaker, I can mostly understand them even though the case they use is not strictly correct, so I hope this transfers to Finnish as well. This is also why I think that learning a case language by translating to a non-case language is sometimes frustrating, because non-case language sometimes lack a proper translation and stuff can sound "the same".

[@finnished]

That's true, we always try to understand if someone makes the effort to speak our language :)

[@mep6302]

1:13 I agree with this. I'm a native Spanish speaker and I learned French. The most difficult parts were pronunciation because it's so different compared to Spanish and understanding spoken French because of the silent letters. Besides that it wasn't that hard because of the similarities between both languages. In fact, I can speak four Romance languages and I'm learning my fifth one. They're very easy to learn for me.

[@finnished]

Wow that's awesome, I wish I could speak all the 5! I'm on my third one ;)

[@aniram.avosterg]

You are definetly right, saying that Finnish is difficult became a way to common excuse, but its only half excuse and half very true, mostly cause you Do have to rememmber words by heart, and also amount of letters in them, as its absolutely not intuitive....and unlike in case of English they (Finnish words) do not pop out from everywhere.. I know You're video is meant to motivate us, but its a bit like blaming carnivours for eating meat - leads for them hating vegans and eating more meat.Hearing that there is a French girl who lived 4 motnhs in Finland and spoke Finnish, and I lived 5 years and I don't well maybe I am dumb then and should just give up all together. I won't give up, but now I understand, why shaming does not work as motivation. Still many thanks for the video, and if you know some other Finnish speaking channgels, WITH finnish subtitles, please share ! Kiitoksia P.S. Oon asunut Suomessa viisi vuotta ja mun sopivalla tasolla on nyt Pipsa Possu animation, mutta valitettavasti siellä ei ole tekstitystä :)

[@AJBonnema]

As I understand the video, the shame is on people who judge without knowledge of Finnish. It is not about someone struggling to learn (like me and you). The message in my understanding is that the pre-conception of Finnish being a difficult language is a non-starter to learn Finnish. I read a Finnish article about exactly this subject where the objective was to show that the mere repetition of "Finnish is a difficult language" is a bad influence and hampers learning. I remember importing the article into my language learning tool, but I don't remember the source (it was a Finnish site). As long as I am outside of Finland, I suspect understanding Finnish will still be hard, but who knows? I have only been studying for 18 months.

[@aniram.avosterg]

@@AJBonnema You are right, it is pitty if people dio not give it even a chance, due to that saying. Only a few ones can take it as a "challenge", like "Hah, its a different language, but I will learn it - hold my beer ;)"

[@finnished]

I definitely didn't mean to make you feel stupid!! That's not the message of this video at all - no one is too 'stupid' to learn Finnish (or any language). What I wanted to highlight is that your attitude plays a big role. And the reason why you don't yet speak Finnish might be that you have not tried a learning method that works best for you. My channel introduces an alternative way of learning that I hope (know ;) ) will help you! Tsemppiä opintoihin :)

[@miaow8670]

*warning: long comment* I couldn't agree more! It would be nice if more people knew that in the vast majority of cases, the question is not whether a language is or is not difficult, but rather whether a language is or is not difficult _for you in particular_ - depending on what your first language is and which other languages you speak (and how well) because this has an immense influence on how well and how quickly you're able to acquire your target language in a given time period. I dare say that there are certain (albeit not very numerous) respects in which a language can be considered more or less "universally" difficult - but these, I think, do not have anything to do with which language family the given language comes from. Rather, I'd say that these "universal language difficulty" parameters mostly have to do with: 1) how regular the grammar is (an extremely irregular grammar will naturally make any language challenging), 2) how many quality learning resources there are (if very few, then acquiring the language will naturally be challenging for anyone, regardless of how regular its grammar may be), 3) whether it contains phonemes that are found in no other language in the world, and how many such phonemes it contains, 4) whether it uses some kind of alphabet and/or writing system that occurs in few or no other languages of the world (and if it does, its difficulty will of course rise a lot because learning a completely different writing system is always challenging), 5) how many loanwords it contains, and from how globally widespread a language (if very few and/or from a not very universally used language, then acquiring vocabulary may be somewhat more time-consuming for foreigners). Indeed, every language has easier as well as more challenging areas; precisely as you say, English may seem easy to most people, but I think that's mostly due to its globality and analytic character; on the other hand, for example, its pronunciation is actually extremely challenging and highly unpredictable, just as the use of many prepositions and in some cases even articles or verb agreement e. g. in expressions of quantity (a/the number of X is/are; a/the total of X is/are; a/the proportion of X is/are; etc.), and I'm not even mentioning phrasal and prepositional verbs where nearly all logic simply vanishes. And logic and predictability is one of the respects in which Finland clearly surpasses English as well as many other languages - it is a very, really very regular and logical language based on reliable principles (although these principles are often numerous and/or complex for the given area of grammar), and furthermore, it has a basically 100% shallow (transparent) orthography, i. e. basically 100% one-to-one phoneme-letter correspondence. That is cross-linguistically a very rare feature and it helps immensely in language acquisition. And it applies even to the lexicon: behind many of the seemingly "scary" super-long compounds, you can see clear logic once you take the compound apart into individual elements. Also, Finnish lacks many features that are in other languages often challenging, such as gender distinction, differences in stress placement (an absolute nightmare in English for example), or tonality. So, Finnish indeed isn't necessarily (generally) more difficult than any other language - it's just different. And in certain respects, it can be considered generally easier than other languages (for example in pronunciation). True, many things in Finnish require a lot (like quite a lot) of patient learning and practice - for example vocabulary acquisition, verb conjugation, nominal declension, or correct use of prepositions and postpositions; although all these are mostly highly regular, it usually requires some time for one to get used to them. And as one of the people below already said, unlike in English (which is highly analytic), in Finnish it's hard to produce an "immediate translation" in your mind not just because the language (usually) works differently than your native one, but also because Finnish is so highly synthetic. That's indeed one of the respects in which English has an advantage over Finnish for most language learners. There's one respect, though, in which I think Finnish is really hard from a universal perspective, and that is rections. They're hard because unlike most other areas of Finnish grammar, they are almost entirely unpredictable; there's usually no logical and/or semantic reason why this verb imposes an elative on its subordinate element while this verb imposes an illative, or why this noun imposes an allative on its postmodifier but this noun imposes either inessive or illative. That, and object cases (nominative vs. genitive vs. partitive vs. accusative) are also quite challenging, although there's regularity behind them. And puhekieli vs. kirjakieli, too - the difference is quite notable, I'd say considerably more notable than, say, in English, and not all of the puhekieli forms are underlain by some sort of rule or principle of how they're shortened and/or modified in comparison to their kirjakieli forms (although some of them are, e. g. numerals).

