Notes upon Finnish Language

"En ollut ollut baarissa humalassa yli vuoteen!"

2008-06-29T10:25:00.003+03:00

I recently listened to a recorded episode of the "Kesälomautus" radio show called "Mökkinisti" (something like "cottager" - someone who is addicted to going to the cottage every weekend) on Yle site. It is about the story of a guy who confesses about his problem, even having to steal in order to afford to go there.

Something what caught my attention was the way he realized that he had a problem: while sitting in the sauna it suddenly struck him that he had not been in a bar, getting drunk, for over a year!

What on earth?!?!?!

If someone has not been drunk his/her all life, he/she must have a pretty crappy life (I know at least one guy, Vanhanen, the prime minister, is an absolutist, poor guy! ;-))! So hey, people, if you don't drink to get drunk, your life sucks! You have a problem. Accept it, it's the first step... and then head to the bars. They are waiting for you to get wasted!

After this, you can proudly say that you have finally gotten on the right track (after years of confusion), and become part of those with a real life: the crowd whose members are crawling to the taxi stations at 4am and then finding themselves the next days with a bill to be paid, from the taxi driver who had to take his cab interior to be cleaned...

The radio show can be listened to here: http://areena.yle.fi/toista?id=1341871, available until 26.07.2008, 15:23.

Life is so cheap in Finland

2008-06-16T15:39:00.000+03:00

Again, no language related, but a news in today's newspaper. A youngster who run away with 190 km/h driving a car under the influence of alcohol (1.24 pro mil), killing a policeman, only gets 3.5 years in jail.

People are outraged about how life means nothing for the government and law makers in Finland (I read the comments to the news on the newspaper's site). They are also speculating that because the convicted was under 21 and first conviction, he will get away with under 2 years in jail.

Long live justice!

Original news in Finnish.

Beggars vs. drunken people... and Vappu!

2008-04-30T21:01:00.000+03:00

In this post I will not talk about the language. No. It is Vappu! The drunken people's day!

I read today an article in Helsingin Sanomat about the beggars in the capital area. Summer is here and it seems that a new round of beggars is due to arrive in Finland. People are debating it, talking about it, turning the issue upside-down, inside-out, and then back... Some of them are supporting the total banning of begging, some of them oppose it. Some of them are disturbed by them, others give them money, others pass by without giving them not even a look.

I, myself, do not give them ever money. Why? Because I do not want to support this kind of activity. I am sure there are other means of getting enough for the daily bread, instead of just begging. But the truly poor will not just go beg. They will try all other means first...

No, I am not bothered by beggars... I am bothered by the drunken. The drunken who after 1o pm, especially on week-end nights, I have to avoid while driving in the center. By the drunken who sometimes willingly breaks the beer glass on the sidewalk where I drive my bike, and makes my ride a pain... By the drunken who in Finland is so privileged! So privileged that the Police see them in the middle of the road or just crossing on red and just toot their horn while passing by (the traffic is a mess on those week-end nights). So privileged, that people dare without any remorse to take out the bottle and drink on the street. And not one... but tens, hundreds. Almost never Police intervenes.

Drunken people will get smaller punishments when committing a crime. Why? Because they did not know what they were doing... Yeah, sure! It all started with the first drink before the crime, and there is no doubt they knew what they were doing then...

I staid in for Vappu. I guess there's no way to enjoy it unless you get drunk!

I wish you all a sunny spring!

Finnish Language and its Verbs

2008-04-04T15:04:00.001+03:00

I find the verbs of the Finnish language quite easy compared to other languages, especially to romance languages (Spanish, French and especially Romanian). The pattern is so regular in Finnish that one can automate their conjugation. Of course, there are exceptions, which must be treated separately, but all in all, they are a piece of cake compared to other languages (exclude English ;-)

So I searched the internet, I studied all the groups, exceptions and more... and after a few weeks of work I have created an automated Finnish verb conjugator. But I did not stop here... as similar tools were available on the internet (see http://www.verbix.com). Conjugation is not a big deal compared to the reverse engineering of the conjugation process.

I remember, when I was at the beginnings with my Finnish studies, I had big troubles looking up a verb in the dictionary, guess why? Because the dictionary has only the basic forms (very seldom some conjugated forms which are used as adjectives and so on). So I extended the functionality of my conjugator with the reverse recognition of the Finnish verb forms.

You are welcome to try it out. Go to this page:
http://www.dictionar-finlandez.net/main.php?page=verbs
and start firing!

and remember to post your critics, if any.

