Introduction to Finnish Grammar

A brief overview of the grammar of Finnish. In this video I’ll go through the central pieces of Finnish grammar-phonological processes, case inflection, verbal forms, word order and much more-to give you an understanding and a feeling for how Finnish grammar functions on a more systematic level. After watching this, you should be well prepared to take on the more specific details of Finnish grammar in your further studies!
ERRATA
- At 01:29, the 'e' in 'tulevaisuus' should be colored gold, as it's a neutral and not a back vowel.
- At 12:37, one negative form is given as 'tietä'. This should of course be 'tiedä', like the rest of them.
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CREDITS
‘Forest silhouette’ image by Freepik
Music by msp211ent
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FOLLOW / SUPPORT
KZbin: / academiacervena
Facebook: / academiacervena
Patreon: / academiacervena
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:23 Phonological features of grammar
00:33 Vowel harmony
01:58 Consonant gradation
04:01 Overall structure
05:23 Features of Finnish grammar
05:54 The case system
07:33 Telicity (accusative vs partitive)
09:18 Word order
10:40 Possessive suffixes
11:16 Prepositions/Postpositions
11:38 Verbal conjugation
12:04 The negative verb
12:44 "Compact" verb forms
14:04 Enclitic particles (-ko, -pa, -kin)
14:48 Written vs spoken language

[@jereseilo9714]

Why am I watching this. I'm a native speaker

[@AcademiaCervena]

Well, even if you're a pro at driving your car, you might be interested in knowing how the engine works as well :)

[@jereseilo9714]

Academia Cervena haha but if I'm engineer already?;)

[@citadelofwinds1564]

Suomi mainittu. Torilla tavataan.

[@vialactea6321]

Why am I watching this? I don't even learn Finnish :D

[@Phoephoey]

Perhaps you dream of becoming a teacher

[@blueoceancorporations1019]

The lack of gender in finnish language once lead to a funny situation for me once when I read a book that was originally written in english. I read the entire book without realizing that one character was female...

[@suaptoest]

+Blue Ocean Corporations So what? I once talked to a person and to this day I don't know if he/she was a man or a woman.

[@blueoceancorporations1019]

@@suaptoestIt just was a bit funny to discover that this person I had thought was a man was actually a woman.

[@okaro6595]

Sounds like a poor translation. Translating to Finnish easily leads to expression like "He looked the girl into her eyes" as one has to somehow express the gender and to avoid using same pronoun for the subject and the object.

[@enrymion9681]

Same, for a long time I thought Snape in Harry Potter was a woman. Also @Okaro X while it's true that if the translation didn't make a point of mentioning the gender when a character was introduced it's bad but I don't see how you'd bring up the gender of characters if the reader is already supposed to know it without it sounding weird and that avoiding repeating pronouns is the reason you'd do that often.

[@Quadronnn]

@@enrymion9681 "Same, for a long time I thought Snape in Harry Potter was a woman." Oh wow, glad to hear I'm not the only one. I'm pretty sure it was only in the second book where Snape was specifically referred to with the word "mies" in the Finnish translations, so for the entire way through the Philosopher's Stone and up until that particular part in the Chamber of Secrets I, too, was under the impression that Snape was a woman.

[@ember_falls]

you know the language is complicated when native speakers learn new things from videos like this

[@crossroads3]

The thing is, we're not taught all this stuff and terminology so thoroughly. We're just taught to speak and some more basic grammar stuff in school.

[@anjagoller]

Don't worry it's similar with other languages. I learned most of the German grammar in Latin lessons. We are taught the grammar in German lessons, too, but you learn a lot more when learning another language and as Latin is pretty intense with grammar I learned it there.

[@crossroads3]

@@anjagoller Aye, another Latin student! I'm studying Latin too :D

[@anjagoller]

@@crossroads3 Nonono, that was like 20 years ago in school.

[@zakp1124]

Moi enppuli :3

[@TheNikz0rrr]

Your pronounciation is the best for a foreign person I have ever heard!!

[@Phoephoey]

I suspect the narrator is a native.

[@fritt]

Phoephoey he’s from Sweden actually

[@jokumukamikalie]

@@Phoephoey Nah, him not being a native is easy to spot.

