The Finnish Language

This video is a mini-documentary about the Finnish Language. First I investigate the history of the Finnish language before dissecting some of its important features.
Are you learning Finnish? Click the link to get a free account at FinnishPod101: ► bit.ly/Finnishpod101 ◄
(Disclosure: if you upgrade to a premium account, Langfocus gets a small referral fee that helps support this channel.)
Special thanks to Atte Kankkunen, Iida Virtanen, and Tura Satana for their audio recordings and advice.
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Special thanks to: Nicholas Shelokov, Brandon Gonzalez, 谷雨 穆, Adrian Zhang, Vadim Sobolev, Yixin Alfred Wong, Kaan Ergen, Sky Vied, Romain Paulus, Panot, Erik Edelmann, Bennet, James Zavaleta, Ulrike Baumann, Ian Martyn, Justin Faist, Jeff Miller, Stephen Lawson, Howard Stratton, George Greene, Ian Martyn, and Panthea Madjidi for their generous Patreon support.
Nicholas Shelokov, Brandon Gonzalez, and Adrian Zhang, Yixin Alfred Wang, and Vadim Sobolev.
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Music: Intro: "Sax Attack" by Dougie Wood.
Body: Actually, Like by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Artist: www.twinmusicom.org/
Outro: "Circular" by Gunnar Olsen.

[@Langfocus]

Hi everyone! If you're learning Finnish, check out FinnishPod101 ►( bit.ly/Finnishpod101 ) ◄ - one of the best ways to learn Finnish. I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do! For 31 other languages, check out my review! ► langfocus.com/innovative-language-podcasts/ ◄ (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it, and the free account is pretty good on its own

[@mull529]

I have lived in Finland for 20 years. My native language is English. The language for an English speaker is very difficult for multiple reasons. First, the grammar is just a mess of changing the pronunciation of normally several words in any one sentence. Because of these changes, when one listens to people speaking one doesn't hear words repeated nearly enough to imbed them. Also, The written language and the spoken language are not the same. People on the streets speak with shortened words or in regions there are simply different ways of pronouncing, even different words for the same thing. Another reason it is hard to learn is that Finnish people actually love to practice their English with you. I have gone into a store many time thinking I will not speak English, but the second they hear my accent they change to English, and learning for me fails. I could go on but it appears that some people have easier times learning than others. Must do it complaining the whole time about how hard it is.

[@_frogster_]

I dont need no learning im finland so nah

[@underkidsau5801]

Bruh I tell you they have this for every language

[@underkidsau5801]

@Matty Bruno Lucas Zenere Salas yeah but Europeans arent lazy like Americans so.... By the way clothing spoke about 5% of the population so wouldn't help you that much, it's like learning Arabic to go to the United States

[@jessebrettjames]

@@underkidsau5801 Do not generalize. I am American and speak 10 languages with more than half of these with relative fluency

[@aspexpl]

Fact : about 70 people in Finland don't belong to a metal band.

[@muuumipeikko2245]

+Stéphane Pierrejeu (Asp Explorer) Or have a sauna

[@murrayaronson3753]

+Stéphane Pierrejeu (Asp Explorer) I've read that classical music is very big in Finland because of music education in the schools. I've heard contemporary Finnish classical music including opera (Kullervo for example) and there many Finnish composers, conductors, and soloists (Esa-Pekka Salonen & Karita Massila to name a couple). So there are Finns who don't belong to metal bands and just might be part of a string quartet.

[@RossWasTaken]

+heikki tiitola when i went finland, i was in a shitty hotel, but even then we had our own sauna 🙂 Finland id the best country confirmed

[@tomaszantochow8391]

+Murray Aronson But metal is quite related to classical. A lot of Hardrock and metalheads also listen to classical. SO that doesn't mean they belong to either one, they probably belong to both ;). I mean, heck, I'm a metalhead and I love me some decent classical, so goes for most of my friends and mates I play in some gaming clans with.

[@jvc8949]

+Stéphane Pierrejeu (Asp Explorer) Maybe a little overstatement. Yes, I am finnish and I have been a guitarist in metal band. And my brother has also been in metal band. So when I think about it, maybe that is quite accurate statement.

[@Pyovali]

-Kokko, kokoo kokkoo koko kokko. -Koko kokkoko? -Koko kokko. Finnish is pure poetry.

[@robertandersson1128]

+Hikikamari What does it mean?

[@Latsilae]

+Robert Andersson The first one lacks an n from the end of 'kokkoo', then it would be something along the lines of - Assemble the whole bonfire (when some of the bonfire has already been assembled) The second and third ones are a continuation of the conversation. - The whole bonfire? - The whole bonfire.

[@robertandersson1128]

Graf Von Muffintof ‘Assemble the whole bonfire’? Why would you assemble half a bonfire? Or for that matter, a third of a bonfire? How would you do that? To quote Sheldon Cooper, ‘You can’t make a half sandwich, if it is not half of a whole sandwich it’s just a small sandwich.’ You can’t assemble a half or even a portion of a bonfire, you must assemble a whole bonfire and then cut it in half to create a half bonfire or otherwise it’s just a small bonfire. Anyway, thank you for responding. Since you speak Finnish I assume you live in Finland, with that said there is a 1/20 chance you can understand the following sentence: Tack så mycket!

[@Pyovali]

Graf Von Muffintof The n is missing intentionally; this is spoken Finnish.

[@Latsilae]

Robert Andersson Context is key. Theres a unilateral understanding what a bonfire should look like, 'a small bonfire' is no more than a fire. A bonfire is large heap of sticks and other waste material worth burning. At least in the Finnish countryside, the understanding is prelevant and set in stone. Its like; a bucket of water is a whole bucket of water, its not half or a third of a bucket. Swedish wasnt my best subject in school. I can generally understand some of it but translation to Finnish or English would be hard. I guess it means 'thanks a lot!'

[@e.f.3703]

Finnish: has no grammatical gender me: "Well, maybe this wouldn't be too hard to learn" Finnish: also has 15 grammatical cases me: "Finland is too cold anyway"

[@1Leggo9my9Eggo2]

I was literally thinking the same thing, it’s either the easiest language I’ve heard about or the hardest just based on what he explained in the video.

[@idraote]

Cases are not necessarily a bad thing because they are usually regular. In a language like English, you never know which is the correct preposition. As a learner of English it took me years to get a feel for English prepositions.

[@arturgouveia3491]

Finnish is the one of the most difficult languages to learn

[@edibleandsentientautomobil5396]

Eh, the Finns can speak English pretty well anyway

[@tuomoluukkanen7265]

@@1Leggo9my9Eggo2 As a native speaker, I think that number seems artificially inflated. Just as English-speakers often specify their case with an additional description like 'from' --> 'from inside', Finnish just glues that those together to a sort of a "frominside". The tricky part for non-natives , though, is the gluing all those parts together -- for example the plural signifier hops into the middle part of the word, and might or might not affect the root of the word.

[@FLS96]

This man knows things about my language that I don't.

[@Langfocus]

But you can speak it! 😃

[@gorillaman_]

Miksi et sitten harjoittele🤔 is in english why don't you then practice🤔

[@druganema8219]

Suomi

[@noobrieieiibmgo9004]

@@Langfocus i speak finnish

[@kaleviperse8651]

Idiootti

[@hh-ei2nq]

English: "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly" Finnish: "Juoksentelisinkohan"

[@simo9482]

Juoksen ympäri ämpäri. Se on kieli vinkki.

[@SilusValeriusVT]

Sinä olet hauska

[@jaredf6205]

Not really different than "Iwonderifishouldrunaroundaimlessly"

[@AtifAslam-vg3cn]

ihmettelen, pitäisikö minun juosta ympäriinsä päämäärättömästi

[@maryp4563]

Kielestä huolimatta vastaus on kyllä

[@TheRealFOSFOR]

A few different ways to bend the word "dog" (koira) in Finnish: Koira, koiran, koiraa, koiran, koirassa, koirasta, koiraan, koiralla, koiralta, koiralle, koirana, koiraksi, koiratta, koirineen, koirin, koirasi, koirani, koiransa, koiramme, koiranne, koiraani, koiraasi, koiraansa, koiraamme, koiraanne, koirassani, koirassasi, koirassansa, koirassamme, koirassanne, koirastani, koirastasi, koirastansa, koirastamme, koirastanne, koirallani, koirallasi, koirallansa, koirallamme, koirallanne, koiranani, koiranasi, koiranansa, koiranamme, koirananne, koirakseni, koiraksesi, koiraksensa, koiraksemme, koiraksenne, koirattani, koirattasi, koirattansa, koirattamme, koirattanne, koirineni, koirinesi, koirinensa, koirinemme, koirinenne, koirakaan, koirankaan, koiraakaan, koirassakaan, koirastakaan, koiraankaan, koirallakaan, koiraltakaan, koirallekaan, koiranakaan, koiraksikaan, koirattakaan, koirineenkaan, koirinkaan, koirako, koiranko, koiraako, koirassako, koirastako, koiraanko, koirallako, koiraltako, koiralleko, koiranako, koiraksiko, koirattako, koirineenko, koirinko, koirasikaan, koiranikaan, koiransakaan, koirammekaan, koirannekaan, koiraanikaan, koiraasikaan, koiraansakaan, koiraammekaan, koiraannekaan, koirassanikaan, koirassasikaan, koirassansakaan, koirassammekaan, koirassannekaan, koirastanikaan, koirastasikaan, koirastansakaan, koirastammekaan, koirastannekaan, koirallanikaan, koirallasikaan, koirallansakaan, koirallammekaan, koirallannekaan, koirananikaan, koiranasikaan, koiranansakaan, koiranammekaan, koiranannekaan, koiraksenikaan, koiraksesikaan, koiraksensakaan, koiraksemmekaan, koiraksennekaan, koirattanikaan, koirattasikaan, koirattansakaan, koirattammekaan, koirattannekaan, koirinenikaan, koirinesikaan, koirinensakaan, koirinemmekaan, koirinennekaan, koirasiko, koiraniko, koiransako, koirammeko, koiranneko, koiraaniko, koiraasiko, koiraansako, koiraammeko, koiraanneko, koirassaniko, koirassasiko, koirassansako, koirassammeko, koirassanneko, koirastaniko, koirastasiko, koirastansako, koirastammeko, koirastanneko, koirallaniko, koirallasiko, koirallansako, koirallammeko, koirallanneko, koirananiko, koiranasiko, koiranansako, koiranammeko, koirananneko, koirakseniko, koiraksesiko, koiraksensako, koiraksemmeko, koiraksenneko, koirattaniko, koirattasiko, koirattansako, koirattammeko, koirattanneko, koirineniko, koirinesiko, koirinensako, koirinemmeko, koirinenneko, koirasikaanko, koiranikaanko, koiransakaanko, koirammekaanko, koirannekaanko, koiraanikaanko, koiraasikaanko, koiraansakaanko, koiraammekaanko, koiraannekaanko, koirassanikaanko, koirassasikaanko, koirassansakaanko, koirassammekaanko, koirassannekaanko, koirastanikaanko, koirastasikaanko, koirastansakaanko, koirastammekaanko, koirastannekaanko, koirallanikaanko, koirallasikaanko, koirallansakaanko, koirallammekaanko, koirallannekaanko, koirananikaanko, koiranasikaanko, koiranansakaanko, koiranammekaanko, koiranannekaanko, koiraksenikaanko, koiraksesikaanko, koiraksensakaanko, koiraksemmekaanko, koiraksennekaanko, koirattanikaanko, koirattasikaanko, koirattansakaanko, koirattammekaanko, koirattannekaanko, koirinenikaanko, koirinesikaanko, koirinensakaanko, koirinemmekaanko, koirinennekaanko, koirasikokaan, koiranikokaan, koiransakokaan, koirammekokaan, koirannekokaan, koiraanikokaan, koiraasikokaan, koiraansakokaan, koiraammekokaan, koiraannekokaan, koirassanikokaan, koirassasikokaan, koirassansakokaan, koirassammekokaan, koirassannekokaan, koirastanikokaan, koirastasikokaan, koirastansakokaan, koirastammekokaan, koirastannekokaan, koirallanikokaan, koirallasikokaan, koirallansakokaan, koirallammekokaan, koirallannekokaan, koirananikokaan, koiranasikokaan, koiranansakokaan, koiranammekokaan, koiranannekokaan, koiraksenikokaan, koiraksesikokaan, koiraksensakokaan, koiraksemmekokaan, koiraksennekokaan, koirattanikokaan, koirattasikokaan, koirattansakokaan, koirattammekokaan, koirattannekokaan, koirinenikokaan, koirinesikokaan, koirinensakokaan, koirinemmekokaan, koirinennekokaan And yes... there are more.

