Introduction to Finnish phonology

[@coolbrotherf127]

Now I'll be able to read Finnish without being able to understand a word of it.

[@supplanterdefender3978]

theacp127 That’s exactly why I started studying foreign language. It was always an interest of mine to learn new ways of speaking and pronunciation, and I am now currently working on over 20 different languages for phonology!

[@legendmitchell3040]

I know Im kind of randomly asking but do anybody know of a good site to watch new series online?

[@tomasbeltran04050]

Ðat's a nice achievement, actually

[@ribozyme2899]

It's a nice contrast. Finnish: No letter can be silent. English: Every letter can be silent.

[@greasyfingers9250]

English is an absolute mess of a language

[@Omio9999]

I thought "every letter can be silent" was more French?

[@ribozyme2899]

@@Omio9999 Yes, French also has some silent letters, but its pronunciation rules are a bit more consistent than the English ones. Most silent letters are h and ends of words. Of course, it has things like "eau" = [o:], where I don't know what letters count as silent.

[@toma00]

@@ribozyme2899 All of them are silent, or all of them count as [o:], you choose. We French people thrive on confusing people

[@ribozyme2899]

@@toma00 Yeah, I noticed ;). French is also the source of, like, half of all cases of silent letters in English.

[@juliusg.7074]

Once a guy commented under one of your videos "Why dont you give up on religion and concentrate your life on what you are good in: programming." And in my head I had like a trillion arguments why his 'suggestion' was stupid, but you just replied with "Because it is not meaningless to me" And i thought that was such a easy, disarming and brilliant answer so that I still remember this.

[@ImperatorGrausam]

I read this comment and found it quite insightful. But to me, my hobbies do mean something even from a spiritual perspective. I am quite religious and fond of both linguistics and retrocomputing/retrogaming (which incidentally this channel focuses on), but I'm not Christian. I'm a Muslim. To me, the Islamic perspective is that things that make you happy but have nothing to do with spirit are still important to the spirit. One cannot have complete happiness, at least to me, without having little things like hobbies to enjoy and friends to talk to who share your feelings and interests. I think you have to realize.. "carnal" happiness in order to realize the greater, and spiritual happiness. tl;dr I think hobbies are still important for the spirit as the spirit cannot exist without the flesh.

[@whiteingale]

but why buty why but why but why but why?

[@marymills3581]

I'm learning finnish now. it makes a lot of sense, I think, as a language. but there's so much to learn that I find it a little overwhelming. thanks for your video, it's helped!

[@fancyndzefu7798]

How much have you progressed with your Finnish language? Any tips for absolute beginners?

[@ENTL37]

I like these linguistic videos for a change even though I came for the tech stuff

[@Bisqwit]

Yay, I have seen this before!

[@BenGras]

Are you replying to your own video :)

[@Bisqwit]

No, I am _commenting_ on my own video!

[@BenGras]

@@Bisqwit touché!!

[@tonym5857]

Each language is different, but yours is really complicate. I apreciate your explication. Regards.

[@duuqnd]

OH NO, My Swedishness has been revealed! I'll never be able to talk to a Finnish person ever again!

[@rahadian364]

2 Finnish youtubers that are my fav, Hydraulic Press Channel and YOU! Glad we have the same interests, linguistics and programming :D

[@Consolethinks]

ŋ is an allophone only sound in Hungarian as well, but instead of /k/ we use it when a /g/ sound comes after it, for example ing /iŋɡ/ (otherwise it's just /n/.) In addition, Hungarian has plenty of fricatives and affricates, for example the /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are often used (/ʃ/ is as frequently used as /s/), and /c͡ç/ and /ɟ͡ʝ/ are 2 sounds that are very hard to pronounce for non native speakers because they rarely appear in other (European) languages. I am also interested in learning some Finnish, so thanks for the video!

[@zorggn]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't it be a bit more correct to say that in Hungarian, we use the ŋ allophone in both cases of when either a /k/ or /g/ follows an /n/? Example: The word inkább /iŋka:b:/ also behaves like this, with my pronounciation, at least, as well as engem /ɛŋgɛm/.

[@Consolethinks]

@@zorggn You are right. I didn't notice since it's second nature to me.

[@themcc1879]

Finally someone who explains the umlauted o in Finish. I have tried to figure out how to pronounce it but I haven't heard it with my ears. Thank you for the pronunciation rules. They help a lot. I speak Japanese and Spanish so much along with English that I have trouble pronouncing words from outside those three languages correctly. I want to learn more about Finish but I think it is seriously a language where you have to be in the country it is from to really get a good grasp on it.