[@finnished]

Thank you for this very interesting analysis! I can only agree with what you say. And thanks for bringing up many points and facts I didn't even know or thought about! :)

[@paulimaisi]

I totally agree withe rections, they are as hard or even harder than phrasal verbs in english (they simply make no sense and you have to learn all of them by heart). Another thing in my opinion that makes finnish "universaly" difficult is the rather free word order you can sometimes find in written sentences, which doesn't necessarily follow an SVO-patter. In addition to that, LOTS of words inflected in certain cases just look like other words in other cases: I can mention the classical example of "tavata - tappaa", and "kuusi palaa".... and just from the top of my head there's also "jää" (jäädä - imperative or 3rd person singular vs. jää - noun). These two things combined make reading texts over a B2 level feel like solving a puzzle, where you have to indentify where is the subject, the verb the object, etc.... In the end, I just had to learn the grammar for me to be able to apply the Comprehensible Input/Natural method!

[@RcsN505]

Moikka! Kiitos tästä videosta :) One other thing I would add, as a linguist and language teacher who's lived in Finland and who's tried very hard to learn the language (courses at the U of Helsinki, Työväenopisto, etc) is that most courses of Finnish as an L2 are heavily focused on the grammar and on reading (the standard language). I remember when I was learning the partitiivi, the teacher went over ALL the patterns in the same class (ruoka-a, ihmi-sta, maa-ta) the same day... And that was always the case for every new thing. Of course students are gonna say it's difficult! It's like if you're learning Spanish to have to learn all the verb tenses and aspects at once... In short, the communicative method cries Finnish tears =D

[@finnished]

Thank you for your comment! This is exactly what I'm trying to solve in the Finnish learning landscape :D

[@ramiroflores6988]

Mahtavaa!! Mä löysin mun opettaja 😁🙌🏽🤗🇺🇾🇫🇮

[@alexandrawakening]

Kiitos paljon! Your tehnique is very useful, almost done with day 5. Let's see how does it develop in one month, but I can already see a lot of changes in my understanding of Finnish people talking. Also, the truth about learning Finnish and why does it seem hard is what you said: the tought of it and absence of an open mind. I am very curious of my progress with your videos! I only practiced grammar until now.

[@finnished]

Thank you for sharing! Please keep me posted on your progress!

[@farouq7107]

Es verdad que no hay una lingua como finlandés. Probablemente eetsi, no lo sé 🤷‍♂️ Pero una lingua ser única no es igual que una lingua es difícil para estudiar y entender. mi primer idioma es árabe y esta es un difícil idioma. Inglés es completamente diferente a árabe. Sin embargo, es muy fácil para estudiar. Ahora no sé que finlandés es fácil o difícil. pero yo sé que me encanta mi tiempo con este lingua. Y eso es el más importante. Si no estoy feliz, entonces no hay razón para continuar.

[@finnished]

Tienes razón! :)

[@j.-m.b.]