[@sudenluola2241]

Yeah he pronounces some things oddly, but that is only because his accent. He is used to pronounce things in a certain way, so it is not likely he will be able to pronounce everything "perfectly", that is because of our accents. Same as chinese, russian and japanese speak completely differently compared to finnish, not the words, but HOW you speak, our accent will fuck it up big time. Really surprised that his accent has adapted so well, that there were barely any words his accent modified to not sound native. A good example is how the letter R is pronounced in finnish, and then in english. That is where "rally english" mostly comes from, as our accent uses a hard R, and in english it is almost like a completely different letter, in the way it is pronounced "softly".

[@Nocutexx]

i thought he is finnish...but what do I know im just a german xDD

[@jonikyro1168]

How to speak finnish 1. Learn finnish words 2. Speak engilsh like a yoda 3. Convert the yoda english to finnish words

[@Cherubi-chan]

I noticed that Yoda thing as well :D It was very strikingly obvious when a sentence was written in english (but I've never thought of it when speaking finnish).

[@elderscrollsswimmer4833]

@@elsiesrifle What were you doing there? Waiting for someone who didn't show up perhaps? If you had some coffee, you say kahvilassa.

[@samsku6862]

@@elsiesrifle sanottais että olin eilen kahvilalla

[@aleksituononen2235]

Your pronunciation was good for foreing

[@costacordalis2722]

Aleksi Tuononen ihan VITUN hyvä

[@thesuomi8550]

Aleksi Tuononen opetellu varmaan sanoo noi kaikki ennen ku on tehny tän

[@nothanks5570]

* a foreigner; not foreing

[@Jonsson95]

The Gotham Goliath aar juu sure thät juu want tu gou daun on thät roud?

[@igorjee]

@@Jonsson95 Áj dont szink dát hi vud vánt tu dú dát.

[@benvanzon3234]

Almost six years ago already... I really hope you come back with more videos on Finnish and Sámi, they're so well done and easy to follow!

[@einienj3281]

There's things, that even I didn't know.. And I've spoken it about 35years.. :)

[@AcademiaCervena]

That's usually how it goes with our native languages! We speak them perfectly, but we don't necessarily know much about them :)

[@einienj3281]

Academia Cervena true! :)

[@milus2200]

It is impressive.

[@dlersherro7107]

easy for you to say

[@xavatal]

😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

[@rzeka]

The pseudo-english examples help a lot for me, thanks

[@AcademiaCervena]

When used in the right way, I find there's a lot of educational potential in such pseudo-translations!

[@einienj3281]

Without the psuedo examples, our language would be very diffucult.. it's diffucult for me too, even tho I'm finnish.. :D No one I've talked with, have no idea how my name is pronaunced.. It's said like the word "alien" , but replace the L with an N.. :D This Guy speaks finnish very well, without being finnish! :)

[@eduardobraivein8496]

Academia Cervena Couls you please make/post new videos about: a) Icelandic. b) Faroese. c) Old Norse.

[@TheSoulBlossom]

@@einienj3281 I could pronounce your name with ease

[@diegosilva53]

CONTINUE THIS SERIES PLEASE :( I'm a brazilian and it's hard to find a video teaching finnish as didatic as yours

[@toroza159]

I agree!

[@Nesyulett]

I agree.

[@TeuvoPS]

Totally agree

[@user-su6wy3bj4v]

Finnish is a fun language for a native speaker, because the grammar is so flexible. The written language tends to glue words together and prefers endings to separate words when pointing out a quality or circumstance, but colloquial Finnish again tends to work more similarly to Indo-European languages (understandable due to the historical influence of Swedish and German). Then, like in the national epic of Finland, Kalevala, there are also forms of poetic Finnish, meaning you can change the words and in some cases even grammar to imply an art form. This is of course used in poems and songs. Some examples of this: "(someone) wants" in Finnish is "haluaa", but has a poetic form "halajaa" "Don't" in Finnish is "älä", but has a poetic form "ällös" "Battle" in Finnish is "taistelu", but has a poetic form "taisto" "to forget" in Finnish is "unohtaa", but has a poetic form "unhottaa" "a thought" in Finnish is "ajatus", but has a poetic form "aatos" These poetic versions of words are usually word variations from old dialects, words that have otherwise fallen out of use or have changed, but due to their presence in poetry and song have become words still used but only in that context.

[@timenotime]

This is not unique to Finnish. The flexibility of word forms also doesn't necessarily have that much to do with 'grammar', that's more morphological. Also, it's not just colloquial Finnish that has Indo-European flavour to it; we've retained a whole bunch of things from (Proto-)Indo-European.