[@henriquec8848]

Your videos are incredibly soothing and informative. Thanks for producing this kind of quality content, which is progressively scarcer on media in general. Have a great weekend!

[@letsshall]

I love the way you teach things. You have a knack, my friend.

[@l3p3]

What is a knack? In German, having a _Knacks_ is something to avoid.

[@speggeri90]

@@l3p3 Knack in English means you have a special disposition for a skill, such as teaching or singing.

[@fruitcake7789]

By the way, I know Estonian and it is very close to Finnish! But in Estonian, Ü is used instead of Y, like in German. And also, Estonian has an extra letter Õ/õ. Finnish: Oppia Estonian: Õppima(da) In cases where Estonian uses Õ, Finnish seems to use O!

[@SwitchyWitch_]

Estonia is bootleg Finland

[@PaulVinonaama]

Not always. For example võõras in Estonian is vieras in Finnish.

[@martinlelarge]

I think gemination can be explained by the fact that imperatives and adjectives ending in -e (like terve, in terve-(t)tuloa) used to end in a k (syö < söök) or h (terve < terveh). Which means they would've formed some kind of consonant cluster with the word after them, which resulted in present-day gemination. I'm not a linguist tho, so if this is nonsense, forgive me xD

[@ExperimentIV]

honestly this is how it was explained to me while i was learning finnish. it was in my intermediate finnish course. it was some other consonant, let’s call it *k. so it’s compensating for *tervektuloa. the gemination occurs as the result of some kind of fossilization

[@an3ri]

7:20 is something that happens after all imperative verb forms. It either doubles the following consonant, or you have a glottal stop if the following word starts with a vowel (this is just my interpretation by the way, not sure how this works exactly). For example if you say "anna _ omena" with a stop between the words it means "give me an apple", but "Anna Omena" without a stop would (probably) be interpreted as a name.

[@visserskarel]

That's an interesting observation! While it is true that the phenomenon you described occurs after imperative verb forms, there are actually several other contexts in which it can be observed in Finnish. The doubling of the following consonant or the presence of a glottal stop before a vowel also occurs after various word forms and suffixes. In addition to imperative verb forms, this phonetic phenomenon can be seen after the possessive suffix of the third person (-nsa/-nsä), after first infinitives, after the allative case (-lle), after the sublative suffix (-nne), after the prolative suffix (-tse), after adverbs ending in -sti, -lti, and -ti, after most native Finnish nouns ending in -e, and a few other words and word forms. The reason for this doubling lies in the historical development of the Finnish language. In Proto-Finnic, the word forms that trigger this doubling actually ended in -h or -k. However, over time, the -h and -k sounds at the end of words disappeared in Standard Finnish (though the -h ending is still pronounced in the Karelian language). One way to analyze this phenomenon is by considering an underlying -h or -k that is always assimilated. It assimilates either to zero or to the following consonant or glottal stop, except when it is at the end of an utterance. In that case, it always assimilates to zero. TL;DR: this doubling of consonants or the presence of a glottal stop is not limited to imperative verb forms but also occurs after several other word forms and suffixes in Finnish. These forms used to end in -h or -k in Proto-Finnic, and the assimilation can be seen as a historical process that has shaped the phonetics of modern Standard Finnish.

[@an3ri]

@@visserskarel Great detailed comment! I would like to add an interesting observation I've made: there are some areas of Finland, such as Kotka, where people don't use the glottal stop or doubling of consonants. It sounds so odd! I wonder why this is.

[@AliTomaev94GE]

Wow, kiitos paljon, this is so useful, i've never paid too much attention to phonology, but hey, turns out that this is very important aspect of a language 🙌

[@justanormalperson]

These videos are really great

[@Pakanahymni]

7:30 it's called the "jäännöslopuke" or "vestigial consonant", it comes from a historical -h or -k.

[@IliaArkhipov-fz3id]

You can find examples of double Vs and Js in finnish dialects :)

[@ImperatorGrausam]

Wew, Bisqwit. You make linguistics AND retro-tech videos? Now I truly found a channel suited for me ^w^

[@metadaat5791]