[@jaanaenkerro445]

tossa on kaks kertaa koiran.... :P jk yllätti mutkin

[@haelidh]

Genitiivi ja akkusatiivi :p

[@jaanaenkerro445]

+Allard88 jos et muistuta nii en kyllä yhtää muista mikä on akkusatiivi

[@haelidh]

Mä muistan, koska suomi ei ole mun äidinkieli ;)

[@TheRealFOSFOR]

genetiivi: esim. tohveli on koiran purulelu. akkusatiivi: esim. Minä omistan tohvelia pureskelevan koiran.

[@daphneedescends]

I'm greek and I want to share a funny story with my finnish friends: The old greek flag is the same as finnish flag, EXCEPT, the cross is white and the rest is blue. When we were around 5 to 7 y.o. in school, in national holiday days (2 times per year) the teachers would give us flags with only the lineart of the flag, for us to colour. Me and some other kids, always messed the colours up and practically drew the finnish flag. The teachers would explain that this is not the right way, but never excluded us from the feast. So every kid would hold its flag for the school feast, only about 1/4-1/3 of them were practically finnish ones. The finnish flag might be the first flag I knew apart from greek for that reason.

[@user-jh8cf4ib3k]

Απευθείας από το 3ο ΕΠΑΛ Ελσίνκι

[@thiefs9882]

@@user-jh8cf4ib3k xaxaxaxa

[@miikasalo]

Yeah the same happens in Finland :D We make old Greek flags...

[@DrMariannaWWinchester]

​@@user-jh8cf4ib3k 😂😂😂

[@JuanSanchez-jv4mc]

I think the Finnish language sound similar to Latin or Greek. I mean that its pronunciation is very easy to repeat for those of us who speak languages derived from Latin like spanish.

[@esonoimporta1750]

Learning Finnish is no joke. I learn Finnish and now am at intermediate level and learning a different language can really open your mind. You literally have to change your way of thinking and approach to the language.

[@ozkupelaileenyc4330]

Kauanko olet opiskellut

[@harrijaskari5450]

There are studies showing that part of the FInland's success is due to the language. It's logic and how we handle things with it. It also belongs into the 10 oldest languages existing. Basque is also there, but ENglish, Spanish, French, German.... nope.

[@BrassBoy-ot4sy]

I feel that. I speak two West Germanic languages (English and Afrikaans) and one Latin language (Spanish), and I understand what you mean. But it must be even more so for you.

[@MonsieurChapeau]

Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s very interesting to me as a speaker of Indo-European languages. Looking at the examples I can imagine one’s brain would need to rewire quite a bit. It must be a great reward!

[@JoonaBruh]

Finnish is easy. Perkele and Noni. The only words you need to sruvive in Finland.

[@TheNismo777]

Clearly you can write lol Takasin sinne kouluun perkele!

[@voivitunvittu1928]

Lololol

[@JoonaBruh]

@@voivitunvittu1928 Ja kerta osaat noin hyvin suomea selitä sana äpärä

[@ililiililliliill9498]

Noni on kieltämättä tärkee

[@Emmis135]

Noniin 😂😂 se käy literally kaikkeen jopa tähän

[@mateszegedi8972]

I’m Hungarian, also a Uralic language speaker, and for me, the Finnish grammar is soo logical.Finnish has a really close relation with the Hungarian language.The system of the two language is really close.I think your language is interesting and very beautiful! 🇭🇺❤️🇫🇮

[@taavittee]

Thank you, Hungary and Finland = Uralic brothers💪🇫🇮❤🇭🇺

[@anti-glassesgang7622]

hungarian is turkic

[@mateszegedi8972]

Anti-glasses Gang Nice joke😉

[@Zenfoni]

@@mateszegedi8972 Thats actually true, if you generally put the verbs in the end of sentence, omit palatalized double consonants from Hungarian alphabet, that's all same grammar and phonology rules with Turkish language. These three languages are from the same language family. Even your name is a Turkic name, Mete Han, founder of Central Asian Hun Empire in the history. Its not Mattias or something for this reason, but Turkic name Máté 😉

[@CatMC_1]

@@mateszegedi8972 not a joke, Hungarian is both 😉

[@zahrans]

To hear proto Finnic, all you need to do is to be near a drunk Finn

[@ducksareurlords3782]

Nah most you hear is just: öööÖööÖööÖÖÖÖ and perkele and also jumalauta

[@MacetazzOpina]

well that doesnt sound to hard to accomplish from what ive heard xD

[@Le0A]

Drunk finnish sounds like estonian :DDD

[@citadelofwinds1564]

Blotto Finn -> Proto Finnic. Close enough.

[@remittanceman4685]

I that the song about the little teddy bear?

[@stefanakerman6782]

I belong to 5% minority that speaks Swedish so had to learn Finnish in school. Found it difficult because my surrounding where totally Swedish spoken. At the end I went to Sweden to get my degree so I hadn't to worry to manage the Finnish in addition to all other courses. Now I am living in Finland again and manage in Finnish vere well. My children are bilingual so they speak both Finnish and Swedish as native languages, a huge advantage in the daily life and job applications.

[@moisuomi]

Try only Finnish

[@reidshadowlegends4328]

I kinda have the same thing. I also have Swedish as my mother tounge (on paper) but I've always spoken Finnish at home, I just got put into a swedish kindergarten, school etc. I'm glad i did learn Swedish from such a young age though cause many people complain about 'pakkoruotsi'.

[@papegooja]

samee

[@duckeh1952]

I am Finnish speaker living in west coast. You know what is funny? The Ostrobothian accent. No one else can understand it. We used to have group trips to Sweden and then there was always someone "Oh I can do the talking since I am Swedish speaker" and the Swedes did not understand. Also Swedish speakers from south coast (Helsinki-Turku and places between) don't understand Ostrobothian Swedish. I had one someone explaining this to me. Her husband was Swedish speaking from Ostrobothia but they lived in Kauniainen so their children had picked up the Swedish that was spoken there. And according to her its like two different languages. Also it's known that in ostrobothnia some struggle to pass in Swedish mat exam because they've only relied on their accent. We also had fun teacher at school, when she might have laughed our funny errors in Swedish class, she also kept telling lines that were made when she taught Finnish to Swedish speaking kids.

[@fransi7564]

Same i don't speak finnish at all, and its very hard to live here when I don't really understand any Finnish

[@FireKraftStudios]

Everybody gangsta until the grammar cases show up

[@masicbemester]

Not enough cases *heavy breathing*

[@oofyemma_240]

and i thought 6 cases in latin were a lot

[@FireKraftStudios]

@@oofyemma_240 same with Russian

[@masicbemester]

@@oofyemma_240 I think there is a language that has 64 cases or something like that

[@oofyemma_240]

@@masicbemester based

[@victormark2205]

Many years ago I was in Finland on a business trip. I nervously tried to learn Finnish. I did not do well. I walked up to a taxi driver in Lahti and said, “Puhutko englantia?” In a perfect New York accent he replied in a bored way, “Yeah. Where do you wanna go?”

[@tiuhti__]

I don't even want to know what a perfect new york finnish accent sounds like

[@edibleandsentientautomobil5396]

That taxi driver is badass

[@blackcoffeebeans6100]

In Finland ppl can speak english.

[@karontequinto917]

@@blackcoffeebeans6100 then if I go to Finland can I survive only on English alone?

[@WickedChickenz]

@@karontequinto917 Yes. We recently moved to Finland and things have been fine even though we don’t speak Finnish. Navigating the grocery store requires heavy use of Google Translate but other than that things have been fine.

[@Fabianelaube]

Hello there! Nice channel! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 I’m from Brazil and I’ve lived in Finland for 22 years. I can tell you that it was freaking hard at the beginning as you don’t understand 99,99% of it when it’s spoken to you. At first you only understand borrowed words from other languages such as “posti” for post office or post and names of countries like “Brasilia” for Brazil for example. So at first it just sounds like a bunch of T’s and K’s mixed with vowels. Once you start studying the grammar your brain explodes 🧠 🤣 as a speaker of Portuguese and being an English teacher I found it really hard to wrap my head around the cases and the postpositions. I’d say that it took me at least 3 years to “crack the code”. I can speak Finnish quite well after 22 years and sometimes I can even fool a Finn for a moment , but I still make mistakes with the cases, so they usually think I’m either Swedish or from the Swedish minority living here 😄 It’s quite an awesome thing though to be able to understand, speak and write in Finnish, something that I NEVER thought possible! So for those studying Finnish out there, keep going, one day it will all make sense! And it’s perfectly possible to learn it! Good luck! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻💜💜💜

[@eusela_99]

@@egoloegman1610 lol, why do you hate finnish?

[@lucca3371]

que história interessante! Tb tenho muito interesse na cultura finlandesa. Helsinque e o idioma são lindos

[@arturgouveia3491]

HEY! I'm from Brazil too and I'm also struggling to learn finnish :) such hard but yet beautifull tongue

[@salrk]

To be honest, the 15 grammatical cases seem to make the language easier, from a German perspective. It's easier to just add a suffix to indicate what's happening to a word instead of a preposition and an extra article. Finnish itself seems less difficult than people make it out to be, it's really just the vocabulary that's the challenge in my opinion! I'd rather learn Finnish, than, say, Russian, Greek or Polish.

[@Pyovali]

I think it's easier to add articles and prepositions because with suffixies, you have to always figure out how to conjugate the word and its attributes and utilize vowel harmony a top of it all. But once you learn it, it's like a new skill on its own. You can do such deductions subconsciously after a year or two. But to demonstrate my problem, for example: Eng.I walked into a big yellow house. Fin. Kävelin isoon keltaiseen taloon. With English, you just make walk past, add the preposition, and it's an 'a' because the first adjective 'big' starts with a consonant. With Finnish, you conjugate walk to match with person, tense and then conjugate every adjective that they picture. Another example is numbers: "From one hundred twenty-three million four hundred fifty-six thousand seven hundred eighty-nine" "miljoonasta kahdestasadastakolmestakymmenestäviidestäthuhannesta seitsemästäsadastakahdeksannestäkymmenestäyhdeksästä." Every number needs to be conjugated to _from._ It's a nightmare, I tell you.

[@arthurquito161]

you nailed it, now I'm gonna start learning Finnish, many thanks for that wonderful insight!

[@fanaticofmetal]

Ancient Greek and Latin barely had any prepositions, Latin only has a few that you don't need to use. Latin has this thing called the "Ablative" case which is a suffix that marks many meanings related to company, use, location and many many more Latin has 5 other cases which are also the cases Ancient Greek has : Nominative - Subject (*i* eat) Genitive - Possessor (*God's* will) Dative - Whom the action is to (I give it *to you*) Accusative - Direct object (I give *a book*) Vocative - Vocation (*Hey John*!)

[@smergthedargon8974]

@@fanaticofmetal What are you on about? Latin had a good few prepositions - in, ab, ad, prope, circum, etc.

[@veuxtuetremonami]

i met a linguist in finland. he was Romanian and knew 14 languages perfectly (it was impressive, he spoke with no accent) including very challenging ones. he told me that after he finally succeeded in learning Finnish (after many years actually living in helsinki) he realized it was its biggest success. "After you learn Finnish, you have the right to see yourself as the king of the world" he said

[@justink5000]

Which languages does he speak? Could you list them, I'm curious ;)

[@alexb9969]

Yeahh do you remember his name? I'm Romanian btw

[@seraphinpanlion9101]

i remember meeting a dutch finno-ugrist scholar who told me that after learning north sami and mari, finnish was easy lol. As a finnish learner I can't imagine how hard these languages are then

[@dovahkiin3379]

sounds like a case of lying for no reason

[@cacogenicist]

A _linguist_ or just a polyglot?