[@Kromaatikse]

A famous example of something similar in English is Jabberwocky. Apparently it uses a lot of (now obsolete) words from Cheshire dialect. Ironically, the word "vorpal" has actually been revived somewhat due to its use in the poem, though specifically in fantasy-gaming contexts.

[@perunasinko3341]

Ahem just saying Aatos is a name but it also means idea as well but name is More common

[@user-su6wy3bj4v]

@@perunasinko3341 uhh, "idea" means idea xD. Aatos is a name, but it's also an older synonym for the word "ajatus". You don't really ever hear people use it in regular speech anymore

[@jerrimenard3092]

This explains a lot. When native Finnish speakers are speaking English sometimes here in the USA, they sound a bit poetic. It's hard to describe. It's much more fluid in it's train of thought. Now I see why.

[@crossroads3]

Two things. 1. I'm a native Finn but this video taught me more about our grammar than 10 years of school. 2. Your pronunciation is amazing. Best I've ever heard a foreigner do.

[@botvirus6770]

4:30 Katsotko venettämmekin? = Will you look at our boat, too? = Do you look at our boat, too? = Are you looking at our boat, too? ---> The clitic "-ko" isn't related to the future tense. It's related to question (I think). Anyway As a native Finnish speaker I can say that this one of the best videos about Finnish I have ever seen. Good job!

[@AcademiaCervena]

Thank you for the compliment! You are right, -ko is the question particle (as shown near the end), and the sentence "Katsotko venettämmekin?" could just as well be in the present tense. But since English requires questions to be formed with an auxilliary verb (will, do, are), there is a slight relation, so I chose to mark it as the best equivalent for the Finnish question particle, to make the example more elegant!

[@seneca983]

"Do you look?" I'm not a native speaker but this sounds a very unnatural wording in English. In English you'd probably say either "Are you looking?" or "Will you look?" if you want to translate "Katsotko?". Adam chose the latter translation. He could have chosen the former as well but it would have been just as an arbitrary choice without additional context.

[@fmmsavesyourmom]

Your color coding makes the prefixes and suffixes of the words very easy to understand. It's only semi-comparable to finnish, but I wish I had something like that while studying with the Wheelock's Latin book.

[@shagbarelads1643]

me: *has a single finnish friend* KZbin: hey wanna learn finnish even though all your friends can speak and write in extremely fluent English

[@noone-pl2gj]

Well, are you speaking suomea now?

[@Josku2411]

Meanwhile i'm finnish and i got this in my recommendedXD

[@Viljop]

Oof

[@reetapantsar]

Sun suomen kieli on aika hitsin hyvä

[@rasmussyrjala1370]

Aika hitsi? Semmosesta hitsistä en oo kuullutkaan.

[@liljes]

Jack _ oletko tietoinen konseptista huumori?

[@deejayxcrypt]

"aika hitsi" on sellainen, joka valmistuu sitten aikanaan

[@deeznuts-rp2ms]

@@rastas_4221 sama vois sust sannoo

[@ukkoloytty689]

lil jes oletko vitun ärsyttävä äpärä

[@sunterry]

Your pronunciation is stellar for a foreign speaker!

[@kaapporaivio]

5:48 In modern Finnish, pseudo-articles are used semi-regularly: "eräs" ("certain") in written language and "yks" ("one") in spoken language for an indefinite article, and "se" ("it") for a definite article. Examples: "Siellä oli *yks* mies": "There was *a* man" "*Se* mies tervehti mua": "*The* man said hi to me"

[@memesfrommycameraroll8424]

In the middle of the video I just started laughing because I realized how hard my language actually is

[@Darianka7565]

I have no other option than to laugh too as a Finnish language student. I tried to learN It on and off by myself for 10 years with no great outcome...haha, so now I started virtual classes with a native. Mutta nii, onpa tämä vaikeaa!

[@wolfish-berry]

I always wondered why consonant gradation is the way it is. Every Finn I've talked to doesn't even know. So thank you for explaining this. It helps a lot!

[@nicolasespindola2852]

Man, this is gold! Thank you very much, now I'm much less scared to pick up Finnish at some point in my life

[@costacordalis2722]

Nicolás Espíndola you should still be scared af…

[@blue9139]

Good luck.