Finnish is so regular! Whereas in English you could write "ghoti" and taken from the pronunciations of the words "touGH", "wOmen", "excepTIon" you could say it's pronounced as the word "fish". I mean, in actual English you wouldn't, but the language pronunciation is so riddled with exceptions, it might just as well be :-) Your conclusion in the video is spot on, btw. As you where explaining the phonololologies it was immediately clear, so that is why Finnish English accent always sounds like that. Also it explains to me why Finnish text often looks like it does, with relatively many doubled letters :-) Also the timing consequences of doubled letters explains why Finnish always has this "calm flow" to it, you really take your time when a sound must be longer. Particularly find the plosives interesting, that the pause occurs *before* the sound, not after, produces a very particular rhythm. Now I'm super curious about Finnish hiphop :-) If the timing and length of sounds is so important to the meaning or identity of a word, do Finnish rappers have to work around this in a hiphop rhythm flow? Or is it actually something you can take advantage of, create an extra "interest" when the rhythm of the rhyme coincides with the rhythm of the word. Can you actually rhyme a short sound to its (doubled) longer sound in Finnish, or is that considered a "false rhyme"? Or what about this, given that Finnish words have an explicit intrinsic rhythm to them, is there a style of "rhyme" where the words only rhyme rhythmically, even if they have different sounds? Would that work? Many questions. It's unfortunate I can't understand Finnish :-) :-)

[@rtyzxc]

I'm finnish but don't listen to finnish rap but I know what it sounds like. In Finnish rap, double consonants and double vowels are often shortened to singles, which can make it sound a bit like japanese, and you can guess the words by the context. But yeah, if you translated it back to text literally, it would be wrong. Sometimes if a bad word would be apparent, lyrics are built to avoid that, or the rhythm is slightly sacrificed to make it correct length, you don't need a lot for double consonant. In normal singing, consonants are not shortened as much as in rap and it follows the rhythm of the language somewhat accurately, but short wovels get extended a lot. But that's in any language. "Perfect" singing with language rhythm following the song rhythm exactly, is not done, but technically possible, and now I'm curious in hearing some. It would probably just sound funny, because bending the vowel and consonant lengths in songs is normal.

[@zacharyherfkens7902]

I prefer "Physche" to "Ghoti"

[@proot.]

@@zacharyherfkens7902 Yes, because unlike "physche", "ghoti" doesn't actually follow any english phonetic rules. "gh" is never pronounced [f] at at the beginning of words, see "ghost", "ghoul", "ghetto", and "ti" is never pronounced [ʃ] on its own, only in the suffix "-tion".

[@Saturos02]

Great video, looking forward to the continuation!

[@excitedaboutlearning1639]

Great work. I'm a native speaker who's very interested in phonology. I'm very impressed with this video: You even mentioned the glottal stop. Do you have a phonetics-study background or linguistic background? Actually, the reason why consonants are doubled at word boundaries, is because some endings and words used to have a K or H sound at the end. Olla used to be oldak, nähdä used to be näkedäk. Vene used to be veneh Ostaa -> ostadak Mennä -> mendäk and so on. What later happened is that these final Ks and Hs became pronounced as glottal stops. Ostak tämä became ?'osta?'tämä. Later those glottal stops started to assimilate if the following sound was a consonant. ?'ostat'tämä I used to study these things a lot, so at one point glottal stops and duplication disappeared from my speech entirely. The key to pronouncing these correctly is pronouncing the final K or H as a GLOTTAL STOP, NOT as a duplicated consonant. Later you'll see that you'll automatically start replacing the glottal stop by a consonant sound. Today, I pronounce all duplications correctly and consistently. It's because of the glottal stop that I do so. P.S. Kiinnostaisko sua yhteistyön tekeminen? Mä niin haluisin tehä suomen kielen opetusmatskuu, mut multa puuttuu monia kykyjä kuten editoiminen, et mä saisin tällasii videoita aikaan. Me voitas yhessä suunnitella videoita ym.

[@Bisqwit]

Thank you for your kind comment! And yeah, the remnant ending (jäännöslopuke) seems to be the predominant theory for the cause of the consonant doubling. First time I hear about glottal stop substitution for it, though. As for me, I am just a hobbyist that has an fascination about the inner workings of languages. Yhteistyö olisi ehkä mahdollista! Ainoa vaan että minulla tuppaa aikataulut venymään pahasti, teen näitä projekteja silloin kun jaksan :-)

[@Shareenear]

What is Sans doing here? He should rather be in introduction to Danish phonology, because if you try to say rødgrød med fløde, you're gonna have a bad time.

[@learnfinnishvideos5726]

This explanation is very good

[@selladore4911]

i don't even know why i'm here but I love this video because you explain things well

[@choomatt]

I enjoyed this, but I dont know what to do with this knowledge

[@Soloohara]

XD

[@Holgast]

now you know how to correctly pronounce 'perkele vittu saatana helveti'

[@adabrew2310]

@lordnordsword That is not a party trick. It is just a blatant lie.

[@l3p3]

Get a paper of finnish insults and read them out loud when needed.

[@wilson3844]

Hyvä video! Todella mielenkiintoista.

