Finnish learning thread!

[princeofdoom]

Oh btw, there's apparently a Finnish club in the town I moved to in Pennsylvania. I don't know how many Minnions live near Philly, but who knows? I could meet someone nearby here.

[starfallz]

I had a question about compound words... When I was looking at the basic learning Finnish stuff, it talked about how wonderful vowel harmony is. And when I am finally learning some Finnish words, and then many of the long words don't have that vowel harmony. Is that what happens with compound words?

[Dane Murgen]

I think, as a non native speaker, vowel harmony is applied to the words that are in the compound word separately. I can't really think of any examples, though. Others can correct me.

[Auleliel]

I had a question about compound words... When I was looking at the basic learning Finnish stuff, it talked about how wonderful vowel harmony is. And when I am finally learning some Finnish words, and then many of the long words don't have that vowel harmony. Is that what happens with compound words?

Yes, the vowel harmony only applies to the parts of the compound word, not the whole compound word.
Example:
Seitsemän + toista = seitsemäntoista

[DB (f.k.a. DaveBro)]

One thing I didn't see specifically mentioned going through the previous pages, was where is a good source for sounding out the written words?  I started with phonics as a child, and I guess the habit persists.  I tend to want to voice the double vowels as musical duplets (like triplets, only shorter).

M'wife & I will have a chance to test this in Helsinki come early August, so this will be a bit of a cram.  Oh well, can't practice flute with tendonitis, so I may as well use the time constructively. 

LATER EDIT:  Starfallz' link to Finnish for Foreigners actually gets into that very issue.  Instead of separate voicing, double vowels get the musical equivalent of a tie, extending the duration of the initial voicing.

[Cancvas]

Here is some that I found , key word being "puhesyntetisaattori"

Tässä on joitakin joita löysin, avainsanan ollessa "puhesyntetisaattori"

http://www.mikropuhe.com/ (demo)
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suopuhe http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/suopuhe/ + http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/ (free, but seems to be bit more work to operate)

[Laufeysdóttir]

so much going on here!! **happy**

...I wish I had more time...

just to add some extra info for DaveBro (as always, natives, please correct me if I'm talking rubbish.)

I don't know an awful lot about learning to read English, or phonics, in particular (my children started with Welsh, which has a super phonetic orthography, like Finnish(!) and we now live in Germany...)
BUT, I've seen the books & it looks like it's basically a system for languages with much more complicated sound-to-writing correspondences. (I think?) From what I can tell, you teach spelling patterns that correspond to certain sounds, so you know how to read that letter combination in words(?)

With Finnish, you won't need any of that; sounding out words should be much easier - once you know your language sounds, corresponding letters and the stress pattern (which is also regular!) you can't really go wrong. (It's almost like reading simplified IPA, only with (a few!) different symbols)

you probably missed the bit on phonology (and, implicitly, spelling), there's a section on that in the grammar link that Cancvas posted a while back.

I also think the Wikipedia article on Finnish orthography is pretty good.

@Cancvas, onko se puhesyntetisaattori sama kuin text-to-speech? Olisi kyllä hyödöllistä jos haluat tarkistaa(?) jos lukeat oikeasti...
:uk: @Cancvas, is this puhesyntetisaattori the same as text-to-speech? That would of course be usefeul if you want to check if you're reading correctly...

argh, one of these days, I'm going to try and write a bit more in Finnish. (I'm sort of playing it safe in that I'm only writing stuff that I think I remember... Even that takes way too long! grrr. It's so much more frustrating trying to relearn a language you were once fluent in. and not having time!!)

[DB (f.k.a. DaveBro)]

Laufeysdóttir,

Thanks for pointing me toward those links.  What I meant by phonics was indeed sounding out the letters, which I got up to yesterday in Finnish for Foreigners.  The Wikipedia article sounds like it would be a good overview, in particular. 

Errands to run, so I will have some hours to go before trying anymore new stuff.  At least I know where to look now.     Again, thanks!

[Lalligaattori]

I also think the Wikipedia article on Finnish orthography is pretty good.

In Finnish, [ä & ö] are collectively referred to as the ääkköset when they need to be distinguished from the ISO basic Latin alphabet; the word is a somewhat playful modification of aakkoset, which is the Finnish for the alphabet as a whole.

punning level - Finnish

[Ann Marie]

punning level - Finnish

A pun deliberately writting into the language!  XD  Amazing.


Sorry to be so absent.  I'm too tired to exist this week.  Bleh.

[Cancvas]

Laufeysdóttir : Puhesyntetisaattori is text-to-speech, it's (computer wise) old expression, but "tekstistä puheeksi" is sort of clumsy expression. It's a compound word from puhe = speak, talk and "syntetisaattori" which is loan word from "synthesizer".

Otherwise, finnish is quite bit written as spoken, but there are few exceptions, most notable ng and nk wich mean this "äng-äänne" (soft and hard, respectively) and not "än-gee" or "än-koo" (maybe like "anger" for ng).

Second one is consonant transfer example "tule tänne" (come here); if you just pronounce tule tänne it sounds clumsy, but its more like "tule(t) tänne" Actual "tulet tänne", with complete "t" at end forms imperative case. 

Again somebody wiser than me in grammatics can correct and do proper labeling.

-C

[FinnishViking]

Hmm on the last one it seems a bit off in my opinion.

I would say that that has something to do with the local dialect since "Tule tänne" is pritty much just said like that and in more unformal cases the "Tuu tänne" is used.
Adding consonants in the end of words is not something i have really noticed or i think is a thing, but im not a real expert on this.

[olavi]

The "äng" is a velar nasal. Here's wiki links in Finnish and English Wiki: http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velaarinen_nasaali / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velar_nasal

The second one is called "rajakahdennus" (among other names) translating to something like "boundary doubling". Unfortunately Wiki has only an entry in Finnish: http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajakahdennus

Here's a quite extensive writing on the subject in English: https://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/suomi/cab.html

@FinnishViking: It's most likely dependent on the local dialect like you said. I can easily find word pairs where this happens (Oulu dialect). The pairs sound like a single word with double consonant in the middle. Saying the words completely separately sounds weird to me.

[Cancvas]

FinnishViking and olavi: Well, I'm trying to keep out nightmare of dialects from so simple grammar of finnish, and mostly to and keep it formal language. For example "tuu tänne" sounds bit off or maybe on imperative side to me, and I most likely would use "tuus tänne"  (when asking someone to come here).

-C

[Laufeysdóttir]

ooh! phonology!!!

kiitos tosi paljon teille kaikille!

I read that article on word boundary gemmination (plus a few more on the site that came from). Interesting stuff.
Not that I can remember what people sounded like when I was in Finland 20 years ago...

would it be too nosy of me to ask which parts of Finland our resident native speakers come from? roughly?? I love dialects and regional variation and I'd find it really interesting to relate different pronunciations and words/ expressions to different areas.

Itse olin Keski-Suomessa (vaikken ikinä ollut Keuruussa) ja huomasin että kieliopin linkkejä oli Jyväskylän ja Tampereen yliopistoista. that used to be my home turf!! yay! (the little things that make you happy...)

to the other learners, I think the mentioned "irregularities" are actually still regular just maybe not one-to-one in terms of letter > sound.

ng = ŋ
nk = ŋk

(as in English, only you never pronounce the g: cf ng in bang -no g-sound- as opposed to banger)

the unwritten gemmination (=consonant lengthening) stuff is probably nothing a beginner needs to worry about, it appears to be slightly different in different areas anyway. I'm guessing it's the sort of thing you tune into when you're there and you won't even notice you're doing it.

and now I'll try and stop procrastinating and do some actual work...