Thursday, September 14, 2006

Is Finnish a Difficult Language? [continued - 3]

Continuing the idea from the previous post, those "k-p-t" changes don't pose too much difficulties in general. Two things are to be mastered here: which inflection uses them (for example which noun cases or verb forms), and how to get back to the basic form of the word when we have the inflected form.

I will give here a couple of examples:

  • A simple case: the word kauppa: kaupassa, kauppaan, kauppoihin, kauppoja, etc. You will notice the inflected forms of this word do not pose too much difficulties in order to recognize it's basic form.
  • A more complicated case: the word liikenne: liikenteessä, liikenteeseen, etc. In this case it is a bit more difficult to get back to the basic word when reading any of the inflected form. It requires quite extensive knowledge of the way inflection works for this particular type of the word, and how and where to apply the "k-p-t" changes.