[@ristoalanko9281]

One peculiarity in English is the game "Spelling bee". To a Finn, that is completely incomprehensible. Finnish is "a letter makes a sound, always the same" language. If you know the word, you know how it is written and how it is split to syllables. That's first grade stuff in school. The pronunciation of English words is at first very strange.

[@senya6095]

Believe me, English spelling is very strange even to native speakers like myself.

[@grauwolf1604]

A letter makes a sound! Like that it has to be. It is weird if it is different.

[@Masterfortinero97]

Yep, the same thing happens in spanish and we mispronounce almost every english word xd

[@nikolaikim4649]

That's the most fascinating part of Finnish for me: you can reading aloud anything but have no clue to what it means.

[@sampokemppainen3041]

Spelling bee makes no sense in finnish. Also a big reason why rally drivers always sound the same when speaking english.

[@bjornsan]

The only finnish I knew as a kid was "Ei saa peittää". It was on a warning sticker on the radiator in the bathroom.

[@miikkak8955]

Yeah, the only sentence I (a Finn) have ever properly known in Norwegian 😂

[@tiuhti__]

Like wtf is this with the 'Ei saa peittää' my parents know it in Swedish as well why is this a thing

[@okaro6595]

@@tiuhti__ People were used to use water radiators to dry clothes. One should not do that with electric radiators as at worst it could cause fire so they put stickers.

[@eetuthereindeer6671]

Fun fact: i also have one of those radiators in my school apartment but it has a typing error. It is supposed to have 2 T's but it only has 1. It should say peittää but it says peitää. Thats such a dumb error to go for mass production because its very likely that the radiator there isn't the only one

[@eetuthereindeer6671]

Also it means "No allowing of covering" when translated straight but more simply just translated to "Do not cover"

[@olofholm8612]

Finnish is so logical, so consistent - and beautiful. And the spelling is without exception; you spell as it sounds.

[@blocksterz]

I speak Finnish ..what is your super power ?!

[@abrissimon914]

Hungarian...

[@BlindThunderr]

My super power: being a finn

[@hnas-]

My super power is having a polish father that speaks finnish, Estonia, hungarian, German, English, french and mainly polish

[@fisu8087]

breathing

[@ilkkamiinalainen7116]

ur mum

[@douglashamiltonswe]

I'm Swedish but Finland is by far the coolest country in this region. I used to work with people in Finland (office in Espoo) and I recall them as a little macho, very honest, no BS behind your back and with a big warm heart. Also, always straight and honest in doing business. In addition Helsinki is a beautiful Easter egg with all its great buildings and parks.

[@ronnygronholm8742]

@-Taistelu-Яotta - nope. Here in Kemi we love swedes.

[@richarddelionheart8308]

-Taistelu-Яotta - nope, the city i live in Finland also doesn’t hate swedes

[@pyromorph6540]

@-Taistelu-Яotta - Olet joko 11 tai ihan vitun lapsellinen. Sun suku on varmaan osittain Ruotsalaista ja eipä siellä enempää homoseksuaaleja ole kun suomessakaan. Suomalaiset ei vihaa ruotsalaisa ja meillä on hyvä suhde heihin. Joku ruotsalainen ihminen yrittää täällä antaa kehuja ja olla mukava niin jätkän pitää tulla vaan kommentoimaan että "Joo ei, mä vihaan sua". Koitappa olla vähän ystävällisempi ensi kerralla muille ihmisille, sä olet osa erittäin pientä populaatiota jolla on lapsellinen asenne ja keskimäärästä alhasempi älykkyyden osamäärä. Mutta luultavasti olet vielä 11 ja sinulla on paljon kypsyttävää. Hyvää päivän jatkoa.

[@koditonihminen6702]

Dumb people get caught talking smack.

[@fl4shi238]

@-Warkomm - Only during hockey game.

[@TheKentaurion]

I'm a swedish speaking Finn and I just adore the beautiful way to construct new words in Finnish. Not to mention Finnish poetry. Absolutely beautiful.🥰

[@lantapaukku7629]

As a german living in finland I have learned that speaking finnish is quite easy. You just keep your lips tight until you drink some booze. ;-)

[@aargiii5288]

Oh gosh i'm a German too living in finland

[@PeakApex]

Haha maybe it'll be easy for me as an english (and newly german) speaker, whats the drinking age, im probably too young

[@themax2848]

@@PeakApex it’s probably similar to Russia where everyone simply forget what the drinking age is

[@jan-ovepedersen5764]

Kippis, greatings from Norway

[@w.selfless6022]

@@PeakApex drinking age is 18 but everyone has theier ways of getting it in any age rly either a friend or take from parents etc ik lot of finns start drinking at the age of 12 and know some who has already drank at the age of 10 but majority has already drank by the age of 16 on my own experience.

[@sallakolehmainen4535]

In spoken, casual Finnish we often use "se", the Finnish equivalent of "it", instead of "hän".

[@0thepyat0]

Why in Norwegian and Swedish is the pronoun "he" ("han") so similar to Finnish's "hän"? Just coincidence?

[@enenenergp]

+The Pyat don't know if it's a coincidence or not but the other pronouns don't resemble Swedish pronouns at all. Jag vs minä, du vs sinä, vi vs me, ni vs te. So maybe it could just be a coincidence, because why would we only adopt one pronoun from Scandinavian languages and not the others?

[@NinaNooneknows]

Probably a coincidence, but I feel the need to mention that Swedish has (kind of) recently added a gender neutral pronoun, "hen", which resembles the Finnish "hän"!

[@rudde7918]

Nina nooneknows I think that was taken from Finnish into Swedish.

[@NinaNooneknows]

Dark Fladramon Yes, I believe so too. I meant that "han" being similar to "hän" is probably a coincidence. c: "Hen" pretty surely came from "hän".

[@abbieb8130]

I've been trying to learn Finnish. The grammar is difficult. But I love how reliable the pronunciation is. And since it's so different and uncommon (and Google doesn't understand it), it feels more like learning a secret code than a language.

[@enenenergp]

Are you not in Finland then so you can't hear the language being spoken and access books tv shows etc? Where are you from, i'm curious and why are you learning Finnish? :)

[@dunsparceislife2156]

Kuulostaa mukavalta. Suomi tori perkele vittu Alko. Tarvitsetko apua?

[@johnmotherfuqingcena962]

enenenergp Ja minä haluan oppia suomen kielen koska haluan opiskella Suomessa

[@JaakkoNiskakangas]

John Mother Fuqing Cena I may be able to help you where are you from and do you have solid english?

[@KsanUwU]

I find it funny how we need to translate from english(or any other language what google understands) to swedish if we want to translate a finnish word to swedish

[@AnnoyedKitten]

Just started learning Finnish via Duolingo, because as a Swede, you meet Finnish language a lot when you live in some areas of Sweden. Typical where it has been old mining country, because Finns was very good at working with metal and taught Swedes a lot in that area. Must say that it is NOT an easy language to learn for a Germanic-speaking Swede, but it is not impossible either. And I find the lack of gender in the language really liberating. :)

[@svetlanakekish4792]

I lern finnish for 2,5 years. It is difficult, but so interesting. My finnish is better than english now, my native language is russian. I love Finland! 🇫🇮

[@PaulaFi]

As a Finn I try to learn Russian. (Started already before the crazy war). Not so easy either.

[@SuperCompany007]

Oh the dialects are noticable as fuck! The pronounciation doesn't just change, the entire word changes.

[@Smuglu]

Well they have mixed a lot together at least in south. Like nobody speaks Tamperes (Kyä nääs rotvallin reunal.. jnejne) dialect and I really don't hear much difference in any southern dialects, but northern dialects are still very different. Also, one thing that foreigners I've met thought was weird was, that in Finnish you shorten the numbers in spoken language. Like number 52 is written like "viisikymmentäkaksi" but in spoken language it's "viiskytkaks".

[@SuperCompany007]

Smuglu Yeah unlike English we have "spoken language" and "written language". Written is formal, spoken is unformal and basically shortens every word possible. And when it comes to the dialects, i can easily tell when someone is from SE-Finland, SW-Finland or S-Finland (Helsinki area).

[@undulaatti9805]

54 viisikymmentäneljä 52 viisikymmentäkaksi

[@Smuglu]

Woops, fixed

[@paivityni5767]

I live in Tampere and I see that Tampere dialect is more of a thing about pronunciation. The r is really pronounced differently here. There are also some words that other people don't know.

[@notknot12knots]

I started to learn it, but can't finnish

[@Langfocus]

lol

[@petrusranta7876]

ok calm down pls :P

[@petrusranta7876]

+Mortablunt why to fuck you say that to us. You know that there could be under 10 year old people too?

[@user-pd6bd7ir4z]

+Petrus Ranta who cares.

[@qboy76]

is this all people have said about Finnish?

[@dingbat4]

“There’s no future tense” The future is now old man

[@Cybernaut551]

Ah, yes! It's all coming together.

[@msai257]

There was actually some research, that people who speak future-less languages are on average better at saving money. Because the future doesn't feel as far away from now. So yes, the future is now and it is best to believe that.

[@qutoobe]

Many people also don't know that English has only two tenses: past and present. There is no form for future tense as there is in Spanish for example. The word "will" is a modal auxiliary verb that aids in expressing the future along with "going to," but it is not by a change in verb form that the future tense is made such as in Spanish, "yo compro"- I buy; "yo compraré,"- I shall buy.

[@CrudelisDiabolus]

@@qutoobe In this sense, Finnish only has two tenses as well, as the present perfect and the past perfect are formed using an auxiliary verb + participles (just like in English).

[@Memu_]

9:09 You can absolutely recognize where someone is from after hearing just one sentence. You can very easily hear if someone is from for example Tampere or Helsinki. In the Finnish language there are multiple different accents or murteita depending on where you're from. My family is from a town near Kuopio so I have a fairly strong Savo accent compared to my friends.

[@TheRawrnstuff]

I'd argue you could at best make an educated guess. For example, let's take "Juuso". Juuso's parents are from Turku, and speak with a distinct Turku accent. However, Juuso's parents moved to Kouvola for work, and all Juuso's childhood friends spoke with Kouvola accent. As Juuso got older, he moved to to Helsinki to study and work, and was influenced by accents from all over Finland. Now Juuso's vernacular sounds like "Mie tiärän et fyrykkaa on vaikia saara iliman duunii". You can definitely geolocate an accent/murre, but since Finns tend to move around a fair bit, it's far less likely that the accent an individual has is 100% indicative of where they're from.

[@Memu_]

@@TheRawrnstuff Someone who has moved once or twice often has the accent of where they're living in currently, but often the original accent can leak out like when explaining something. If they have moved many more times, then as you said, it's gonna be a lot harder to realize where they're really from. I live in a fairly small city's suburbs so there aren't many people who've moved a lot.

[@pirkkojohnes8675]

My mother and grandma were evacuees from Karelia and were settled in Rymättylä where the dialect is very close to Turku. Instead of "mie" my father said "mää" and we tried to correct my poor grandma often. But now I wonder how many Karelian words might have stayed in our speech. For instance, grandma said palttoo instead of takki (coat). Did anyone else call lentokone (airplane) lentsikka?

[@OldieBugger]

@@pirkkojohnes8675 My family moved some, too. When I was 0-4(ish) years old, we lived in Kotka, from 4(ish) to 7 years in Tampere, from 7 to 17 in Parainen (since age 10 I went to school in Turku). At the time I was 12-13 years old I really couldn't speak any dialect, but I spoke a mixed dialect added with what I learned from books _(kirjakieltä)._ Oh, for your questions: Yes, those are words I (and my parents, ofc) used often when I was a child.

[@runawaytohide.com_watistisname]

Someone is from Helsinki if you hear ”Hiffaaks veli!”