Have a nice weekend!

Luokse, luona, luota

2007-04-17T12:17:00.000+03:00

They are used to express the construction "to/at/from someone" or "to/at/from someone's place". For example:

Olin eilen kaverini luona. I was yesterday at my friend's (place).
Tule huomenna luokseni. Come to me / to my place tomorrow.

One particularity in usage of these constructions is that it is incorrect to use it for the same person as the subject. The following examples are incorrect:

Palaan takaisin luokseni illalla. I will return to my place / home in the evening.
Milloin lähditte luotanne? When did you leave from your place / home?

Vissiin

2007-03-14T15:43:00.000+02:00

Have you ever come across this word? Did you look it up in the dictionary and could not find it? Well, I came across it and it is not listed in any dictionary. And now that I know what it means, I hear it all the time around (I am sure I heard it also before, I was just ignoring it).

And it means (I won't keep you waiting any longer), well, it means: maybe. Same as ehkä, kenties, kukaties.

People use so many "unofficial" words in their spoken language. I will post them here when I encounter new ones.

Meanwhile, just came to my mind, here are the "spoken" or "shortened" variants for the numbers:

yksi = y
kaksi = ka
kolme = ko
neljä = ne
viisi = vi
kuusi = ku
seitsemän = seiska, seittemän
kahdeksan = kasi, kaheksan
yhdeksän = ysi, yheksän
kymmenen = kymppi

Is Finnish a Difficult Language? [continued - 3]

2006-09-14T13:28:00.000+03:00

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.

Is Finnish a Difficult Language? [continued - 2]

2006-08-30T20:15:00.000+03:00

After a relatively long summer break, I am resume posting here. I will try to come up with a new article at least every two weeks.

Continuing the subject, let's take up the nouns and the verbs.

Nouns, Verbs and "Grade Changes"

When learning the language, nouns are always presented devided in groups, each group following certain rules for inflection. The groups can be very general, in this case they'd be a bit over 10, and if one manages to learn this, he or she'd probably get right the inflections in 90% of the cases.

The same with verbs: there are 6 groups, once you learn them, you can inflect correctly 99% of the verbs.

Both the nouns (and all nominals in general) and the verbs undergo the so called "grade change", or "kpt change". The change can go both ways, depending on the group the noun or the verb is in.

Is Finnish a difficult language?

2006-05-12T12:24:00.000+03:00

One of the blog visitors suggested to discuss the subject "Is Finnish really that hard to learn?", so here we go.

My opinion is as simple as this: "It is easy to learn Finnish, but it's very difficult to use it". In this article (which will probably continue in more than one "episodes") I intend to go through all the aspects of the language, evaluate them by comparing to other languages (mainly germanic and latin-rooted) and pointing out the similarities and differencies.

Although very good background information on Finnish can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language, I will approach it from the perspective of a foreign learner rather than from that of a linguistical one.

Sounds, Letters and Words

The first contact with the language brings up two issues: how it sounds and how the words look like. In Finnish you write as you read, meaning generally that each sound corresponds to a letter. If one compares it to French or English, this is definitely a big advantage in learning the language. Some small troubles may appear with double consonants, but once one gets used to it, everything's fine. On the other hand, due to the structure of the language, the compound words can become unusually long, take for example the well-known slogan word of the current leaders in Finland: "hyvinvointiyhteiskunta" = welfare society. Yet again, once one gets used to this, it does not seem that troubling anymore.

The alphabet is an ordinary one, for me the only new letters were: y - pronounced as German "ü" and å - a Swedish letter pronounced "o".

[to be continued]

Plural of Numerals

2006-05-11T23:33:00.000+03:00

Finnish is odd at least from one point of view: the numerals can have plurals. Moreover, even the numeral "one" can have a plural. And I am not refering here to the type of plural like "ones", or "twos" in English which denote a multiple quantity of numbers one or two, like in this example: "The twos in this text should be written with different fonts." And since numerals are nominals, they can be inflected potentially in any case.

Let's start with the following example: "Ostin kahdet housut" - "I bought two (pairs of) trousers". The noun "housut" has only plural form and since the numeral "kaksi" will agree with the noun, it has to be in plural also: "kahdet"! These are inded special cases, but this is as well a special characteristic of the Finnish language.