[@AlexVasiluta]

Some similarities/differences about the vowels to Romanian: Romanian also has the finnish vowels a,e,i,o,u,y,ä as a,e,i,o,u,î,ă, the only one missing being the finnish ö. Vowels are also pronounced individually here, even in diphthongs. Double vowels are also elongated. The only time when vowel sounds are changed are in "letter groups", where the group is pronounced as single/dual sounds: ce (like in *ch*eck), ci (like in *chi*ldren), ge (like in *ge*rmany), gi (like in *ja*cket), che (like in *que*stion), chi (*ki*ndergarten), ghe (*gue*ss), ghi (could not find any match)

[@Kitulous]

Those single/dual sound at the end look more like Italian rather than Finnish. And also I believe that Romanian ă sounds more as schwa, so it's like bEfriend or actOr in English. And also î is pronounced as /ɨ/, so it's more of like Russian Ы.

[@vakvods]

Ghi guild

[@ArturoStojanoff]

*wowols* I really like this video. Thank you.

[@otesunki]

2:25 I was surprised by the perfect pronunciation!

[@Bisqwit]

The Russian word immediately after it didn’t go as well though :P

[@Halopedian]

Absolutely loved it. Loving these linguistics videos

[@oferzilberman5049]

This is a great video!

[@leopartanen9431]

5:13 I think the letter D is just implemented by Agricola. Not original Finnish sound, but nowadays pretty easy for the Finns to pronounce like the letter F. D is sometimes pronounced as R or T, or not at all, it depends where are you from. I usually drop it out because it feels more natural than literary Finnish no one really speaks.

[@Bisqwit]

So how do you pronounce “kädet” for example? Or “kadulla”?

[@leopartanen9431]

@@Bisqwit I pronounce kädet as kädet, but many people say it as "käet". I think that without teaching the D sound in schools, we could say those words as "käthet" and "kathulla" or some other variations of those words. If you understand Finnish you can check the letter D in Finnish language from wikipedia: fi.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D

[@singleturbosupra7951]

@@leopartanen9431 Reminded me that some people actually also say "käjet". But I don't believe "käjet" has evolved straight from "kädet", instead I think it may have evolved from the "käet" you mentioned

[@okaro6595]

The original sound was th in some Western dialects. It was written with Ð or D. Later the "th" spelling disappeared and the the learned started to pronounce it as D. There it spread to the official language. It became adopted in normal speech on some areas but on traditional dialects there is no D.

[@uikonimi]

The word herne used to end in a consonant a long time ago, that's why hernekeitto is pronounced with long k. Same happens with the word vene.

[@Josh350]

Gracias por tu video Bisqwit. Es muy interesante aprender sobre tu idioma. Thank you for your video, Bisqwit. It's really interesting to learn about your language.

[@koveek]

I am super confused about the Finnish or the IPA for it to be exact. The Finnish is pronounced exactly like the German , as far I can hear. So the IPA should be /ɛ/ not /e/. The German ≠ the Finnish imo, but I could be wrong

[@Bisqwit]

The perception of phonemes depends really on one’s own background. For example, I have really hard time hearing any difference between the English /i/ (feet) and /ɪ/ (bit), or between /ɑ/ (palm) and /ʌ/ (cut), or between /u/ (boot) and /ʊ/ (hook), and many other examples. I guess you are German? To me, the example German pronunciation of /e/ in Dresden at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden (click the speaker icon in the first paragraph) sounds exactly like the Finnish ⟨e⟩, while the /ɛ/ in Nuremberg at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg sounds to me like the Finnish ⟨ö⟩, that is /ø/. The /ɛ/ in Berlin at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin sounds to me like something between the Finnish ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ö⟩. The /ɛ/ in Essen at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essen sounds to me like something between the Finnish ⟨e⟩ /e/ and ⟨ä⟩ /æ/, which is exactly where it should be according to the IPA vowel chart. In conclusion, in every language there are plenty of allophones to any given phoneme between different speakers or even with the same speaker, as long as there is no confusion. I spoke about allophones a bit at 6:39, although I covered only one example (allophones of /h/). -I couldn’t find any placename on the German map with ä in it, so I could not compare.- Allgäu according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allg%C3%A4u is pronounced with /ɔ/, so that is out of picture, as is the company of Löwenbräu. The product name of Jägermeister seems to be pronounced with /ɛː/ just like the German ⟨e⟩ in most cases apparently, so that is also out of picture. Dräger(werk) and Kärcher had no example pronunciation. Möckern and Drömling had no example pronunciation, but the /ø/ in Schönebeck at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6nebeck sounds pretty much the same as the Finnish ⟨ö⟩.

