Maybe a little side-track, but I recently discovered this brilliant little Finnish folk song called "Ievan Polkka". There are dozens of versions on youtube; I can't understand a word of any of them, but I can't stop listening:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAyWN9ba9J8 - One of my favorite things on the internet, a South African guy remixing an blind Turkish street performer playing a Finnish song.
Thank you for this post. I needed motivation to get up and put more time into something I'm working on that is large and draining, and this short video reminded me why it is important.
I think Scandinavians my age know "ei sa peittaa". Basically "do not cover". When bored on the toilet before phones, reading whatever labels was the norm, and they often had a Finnish version. This was the label on the radiator.
My mother is Finnish, and my parents traveled and mover around a lot during our younger years - but we did live in Finland from I was age 3 to 7, so Finnish is the language I first learned to speak fluently.
Picking it up again once a year wasn't hard (usually when we'd get relatives visiting us, or the other way around), but around the time I became a teenager, I started speaking less - for no other reason than that I traveled less to relatives during the summers. These days I can read some, and listen to some conversation, but speaking is very hard - probably 25 years since I spoke it fluently. It is a shame, as I have to speak English with my grandparents, aunts, etc. - but language is def one of those "use it or lose it" things.
With that said, for the English speaking people - you'd be surprised how much Norwegian / Swedish / Danish (Germanic language) you can understand, with the amount of shared, or very similar words, the languages have.
Same way for us Scandinavians and Dutch. Can't really understand much when the language is spoken, but when reading some text, there's a lot of structure and words you can understand.
I'm natively british, but I live in the southern part of Sweden for the past 11 years, and I can only concur to what TrackerFF is saying.
There's a handful of false friends (Fart, Slut) but probably 10-15% of the scandinavian languages still have influence on modern english.
I say "still have root" because; if you weren't aware: the first common tongue variant of English was a proto-germanic language from the "Angles" of Denmark. "Angle"-ish, if you would.
Its more strange how the scandiavian dialects have a broader application in Scots english (Barn/Baen for child, Kirk for Church for example) - my family are Scottish so that was a weird surprise.
Regardless, if you're going to try to learn a Scandinavian Language: Stick to Norwegiean or Stockholm-Swedish. The Danish and Southern Swedish dialect (Skånsk) is difficult to unpick word from word and will leave you bewildered. But you will understand more than you might originally expect to if you visit Stockholm and have a simple pocket dictionary. :D
I played the game Noita where the enemies have inscrutable names like "Haulikkohiisi." I was amused to learn that is just the Finnish for "Shotgun Goblin", and that was the general pattern of names
After living in Finland a few years we got a dog, so I was often holding a big bone in my hand and saying the Finnish word for it, "luu". Something felt so correct and ancient about it, like luu is - and could only ever have been - the word that means the concept of a bone. I looked it up and luu is Proto-Finno-Ugric, and one of the oldest words to stick around in the Finnish language.
I have great respect for that first person to shake mammoth bone in another person's face saying "luu". They nailed it.
My best friend George (Gyuri) from college is Hungarian and I've picked up a few words (mostly cuss words) from him. One of the hardest parts for an English speaker to learn about Hungarian and Finnish is that the length of a sound (how long you articulate it) is significant. Finnish uses doubled letters for this, Hungarian uses accents (a vs á, o vs ó, etc.) for vowels and doubled letters for consonants. I've gotten to where I can hear the difference when listening to George speak Hungarian but it took some effort.
I have a Finnish friend here in Switzerland who believes Finnish is impossible to learn as an adult. I think because of the conjugations. She has a son and she is divorced from a Spanish man who remarried a Greek woman. Her son speaks German (Swiss school), French (Swiss school), English (Swiss school and all the other children at school), Spanish (father), Greek (step-mother and step-siblings), and because she makes a point of speaking Finnish with him at home, Finnish.
He has no problem with any of the languages including Finnish but she's still convinced that she needs to force it on him before he's an adult so that he can... well, I'm not sure why.
I have a(n English) friend who moved to Finland as an adult (in her 30s) and is now fluent in Finnish (and English, just the two languages for her) so it is certainly possible.
I have very jealous of your friend’s multi-lingual son though!
> He has no problem with any of the languages including Finnish but she's still convinced that she needs to force it on him before he's an adult so that he can... well, I'm not sure why.
Seeing your kid speak your native language is a delight regardless of the circumstances.