[@vsm1456]

I love how Finnish sounds. I don't understand a thing, but I love the sound of it. It's so poetic and rhythmic at the same time.

[@inkeriy5760]

vsm1 lol in the 19th century the Swedish speaking people (basically the ones that could read) argued that you shouldn’t be allowed to write in Finnish because it’s so ugly and unpoetic.

[@sofikemppainen9856]

to me it sounds rly ugly and clumsy lmao. coming from a finnish person

[@fluffyhnybadger5378]

It really is a beautiful language! I myself and a sucker for phonetically correct and grammatically consistent languages, so Finnish is amazing!

[@tiuhti__]

perkele mitä sinä nyt saatana puhut ei tämä mikään kaunis kieli ole

[@ellaaa4480]

@@tiuhti__ If u swear that much then of course ur making it look ugly mate😉

[@ArturKorobeynyk]

These 9 minutes are more informative than half a year of Finnish courses.

[@chava1303]

Artur Korobeynyk I relate to this comment so much! hahaha

[@shirool1142]

@@fisfan9500 Et sit varmaa ollu oikein tunneilla hereillä. Näitä asioita opiskellaan aikapaljon ainaki ylä-asteella ja Lukiossa

[@veikkohiiri1093]

Suomen protokieli on vanhempi, kuin 4000 vuotta. Volgan ja Kaukasuksen kautta tuli jo 6000 v sitten ugrilais-uralilaiset kielet.

[@tuomasmattila283]

It's becouse they dont want anyone learn The language! It's hard to get Job and when you get IT IS low salery!

[@osmanaltanyuksel6598]

Artur Korobeynyk No.

[@LotharOfTheHillPeople]

Finnish is extremely difficult. I learned conversational Swedish in just a few months, but Finnish has taken me years and I constantly feel like I sound like a child when I speak it.

[@intensemint7800]

We Finns are always excited to see other people who want to give Finnish a go, and I'm sure you're just being modest about your skills 😊 Besides, for me personally, Chinese is the hardest language, cannot tell the difference between the signs there at all 😮 Oh, and also Hebrew, I tried and tried but nope, couldn't get past the no vowels thing... 😄

[@fanaticofmetal]

@@intensemint7800 Mandarin has one of the easiest grammars in any language, it's very intuitive and logical. The writing system and the tones make it intimidating, but it's really simple

[@samivarjosaari4022]

I am Finnish and for all intents and purposes a native speaker yet I sound like a child when I speak it, too. No big deal. If you can get your point across, no one will bat an eye. Keep at it!

[@alexzingo6952]

Finns respect you for learning finnish, even you are not perfect in speaking finnish.

[@smergthedargon8974]

@@fanaticofmetal Tones are an absolutely bastard, the homonymity is insane, and logographies are quite difficult compared to an alphabet - at least, languages with mostly regular alphabets.

[@johnpaulcolthrust8207]

I became acquainted with Finland in 1998 when I visited Wartsila’s works and offices in Vaasa. I quickly came to appreciate the land, the people and the language but never dared to try to learn it. Imagine my delight when I found out that it influenced Tolkien! I am approaching retirement and I think I well make a project of learning it then.

[@wheresmypretzel579]

Good luck! Go for it, as a native I highly encourage this decision. Get as much versatile content as possible to make it easier, movies tend to help quite a lot!

[@JJ3E]

Proto-Germanic for king = kuningaz, Finnish for king = kuningas. It's fascinating how this ancient version of the word survived in Finnish almost untouched, while changing quite a bit (king/kung/konge/könig/koning) in the actual Germanic languages still spoken today.

[@impossible7163]

That's cool! You learn something every day. Finns did have lot of trade relationships with german people very early on.

[@0thepyat0]

I keep reading about how the early Norse may have had more Finnish blood than previously suspected, that many of the sagas refer to early belief systems that were Finnish in origin, that some of the practices described hark back to very ancient Finnish culture, how the (Finns) Kvens ruled northwest Norway and the northern British Isles, and they might be considered the first "Vikings," who were more far-travelling tradesmen than warriors. So among the Nordic countries, is there agreement on the history of the various countries and peoples? Are we certain that "kuningaz" was not a Germanic borrowing from Proto-Finnic? Will Doggerland yield people with genetic material more akin to the Finns or the Germans?

[@impossible7163]

Well, it's really hard to decipher early Finnish history because to my understanding very little of it was ever written down (with runes) and even most of of that little was destroyed by Swedes when they took over Finland. So it's a lot of quesswork and theories. Some good and plausible and some not so much. But I think that word like kuningaz would be from Germany since I could much more easily see influental person/leader being "king" there than in Finland where people were more tribal and leader would propably be more like a chief (päällikkö) or elder of village (kylänvanhin). But this is just my thinking and is based on nothing solid I can provide, so who knows. :) BTW if you have some sources where you have found your information, I would love to read them. I am very interested to learn about early Finns and Finnish history. But Finns absolutely were tradesmen, there really is not big warrior culture in Finnish history to my knowledge. Not like Vikings and such.

[@rudde7918]

Valtteri Manala Swedes did not destroy anything. Finnish-speakers just did not use written language back then.

[@0thepyat0]

Much has been preserved in some of the surviving rune songs, thank goodness. I think leelo singing was more prevalent as well. And then there are these amazing murals inside the churches of Finland that are bizarre. The thing about it is that Finland has been a patchwork of distinct tribes, each with their own history and culture. Take for instance Kainuu. www.tarinakartasto.fi/en

[@ThatMattOne]

I have to say, I’m English. I have studied French, German, Latin, Dutch and Swedish for several years prior to learning Finnish and .... maybe it’s just me,.... I found Finnish so refreshingly different that it was easy to pick up. It gave me a different focus to the languages I’d learned before. Now Finnish is my forte and I adore the language, country, culture and its wonderful people. If I could learn it all over again and experience the country for the first time once more I would love to. For anyone interested in learning a language, I would say “pick one that none of your fellow students have”. This one is a beauty. “Suomi on maailman mestari!!...”

[@yere7851]

I'm a finn and I have no idea what the finnish culture is

[@roppis9258]

@@yere7851 Sauna, kalja ja tori veikkaisin

[@FinnPotato]

@@yere7851 Sauna, viina, Nokia, Karjalanpaisti ja piirakka, talvisota ja Kekkonen.

[@veikkalintula6546]

@@yere7851 sauna, kalja, makkara, tori (amanda), siinäpä ne aikalailla

[@keijo55lahtila10]

Kuka tietää liperin

[@veli-pekkakortelainen7408]

Whether you see Finnish easy or hard to learn depends of your own language too. For example Japanese: They consider English as rather hard language to learn, but they say Finnish is very easy to learn from their perspective.

[@unitrx5535]

Yeah, have kinda noticed same in Estonia. Expat Japanese generally speak rather well and fluently. Saw Japanese chick working in bus station cafe in Tartu: she seemed to be fluent in Finnish and Estonian both: in front of me in queue was Finn ordering something, chick didn't even stop to change mental gears..it was fascinating

[@karentolkkinen1243]

I studied Japanese in high school and college and lived in Finland for a year. I've always wondered if there was some ancient connection between Finnish and Japanese.

[@guitarsauce5978]

I just started learning Finnish and I have studied Japanese for over a decade now (native English). First thing I was hearing over and over was how hard it was to learn Finnish, but so far all the cases and changes were actually easy to grasp and I did wonder if it was because of the way Japanese handles its transformations of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I'm curious now how much of the 'hard' talk wont be so hard given that I already have that grammatical background of changing my way of seeing a language, or if there are more and more similarities and I lucked out on having languages learned.

[@mirae9163]

As a Japanese speaker, I would say Finnish is not easy to learn at all. Despite there're some similarities of grammar between Finnish and Japanese, but overall grammatically Finnish is much harder than Japanese.

[@promealiens9659]

I have use little funny compare those two languages: When Japanese is written in Roman characters, compared to finnish, in both languages are common a sequences of battle pairs formed by a consonant and a vowel as: katana - takana

[@nekomata864]

To learn perfect finnish is very difficult, I'm pretty sure most finns cannot speak their language 100% correct To learn enough finnish to get through, is fairly simple as long as you know what to watch out for. Stretching your words incorrectly can change the meaning of the word; Tuli = fire Tuuli = wind Tulli = toll

[@Mythricia1988]

One of the really interesting parts of watching these videos is the part where you scroll down to read some comments by the native speakers of the language being discussed, and how skillful their English is. I've seen a disproportionate amount of Finnish people who write frankly excellent English (great vocabulary, and a very naturally polite style) over the years.... In contrast, you see droves of English speakers who can't speak a single foreign word if their life depended on it x) Not that I think it matters, but it's kind of a funny pattern.

[@l.k5244]

Why would you speak a second language when your mother tongue has dominated the world?

[@hannolansman7993]

The reason for this is probably because we are taught english earlier during elementary school than swedish, Swedish is started to be taught to us in 7th grade (1st of middle school). English is also heard here very often since, for example, TV shows are mainly only dubbed. That way we start to learn English and it's accent very early. But about the difference between written and spoken English is significant. Finns often seem to have nearly perfect english whem thru write something, but in fact, spoken language isn't so good. That can be explained with the varieties between the accents of the two languages. Finns pronounce every letter as it is and english is spoken leaving some letters out and adding some letters into the word.

[@blotski]

I was going to say that. In a lot of countries like the Nordic countries and The Netherlands they grow up hearing English language programmes and films on the TV all their lives.

[@DAAI741]

I think you're mixing not knowing good English with having a different dialect.

[@mayj257]

True English has made us lazy since it is spoken in other countries and many of those countries would rather hear English than our lame attempt to speak their language.

[@rustyspace900]

The dialects are usually very noticeable, much like in English (Southern U.S. vs London) In addition the actual words change, not just the accent (I-Minä-mie-mää, you-sinä-sie-sää) Finnish is a phonetic language so no-one really has an accent if reading formal text. Normal conversation over text includes the changes caused by the accent into the text :)

[@emppuv6083]

Agree:)

[@AtheistCitizen]

+JSH-industries Ironically much of Southern is more closely related to England English due to migration patterns and relative isolation hstorically [AirConditioners and Interstate Hwys have broken that isolation] than more diversely settled parts of the USA. There are even coastal NC/VA areas where the connections to Elizabethan English are recognized [backwaters literally and figuratively]. A further example of this kind of migratory association is that the SW was settled mostly post-Civil War by Southerners [ not simply Texans] hence a share dialect precursor.

[@Kerrandrius]

My grandmother is from Western Karelia, so as a Helsinkian it always amuses me that she pluralises nakki (wiener) as "nakkiloi" instead of "nakkeja".

[@sammakkotonttu]

The major cities Helsinki, Tampere and Turku all have their distinguishable accents too.

[@nubb11]

+JSH-industries Also the speed of speaking tells if you're from Helsinki. (Also normally we use more words when we're speaking, good example is "niinku" which literally doesn't mean anything and you can have multiple positions in one sentence to use it.)

[@maximelambert4099]

Thanks, my native language is Russian, but my father was Karelian and my grandmother spoke Karelian, I would like to learn some basics of Finnish and Karelian. Terve (h)

[@pekkajohnsson8614]

As a native finnish speaker i have to thank you for a great presentation of our language and its history! I hope it encourages many people to study finnish! As answer to your question dialects can be distingushed pretty well and can mostly be localized by a native speaker!

[@TeachMeBert]

Finnish also doesn't have a word for "become": "I become a man" = "Minusta tulee mies" = "From me comes a man".

[@elderscrollsswimmer4833]

That's cause there's translative case for that. -ksi. And one has plenty of verbs to choose from...

[@warxdrum]

I don't think that's weird. I've noticed German speakers have a problem with it. You could say "Ich werde ein Mann." in German but translating it the other way you would most likely hear "I will be a man." or "I turn into a man."

[@Gaeryc]

You know, because of things like this finnish jokes can be really really stupid because everything has a double meaning and you are just supposed to understand what is intended.

[@suaptoest]

+gaeryc What did you mean by "everything"?

