Author Topic: Finnish learning thread!  (Read 84024 times)

Cancvas

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #105 on: April 30, 2015, 07:52:00 AM »
I usually say, that "I'm from nowhere." ("En ole mistään kotoisin.", also idiom for good for nothing), but last thirty years I've been in Eastern Finland and that dialect has stuck, with affiliated tendency to "clarity".

Tavallisesti sanon että "En ole mistään kotoisin." (ilmaisu joka tarkoittaa että ei ole hyvä tai käyttökelpoinen), mutta viimeiset kolmekymmentä vuotta olen ollut Itä-Suomessa ja murre on tarttunut, mukaanlukien siihen liityvä "selkeys".

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Being friendly cost nothing and often pays off. Just spice it with grain of salt.

FinnishViking

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #106 on: April 30, 2015, 07:53:27 AM »
The dialects are generally split in to the western and eastern ones and those are split even further down so for example the eastern dialects are split to the Savonian dialects and then the south-eastern dialect ( if my memory serves me correctly. )

I personally come from Kuopio and i speak a savonian dialect and i guess i noticed the difference since in here it almost seems like we add vocals and remove consonants from any where we can.

For example: "Helmeä" is new expression that directly translated means "Pearly". Here people use it as an expression for either when things are going well or as a sarcastic expression to say when stuff isn't great so one could say: " Eillinen sade oli aika helmeä." which one would translate to "Yesterdays rain was quite nice" with the tone expressing if you actually enjoyed the rain or did you find it horrible.

Regardless where i live the word "Helmeä" which is a formal word has been twisted and has become "Helemee" and these kind of word twists are quite regural here where essentially the end of the word has added adjectives and we also eploy a lot of diftongs because of this.

,But alas i'm not a linguistic expert So don't take this at face value.

Cancvas

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #107 on: April 30, 2015, 08:02:58 AM »
FinnishViking very good example, and its self evident, if you read body language and inflection of person speaking, which is ment, but then again, I've come across distant relatives from capital region who find dialect annoying (leaves them unsure maybe) and you need to be somewhat carefull with people from "pohjanmaa" as they tend to extremely straightforward and literal.

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Being friendly cost nothing and often pays off. Just spice it with grain of salt.

FinnishViking

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #108 on: April 30, 2015, 08:47:53 AM »
Hmm while that is true people in the capital area too speak in some sort of an dialect that while less notiaceable ( or more if they happen to speak a slang ) is still a thing.

Also when it comes to pohjanmaa... well i happen to come from the place that is famous for giving uncertain answers and answering questions with questions so eh, i like playing the savonian stereotype sometimes.

And honestly i enjoy dialects since i find most of them quite funny and i find it fun to speak to eachother with a dialect. Of course with foreigners i tend to try so peak with more of a formal style to not confuse, but i do know a immigrant from africa who spoke with a savonian acccent which was hilarious even in his own opinion.

olavi

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #109 on: April 30, 2015, 09:23:18 AM »
Like mentioned above, I'm from Oulu, but I spent my childhood a bit to the north closer to the Swedish border. Due to this I have some Lapland influence in my dialect when it comes to word choices. However my parents are both originally from Oulu, so that's what I heard most when growing up. From pronunciation perspective I think I could fool anyone that I'm paljasjalkainen ("bare footed" i.e. native born) Oulu dweller.

The most distinguishable trait in Oulu dialect is double consonants. We often stretch single consonants and change consonant pairs to a double consonant. The classic example goes: "Ookko nää Oulusta? Pelekääkkö nää polliisia?" which in standard is "Oletko sinä Oulusta? Pelkäätkö sinä poliisia? (Are you from Oulu? Are you afraid of the police?). As you can see, the you personal pronoun is written as "nää" although I personally prefer "sää". Similarly minä is "mää". In contrast the forms used in many southern dialects are "mä" and "sä", showing yet another stretching of the words. This time strething of vowels instead of consonants.

First trait of the Lapland dialects others notice is adding H to a lot of words. This is called "puhua H:n päälle", "to speak on the H". The place of the H in words varies from subdialect to another, but you can still hear when the H is definitely in the wrong place. Southeners sometimes try to imitate it with hilarious results. They seem to miss the spot almost always. ;D Here's a champion both showing how it's done and lameting on the bleak future of the habit:
(yes, they actually had a competition)

I can fake some Helsinki dialect, stadi slang (from Swedish stad = city), but I'd be easily caught by someone actually living there. Thus I should leave the pecularities of this to someone who can actually speak the dialect, but here's some notes on its history. While most of the vocabulary comes from Finnish, a lot of the words have origins in Swedish and English. This hasn't always been the case. When Finland was a Grand Duchy of Russia the slang had mostly Swedish words mixed with some Russian and Finnish as half of the city's population was Swedish speakers and the government officials spoke Russian. After independence both of these languages' influences started to drop while being replaced by Finnish words as the demographics of the region switched from 50-50 split to a majority of Finnish speakers. Later at the end of last century English started to mix in and now the language is mostly distorted Finnish with English and Swedish words mixed in.