In the end, all cultures in existence are very sticky and want to survive and replicate. The ones that don't didn't make it into the modern age.
For an English speaker it would be difficult. It is a highly synthetic language (meaning the markers which tell you which parts of the sentence are doing what), compared to English which is an analytical language (meaning there are extra words like prepositions which tell you which part of the sentence is doing what). This is why Finnish (and other Uralic languages’ words) look so long to us, because where we in English would use prepositions and word order to denote object, subject etc., much of that is expressed in Finnish through suffixes.
Perhaps for a speaker of another synthetic language like Polish it might be easier to learn Finnish as their brain might would already have the wiring but even then, as the article notes Finnish is not an Indo-European language so it is further removed still.
English speaker living in Finland (15+ years) checking in. It’s doable but very difficult. I haven’t succeeded and of all the foreigners I know - only a handful have learnt the language to the point of being able to function. Most of them Germans - interestingly.
We read and write so much more English than Finnish when working with software, so the English terms bubble up naturally.
I have a strong dislike against setting the language of my OS, or most applications, to Finnish. Application translations are extremely inconsistent, sometimes even nonsensical. The absolute worst case is seeing only translated error messages without error codes. It's nearly impossible to search help or follow step-by-step guides.
I definitely should improve my knowledge of "proper" Finnish IT terms. Some of them have very intuitive meanings:
- hashing -> hajautus: (chaotically) splitting, scattering things away from each other
I think even that is more 90s and it’s getting replaced by just using the English words - sometimes pronounced as if it was Finnish but the final form is that part of the language is just English. Brainrot globalization!
perkeleen vittupää! I need to use this the next time our junior wants to merge something copy pasted from an LLM that not only breaks something but doesn't even do what it's suposed to do.
Interesting how accurately it has preserved some early Germanic forms verbatim. Wonder if Finnish has been relatively conservative in the same way that nearby Lithuanian is a relatively conservative Indo-European language.
Finnish has been very peripheral and isolated due to geography. It is closely related to Estonian, but remains much more similar to their common archaic root, while Estonian has streamlined and developed due to more contact and exchange.
I don't think it is as clear with the Russian word for market (торг) being derived from the name of the Finnish city, because related words (trh in Czech, targ in Polish...) (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/t...) are used in most Slavic languages, so this origin explanation feels a bit strange.
at the time "proto-Germanic" is claimed to have been spoken, most of Germany spoke a slavic/celtic/local dialects unrelated to what was being spoken in Norway or Sweden and the association was constructed by german nordicists of the 18th century that drove popular indo-european philology based around grammar protocols established by international trade or diplomacy instead of words and tones used by natives in life and labor
At the time of proto-germanic, it would have been spoken only in the northern parts of present day Germany, besides southern Scandinavia. The language spread and diverged during the first millennium AD.
Japanese too. Once you get past the alphabet being different, there are an enormous number of loan words (mostly from English). I bet walking around Tokyo you could read half the signs if you spent a couple of days just learning katakana.
Clickbaity title: In the text he analyses that Finnish has preserved loaned aspects that the indo-germanic languages have lost ages ago. So we indo-germanic speakers don't know them.
That there are plenty of words in Finnish which have indo-germanic roots is without doubt. A majority of things introduced after 1500. But recognizing similarity of single words is not knowing a language. The structure of the language is so different, that even common grammatical concepts like singular and plural or subject and object don't really match to define the rules. Finnish has five house, but fives trousers. The list goes on and on with concepts far too difficult to explain here.
[+] [-] stickfigure|7 months ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ievan+polkka
If you can only do three:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqthspSKZV8 - Acapella from Finland, circa 1990s
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX5OARoNFpg - Modern Russia, I sincerely hope none of these folks get drafted
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAyWN9ba9J8 - One of my favorite things on the internet, a South African guy remixing an blind Turkish street performer playing a Finnish song.
Delightful stuff.
[+] [-] BlindEyeHalo|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Ndymium|7 months ago|reply
Turns out you can play it with an angry face.
[+] [-] seirus|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bogzz|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unwind|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] justinrubek|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] laurent_du|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gausswho|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] matsemann|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tapland|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Ndymium|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mrweasel|7 months ago|reply
For a brief attempt at a Finnish webshop I also happen to know "Osta Nyt" (Buy now) and "Verkkokauppa" (Online store).