[@Lattamonsteri]

:O I never thought of it before but G is a funny letter since it doesn't occur in Finnish alone, but it's quite commonly found next to N (ng). :P This video teaches even native Finns well, good job :D

[@mattiamele3015]

Actually, Japanese is timing-wise pretty much the way you describe Finnish. It's based on morae, not on syllable. A syllable can be variable in its duration, while morae are all pronounced with the same length. The major difference arises when you consider long vowels and double consinants. In Japanese, the extra length that turns a short vowel into a long one counts as a mora. Ditto for consonants. The nasal which is not tied to a vowel in a single syllabe (like n in "na" or m in "m") is transliterated as "n" but it's very variable phonetically and most often velar or uvular but without audible release. That one, too, counts as a separate mora. Let's take the two words obasan and obaasan, meaning "auntie" and "grandma". Considering that aa is a long vowel, one can say they are both consisting of three syllables. However, they are resectively divided into four and five moras, each supposed to have the same duration.

[@Bisqwit]

It is quite similar indeed - which is why Japanese pronunciation is quite easy for Finnish speakers to learn - but I did list it separately with mora timing in the slide at 8:10, because it was described differently in the material I used as sources for this video. There are some differences. For example, in Finnish, “minua" (partitive form of I) and “minuna" (essive form of I) are pronounced with slightly different duration. “Valta" (governing power) is pronounced much longer than “vala” (oath). “Vatsa” (stomach) is pronounced longer than “vasa” (calf). In Japanese, syllables with a single vowel, or a consonant and vowel, are pronounced same length, and つ (tsu) does not differ in length from と (to) or う (u).

[@tammy-0]

i'm french and we have both [ø] and [œ]. at 2:02, your pronunciation of "ö" sounds very much like [œ], not [ø]. furthemore, your french example, "jeûne", has [œ] in it rather than [ø] (as you can check on wiktionary). what's the deal? does finnish sometimes pronounce "ö" as [ø] and sometimes as [œ]? is this an accent thing? or am i missing something?

[@Bisqwit]

As Finnish language has only the vowels listed in the chart, for every vowel there is a wide range of acceptable variation which are all interpreted as the same vowel.

[@tammy-0]

@@Bisqwit makes sense! thanks for the speedy clarification :3

[@kahnfatman]

When Bisqwit starts out with something REALLLLY simple (like a blank editor screen lol)... be prepared for much much more complication later :D Seriously though, I also have a strong taste for linguistics and programming. Do you enjoy cooking too?! Vietnamese food tastes AWESOME!

[@itsme-jj7zk]

Thank you 🙏 very helpful

[@user-mm2tw1zr7p]

Very well explained 👍🏻

[@Bisqwit]

Thank you!

[@ImperatorGrausam]

Wow Bisqwit, not only do you make retrocomputing videos but also linguistics! I have an interest in both of those things. Anyway, Uralic languages do interest me a lot. I wonder how much Hungarian Finnish people can understand. Also if you make a video on Finnish morphology I'd bet it'd take more than 20 hours. Your noun cases are all over the place and I love it.

[@Bisqwit]

In general, Finnish cannot understand a word of Hungarian. It is completely opaque. Only linguists can see some similarities.

[@singleturbosupra7951]

There are only very very few words where you can kind of see that they most likely have come from same origins. But mostly the Hungarian vocabulary is completely different. In fact it sometimes seems it has way more in common with Turkic languages, since Hungarian has some loanwords from there historically. They also seem to have some loans from Slavic languages here and there, most likely because they are quite in between many Slavic countries. But from what I've understood the grammar rules and stuff like that are quite similar to Finnish.

[@distar7471]

@@Bisqwit I tell people this and they don believe me, while they also know far less about languages overall. Of course they end up shocked ŁØŁ.

[@gabrielmunoz9255]

i really like finnish, i hope learn it someday, excellent video by the way!!

[@speggeri90]

Why not start today?

[@unevenprankster]

Hmm, now I know a bit more about finnish, it may be odd compared to languages like mine (portuguese, but from brazil, which has a lot of changes to meanings of words in special) but that makes it the more interesting and quite deep in phonology.

[@tomh6339]

Your speech is so meticulously constructed that I had to go looking for errors. I find it interesting that you sometimes substitute a voiced fricative where there should be a voiceless one (saying 'dhing' instead of 'thing', i.e. substituting eth for thorn). Of course this makes perfect sense because, as you explain, there are no voiced fricatives and almost no voiced plosives in Finnish so it's not a distinction that comes naturally to you - and with the jettisoning of the written distinction between eth and thorn in English even the spelling is no help to you.