[@elderscrollsswimmer4833]

Gaeryc As if other languages don't have words with multiple meanings... but yes, there are jokes about that sort of thing. Otherwise, context is often enough...

[@kopanvezer]

I think Finnish is a very practical language, you dont have to say more words than its necessary.. I want to learn Finnish some day :) Love from Hungary :3

[@darthsauna1525]

Only Word you need to know is "Noniin"

[@marcusnurmio4529]

Iam from finland and I have to say everybody say finnish is hard to learn and blaa blaa blaa. When you start learnig 1.forget some words (please, thanks) 2. In finland one word can be guestion 3.two word can be enything 4.find someone who is from finland and start speak with him then you dont have to use apps that are wrong or you doesnt need lessons that are harder than just speak with someone

[@chebu...]

@@darthsauna1525 yeah

[@Vvopat96]

@@marcusnurmio4529 Yea every young finn knows english because we all learn english at school about 6 years so they are good teachers. and you only need to know about 20 of the bend the words, words carry so much information that we can understand even if it's not correct. Best part of the finnish is that you can always know how to say a word when you see it written. written word says all what it is

[@mass1985]

be carefull if you are in the bucket line... buckets are very important to Finnish ppl!

[@catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatca]

I have been hopping from video to video whole morning, and landing on this one was definitely a pleasant surprise! Olen hyppinyt videosta videoon koko aamun, ja tänne päätyminen oli erittäin mukava yllätys!

[@kerlipeterson]

Finnish is easy to learn when you are Estonian. :D I grew up visiting my family in Finland each summer, so that made it even easier. I have always stayed near Turku area (South-Western Finland) and while working in Spain and talking with Finnish people, they did notice my local accent.

[@Komatik_]

Does Finnish sound like funny-Estonian to Estonians? Like, yeah that makes sense but it just sounds odd or silly?

[@kerlipeterson]

@@Komatik_ Yeah, kinda

[@jyrkilehtinen9886]

The difference between Finnish and Estonian resembles the difference between the southwestern dialects of Finnish and and other dialects of finnish. That is the words become shorter in the end. The case system of estonian would be very very difficult for anyone but having heard the southwestern dialects of finnish it is very much the same and easier to comprehend.

[@unitrx5535]

@@Komatik_ Estonian has had lot more Low German loans (Finnish loans usually origin from Swedish), fewer Russian, Swedish and Latin loans, few thousand completely artificial words (linguists) etc all bolted into Uralic grammar structure (of which some also has been borrowed from Low German (like prepositions). As a result, Finns listening Estonian go into sort of "mental loop" - "it sounds like I should understand it but I dont, except few words here and there". Only very basic concepts on the level of common proto-words are mutually intelligible. Estonian pronounciations are probably easier to learn (especially for Germans) but grammar might be far worse due massive amount of irregularities thereof you'd simply need to remember. Finnish grammar at least has logic into itself, Estonian, not so much. Dialect-wise its easier. Only Võro dialect sounds like another language. Most speak standard language and you wont usually detect speaker's origin from speech when he/she is native speaker. Can instantly recognize Finns speaking (learned) Estonian - they tend to cling to their monotonous pronounciations even when speaking grammatically correctly. Low German influence to Estonian is massive, until WW2 German was most spoken minority language in Estonia, most everybody could speak German from pidgin to fluency of native speakers. Germans consisted of something like 15% of population. Before WW1 German was common daily language for city dwellers. Between world wars efforts were made to promote Estonian and reduce use of German. That all bled over to Estonian during many centuries - now 1/3 of modern Estonian vocabulary has Germanic origin. Which all renders it mosrly unintelligible for average Finnish person.

[@jukkahelisjoki5820]

Iam always surprised how little people in Tallinn know and speak Finnish. It just unbelieable Estonian beign so closely related to us.; and all those Finnish people all the time in there. Funny that people in Greece, Spain and Turkey speak more Finnish at bars at least in tourist resorts than in Tallinn.

[@utes5532]

"syötkö kalaa" can mean both "Do you eat fish?" and "Are you eating fish?"

[@miskaloki2874]

@shoutap nope yes

[@STriderFIN77]

Söittekö sen kalan?

[@sectorgovernor]

"Eszel halat?" - In hungarian

[@Haarunen]

Arstotzka greatest country! For those that don’t know what that means, I was referring to their profile pic

[@Vikalaeppa112]

Syötkö sinä kalaa means both

[@JuusoAlasuutari]

I can definitely "geolocate" other Finns by dialect. Some very distinct ones (in no particular order) are Tampere (Pirkanmaa), Helsinki (Uusimaa), Lapland, Joensuu (Karelia generally), Savo (used car salesman lingo masquerading as a dialect), South Ostrobothnia (how Finnish sounds when used as a blunt force weapon), Pori (how Finnish sounds after being hit repeatedly with a blunt force weapon), Turku (a medical experiment on circus clowns gone wrong).

[@mariapietila5453]

My god this is golden! I'm from Pori and I laughed out loud when I saw the description. But hey, don't forget about Rauma. That is basically a language of it's own, or so they say.

[@pirkkojohnes8675]

Maria Pietilä - I am from near Turku so I can understand Rauma dialect (mostly). I was reading that it is the closest to Estonian!

[@TristanJCumpole]

I learnt my Finnish when I moved to Pori ten years ago. It does sound like brain damage. HÄÄÄÄhhhhh

[@mobilelast1715]

My mother is from Turku, father from Savo, I’m born and raised in north Karelia and lived all my adulthood in Tampere. Quite a mess of a dialect…

[@TristanJCumpole]

@@mobilelast1715 That all depends on whether you took the best or worst parts of each ;-)

[@salavat294]

Interestingly, next to my Grandpa’s village there was a Mari village. My dad, who speaks Bashkir easily understands the Mari, especially if he remembers the “old” Bashkir syntax (taught by Grandma). The Mari are Urga-Finnic group and the only indigenous pagan society of Europe.

[@user-nn3wh3hd3e]

I am Russian and I never planned to learn Finnish, but now it the second (after German) language of love for me. I need to learn some Finnish every day. I dream to go one day to Finnland!!!

[@marie_es]

It makes me so sad that I never learned any Finnish. My great grandparents immigrated from Finland to northern michigan, like many Finns did. My grandma's first language was Finnish

[@Mauri_Waris]

So did my great grandparents and family do, some move back to Finland. My parents was born in Finland and then moved to Sweden where I was born. Could only talk finnish til I was 6-7 years old but when school began swedish lang took over and through the years I stopped talking finnish. Can understand when people talk but I stutter if I try to speak, but wierdly when I drink beer or alkohol and become drunk I can speak it much better haha :) Download duolingo, they got finnish lang there, I just did, so I dont forget my naitive lang :)

[@AinoNotFound]

Hei

[@user-uf3pg9hv2j]

@@AinoNotFound hoi

[@MMM18092]

So learn it now? Being American does not make it impossible to learn new languages.

[@taranectaria]

I’m from Finland it’s a very hard language even for us :D

[@simokoistinen7470]

In Finnish we don't have a future 😭😭😭

[@simokoistinen7470]

We only have present tense.

[@Nulyramusic]

+Simo Koistinen that is so in! why have the future when u can have the now😉

[@usdane2001]

+Simo Koistinen hey! That makes learning it easier! There's a bright point.

[@vulc1]

No sex and no future

[@Tina06019]

Isn't this similar to English and Dutch? "I spoke last year," "I speak today," "I will speak next year." And of course there is the form "I am speaking,' which can indicate the "right now," or the (often near) future. The words 'will' and 'shall' indicate the future in English. As a native English speaker who is actually rather tired right now, I am struggling to think of an English verb where there is a differently spelled future tense. If I am wrong, correct me - politely, please.

[@Varkku_The_GT_fan]

It's interesting how people see Finnish like a difficult language. I learned it all way from the kindergarden. I know I was very yuong then. But I highly recomend some Finnish learning courses in Finland. My parents learned there Finnish pretty well. Finnish has become my second home language since we moved from Russia to Finland. It's a very beautiful language in poems.

[@NarsFromMars]

Language lover from Iran here🙋🌷 I've learnt a few Finnish words from Saara Forsberg. And the name of that island 'Saaranpaskantamasaari' is amazing! Does it really translate "the island shat by Saara"?🙈

[@attsome5151]

Yes :)

[@user-qc1qz3zg9t]

Yes it translates. Didn't know about it. Had to search for that and yes, it really exists. It's a really tiny island, roughly 30m x 40m in northern Finland less than 200m to the Russian border.

[@timo235711]

You missed a very essential part of the finnish language: the universal spoken finnish, ”puhekieli” is so different from written official finnish, ”kirjakieli” it could almost be a separate language. The difference is so well understood by native speakers that it never gets a lot of attention. For immigrants or swedish speakers this presents itself as a situation where you, once you’ve learned the official written language need to start over and learn a second language, the spoken finnish language. I have been told arabic has an official version, Fusha, that no-one really speaks in a same way as ”kirjakieli” in finnish. ”Kirjakieli” can and is spoken by politicians and newsreaders but not by many others. The words and grammar of the spoken finnish, ”puhekieli”, are to a wide extent different from the official, written ”kirjakieli”. It is strange and weird that the finnish taught to swedish speakers in Finland totally focuses on ”kirjakieli”. I hope the finnish classes given to immigrants are better.

[@melangeholic1469]

Technically, kirjakieli only applies to written language and the spoken version is "puhuttu yleiskieli" (spoken standard language).

[@markkujantunen8298]

@@melangeholic1469 I disagree. Standard Finnish, misleadingly called kirjakieli = "book language", can be spoken, too. Listen to the weatherman on television, for example. You will hear kirjakieli. Regional dialects are seldom written, though. Typically, they are used in text messages or short emails between people who don't necessarily identify as educated people. I speak my own regional version of informal Finnish all day but never write it. But if I were interviewed on television (highly unlikely), I'd probably use Standard Finnish. Notably, there are many politicians who have a distinct regional accent while they speak perfect Standard Finnish in public appearances. Such politicians include Jussi Halla-aho (distinctly Tampere accent) and Ville Niinistö (a clear Turku accent).

[@melangeholic1469]

@@markkujantunen8298 Yes, I know what you mean. The spoken and written versions are both yleiskieli, but by definition, kirjakieli only applies to the written form, even if people mistakenly call the spoken form kirjakieli as well.

[@markplain2555]

@@melangeholic1469 and @ Markhu Janntunen: what wrong with you people??? This is like Swiss German... spoken but not written. Simply do like Mikael Agricola, write up a book in the 'dialect' and hey presto you are the founder of the formal language. All through history they will refer to you as the person who started the formal language and YOU, yes YOU will be the great hero!!... what's the name of your regional dialect again? . Just as a side note - Afrikaans is a direct derivative of Dutch. Yet it is less than 100 years old as a formal language. All it takes is to start formalising the language. Use Afrikaans as your inspiration.... (as if Agricola is not good enough)

[@MagusMenna]

🌷

[@Nikocum]

I didn't find learning finnish so difficult, but the real problem is when you want to speak! The spoken version of the language makes it hard to understand because many words are used in a shorter form that makes them harder to catch. They also have no problem using a third person singular form of a verb with a plural subject... and it's not considered wrong when you speak although you're not supposed to write like that... and it's not the way you've learned it either! As a French I can say that finnish grammar is easier than the french one, especially when it comes down to the verb forms. It's also a very logical language.

[@finderOC]

depends where you live, finnish has a lot of dialects

[@holoholopainen1627]

Merci / You are The 1st One - WHO SAYS This ! You surely Have an method - for Others to USE ?

[@NederFinn]

Nikocum everyone speak “puhekieli” nobody uses standard Finnish haha

[@tp-vz7od]

Vous avez raison, madame/monsieur. Subjunktiivi --- pas d´équivalent en finnois.