[@albert3274]

Same here :)

[@paskajuttu9413]

JUST DO IT

[@tuomonygren3145]

This was a very good presentation of the Finnish grammar. I would like to add a small comment. There is no single colloquial language, and your example shows how they speak mainly in Helsinki region. Admittedly, this language has a tendency to be spread around the country via television and other kind of modern communication. Still, there is a variety of quite different colloquial languages in other parts of the country. Finnish is very rich in dialects, and the colloquial languages often have their roots in them. For instance, ‘Are you afraid of the police’ is in standard Finnish ‘Pelkäätkö sinä poliisia’, in Helsinki language ‘Pelkäätsä poliisii’ and in Oulu language ‘Pelekääkkö nää polliisia’.

[@Zuerjelberger]

I was looking for this comment

[@MC1000media]

Im finnish thinking I could never learn this

[@sabishi2404]

Yeah its convenient for finns to be able to just have the feel for it

[@paavobergmann4920]

Haha, same here...I am german, and once some finnish students, studying german, thought it would be helpful to ask me things about german language...we all quickly realized, If I had had to learn german in school, it would have been a nightmare.... Point is: their german was waaayy better than mine.....I had absolutely no idea we had 82 classes of verb conjugation, they knew them by heart and could tell me when to use which....*gulp *

[@pitioti]

@@paavobergmann4920 Same for french, we are a lot, even after the College, to just go by "it's like that, just work with it", because we can't remember all the case and exceptions. Futhermore for the orthographe, it's ironic how we can't do any reform to simplify it, because, we were so much forced to go with this mess, that any little change is take has an insult to the language en disturb us. Just an example, the government, in 1996, tried to pass a law to simplify the script, like the "f" sound, by allowing to write it with just "f", even when it was "ph" that was used ("Philosophe => filosofe", "Nénuphar=> Nénufar", etc...) or writting "Oignon => Ognon" (since we pronounce it "Ognon") for exemple. It was a huge uproar, even if it was just an alternative/tolerance, everyone lose their shit, talking about suiling the french language, even if NOBODY knew why we write the words like that (the ethimology). The "Ph", for exemple, is an heritage of Greek language, it's used to words comming from the greeks. It's nice, indeed, and original in it's script, but, did the French language really be "downgraded", if we no longer use it? The worst, it's when you see the Italian, that did those kind of reforms XD

[@paavobergmann4920]

@@pitioti haha, i can understand. I had french in school for 3years. I have to confess, it was an uphill battle....😉 I didn't know you also were thinking about these reform? Germany did pass them a few years ago, and yes, everyone got their knickers in a twist, as if the language suddenly stopped making sense when you are allowed to write "Fotografie" and "Delfin"...but of course, us being german and all, some things got more complicated after the reform... But: One thing I really cherish about the reform. It finally made sense of the total mess of our 4varieties to write the letter "s". the "long s", "l", was mercifully dropped some decades ago, but now there are rules for "s", "ss", and "ß" that actually make sense...at last...

[@hansmahr8627]

It's typical for native speakers to not know much about the precise grammatical rules of their language. After all, you learn your native language naturally, by imitating. So a non-native speaker might know more about the rules but the native speaker will know better how to apply them.

[@tammikilpi6993]

I'm not sure why I'm watching this as I'm a native finn, but it's actually very informative to us too, even helps me understand some structural differences between finnish and english Also your finnish pronounciation is very good !!

[@chanh4510]

I love your country

[@joaquin.aldunate]

I wish I had a finnish grammar book explaining things like this. The ones I've tried get so lost into details, that I have a hard time understanding. I mean, of course details are important, but I feel that I can only start from the big picture. Many thanks!!

[@pynchones]

I've always been so fascinated with Uralic languages, specially Finnish. I would love to learn it so I can finally watch movies of Kaurismaaki without subtitles and maybe, if I'm brave enough, read the Kalavela.

[@ville06102]

Shoaib M Thats how Finnish works.

[@AnnaMarianne]

Glad to hear you like our little language family! ,If you try Kalevala and don't understand it, don't feel bad about it. The language is so old even we native speakers understand only some of it. But it's fun to read anyway, because of the rythm of the octosyllabic structure suits the language well.

[@alegoggi]

After that you should learn the Finnish dialects :D There's quite a lot of them and most of them are like a new language so good luck

[@noone-pl2gj]

@@alegoggi mut pohojanmaan murre onhan paras

[@Ninatic]

*Kaurismäki *Kalevala

[@fcole90]

This is the best video I could find on KZbin about the Finnish language

[@Debre.]

8:30 We have something similar in Hungarian: To shoot someone and kill them is *lelő* ['lεløː]. To shoot someone but not kill them is *meglő* ['mεgløː].