[@PreyMa]

First time to get an intro to Finnish, the similarities to German (my native lang.) are really amazing!

[@paziipa]

Interesting serie, loving it!

[@Yoshimidsu]

Love your voice

[@rochr4]

These felt like your programming tutorials!

[@MidanMagistrate]

So, I was learning russian for about 2 years, before I quit and picked up Finnish. People say its one of the hardest languages to learn, but, I'm learning it a lot better than I was learning russian

[@muhammadhabibjawady552]

I'm impressed by your Arabic :o

[@alborn4217]

I think he's Muslim.

[@Bisqwit]

Under no circumstances.

[@4aasdaw]

I have to say I enjoy every time you touch upon linguistics, although it might be because of personal bias. I hope you continue the series and expand more than just phonetics, which, although interesting, isn't nearly as interesting as grammar. Once again, it might be due to my mother tounge being Serbian, which has most sounds present in European languages. In the case you never get around to tackling more complex topics, I have to ask: Is Finnish a subject-less language (at least optionally)? I know zero person leaves it to context, but is there an equivalent of "He called me" that ommits the subject? Does Finnish have a polite verb form? Does Finnish allow pre- (or post-) position prefixes/suffixes on verbs/words in general? I.e. do vs. redo, etc. In Serbian, verbs can be transitive, intransitive or reflexive (which is then split into true and false reflexiveness). A reflexive verb always has the additional reflexive pronoun 'self' and usually indicates that the action happened on its own, or that the subject is the object of the action. Does something similar exist in Finnish?

[@Bisqwit]

In general you don’t leave the subject out, but there is a passive verb mode where the subject is not named. English has something similar: I was called. In the Finnish equivalent, the word for "I" is object, not subject. There is no subject. This also answers your last question. Finnish does not have a polite verb form, but there are circumvent ways to express things politively. There is also a difference between written (formal) Finnish and spoken Finnish. Written Finnish has more grammatical cases than spoken Finnish tends to have, and the words are a bit longer. "I am" would be always written "minä olen" (or just "olen"), but it can be spoken, depending on dialect, "mä oon", "mie olen", or some other way. The personal pronoun can however always be omitted if it is evident from the verb conjugation, as is the case here, so simply "olen" would suffice in both written and spoken language. This also touches your first question. The first and second person in both singular and plural are such that the pronoun is usually redundant. In third person (singular or plural) it is not omitted, because there are multiple options who they might be and the verb alone is not enough to name it. Finnish has some prefixes, but they are not the same as in English. For example, we could say "overcooked" or "precooked" using the "yli-" or "esi-" prefixes respectively, but we do not have equivalent translations for "redo" or "undo". The famous longest word in Finnish begins with the prefix "epä-", which basically means non-.

[@Zarniwooper]

Marja-Liisa Haemaelaeinen. That haunts me from my childhood.

[@monomere]

hmm, пять in russian is usually pronounced without the й so like “a” but a little different i guess..

[@okaro6595]

"Vauva" - most pronounce it with long v. Many put long v in "lauantai" and say "lauvvantai". Long o became "uo" but that happened before the writing system was standardized so we spell it as "uo" like "Suomi" (Estonia: Soome). That means long O is rare in Finnish as is long E.

[@xmvziron]

4:59 Those sound more like ejective stops.

[@gazehound]

so that's the pattern i hear in your english, you emphasize the first syllable like finnish

[@louisparry-mills9132]

How many languages do you speak? It seems like you hint at speaking Hebrew? Did you learn that for your own religious purposes or just curiousity about Judeo-Christian theology? Also I'm really glad I came across your channel these videos are v interesting to me. I'll probably never learn Finnish but it's a fascinating language and I think the accent in English is charming

[@Bisqwit]

I know Finnish and English really well, and some bits of Japanese, Swedish, Hebrew, and Estonian, in descending order of skill. I teach Israeli folk dance and sometimes Torah too, so I try to learn enough to know what I am talking about. And sometimes things just stick, so I have memorized some songs, prayers and even every-day phrases in Hebrew. But I have never actually studied the language.

[@pavelkovalyov3176]

Do Finnish people use more than two vowels at the same time to express some kind of thing which lasts sooo loooong? (well, not officially but just in non-formal conversation) And as someone already said: you pronounced "пять" as "пйять" (but we still get that ;) ) Also, I think the difficulty of Finnish phonology can't be compared with its syntax. But that's a topic for a lot of videos. So thank you, Joel, for your comprehensive guide!

[@potatoos]

Sometimes i think

[@freezedeve3119]

yes, you can use longer one, example "tosi pitkä" (really long) you can say "toooosi pitkä" which makes it sound really long ;D. In Finnish spoken language way you say it gives a lot of meaning to it, so same thing can have different meaning even opposite if you say it right way.