[@ItsBenjiIswear]

ok. We have puhekieli (the way we talk) which usually only shortens the word. THEN murre. (It's kinda like an accent, but not exactly) and OH BOY it's like, not even all finnish people understand eachother due to that lmao

[@mveidemanis]

Finnish has germanic (i.e. Indo-European) loanwords. Latvian is also interesting - we speak Baltic language (Indo-European) however we have a lot of loanwords and features borrowed from Uralic languages, specifically from Livonian which has blended with Latvian over the history.

[@DikWhite]

Thank you so much for your in-depth coverage in each of your language assessment videos.

[@wonderfalg]

There must be some reason why J.R.R. Tolkien loved finnish language.

[@pooferss6056]

Wow! Didn't know that...

[@johanna-hypatiacybeleia2465]

@@pooferss6056 Tolkien said about his encounter with Finnish: "It was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me." The Quenya language is inspired by Finnish, as Sindarin is inspired by Welsh.

[@pooferss6056]

@@johanna-hypatiacybeleia2465 That's cool! Maybe I'll be able to understand some of that language when I get to that part In The book...

[@andrew2353]

I was likely because Finnish was so exotic and strange to him being a non Indo-European language.

[@VortechBand]

Suuret melonit

[@arpad2188]

For a Hungarian It's so good to see another agglutinative language :) It's soooo difficult for others to "bend their mind" to comprehend the logic but it's just natural for us. It's just the order that is different, in Hungarian it would be TALO-I-NI-SSA.

[@AnnaMarianne]

As a Finn, I've always been bothered by the fact that it's TALO-I-SSA-NI, and have thought that TALO-I-NI-SSA would make much more sense. So you have it that way. Interesting! I traveled around Central Europe last summer, and after being to many Germanic and Slavic countries it was so cool to go to Hungary and listen to people speak. It sounded so natural and right, even though I didn't understand a word.

[@gksurabhi]

Dravidian languages (South Indian languages) too are agglutinative languages. Eg. Malayalam As a trilingual, with Malayalam as my native language, I feel so attracted to other agglutinative languages like Turkish, Hungarian n Finnish. It feels like home

[@Livi42]

I am struggling a little with the vocabulary. But I LOVE the grammar. It seems so clear and logical, it’s amazing! I want to re-learn it so much * - *

[@ufromwhere9756]

Fantastic explanation about Finnish language Paul! 👍👍 Very clear and insightful indeed! I totally enjoyed it! 😂👍

[@P4NZ3R_F4U5T]

Example of simplicity in finnish: The word "Kuusi palaa" can mean The spruce is on fire. The spruce returns. The number six is on fire. The number six returns. Six of them are on fire. Six of them returns. Your moon is on fire. Your moon returns. Six pieces. Simple. :DDDD

[@cemyildiz7842]

I tried to translate it in Google and Google Translate servers crashed because of the overload! Weirdo thing is, when I try to translate it into different languages, Google claims that: English: Six pieces Turkish: Altı geri döndü (Six returned back) German: Sechs ist zurück (Six is back)

[@leipurinen2194]

I learned Finnish to fluency when I lived there from 2014-2016. It's perhaps a little hard to start because you'll need to master a very intricate grammar, but once you understand the rules and declension patterns, everything else is just a matter of vocabulary; overall, I didn't think it was too hard. I was conversant in about four months and almost fluent in a year. That being said, learning Finnish was a primary focus for me that absorbed a lot of my time, I'm very good at learning patterns, and I was in an immersion setting. Outside of those parameters Finnish is usually very difficult for native English speakers. Some dialects are more noticeable than others, at least to me as a foreigner. I first lived in Jyväskylä, which speaks very "clean" Finnish, or Finnish that is very close to how Finnish is written. The more a person's dialect differs from standard Finnish, the more noticeable it is, and certain traits give you a decent idea of what region a person comes from. I got to know many of these dialects as I moved around Finland, and I must say that my favorite was the dialect spoken in Northern Finland. My own speech has many features of this dialect because this is where I really started to become a fluent speaker, and my accent improved significantly. I definitely still love the beautiful Finnish spoken in Jyväskylä. Jos joku suomalainen saattaa lukea tämän loppuun, niin haluan onnitella 100 vuotta kestäneestä itsenäisyydestä! Palaan Suomeen itsenäisyyspäiväksi viettämään sitä teidän joukossanne. Torilla tavataan!

[@etunimi4206]

kiit vua onnitteluists, hyvvee hä se tekkeepi kun opettelleep ne murteet tarkkaa, suap paremma ymmärrykse suome kielest

[@holoholopainen1627]

Hyvin kirjoitettu ! Kiitos

[@thesuomi8550]

Oh hell do I hate the Jyväskylä dialect, or maybe I should rather call it an absence of dialect. It just sounds so unnatural and official... and by Northern Finland do you mean Lapland?

[@seasonal_clorox_bleach8308]

TheSuomi sanapainot on erilaisia, vaikka eivät sanoja niin taivuttakkaan

[@thesuomi8550]

@@seasonal_clorox_bleach8308 taivutakaan* meinaatko että jyväskyläläiset ei laita sanapainoo aina ekalle tavulle?

[@smurface549]

So, in my experience trying to learn Finnish is difficult, as almost everyone will switch to English if you try ask a question in Finnish. So completely the opposite of the French :-D At least in the capital region. Learning the basics and being able to order food or drinks isn't too difficult. Participating in a random conversation is a different game though, especially as the spoken language contains some shortcuts. Finns seem to be able to pick up locations based on a dialect. At least that's what I got told by colleagues, I'm happy if I understand anything at all other than "olut".

[@europa_bambaataa]

wow. I've read about Finnish on wikip. but this narrative kind of layout was much more accessible. thanks. Paul drops another banger!

[@kiiltochii1607]

We are the weird, quiet cousin sitting at the corner of the Nordic table

[@adamb1593]

From what I understand of Scandinavia, everyone at that table is weird and quiet.

[@itsBlueshift]

@@adamb1593 Sweden is weird but definitely not quiet.

[@ristovirtanen6396]

kiiltochii typical Finn always thinks twice before he says nothing.🤐

[@SisuGirl]

Risto Virtanen So true!!

[@cheriecheung5889]

@@ristovirtanen6396 OMG. this is so funny im writing it down lmaooo

[@InerdeOrg]

I worked in Finland for a year and studied Finnish assidiously. I learned several foreign languages before that, including a very hard one - Arabic. Finnish, without question, belongs in the very hard category. I throughly enjoyed its alien grammar and it is mostly extremely logical - but it's hard to start using it actively due to its strangeness and the number of declinsions. The fact that it is not indo-european and that there are few cognates (and very hard recognize) multiplies the challenge several fold. Surprisingly, stress was one of the hardest things for me. Despite being tediously regular I could never really replicate it ... I would compare it to learning a tone language. It's embarrasing to admit, but I never had a single real conversation outside of class in Finnish after a year of study. I studied Finland's other national language, Swedish, at the same time and in a few weeks I was able to have halting conversations. My learning was hampered by the fact that nearly all Finnish have an excellent command of English so I was never forced to speak the language. I did see many immigrants speaking Finnish - they go full time to school for an entire year when they arrive in Finland. The Finns have excellent pedagogical materials for teaching Finnish, the best language learning textbook I have ever used is a Finnish-only text for learning Finnish (Finnish in Finnish, Suomea Suomeksi). Finland is deeply beautiful country and the Finnish people are extraordinary. If you do have the chance to go to Finland and study Finnish, yes, you'll face quite a challenge but you'll have an amazing adventure. If I could do it again, I would in a heartbeat.

[@Lycosa]

iNERDE Inc. Oh that's interesting and very appreciated, those compliments to Finland and the finnish people. So where are you originally from, what is your mother tongue?

[@holoholopainen1627]

It takes one year to learn Suomi ! When You serve on SA military - You learn by doing things !

[@lennartbjorksten707]

American here. Parents were from the Swedish part of Finland, so we spoke Swedish at home and English at school. We moved to Finland when I was 10, and I was put in a Finnish-speaking school. I don't remember learning the language as being hard, but then again, I was a kid in a language immersion situation, and multilingual to begin with. Finnish is an exceptionally good language for wry, caustic remarks. I can't put my finger on why, it just is. The dialects are about as distinct as English dialects. Southern accent vs New York accent vs Cockney or whatever. Intelligible, but in some cases you have to strain pretty hard.

[@Rockyourassed]

I had been learning Finnish since 2017 and i find it easy, poetic. I'm trying to understand struggles of people when they learn it, but i don't get it hehe. I made some videos in Finnish on my channel and really love to learn it day by day. I'm going there next year for the very first time! So happy. Thank you for this video about Finnish language!

[@SentientRaven]

To the question "Learners of Finnish, how challenging is it to learn?" In a word? Very. But it may surprise people to know that it's not at all the grammar which makes it difficult. It's true that you have to "bend your mind a little" like Paul said, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually relatively simple, at least for comprehension. Also, while the grammar is certainly exotic to Indo-European speakers, it's still rather strict and calculable and there are not many exceptions. When I was trying to construct sentences back in the day, people would often tell me that they were grammatically correct but "weird" in the sense that native speakers would phrase them differently. One of the most fantastic things about Finnish is the complete lack of grammatical gender (to the point that Finns often confuse "he" and "she" when speaking English). Those 15 cases may seem daunting but they totally make up for it by being mostly logical and consistent. Contrast that with German, which has 4 cases but 3 genders and then the genders are random and 2 of those cases (accusative and dativ) seem almost random as well. Furthermore, many of the cases in Finnish are only there to make up for the lack of words lik "in", "on", "from" and such, so they're really no more difficult to learn than such words. The biggest challenge? It may come as a surprise, but it's actually the vocabulary. When Finns adopt foreign words, they will typically remove the first letter, which makes it quite difficult to spot or guess. Even if you speak a Germanic language, a Latin language and throw in something Semitic just for good luck, then you're still almost at square one with Finnish. But that's also one of the fun things about it - it's like learning how to speak all over again! The grammar takes some getting used to, but it's really not as complicated as it seems at first. It's just exotic. The vocabulary is by far the most difficult part in my experience.

[@rudde7918]

Sentient Raven Yup. Finnish has a way of thinning out consonant clusters at the beginning of loan words and placing a vowel at the end of said words. Makes it more prounceable in Finnish.

[@pianofani]

What do you mean by "removing the first letter of the word" An example? I'm Finnish btw

[@rudde7918]

pianofani Ranska=Franska ruotsiksi. F on otettu pois.

[@pianofani]

Aa nii joo.

[@SentientRaven]

pianofani Examples: "Tuoli" from Swedish "stol", "rappu" from Swedish "trappa", "peili" from Swedish "spegel". It doesn't happen to every loan word, but even though I can read pretty much any Scandinavian language *except* Finnish, I would never have guessed that those words meant what they mean. ;)

[@elianamckee]

your work is amazing. Thank you so much for sharing, Paul.

[@Langfocus]

It's my pleasure. And thank you!

[@eleonoramustafaeva1303]

+Langfocus do one on history if english :))

[@giorgiobasta5028]

Langfocus Can you do the Albanian language please ?

[@comfym3850]

i should learn. my paternal grandfather came to the US from Finland

[@BrassBoy-ot4sy]

Thank you for another informative video!

[@konczk]

I couldn't Finnish this video as I had to go and Polish my shoes and I was quite Hungary as well. My Finnish vocabulary doesn't extend much beyond Perkele, Hölökün Gölökün and Hüvá Perse.

[@sera1143]

This is legendary

[@1983Jassukka]

Its "Hölkyn kölkyn!"

[@1983Jassukka]

And Hyvä perse, which means: great ass!