[@diwa393]

Propably becajse finnish and hungarian languages are relative to each other like long lost rother or cousin

[@nakkilama2645]

hi brother

[@miko7498]

same language group

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

are they different verbs or is it an affixation thing in Hungarian?

[@Sillyboi05]

This is very intresting...

[@raducora7159]

As someone who wants to learn Finnish, I found this VERY instructive. Thank you for the work you've put in this! I'd give you 100 likes if I could.

[@kailey3396]

How’s it going?

[@isaacsarver7088]

Fantastic video. Looking forward to more.

[@ucanihl]

The example sentence at 4:50 can be translated as "Botumuzada bakacakmısın?" in turkish. Although formal spelling rules dictates that it should be written like "Botumuza da bakacak mısın?", those seperated words are not words alone but are suffixes. If we translate it back to pseudo-english it will be "BoatOurAtToo LookWillYou?".

[@eqstudio9469]

Phenomenaly well explained and structured video my friend, I took a great pleasure following your thoughts and sent this to the people that needed encouragement to learn the language, bravo

[@inquiringtardigrade960]

My native tongue is Hungarian, so that obviously helps, even if I can’t actually understand the words themselves. Though undeniably a difficult language, Finnish - unlike English -seems structured and logical. It seems similar to Hungarian in that , yes it is more time-consuming to learn in the beginning, but once you get going , you don’t have to worry about the endless exceptions English seems to be in love with. Good video, clear and informative.

[@cascasasa]

Beautiful language! I'm in love

[@kekekekkemorekekeke8518]

Why

[@iMacxXuserXx485]

The way you can just put a verb before a noun or clause and it means "While I was driving". Or "the bought by us apartment" is very similar to Japanese. 1. "Yonda hon wa tanoshikatta" (読んだ本は楽しかった) This sentence means "The book I read was enjoyable." It reads word for word "Read book was enjoyable". The word yonda is just the past tense of "to read" . It just goes in front of the word hon ("book") and that's it! So simple. 2. You can say "Kawa no soba ni suwatte, hon o yonda" (川のそばに座って本を読んで)。This means "I was reading a book while sitting by the river." Literally word for word "By the river sitting, I read a book." The sentence doesn't require a word like "While", you just put the first clause in front and use the word "sitting" and it's clear. I find it much easier to construct these types of sentences in Japanese than in English and cool to see Finnish is the same.

[@kap9415]

These videos are everything I ever wanted in regards to how languages are described and taught

[@SoundsofKatajamaki]

I am grateful that I don't have to learn Finnish from the beginning. Sincerely yours, A Finn

[@TheMoominAk]

This was very helpful to someone who, as a Finn, teaches Finnish to foreigners! Great job!

[@jerrimenard3092]

It reminds me of some Native American Languages here. I can read more Finnish then I can speak at this point. That's why videos like this are important. I need to hear it used by a native speaker. Another trick I have learned to help grasp Finnish is to watch interviews. I like music and art so I look up documentary or news stories where people are being asked questions that you may hear everyday about the work they do. How was your trip? Did you have anything to eat? Are you going to be done soon? That is much better then some of the books we have here in the States. One I bought kept going on about feeding nuts to chipmunks or something. A whole chapter was about some guy named Kari having a tummy ache.

[@radubradu]

Brilliant introduction, thank you!

[@rosa_karoliina951]

As a native finnish speaker, i find this really interesting. I never need to think about these things because finnish is my native language, so it's really cool to see all these grammar things

[@sir_john_hammond]

One amazing channel teaching complex aspects of both the Swedish and Finnish languages? I feel like I need to pinch myself. Thank you so much for doing what you do, and for free.

[@sir_john_hammond]

matilda :] well thanks but i might stick out a bit sitting in a 6th grade classroom. ;)

[@jeffmsmith9650]

Thank you for this video. It is by far the best and most informative basic Finnish grammar video that I have seen.

[@EvaFatal]

Really cool explanation! Please keep on doing such work!)

[@KINGJADEX]

Thank you! Please do more Finnish videos.

[@rei0go50]

I haven't even learned Swedish (and a bunch of other languages) properly yet now you make me want to learn Finnish! I'm especially enamored by its 'telic' features. I've always complained about Japanese particles but seeing this now, I realized they're not as complex as Finnish cases. Though I may be saying this now since I haven't dived into Finnish **yet**. Thanks for the video!