[+] [-] TrackerFF|7 months ago|reply
Picking it up again once a year wasn't hard (usually when we'd get relatives visiting us, or the other way around), but around the time I became a teenager, I started speaking less - for no other reason than that I traveled less to relatives during the summers. These days I can read some, and listen to some conversation, but speaking is very hard - probably 25 years since I spoke it fluently. It is a shame, as I have to speak English with my grandparents, aunts, etc. - but language is def one of those "use it or lose it" things.
With that said, for the English speaking people - you'd be surprised how much Norwegian / Swedish / Danish (Germanic language) you can understand, with the amount of shared, or very similar words, the languages have.
Same way for us Scandinavians and Dutch. Can't really understand much when the language is spoken, but when reading some text, there's a lot of structure and words you can understand.
[+] [-] dijit|7 months ago|reply
There's a handful of false friends (Fart, Slut) but probably 10-15% of the scandinavian languages still have influence on modern english.
I say "still have root" because; if you weren't aware: the first common tongue variant of English was a proto-germanic language from the "Angles" of Denmark. "Angle"-ish, if you would.
Its more strange how the scandiavian dialects have a broader application in Scots english (Barn/Baen for child, Kirk for Church for example) - my family are Scottish so that was a weird surprise.
Regardless, if you're going to try to learn a Scandinavian Language: Stick to Norwegiean or Stockholm-Swedish. The Danish and Southern Swedish dialect (Skånsk) is difficult to unpick word from word and will leave you bewildered. But you will understand more than you might originally expect to if you visit Stockholm and have a simple pocket dictionary. :D
[+] [-] none_to_remain|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] regandersong|7 months ago|reply
I have great respect for that first person to shake mammoth bone in another person's face saying "luu". They nailed it.
[+] [-] rootbear|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayoldie|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] comrade1234|7 months ago|reply
He has no problem with any of the languages including Finnish but she's still convinced that she needs to force it on him before he's an adult so that he can... well, I'm not sure why.
[+] [-] wrboyce|7 months ago|reply
I have very jealous of your friend’s multi-lingual son though!
[+] [-] alexey-salmin|7 months ago|reply
Seeing your kid speak your native language is a delight regardless of the circumstances.
In the end, all cultures in existence are very sticky and want to survive and replicate. The ones that don't didn't make it into the modern age.
[+] [-] mathieuh|7 months ago|reply
Perhaps for a speaker of another synthetic language like Polish it might be easier to learn Finnish as their brain might would already have the wiring but even then, as the article notes Finnish is not an Indo-European language so it is further removed still.
[+] [-] deanc|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] umanwizard|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rclkrtrzckr|7 months ago|reply
Growing up bi-(or even multi)-lingual is always a good opportunity when it comes to speaking, especially here in Switzerland.
[+] [-] anilakar|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] decimalenough|7 months ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finglish
Especially in the IT world. Printteri tilttasi, klikkaa linkkiä, koodi bugittaa, buuttaa serveri!
[+] [-] praash|7 months ago|reply
I have a strong dislike against setting the language of my OS, or most applications, to Finnish. Application translations are extremely inconsistent, sometimes even nonsensical. The absolute worst case is seeing only translated error messages without error codes. It's nearly impossible to search help or follow step-by-step guides.
I definitely should improve my knowledge of "proper" Finnish IT terms. Some of them have very intuitive meanings:
- hashing -> hajautus: (chaotically) splitting, scattering things away from each other
[+] [-] kookamamie|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] coffeebeqn|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yobbo|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|7 months ago|reply
https://pingtype.github.io/finnish.html
[+] [-] kijin|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bauruine|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ummonk|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] vnorilo|7 months ago|reply
(Disclaimer: Finn)
[+] [-] skywalqer|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yencabulator|7 months ago|reply
Read it again:
> The Finnish city of Turku [...] derives its name from [...]
[+] [-] former-emr-dev|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] yobbo|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kleton|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] qingcharles|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] janmarsal|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rffn|7 months ago|reply
[+] [-] usr1106|7 months ago|reply
That there are plenty of words in Finnish which have indo-germanic roots is without doubt. A majority of things introduced after 1500. But recognizing similarity of single words is not knowing a language. The structure of the language is so different, that even common grammatical concepts like singular and plural or subject and object don't really match to define the rules. Finnish has five house, but fives trousers. The list goes on and on with concepts far too difficult to explain here.
[+] [-] 01HNNWZ0MV43FF|7 months ago|reply