[@Eleven1XI]

Christian Koncz the usual words that people teach to foreing people 😂

[@hatridmunpitaa]

Jaakko Tervo He has written that in sort of hungarian style

[@markkujantunen8298]

This video is two years old but it is so good like everything made by Langfocus that I'll answer his first question as a native speaker of Finnish. The main division of Finnish dialects is between the western and the eastern dialects. I grew up in the city of Tampere in the inland southwest and my own dialect belongs to a subgroup of the Tavastian dialects (hämäläismurteet) spoken in the northern part of the region of Tavastia Proper (Kanta-Häme) and Pirkanmaa, the capital of which is Tampere. Tampere and Hämeenlinna are the regional capitals in which my dialect is spoken. There are 19 regions in Finland. I'll make a list of the regions the dialects of which I'm familiar with and can recognize reliably: 1. Uusimaa (capital Helsinki) These accents are all over the media and a lot of television personalities have it. About 40% of Finland's population lives in Uusimaa. 2. Pirkanmaa (capital Tampere) This is where I come from and I'm obviously familiar with it. 3. Varsinais-Suomi (Finland Proper, capital Turku) The southerwestern dialects are very well known. If you're from Turku and are not an expert at faking another accent, you can run but you can never hide from me. 4. Satakunta (capital Pori) Satakunta has no single dialect. The southern part speaks southwestern, the northern part speaks Tavastian dialects much more similar to Tampere, and Pori, the regional capital, belongs to the central part that has an accent somewhere between southwestern and Tavastian. 5. Päijänne Tavastia (Päijät-Häme, capital Lahti) The natives of Lahti think they don't have an accent but they're dead wrong. First of all, everyone has an accent but theirs is basically a less distinct version of the Tavastia Proper accents and their grammar has been influenced by the southeastern accents spoken in what's left of Karelia on the Finnish side of the border. They drop word endings like the southeasterners but don't have an eastern accent. 7. Southern Ostrobothnia (Etelä-Pohjanmaa, capital Seinäjoki) All but the easternmost municipalities of SO speak a distinct and pretty uniform dialect that differs from the rest of the country in vocabulary and accent. It is unmistakable. 8. Central Ostrobothnia (Keski-Pohjanmaa, capital Kokkola) My maternal grandparents lived here. Very different from Southern Ostrobothnia and very similar to Northern Ostrobothnia. I can't tell if somebody is from Kokkola or Ylivieska, a small town, on the Northern Ostrobothnian side. 9. Northern Ostrobothnia (Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, capital Oulu) The western part speaks a dialect classified as a western dialect for good reasons but the accent has a touch of eastern which I can easily pick up on. Many people have moved to the commercial port town of Oulu, founded in 1605, from Northern Savonia in the past few centuries. The eastern part is known as Koillismaa and has a dialect that belongs to the Savonian group of eastern dialects and is clearly different from that spoken in the western part. I have cousins in Oulu and know a lot people in Oulu. I think can tell if someone is from Oulu after listening to them speak for a while. 10. Lapland (Lappi, capital Rovaniemi) I can tell if someone is from Lapland. I'm not too familiar with the sub-dialects, though. Distances are long in Lapland and the roads are pretty bad or non-existent between the eastern and the western parts. 11. Kymenlaakso (capital Kotka) The river Kymmene (Kymi) roughly divides the dialects into those belonging to the internally diverse Tavastian group and those belonging to the eastern dialects. I know one family from Kouvola and have a pretty good idea how people speak there. But it's been long time I've spent any time with them or anyone else from there. I know Kotka even less well. I know one guy from Hamina. Grammatically the dialects seem pretty neutral. They're like in Päijänne Tavastia but more eastern. 12. Southern Karelia (Etelä-Karjala, capital Lappeenranta) My paternal grandmother was from this region. This dialect is very well known thanks to iconic characters from film (Antero Rokka, a fictional war hero), athletes (Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi, Olympic cross-country skier). etc. I know a couple of young people from Lappeenranta and while they have a distinct accent, their grammar and vocabulary are rather neutral. I guess that's an example of Tavastian dialects, to which the Helsinki regional dialect belongs, slowly becoming the norm everywhere when it comes to morphology and vocabulary among the younger generations. The last thing that remains is accent. Typically, it is very difficult for people to change because most people aren't even aware of having one. 13. Southern Savonia (Etelä-Savo, capital Mikkeli) I don't know anyone from here. I can't really tell how it differs from Northern Savonian. I'm certain it sounds "eastern". 14. Northern Savonia (Pohjois-Savo, capital Kuopio) This dialect is very well known because of the way long vowels are sometimes turned into dipthongs and because of the accent used by several well-known comedians who were national celebrities. I'm talking about Pertti "Spede" Pasanen and Esa Pakarinen sr. and Esa Pakarinen jr. Most Finns should be capable of telling whether someone is from the Northern Savonian region. Their accent sounds funny to other Finns without trying. 15. Northern Karelia (Pohjois-Karjala, capital Joensuu) The Northern Karelian dialects have the most extremely Savonian syllable stress pattern of all of the eastern dialects. It is not a southwestern dialect like that spoken in Southern Karelia. I'm able to tell people from Joensuu and Lappeenranta apart with 100% certainty provided that their speech has been predominantly influenced by either but not both or anything else. 16. Kainuu (capital Kajaani) I haven't met anyone from Kainuu for a very long time. It's a Savonian dialect but I'm not very familiar with it. 17. Pohjanmaa/Österbotten/Ostrobothnia (capital Vaasa) Mainly Swedish-speaking. I have known a Finnish-speakers people from Vaasa and I noticed that they do not have anything like a Southern Ostrobothnian accent as I expected. 18. Central Finland (Keski-Suomi, capital Jyväskylä) The westernmost of the Savonian dialect speaking regions. Geographically large and has a lot of internal diversity. The municipalities along the southern and western borders have pretty neutral accents and dialects that have absorbed influences from western dialects. In fact, Standard Finnish has been developed based on dialects spoken in the westernmost parts of Central Finland. In the east and the north people speak in a clearly more Savonian manner. 19. Åland/Ahvenanmaa Swedish-speaking.There is no native Finnish-speaking population here. Langfocus is also correct that the differences between Finnish dialects are in accent mainly, at least among today's young people. I have listened to all of the samples in the dialect archive of the Institute of the Languages of Finland (Kotimaisten kielten keskus, Kotus). The samples were recorded mostly about 50-60 years ago and the speakers are natives to each municipality. I have no difficulty whatsoever understanding them but there exist clear syntactical and morphological differences between the dialects not to mention very large and obvious ones between the accents I think even people lacking knowledge of Finnish but a keen ear for such things might be able to pick up on. One thing to note is how Standard Finnish (spoken by newscasters or top-level politicians or CEOs of large companies, academics and the like on TV, and written in newspapers, official documents etc.) differs from informal Finnish. The regional differences are all in the informal register. The complex grammar of Standard Finnish gets simplified and words truncated sometimes quite heavily depending on the region. The dialect samples given by people mostly born in the 19th century hosted by Kotus: www.kotus.fi/aineistot/puhutun_kielen_aineistot/murreaanitteita/suomen_murrekirjan_aanitteet

[@svk9704]

Ukko pisti myllyn piälle kommentteis :D Ja oot kyl oikees siin, et Etelä-Karjalas sanasto ja kielioppi ei poikkee paljoo "Standarized-Finnish" ainut mikä eroo on just se aksentti ja erityisesti mite vanhemmat ihmiset puhuu.

[@markkujantunen8298]

@@svk9704 Tunsin pari Tampereella asuvaa teekkaria Lappeenrannasta. Lievä itäinen korostus mutta sanasto ja kielioppi olivat erittäin yleiskielisiä ja lievästi hämäläisvaikutteisia.

[@t0msula]

An answer to your question: I'm from northern finland, but nowadays live in the south. As soon as I open my mouth, they hear I'm not from here. The same would apply to pretty much every other region.

[@jonnamajaneva5933]

I was raised around Tampere and now living at south and people usually say that i sound like person from Tampere and some have even said that i have Turku dialect, dont really know where that came from bc i have visited there only once in my life.

[@RDnAC]

I like what you explained with the examples. I always wanted to learn Finnish because It sounds so intriguing to me but I never thought I would be able to. Now I just learned from you about adding things onto a word instead of using separate words. Thanks.

[@juhahakulinen8637]

1) How noticeable are the Finnish dialects today? - The main attributes have diminished, but you can still notice differences, especially in the countryside and among the older people. Differences in the intonation is still obvious sign, even the special words are vanishing little by little. 2) Can you tell where a Finnish speaker is from just by hearing them speak? - Mostly yes. It is now harder to tell, because the people change places quite often and many of them adapt their dialect to local quite fast.

[@elieli2893]

Funny thing though, apparently there's also people who just can't adapt their dialect to the place they are from? One of my friends said it's a genetic trait or something 🤷‍♀️ For example, I'm originally from south-eastern Finland, have lived in Oulu for six years now, still speak like I never left :'D Although I think I do slow my speech down just a little when I come back from visiting my childhood home? Karelians speak fast :'D (Also, I think Kainuu dialect at least is still doing somewhat well, some of my friends from there have completely different words for some things and I can't even begin to understand the meaning without explanation :D)

[@KateeAngel]

What about languages like Karelian and Veps? How much of them do you understand?

[@elieli2893]

@@KateeAngel I have read a bit of Karelian in a library just out of curiosity, and it's actually pretty understandable, only a few words that are foreign to me. Otherwise it looks like a very strong Finnish dialect. Veps I have unfortunately never encountered :(

[@kikkimaus5380]

@@KateeAngel As a finn from eastern Finland I'd say I understand approximately 50% from spoken Karelian (depending on Karelian dialect of course). Written probably more.

[@mrj.kottari8453]

@@KateeAngel Ingrian is basicly 1600s Finnish that got separated from the main Finnish region due political reasons and population relocations etc. (Later Ingrian mixed with Estonia east dialects) Karelian is quite intelligible to Finnish speaker as written but not so much as spoken. Karelian pronouncication is heavily influenced by slavic languages (in practise: Russian) Sámic languages are not very closely related with Finnish -- but structurally clearly belong in same language family. Other related small Fin-Ugric languages in west Russia like Vepsä and Votya aren't mutually intelligible with Finnish.

[@GGViraN]

I am half finnish and half swedish. I was never taught finnish as a kid so I am lesrning it now, but it is quite difficult. most difficult is to use the right forms of words. example: I always say Puhun suomi (I speak finland) instead of Puhun suomea (I speak finnish)

[@emppuv6083]

Hey! I'm half finnish & half swedish too,the only difference is that my mom has spoken finnish with me since the day I was born:)

[@gastonmartinez6316]

hör du till delen av Finland där talas svenska eller bor du i Sverige?

[@GGViraN]

+Gastón Martínez Jag? jag bor i sverige

[@gastonmartinez6316]

+Sebastian Alanen oh ok :) Jag kan inte heller tala på finska men jag skulle vilja lära mig det. Det finns en musikgrupp som heter "Haloo Helsinki" och kanske så kan det hjälpa dig med att få nya ord. Jag förordar det helt

[@GGViraN]

Just nu använder jag memrise, men ska kolla in den där musikgruppen.

[@mariaelenavasquezgarcia5225]

Thanksss, that was really informative & I had fun

[@thespectator2976]

Kiitos hyvästä videosta.You did actually remind me alot of things. My first language is Finnish but you video gave me good information what i take for granted.

[@eerohoppania6562]

Finnish is a great language The spruce returns = kuusi palaa The spruce is on fire = kuusi palaa The number six returns = kuusi palaa The number six is on fire = kuusi palaa Six of them return = kuusi palaa Six of them are on fire = kuusi palaa Your moon returns = kuusi palaa Your moon is on fire = kuusi palaa Six pieces = kuusi palaa lovely

[@zahando5420]

mr potato your moon is returning = kuusi palaa

[@joonaskekoni2867]

That example is a trick. Why kuusi=6 kuusi= spruce (tree) Homonyms are not typical finnish. kuu =moon kuusi=your moon palata=to return palaa=to burn pala=piece Due to agnative nature of the language and similarity of the some forms of the words are same as some or some other forms of some words. This is possible, but is not that common. Having multiple possibile interpretations is not typical.

[@zahando5420]

@@joonaskekoni2867 tiiän

[@itsenzo3000]

Variety!

[@coyotelong4349]

Just kill me now = kuusi palaa

[@apinakapinastorba]

Pro tip: learn the difference between A and Ä, and O and Ö.

[@geographydragon3016]

That's easy.

[@nadiaparamita101]

Does it work the same as german or not?