[@blue9139]

JJin ジン 찐 Nice. If you need any help with something, i might be able to explain it

[@citadelofwinds1564]

This was an excellent introduction that made things very clear, particularly by using colour coding to match the equivalent components between the two languages.

[@jeresalonen7643]

Another great video! Your comparisons are really, really good! Keep up the great work! I bet you make finnish much easier to understand with your videos!! Greetings from a native finnish speaker!

[@your_opponent]

Super comprehensive! Thank you! I am looking forward to the next intermediate video!!

[@nicolasdomon7382]

I’m trying to learn some Finnish because I’m in love with the country and I like challenges! However, as a native French/Italian speaker, there aren’t many available books to teach me the language. I guess I have to learn from English/Finnish books then. Thank you for the clear explanations!

[@kekekekkemorekekeke8518]

DONT LEARN FINNISH ITS NOT WORTH UR TIME AND EFFORT I SWEAR🙏🏻🙏🏻

[@pinjakorpikoski9315]

kekekekke more kekeke if he wants to learn then let him:)

[@juliekinghorn3158]

Very informative and precise. Kiitos

[@andypaulsibakoff9816]

Your Finnish pronunciation is totally flawless to the point I'm more than gobsmacked!

[@LevisL95]

Great video! 4:14 Btw, here the English equivalent can be translated in to different ways: "Katsotko venettämmekin?" or "Katsotko meidänkin venettämme?". (our *boat*, too vs. *our* boat, too) Just pointing it out, since it sounded in English like the weight was on "us".

[@laurilaitinen5606]

He actually pronounced finnish words correctly...

[@hyhhy]

A great summary of the features of Finnish language. Concise and with good examples.

[@iMacxXuserXx485]

This is an amazing introduction to Finnish grammar! I wish every language has as in depth a showcase of their grammar as you have given here. Grammar is truly one of the richest and most fascinating aspects of language.

[@orianem6608]

Very interesting and well-explained video, thank you!

[@Orkel2]

And this is just the "official finnish". The country is littered with various dialects which make it even more complex. Like your example, "Katsotko venettämmekin", when spoken in my area it could be "Tuukkonäkattoo meijänkin venettä" or "Katokkonä meijänki venettä"

[@HKBlo]

Asukko nää oulussa, mulla on koko sukuni sielläpäi!

[@elysian404]

also especially the youth uses more spoken finnish instead of written finnish so for example it could also be ”tuuks kattoo meijä venettä”. this makes finnish really hard for someone who is trying to learn it and for example travels to finland - only to find that barely anyone speaks written finnish anymore

[@Noah-pm1bg]

Kai mä voin teiä paattii tsiigaa

[@Puistokemisti]

In southern finland it can be commonly said "Katotsä meiänkin venettä?" or Tuutsä kattoo meidänkin venettä?" or in Helsinki slang "käyks tsekkaa/tsiigaa meitsi(n) botskii/paattii" Fun for foreigners, I can tell

[@TheSoulBlossom]

Yeah but that applies to pretty much EVERY LIVING LANGUAGE. Don't make Finnish seem super "special" because it's not. It's got its share of peculiarities and dialectal differences but what language doesn't?

[@CitySwimmah]

I'm really addicted to Finnish grammar videos for foreigners even though I am a native speaker. I have never thought of this kind of stuff :D

[@MrEurochannel]

Am glad this is a KZbin video, something I can stop and start, as just trying to grasp these concepts in English is hard enough! The explanations are very fast!

[@myla9111]

Can you please make more videos about learning finnish? This is helping me a lot! Thanks to this video! 😊😊😊

[@ClemensKatzer]

Vowel harmony is really significant. I was told that especially for older persons, who never learned a different language, loan words with mixed vowels were troublesome. So much so, that for a loanword like Olympia, he'd instead say "Olumpia". Also, Finnish language does not like double consonants at the beginning of a word, so school => skool => koulu, stool => tuoli); and most grammatical cases kind of need a vowel, so he turned my name Clemens to Lemenssi :)

[@inortz3764]

Amazing video, this probably took a lot of effort! Its really intresting to see how people learn my native language and it really opens up a whole new perspective to a thing I take for granted.

[@ernab.565]

Interesting and very helpful video, thank you!