Edit: while maybe not the best formatted page on the subject I'd like to recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquial_Finnish for those more advanced learners who are at a stage where they might listen or speak colloquial Finnish in addition to the standard one. The entry should give you an idea on what kind of reductions can be and are done in pretty much every dialect.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2015, 11:13:20 AM by olavi »
Native :finland: > :usa: > :sweden: > :italy: > :france: > :netherlands: > :iceland: "Hello"

Anton

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #110 on: May 05, 2015, 11:37:46 AM »
So, i started learning finnish two weeks ago, so I still cannot really form coherent sentences. I'm mainly working on general words and easy sentences in the present for now, because I'm trying to work this out on my own schedule.
What I wanted to ask is if some of you know of any children's books, possibly as a pdf i can read online, in finnish. I know I can learn best when I have texts in front of me and work my way through translating them, so that would be a great help :)

Cancvas

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #111 on: May 05, 2015, 11:44:13 PM »
Well you could try this, tho its more of language course than childrens book.
http://peda.net/veraja/kuopio/kansalaisopisto/tilauskurssit/maahanmuuttajat/suomentehokurssi

Then here might be something ?
http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/childrenpages/Finnish.html


-C
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Being friendly cost nothing and often pays off. Just spice it with grain of salt.

Bobriha

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #112 on: May 07, 2015, 03:27:01 AM »
Anton, if you speak Russian here is site http://www.suomesta.ru/ that contains many helpful stuff about Finnish, including books.
And the reason I entered the thread now is that I wanted to share a funny parallel between Finnish and Russian idiom. In my Finnish-Russian dictionary an article "sydän" (heart) has as an example an idiom "Sydän nousi kurkkuun" (literally "Heart rose into one's throat") to which Russian equivalent "Serdtse upalo" (literally "One's heart fell down") is given.
It's interesting how Finns and Russians by saying their hearts moved in directly opposite directions express one and the same feeling :)
And guess who isn't going to have problems with remembering finnish word for "heart" 8) (as she often has with all the other words, unfortunately)
majavanainen

Ann Marie

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #113 on: May 07, 2015, 04:38:23 AM »
Welcome Anton and Bobriha!  You've taught me a new word, I hadn't seen sydän before.

Anton, have you tried reading aRTD in Finnish?  I hear it's pretty good.  ;D
native:  :usa:
learning:  :finland: :germany:
dabbling, exactly like a duck:  :sweden:

taking the long road to comic comprehension

Anton

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #114 on: May 08, 2015, 05:06:23 PM »
Bobriha, no sorry, I speak only german, english, french and a bit of spanish at the moment.

Ann Marie, I have not yet, since I'm really only starting at the very beginning. But I will once I feel confident enough with the basic vocabulary and conjugations ^^

DB (f.k.a. DaveBro)

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #115 on: May 09, 2015, 10:51:37 PM »
Commenter Brad Petry, an hour ago, offered a link to a six-fold Finnish ambiguity, curious as to its truth.
Help?
http://cdn.iwastesomuchtime.com/4262015024359.jpg
 
Fluent:  :usa:      Fair:  :norway:    BTE:  :france:
           Chapter Breaks Survived:  
                            :hat:
            :chap17: :chap18: :chap19: :chap20:
            :chap13: :chap14: :chap15: :chap16:
            :chap9: :chap10: :chap11: :chap12:
            :chap5: :chap6: :chap7: :chap8:    (5-20)

olavi

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #116 on: May 10, 2015, 12:01:08 AM »
Commenter Brad Petry, an hour ago, offered a link to a six-fold Finnish ambiguity, curious as to its truth.
Help?
http://cdn.iwastesomuchtime.com/4262015024359.jpg

Yeah, I'm afraid this is true. :P
Kuusi: number six; a spruce tree; 2nd singular possessive of Kuu = Moon.
Palaa: to burn or be on fire; 3rd singular of palata = return; partitive of pala = piece.
Native :finland: > :usa: > :sweden: > :italy: > :france: > :netherlands: > :iceland: "Hello"

Bobriha

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #117 on: May 10, 2015, 06:40:53 AM »
Bobriha, no sorry, I speak only german, english, french and a bit of spanish at the moment.
Anton, my bad. Still, here is their list of texts in Simple Finnish: http://www.suomesta.ru/topic/finskij-yazyk/teksty-na-uproshhennom-finskom/. Hope it will be useful.
majavanainen

DB (f.k.a. DaveBro)

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #118 on: May 10, 2015, 10:01:37 AM »
Thank you for taking time to break it down so beautifully!

It has inspired me with a new plan for studying Finnish.  How to say,
"Honestly, I tried learning some Finnish, but I hurt myself.  Do you speak English?"

JK, but all I really expect to have by August are some rote phrases, and very limited comprehension--if only due to time (and my experience cramming Icelandic).
Fluent:  :usa:      Fair:  :norway:    BTE:  :france:
           Chapter Breaks Survived:  
                            :hat:
            :chap17: :chap18: :chap19: :chap20:
            :chap13: :chap14: :chap15: :chap16:
            :chap9: :chap10: :chap11: :chap12:
            :chap5: :chap6: :chap7: :chap8:    (5-20)

fella

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Re: Finnish learning thread!
« Reply #119 on: May 10, 2015, 02:41:31 PM »
Hi,

I've been lurking around in the forum but never posted before :) I'm native Finn, originally from Häme-region, currently living in Espoo (next to Helsinki).

I ran into a funny picture about the multile ways we Finns use the phrase "no niin" and thought I'd post it here:



Happy learning everyone ;)