If I could give an advice to people who want to learn a gendered language (such as French) from a non-gendered language (such as English or Finnish).... I would say it's not so useful to just learn lists of vocabulary. I mean, typing "horse" in Google and knowing that it is "cheval" in French won't get you very far (no pun intended)... instead, I think it's a better idea to always learn new words packed with their articles, as a whole, "le cheval, un cheval,... des chevaux" (because silent letters and gendered words are not enough, we also have fancy plurals) Same idea apply to Finnish, I suppose. Instead of getting some kind of little vocabulary book (as I did) that only show the nominative form, I'd rather find fewer words but with the 2 or 3 most probable cases going with it, in context with a very short sentence. Verbs such as tykätä, tulla/mennä, syödä, etc. will most likely fit a big bunch of words.

[@finnished]

That's a great tip! I remember our French teacher telling us to do that, but I just found it so foreign and didn't understand why I should learn the gender as well :D oh well...

[@be_ljsingersongwriter7517]

Moi,true, open your mind and the world is in you. Heippa

[@yuliiadmytrakova734]

Thanks for such motivational video. Kiitos❤

[@finnished]

Glad you liked it!! :)

[@mahabouazizi6063]

This woman is my hero, does anyone know if she uploads content on spotify as well?

[@finnished]

Kiitos!!! No, I don't have a podcast unfortunately :)

[@bunnyteeth365]

I think one way you can deal with Finnish vocabulary is to pay attention to logical connections between words.

[@finnished]

That's a good tip!

[@marin_1441]

One more thing Lack of resources unlike other language like French Spanish German Portuguese Finnish don't have much resources in English

[@finnished]

That's true! Although I always prefer learning a language in that language ;) But you always need subtitles in the beginning of course

[@Itziar_hay_yan]

Estoy totalmente de acuerdo contigo, el euskera (Basque) tiene 16 casos y tampoco es indoeuropeo (aunque tiene muchos préstamos) y muchas personas lo hemos aprendido de mayores. Todavía no he empezado con el suomi, tus vídeos son fantásticos, pero creo que hace falta una base para poderlos usar, aunque sea mínima. ¿Qué me recomiendas para empezar?

[@finnished]

Hola! Que interesante! El euskera es un idioma muy fascinante. El mismo metodo de aprendizaje funciona para principiantes, entonces yo recomendaria empezar con el playlist 'Beginners' o escuchar mis videos con velocidad mas lento :)

[@shammyfinn]

Puhut samaa kuin mun opettaja 😅 kyllä totta se on erilainen kieli ja kuitenkin kielioppi on edelleen vaikea kun minä vertailen omaan kieleeni ja muihin kieliin. Olin tosi turhautunut ensinnäkin koska joissain vaiheessa luulin että minä ymmärsin ehkä tarpeeksi muotoa mutta olin väärässä sen jälkeen minä opiskelen pikku hiljaa ja yritän ymmärtää sitä kielen luonne ja se menee hyvin (parempi kuin ennen).

[@carolineJakovinen]

Mua kummastuttaa kun joko sanoo suomen kielen olevan "hirveän vaikeeta". Mä oon opiskellu ranskaa 13-vuotiaalta asti ja vaikka olen 22-vuotias nyt, en sanoisi, että mä hallitsen ranskan kielen, koska sillä on monia poikkeuksia ja järjettömiä sääntöjä. Mun mielestäni suomi on ranskaa helpompi oppia. Kannattaa muistaa, että englanti ei oo sinänsä "helppo" kieli, vaan se näyttää siltä, koska sitä puhutaan ympäri maailmaa. Englannin kieli on vain suoraviivainen ihmisille, jotka ovat saaneet suurta altistusta englannin lausumismenetelmään. Eikä se oo käytännöllinen globalisaation kielenä, sillä täytyy opetella ulkoa, miten sanat kirjoitetaan.

[@finnished]

Oon ihan samaa mieltä! Suomella vaan on tosi huono maine 😅 Mikä sun äidinkieli on?

[@carolineJakovinen]

@@finnished Mun äidinkieli on portugali, mutta usko tai älä, mä ilmaisen itteäni paremmin englanniks 😅

[@emanuelrodriguez4301]

Suomi ei ole liian vaikea, koska mä ymmärsin kaiken 😅 kiitos❤

[@finnished]

Ihan mahtavaa!!!

[@agni.villar]

German is harder than finnish. Im noticing finnish has less words for each meaning. While german has tons. And im not even including the monster word compounds.

[@finnished]

Interesting! Sorry to tell you that we have those monster compound words as well haha

[@Okra79]

Noh, osallistun sun kurssille ja tykäänkin sun videoista. Ymmärrän sun tarkoitus täästä videosta, mutta sanoisin että, suomen kielen ero muista kielistä ON se juttu joka tekee sen vaikeaksi. 🙃

[@sylviakarin5012]

👍👍👍

[@Rofasta]

Olen täysin samaa mieltä...

[@Faith.M22]

Mä kuulen ton lauseen kans joka kerta 😂😂

[@lexparsimoniae2107]

It is a difficult language. Get over it.

[@jjjj-wk9gt]

no language is difficult, the difficulty depends on what languages you already speak, if you speak Estonian then Finnish is easy and learning Finnish from English is much easier than from Chinese or Thai.

[@said7388]

I am living here in Finland i need to Contact with You please