[@plutodevil1618]

Me, a native speaker of both Finnish and English throughout the whole video: *"Wait... what?"*

[@nooralieri434]

Olen puhunut suomea koko ikäni, mutten ole koskaan alkanut ajatella mitään näistä, koska kaikki tulee tietenkin aivan luonnostaan :))

[@LauriHarsila]

Kyllä näistä suurin osa taidetaan äidinkielentunneilla opettaa, mutta tietty vähän eri tavalla kuin englanninkielisille tarkoitetulla videolla.

[@sabishi2404]

@@LauriHarsila Juu kyl ne opetetaan mut emmä koskaan jaksanu niihin allatiiveihin ja essiiveihin ja partitiiveihin keskittyy. Vieläki nytte tiiän vaa kolme niistä jotka on nominatiivi, genetiivi ja partitiivi

[@artbookgaming]

Itekkii muistan olleeni siellä tunneilla ja otaneeni hyvin muistiinpanoja, mutta ei nytte lähtis ei millää. Ihan hyvin pärjää tällä että on kuullu ja lukenu koko ikänsä ja tulee intuitiivisti kaikki. Toisaalta sama ongelma näkyy mulla englannin opiskelussa, en pystyis perustelemaan kunnolla. Taitaa olla ihan ihmiskunnan laajunen juttu kaikissa kielissä kun tulee niissä tarpeeks hyväks, ku oon kuullu kavereiltaki ja täällä kommenteissa aika paljo.

[@dankie8617]

Lauri Härsilä Joo, tää juttu videon iha alussa opiskellaan meidän 9lk tunneilla

[@SneakyFellow]

Great informative video! I really liked how you gave an example at the end of the video, about the difference between written and spoken language. As those two really do differ a lot.

[@AcademiaCervena]

Thank you! I'm happy that you liked it :)

[@elib2792]

Please add more videos, these are so helpful for Finnish learners!

[@jmtikka]

The question particle (-ko/-kö) can be appended to most words. The question word formed this way is always in the beginning of a sentence. And the answer to a yes/no (kyllä/ei) question in Finnish is usually not "kyllä" or "ei", but that would have been confusing at this stage.

[@suaptoest]

Vastaisinkokinkohan tuohon mitään?

[@emjakos3548]

I'm a native Finnish speaker but this was quite interesting! Also, your pronunciation is good!

[@chelle4419]

Okay, wow. That was both fascinating and overwhelming. Thank you for such a comprehensive video. (American; native english speaker here).

[@mogostommi3830]

I'M happy with your lesson plan!

[@nreekm]

Awesome video!!! I'm looking forward for other videos about finnish!

[@custossolutions5713]

Thank you, so much. Really interesting. Full similarity with Turkish grammar.

[@ayoubchmarkh9689]

This video is just amazing. It makes finnish seem very easy, and its good to start learning. Kiitos

[@sagaronyoutube]

oh man its been 5 years i wish you guys had continued the series

[@jokunortti]

"Eivät tietä" is actually "eivät tiedä", just like all the others. Don't know if that was a typo or not, but pointing it out just in case.

[@AcademiaCervena]

It's a stupid typo that I somehow managed to miss :'( It's already up in the errata list in the description :)

[@tuukkamatikainen3389]

As a Finnish person, I can confirm that everything in this video is correct. Good job at figuring Finnish out! :)

[@koukkula5]

I would never say "Ostan paitaa". "I'm buying a shirt" = "Olen ostamassa paitaa".

[@dokuo9619]

Your explanations are amazingly good, I wasn’t even anxious this time lol. Will you make more videos on the Finnish grammar? I’m sure everyone will love them

[@Story-007]

This is what I looking for. Thank you and waiting next one

[@cadaver6665]

Very good pronunciation!

[@Mystcret]

Fun fact: Because of vowel harmony Finnish people usually have problems to pronounce some loan words like "olympialaiset" (Olympic games). Usually people pronounce it "olumpialaiset"

[@ClockMaster2013]

This Video is so satisfying that i can't stop watching it one time after another :D

[@abcxyz9852]

This is so helpful! I'm finnish, but growing up in a different country I used the language less and less, to the point that I've lost the feel for the right words. Having a structure to follow is so comforting and motivates me to improve my finnish :) Edit: Maybe I shouldn't scream the country I live in into the internet😬

[@BadtasteBraindead]

Please more videos like this on finnish!!! :D

[@gabor6259]

0:56 "Silmä" is "szem" in Hungarian. 5:35 "Koira" is "kutya". 10:25 "Lehti" is "levél". 11:34 "Alla" is "alatt". 11:44 "Tiedän" is "tudom".