[@Vampier]

Another interesting things is that it doesn’t have female and male forms. As a Dutch speaker I probably would pronounce it a whole lot different..... I had a few Fins in stitches when I did it once ;)

[@vs-cw1wc]

0:14 what are those little symbols beneath the vowels?

[@Bisqwit]

They are details, only meaningful to some linguists. I only showed them briefly to acknowledge the fact that the vowel is articulated in a particular manner that is not important to most readers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet#Diacritics_and_prosodic_notation

[@geneverde]

omg this video is gold

[@sourestcake]

Gemination on morpheme boundaries happens because of lost final consonants. It can happen between any morpheme, such as in your "älä menekään" example, because the final consonant of the second-person singular imperative there is lost. Here's the Wiktionary page for the Proto-Finnic ancestor of "mennä": en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Finnic/mend%C3%A4k

[@stardusssr]

that was really good

[@jet69399]

the star ocean music in the background

[@no-ld3hz]

Hell yeah, now i can pronounce everything in Noita

[@cobaltxii]

sauvojen tuntija

[@tlatai]

@@cobaltxii peitsivartija

[@familiagaraguso]

My heart jumped out of my bloody chest when you said "hyvää iltaa!" ja minä aioin kysyä jos olit Suomesta

[@Bisqwit]

Well duh…

[@fruitcake7789]

In Russian vowel sounds can be preceded with "j" phonogram or not, depending on the previous consonant. The word ПЯТЬ is actually "phaet", not "pjaeti".

[@Bisqwit]

The "t" in that word is palatalized, and I did my best interpretation of a /tʲ/.

[@fruitcake7789]

@@Bisqwit Yes, it's palatalized at the end. But another thing is that I was saying, is that some vowels have two forms in Russian. А, Я, Е, Ё, Э, И, Ы, О, У, Ю: А: A Я: ha (short "ja"), ja Е: e, je Ё: ho (short "jo"), jo Э: eh И: i Ы: y О: o У: u Ю: hju (short "ju"), ju I hope I got it right. Something like that. I'm a native speaker of Russian but I may have forgotten some of the details. As an example: the word ЯБЛОКО = JABLOKO (uses "ja") ПЯТЬ = PhAT' (uses short "ja")

[@franklinm9775]

thanks for this video can you post more videos about finnish language thank you

[@djzx]

My favorite chanel on youtube :-) Kör hårt ;-)

[@golsam4592]

Wow!!!! I'm loving it

[@calebgindelberger3046]

Came for the compiler. Stayed for the accent. Learning Finnish phonology? Sure why not

[@dripman78]

Finnish language sounds both cute and sophisticated.

[@treyquattro]

thanks! Now I can move to Finland and join Bisqwit, Laurie and Anni of Hydraulic Press Channel ("heedroolic prrress chnnl") and Kimi Raikonnen (no umlauts on this keyboard, sorry)

[@Bisqwit]

His name is Lauri! But yeah, welcome :-)

[@Lattamonsteri]

Are linja-auto and iki-ihana part of phonetics studies or do they fall more into grammar studies? :P Then there's also those pesky words like i'issä or something ("in ages") and raa'an ("of a raw") :P

[@Bisqwit]

Are you talking about the dash in the middle? That would be grammar. Same with the concept of syllables. Are you talking about the glottal stop in the middle, if a speaker chooses to do that? That would be phonetics.

[@Lattamonsteri]

@@Bisqwit Yes those ones :D I was just wondering if they both have an effect on the phonetics since in both occasions you pause for a millisecond :D

[@gaving.griffon2703]

So, when will we be getting lessons on finnish grammar?

[@mattiamele3015]

I noticed something interesting. When you pronounce "lahja" the sound you use for h is actually a [ħ], not a [x]. It's the same as the Arabic ح.

[@Bisqwit]

I may have difficulty telling those two phonemes apart…

[@jing2404]

You don't wanna say "Koe" in Thailand with that accent 😂😂😂 TOO MUCH KOE- OH MY GOD-

[@Alonoda]

Thanks for such a Hebrew friendly Finnish tutorial but they're too different to make it easy for me haha

[@thesuomi8550]

There actually are words with long v and long j (vauva and kaija) even though they're written with only one v or j

[@Bisqwit]

Maybe in some dialects. I don’t pronounce them with a long v or a long j.

[@thesuomi8550]

@@Bisqwit I highly doubt that, never heard anyone not say those with a long v or j

[@Bisqwit]

To be fair, those are not words I say often. But I stand by what I wrote above.