[@richarddelionheart8308]

Nadia Paramitha Hapsari well Sweden pronounces Ä as “eh” but a little different, German seem to pronounce it differently Ö as “uh” and å as “ua” ... for Finnish... _im not even gonna try to guess_

[@apinakapinastorba]

”Ä” is something like the letter ”a” in the words ”fan” or ”damn” - the sound ”æ”. ”Ö” is something like letter ”e” in ”the” - the sound ”ə”, when spoken in UK English. Both sounds are maybe more resonant in the throat and need more air than in English? Hard to explain a sound by written word.

[@nadiaparamita101]

@@apinakapinastorba OMG Ok ok got it

[@romanyoutube3141]

I'm learning Finnish through Duolingo. I'm a native Slovak (which is a language from the slavic language group) and really the hardest part for me might be the accusative and partitive cases. My language has only 6 cases (and a 7th one that is no longer used) and although we do have accusative case as well, it works completely differently. I haven't learnt a lot yet as I prefer to learn slowly but more consistently. Verbs in present tense are really easy and actually even easier than in my language. Having no grammatical genders definitely helps as well. I don't have good experience with grammar gender languages apart from my native language. It is really difficult to adapt to a different language that also has grammatical genders when your native language also has them. There are just so many words whose gender doesn't match with the gender of your native language. (For example the word horse. In Slovak it's masculine, but in German it's neuter.) Also the fact that it has more cases is actually pretty fine with me as I think it's worse to learn a language with fewer cases. Again when it comes to German, there are only 4 cases so I don't know which case to use when it comes to instances where normally in Slovak I'd use locative or instrumental case. All in all, I think Finnish language is really interesting and really fun to learn. If you hae spare time, are into Finnish music, hockey and winter, I highly recommend learning it. (Best would be to start at Duolingo.)

[@saipuakivikaupias]

Well done video, thank you for posting!

[@curt_allred]

I speak fluent Finnish/Suomea, but am a native speaker of American English (I grew up in the US, and lived for two years in Finland). When I was 40 years old, I moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and found to my surprise that there are still many people who speak Finnish here, which has the highest percentage of Finnish-Americans in the US. However, as I began to speak Finnish with these local Yoopers (people from the U.P.), I began to realize that they were NOT speaking pure Finnish. As I studied this further, I came to realize that what is called Finnish here in the Upper Peninsula is actually almost entirely the dialect of Mielenkieli which comes mostly from the Torne River Valley that is along the border of northern Sweden, Finland and parts of Norway, and which is primarily settled by Finns, Same (Lapps), Swedes and Norwegians, and which borrows influences from all of those linguistic traditions. When people from Finland come to the Upper Peninsula, they are shocked to hear what they are told is spoken Finnish, since it is patently obvious to any fluent speaker of Finnish that it is so different. However, the Yooper Finns speaking their dialect have no idea of this: they believe (falsely) that they are actually speaking standard Finnish. An example of this is the word for 'pancake': 'pannukakku'. In standard Finnish, which emphasizes very crisply-pronounced consonants, this word would be pronounced 'PAHN-oo-Kahk-oo' However, the Mielenkieli speaking Yooper Finn would pronounce it 'BAHN-oo-Gahg-oo'. This is dramatically different from standard Finnish, which does not even have the letters 'B' or 'G' in its alphabet! (okay, they do use the letter 'G', but only as part of a softened consonantal dipthong such as if you changed 'NK' into 'NG'). The Mielenkieli dialect borrows from Same, Swedish and Norwegian and softens the crisp consonants to soft, aspirated ones. This is similar to what Americans typically will do when they attempt to speak Finnish, since Americans love to truncate words and smoosh consonants together: "Why'oncha go'fer a swim?" The reason that the Mielenkieli dialect is prominent in the Upper Peninsula is due to the fact that the first Finnish-speaking immigrants to the U.P. came from the region in northern Sweden where that dialect is spoken. It so happens that it is along the Torne Valley that the iron mining industry of Scandinavia is located, due to the rich iron deposits, as well as copper and other metal mines. When copper was discovered in the Keweenaw Peninsula region of the Upper Peninsula, a great need for skilled miners who would earn good wages enticed these miners from the Torne River Valley to come to Michigan. Because they were the first Finnish speakers in the area, they simply outnumbered other Finnish speakers who came later from Finland proper (an especially large number of Socialist and Communist Finns arrived before and after the horrible Civil War that took place when the Russian Revolution took place and Finland gained its independence in 1917). However, the original wave of immigrants had set the tone, so to speak, and that is why the Yooper Finn today speaks the Mielenkieli dialect and not proper standard Finnish, even if his or her ancestors may have come from Finland and spoke standard Finnish.

[@JormaKovanen]

Curt Allred It is meänkieli not mielenkieli. Meänkieli word means probably meidän kieli (meidän kielemme, engl. our language). It can be considered one of Finnish dialects.

[@JormaKovanen]

I mean the Finnish dialect in northern Sweden, you are talking about the name of the finnish language which the finnish immigrants in Michigan have given to their ixed US Finnish dialect. I misunderstood you.

[@Chokwik]

meänmaalaiset (people speaking meänkieli) are interesting because we were not told about them in school., maybe they got "cut" from our history when lines were drawn by swedish and russian.. (hi from mid-fin) i hope their descendants keep speaking mielenkieli, it's been around in form or another for 1000s of years... mielenkieli means the language of the mind.. :) and btw. mielinkielin might mean overly or abundantly (especially when there's a lot of something to eat and drink).. eli meänmaalasista mielinkieliläisiks., hehe ei ollu vissiin huono veto lähtee reissuun.. :D pannukaakku, pannari or ropsu i have heard of, but bannugaaggu sounds like older and more playful way to say it, a bit karelian or estonian :) hmm, i wonder if they have kalakukko there in u.p.. finnish language used to have more letters, for example ¨s (can't do the symbol, but we call suhu-s).. letters got changed or cut off by academics.., as church and state began organizing teaching, children got 'civilized' and were more quicker to ditch anything that was from their own country or culture, to change for the great greek or german way of industrial life.. we finns don't really understand our ancient stories anymore, they were collected from oral singers in 1800s-1900s and after some academic sampling and re-mixing they printed a version that's poems were in (closer to) karelian language., and the commonly used school finnish is made from west fin dialect.., so no one understands at first try the words and metaphors of this knowledge, and youth want to ditch these books as old fashioned and non-understandable... and older folk started singing new songs from the world.. actually, we really don't understand the mass of new words either, that's brought in by this industrial global banking state of directives and declining separation of privatization... or what-ever, common people would call that gibberish siansaksa (pig's dutch).. old word ;:D sorry for the rant, much love! this was nice news to hear from world.. it would be fun to see how much mielenkieliset can understand from a finnish kalevala :)

[@thesuomi8550]

Curt Allred it's meänkieli but that's pretty interesting. But I think it would still be understandable, I'm not sure though

[@mattihp]

A standard finnish k sounds more like a standard germanic g and a standard finnish p sounds a bit more like a standard germanic b. Could just be that the consonants have moved a bit in their language to fit their germanic speaking of english. This transposal is not all that common in meänkieli.

[@maoravni4203]

I remember seeing a Finnish newspaper for the first time. The headline had a word with 23 letters, where the K appeared at least 6 times. I said to myself, no way I could learn such language!

[@mass1985]

@Mika Hamari city research captain\manager

[@kasikasivendjinn5345]

That word is probably four words glued together by some prepositions, Turkish has a lot of those.

[@JuusoAlasuutari]

Here's an actual compound word for you: hääyöaie.

[@iProgramInCpp]

Can't like, *there* at 69. (The grammatical misspelling is a joke)

[@nakkilama2645]

me too 8)

[@janicelourens5535]

Loved the country and the people. They are really nice. The language is fascinating.

[@punavalkosipuli]

To answer your question: yes. you can hear where someone is from just from their dialect IF you recognize what stuff belongs to each dialect. the differences in dialects are still so minor (in most cases) that everyone understands eachother regardless of where they're from. Of course there are many people who move around and never really adapt to the new dialect or start mixing the dialects accidentally so it becomes hard to try to guess where they're from. For example me, who is from Turku, a city really south of Finland and moved to Rovaniemi, Lapland. People here in Lapland tell me that I sound like I'm from the south but when I go back home they tell me I sound like I'm from Lapland.

[@anni8456]

the Finnish dialects are still pretty noticeable but they're not really the same kind of dialects as in English, the English dialects sound different but the language itself is still pretty much the same. Finnish dialects have different words for different things. some words are completely different and some are almost the same words but just a bit different(forest=metsä, mehtä, mettä.. I=minä, mää, mä, mie...). If you gave Finns from different dialects the same sentence to read they would sound almost exactly the same but if you told them to say that in their own dialects they would change up the words entirely. but the Finnish dialects are blending, if you put 5 Finnish teenagers in a room there would not be that much differences but if you put 5 Finnish grandmas in the same room they might sound like different languages

[@jaanaenkerro445]

missä muuten sanotaan mettä? viime äikän tunnista on aikaa nii en todellakaa muista mitää

[@anni8456]

+Jaana EnKerro ainaki oulun murteessa(:

[@jaanaenkerro445]

+Ilita a okeeei... kiitti :3

[@QuesoQt]

+Jaana EnKerro erikoista mut Turussa kans (en tiedä kuuluuko "virallisesti" murteeseen mut kaikki sanoo mettä)

[@jaanaenkerro445]

+mismatchedpolkadots ihmettelinki vähän koska tampereellakin kai sanotaan mettä, ehkä nuorten lyhennys tai jotain? mut tossa videossahan sanottii että murteet voi tavallaan jakaa itään ja lähteen nii jos liittyy siihen?

[@mishelbolivar6537]

It is one of the most beautiful languages ​​I've ever heard

[@mutated__donkey5840]

Hello welcome to “hearing”. Enjoy your stay!

[@geographydragon3016]

Kyllä.

[@user-xk7vy4ck1v]

Please listen some hindi, or urdu language bro

[@pyromorph6540]

@@user-xk7vy4ck1v Everyone got their taste

[@hansuilija6605]

@@user-xk7vy4ck1v Sounds goofy.

[@elinashome-economics]

I would say that the way of using vocals is a huge part of the uniqueness of the Finnish language. I sometimes try to learn my colleagues easy meanings, such as Good morning: Hyvää huomenta Good night: Hyvää yötä and they seem to be really difficult to pronounce. Or sentences like Drive slowly on the icy bridge: Aja hiljaa jäisellä sillalla Even the word mother is "difficult": äiti

[@obamabinladen4109]

7:31 But you could also say "aion lukea huomenna" which is in the future tense

[@TheRawrnstuff]

No, "Aion" is present tense. "I am intending". It is as future tense as Finnish gets, but it's not future tense.

[@ot981]

Who's here after Duolingo released the Finnish Course?

[@balahatun]

When did they 😱 I should run and have a look

[@ot981]

This Tuesday!

[@PabloPerroPerro]

Terve ja tervetuloa! Minä olen hyvä velho. Matti on kiltti poika. Elsa on sisukas mies. Perkele on suomalainen soitin. Duolingo on mukava sininen undulaatti. I'm practically fluent already.

[@ot981]

@@PabloPerroPerro Wow good for you! I've gotten pretty far, but I don't think I'm quite as proficient as you yet! Great work!

[@balahatun]

@@PabloPerroPerro yes I started the very same day and tama on mukava! and I think I am developing a sisu over here =D

[@timmmahhhh]

Spent time in Helsinki and Turku in 1989, loved it as an architecture student. Next spent time in the then Soviet Union where the tour guide told a joke about the SF stickers on cars. I knew it stood for Suomi and Finland in Finnish and Swedish respectively, but the Russian tour guide jokingly said it stood for Soviet Finland. The Russians wish.

[@holoholopainen1627]

timmmahhhh Didn't They know about Suomi - at all ? It IT a Country and Language - both in Suomi at Suomi !

[@mikkoolavijarvinen3653]

That might be the actual reason the stickers were changed to FIN in 1993.

[@attilatasciko4817]

Thanks . Great job , as usual .