[@roopelampinen188]

Köszönöm nagyon érdekes. If that is right. I didn't know that we had this many similar words.

[@presidentforlife1732]

Isn't "vesi" (water) "vez" and "käsi" (arm) "kez" in Hungarian?

[@corinnaf.1043]

Thank you so much for this helpful Video! Its the best thing I have found in order to learn finnisch Grammar :)

[@FinDi90]

Wow, all the comments I read before watching were right. This is a very good video! :)

[@vesakaitera2831]

Really an excellent video. I hope that more such is coming soon. The speaker, who obviously was not a Finn, pronounced Finnish very well. With these kind of videos it is possible to break the myth of Finnish being a super difficult language. It is a challenging language for anyone, whose native language is not a Finno-Ugric one, but there are several languages, especially in Asia, which are much morre difficult than Finnish.

[@AcademiaCervena]

Thank you for saying so! I'm not going to deny that Finnish is a difficult language, but like you say, many other languages would be a lot harder to learn for speakers of IE languages. And above all, presenting Finnish grammar provided a good opportunity to try to nuance the common belief that cases and endings make languages more complicated/difficult in and of themselves.

[@citadelofwinds1564]

"... there are several languages, especially in Asia, which are much morre difficult than Finnish..." Very true. I've studied languages all my life - even dabbling with Sanskrit before admitting defeat - and some of the Asian languages would break any foreigner. Tibetan might win the prize - the spoken language has drifted so far away from the written language it makes me wonder how the native speakers manage with it, let alone foreigners.

[@blue9139]

Finnish grammar in a nuttshell Written: vihreä Pronounced: vihreä

[@rasikkom9605]

I like to think I know a lot about the grammar(better than speaking and listening unfortunately) but I did not know about the "invisible" 'q' thing. That is new to me.

[@HawkOfGP]

Those types of things would usually only come up when talking about historical linguistics, which people won't usually know of unless they've studied Finnish linguistics at a university.

[@ilonapalotas3040]

There is something similar in German. When a word begins with a vowel, they pronounce it separately, and they don't contract it with the previous word. You can hear this at the beginning of these words.

[@erkkimustajarvi7391]

I never relized how muchni progress when speaking normally. Man!

[@serdip]

Kiitos tosi paljon! Oppitunti oli hämmästyttävä!

[@arilaine6113]

Oikein hyvä selitys näytettäväksi englanninkielisille tutuille. Very good explanation to show for the english speeking friends.

[@jameskuukkeli]

Tuttu is acquaintance friend is ystävä

[@ilesalmo7724]

The atelic "Söin omenaa" more specifically means "I was eating an unspecified amount of apples" which includes the eating of just a part of the apple that you mentioned. It's easier to understand with water. "I drank the water" is "minä join veden". There is a specified amount of water. "I drank water" is "minä join vettä". There is an unspecified amount.

[@okaro6595]

I'd say no, If you said "söin kalaa" that would mean unspecified amount of fish from one or more fish. Omena is different as it is eaten as a separate fruit. If you eat more than one apple, you say "söin omenoita".

[@ilesalmo7724]

@@okaro6595 But if you slice the apples thinly, and then start to eat them, you'd say "söin omenaa". You would be unable to count if you ate under or over one apple. "Söin omenoita" implies that you ate more than one (Real number that is 1

[@elderscrollsswimmer4833]

@@ilesalmo7724 Well... more like partitive singular= more or less than one (may be a specified amount if following a number or similar expression) or is an atelic object. Nominative singular= exactly one. Partitive plural: lots of them/not counted one by one (there's just SO many of them -- stars) or maybe you have different sorts of whatever. Partitive nominative: All of them (may be specified somehow).

[@okaro6595]

@@ilesalmo7724 You would say "söin omenaviipaleita" tai "söin viipaloitua omenaa". You would not use the word "omena" like yo would use "fish". Omena is seen as separate fruits.

[@user-rr7dg9sm4g]

Lovely videos :) Please keep them coming ^^

[@pitioti]

Even has a non-native english speaker, I fully understand this video and learned things 'o' ! Thank you for your work ^^

[@aaronjaff7749]

Onpapapapa tämä vaikeaa!

[@blue9139]

Papapapapa... Uh

[@ThereCameAnEcho]

Can another time be now? I'm really interested in differences between kirjakieli and puhekieli!

[@hanbill]

Thank you for giving free english grammar lesson :)

[@bobinstain3750]

You pronounce finnish words incredibly well for a foreinger. Very good video.