[@thesuomi8550]

@@Bisqwit alright then, official pronunciation for those is with a long consonant though so if you actually pronounce them with a short one then that's pretty interesting. Maybe one way to try it is if you try to pronounce vauva and then vauvva with a long v and see if there's a big difference

[@singleturbosupra7951]

Itse en suoraan sanottuna edes tiedä tai osaa kuvitella miltä kuulostaisi sanoa Kaija "yhdellä" j:llä :D Olisiko se vähän niinku sanois "Kai" ja "Ja" niinku ne olis eri sanoja?

[@ScaryHutmanPictures]

But what do you do when there is no ÖÄÜ? Simply write OAU instead?

[@comptegoogle4313]

Scary_Hutman std::dbg( &n );

[@Bisqwit]

Finnish does not use Ü. If you don’t have Ä and Ö, you write A and O instead. Even though it sometimes conveys a different word (for example, söin = I ate, soin = I emit musical sounds; näin = I saw, nain = I marry/make love), usually you can guess from context what the writer meant.

[@lk7554]

I would love to learn finnish but I can' t trill the r... It is so frustrating to learn a language when you are not able to pronounce the language correctly.

[@singleturbosupra7951]

Have you yet got it? I have understood that if you don't learn to roll the r when child, it can be quite tough to learn when adult.

[@Bisqwit]

Instead of a trill, a tap [ɾ] as in Spanish or [ɺ] as in Japanese will work in most cases for a short r, as long as it’s distinct from [d] and [t].

[@G0NZA11]

How many (human) languages do you know?

[@Bisqwit]

Depends what qualifies as “knowing”.

[@G0NZA11]

@@Bisqwit Know the basic, A2 level or less maybe

[@Bisqwit]

I guess that’s three then.

[@jacksonamaral329]

i enjoyed it.

[@Chriva]

I only have to know one phrase: "voi vittu". Swearing is universal lol

[@jimiyimi]

Perkele

[@SirusStarTV]

Paska

[@mercedesmarton3768]

As a Hungarian, it makes more sense than to an English speaker. 😊🟥⬜🟩

[@FromG2eminor]

I'm American who knows and loves Hungarian. I see what you are saying. Both languages are so beautiful.

[@lerias8027]

How smart are you? Talented in many ways! Nice!

[@okaro6595]

7:45 I had to listen three times to hear the difference.

[@lelandclayton5462]

With English I before E except after C. Yet there are 6,140 English words that do not follow that rule lol.

[@ThIrDWatCher]

It's 2 am and here we go again

[@proot.]

Pretty neat that both American English and Finnish have /ɑ/ and /æ/ phonemes

[@rieblogs7859]

Just moved to Finland, and I’m struggling to understand suome

[@Bisqwit]

Unless your background is Estonian, the vocabulary will be a big challenge, as it does not resemble much any other language. Phonetically and grammatically the challenge depends on what your language background is. People from agglutinative language backgrounds such as Polish or Turkish will have much less trouble with grammar than people from English, Chinese or German backgrounds, and people from Spanish, Italian or Japanese backgrounds will have much less trouble with phonetics than people from English, Arabic or French backgrounds.

[@ruma9687]

First off, welcome, secondly, you wrote that 11 months ago, still struggling or has it got any easier?

[@rieblogs7859]

@@ruma9687 still struggling. Thanks

[@dudeawsomeness1]

I want to learn all these languages (Hebrew, french) and welsh

[@quranreader7616]

yes thanks

[@worldwidegame5668]

Make video about coding an operating system.

[@hikari_no_yume]

Why does Finnish use Y instead of Ü, and why do I already know the answer has to do with Sweden? :p

[@Bisqwit]

Because otherwise Y would be unused. It is likely that Agricola, the founder of literary Finnish, adopted it from Swedish. Finland was occupied by Sweden at that time, in the 1500s.

[@okaro6595]

@@Bisqwit Finland was not occupied by Sweden but an integral part of Sweden.

[@MillyKKitty]

Suoli mainittu, vessassa tavataan.

[@xampzie4995]

I was going in this lesson sayin pff eady than u pulled out the rules and since im an english speaker it confuses me

[@Bisqwit]

Speaking of rules, I think learning about English grammar could be beneficial for you. I am having trouble making sense of what you wrote.

[@xampzie4995]

@@Bisqwit I was trying to say at first it looked easy and than I just saw a bunch of stuff i didn't get, I might need to take 3rd grade english again...

[@Bisqwit]

Thanks for the clarification. Yep, learning spelling would help too :-) It’s “then” when describing consecutive actions, “than” when comparing things.