When writing the above sentence into the negative form, we'll have to use the partitive (because the rule requires that only partitive is allowed for objects in negative sentences). So: "En ostanut kaksia housuja" - "I did not buy two (pairs of) trowsers". "Kaksia" is the plural partitive form for the numeral "kaksi".

Another example:
"Ostin ne yhdet sakset" - "I bought those (that pair of) scisors."

Numbers and Quantities [continued]

2006-03-23T15:17:00.000+02:00

Continuing the previous subject, let's talk more about the usage of numbers with the verb in singular and plural. If we take the follwoing example:

"Kaksi poikaa juoksee kadulla" and "Kaksi poikaa juoksevat kadulla".

The verb is used in the singular in the first example meaning that "Kaksi poikaa" refers to some unidentified, unspecified group of (two) boys part of a bigger group of (possibly whole set of) boys. The plural form usage in the second example implies that there are only two of the boys in that particular context (which is missing in our example). To take another example, the sentence "Perheen kaksi poikkaa ovat ulkomailla" implies that there are only two boys in the family, and all of them are abroad.

The same way: "Neljä pohjoismaata osallistui kongressiin" implies that there exist more than four nordic countries, while saying "Viisi pohjoismaata osallistuivat kongressiin" also tells us that there are exactly five nordic countries and all of them took part in the congress.

Thanks to H-M for these clarifycations.

Numbers and Quantities

2006-03-20T15:01:00.000+02:00

Some things which I found strange straight from the beginning was the usage of numbers (numerals).

In this article, I will start writing about this (this will go on for a couple of next articles, too). In the Finnish language numbers are used with nouns in singular, numbers can have plural forms (as they inflect as any other nominal: nouns, adjective, pronouns), while numeral "one" has some special usage.

Numbers are used with singular form of nouns

In Finnish, we say "Minulla on kaksi autoa" meaning "I have two cars". The word "autoa" is in singular, inflected in the case called "partitive". The partitive is a case expressing incomplete or undefined quantities, parts. In the example, the possible explanation is that this type of sentence belongs to those which obey special rules (omistuslause, tilalause - posessive, existential sentences) - this will be discussed in another article. But how about this then: "Ostin kaski kirjaa" - "I bought two books."?

Also, nouns preceded by numbers (expressing the subject of the sentence) are generally used with the verb in the singular form: "Kaksi lasta juoksee kadulla" (again, this can be included in those special type of sentences) meaning "Two children are running on the street". In English (and many other languages) we use "children" and "are running" - the plural forms, while in Finnish we use the singular forms "lasta" and " juoksee". A possible explanation for this usage would be that two children are refered to as an undefined or unidentified group or set of entities.

There is, however, an exception (which many foreigners would expect more naturaly to be "the rule" rather than "the exception"): when the number expressed refers to specific entities it is used with the verb in the plural form (please note that, nevertheless, the noun stays in singular partitive). So we say "Nuo kaksi autoa ovat uusia" - "Those two cars are new" and "Minun kaksi koiraani ovat kotona" - "My two dogs are at home"

[to be continued . . .]

The "Different" Finnish Language

2006-03-20T13:35:00.000+02:00

When I first came to Finland, for four days, I was confused at the moment I got out of the airport. I understood nothing of the language... Naturally, the first texts I saw in this new language were those on the general signs: Ulos (Out), Sisäänkäynti (Entrance), Keskusta (Center), Lentoasema (Airport), etc.

None of them looked similar to the words in any other language I knew. I was thrilled... but then very surprised to see that everybody spoke English, despite (or I should say maybe due to the fact that) their language was so different.

During those four days I was listening to the language (of people speaking on the street or on TV) with the ear of a child hearing just sounds, not able to distinguish where a word or a sentece started or ended, just a flow of sounds. The only thing I managed to get is probably the tonality, the melodicity of the language (if Finnish has one). I was only hearing an endless sound flow of T:s and S:s, and A:s and I:s and E:s between them. Nothing more.

Now, after more than five years of living in Finland and speaking the language, I wish I could listen to it as during those four days... The only way I can still realize how Finnish sounds to a complete foreigner who does not speak at all this language is trying to remember those four days.

Generally, I have no problems in speaking and understanding it, though spoken language is sometimes still challanging. I have had many challenges in the learning process, many ups and downs, but in the end all the effort was worth it. I got rtid of the frustration of not understanding a word of what people speak, of what my coleagues are chatting during the coffee breaks, of what the different documents I receive at home from various institutions say.

So I decided to post some oddities of the Finnish language I've come accross during this past few years.