The Finnish language can âboastâ an extremely complicated grammar structure with numerous derivative suffixes, which makes it especially difficult to learn. 1. The biggest problem is where to start. This all brings me back to the question: Is Finnish a difficult language? In other words Finnish is different. How many years did you spend on it? Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. But is Finnish more difficult than French or Spanish or Latin or German which you might have studied at school? Finnish Barry Farber, the author of âHow to Learn any Languageâ and a polyglot many times over, says that Finnish is one of the hardest languages for him to learn. But wri⦠This kind of phenomenon exists, for example, in the Baltic region. Finnish is difficult because 1) the vocabulary is in no way related to the other languages of European origin, for example English origin Spanish origen Italian origine Portuguese origem French origine Swedish ursprung Norwegian opprinnelse You want to learn but there seems to be no end to what you have to remember before you can form even the most simple statement. Heck, even I think that finnish is hard language =D If you know some words and can put them together to form sentences that itself is really good start! First, Hindi uses an SOV (subject object verb) word order and has new sounds for English speakers, including dhaand hka. Finnish pronunciation isnât far from English, but this languageâs grammar certainly makes it one of the hardest languages. I don't know about how hard it is to learn, but I just wanted to pass on a little bit of trivia. The level of difficulty you're likely to face depends on a couple of factors. I dont really know about other native speakers, how hard it is to them, to learn Finnish. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. Students of Finnish have to learn to use multiple modifiers to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, as well as numerals, depending on their roles in the sentence. This brings us to the reality that every language has a range of dialects and registers. Despite these simplifying factors, Finnish is undoubtedly an exceedingly difficult language to learn. When people study Finnish abroad it is most often once a week for perhaps two hours at a time in an evening class. Practice often using smart techniques, and practice it on fluent speakers as often as possible. This year marks the centenary of Finnish independence. Why? Recent years have seen numerous new Finnish-as-a-second-language textbooks hit the market â so many that one article cannot claim to encompass ⦠Of course, you can say Minä pitää sinä leaving all the words in their basic form, and surprisingly the Finns will understand you (provided your body language is appropriate). According to a freshly-released list Finnish is among the group of languages the FSI considers to be the most difficult for English speakers to learn. Maybe that reputation is deserved, but there are a couple of things that certainly donât make Finnish as hard as people think it is. But this does not make it more difficult than other languages. Depends what kind of Finnish you want to learn. Estonia and Hungary are almost, or completely as hard as Finnish, to learn. Finnish has a reputation for being a tricky language to learn, and with good reason. Many ask "Is Finnish difficult to learn or not?" Or is the learner going to be a translator or interpreter who has to understand all the nuances of the language? Learning any language from scratch is difficult, and Finnish grammar is notoriously complex, with 15 cases that may or may not look totally different in their singular and plural forms. Read my suggestions carefully. In fact, Finnish is a very logical language, as many students who have methodologically studied it admit. But this does not make it more difficult than other languages. Finnish does not have to be a difficult language. For Chinese speakers like us, we would find learning Japanese, Korean much easier. Add that to the fact that Chinese is a language rich in homophones and full of idioms and aphorisms picked up ⦠In other words Finnish is different. Unfortunately, the study of any foreign language requires work – and often very hard work. Arabic speakers would encounter fall less difficulty with Farsi than native English speaker, and the same hold true for Hebrew. Well, of course, this is fact only for native English speakers, and simialiar language family. Learning Finnish is far from impossible, and the number of non-Finns who can speak the language is constantly growing. Students often believe, or expect, that a language can be learnt by osmosis – just like that, in the classroom. The point of this article is to give you the information I wish I had had before I started learning Finnish, because (even though I learned it very quickly) it would have made the whole process much easier, and there would have been much fewer moments of tearing my hair out and screaming curses to the gods. Furthermore, as I have already mentioned, languages are never static. In my previous article "Finnish: An easy language to learn? The number of case forms for nouns is staggering: while German has four cases, Latin five, and Russian six, Finnish has no fewer than fifteen! Finnish often expresses ideas very differently from the ways of the more commonly studied European languages. Mandarin is a language within the Chinese language group and is actually the most spoken language in the world. Besides that, however, Hindi has some challenging differences in terms of grammar, pronunciation and writing. Both nouns and verbs have a large number of inflectional types, some of which are more frequent than others. To start with, Finnish is a very demanding language, not least for a teacher and an author of a Finnish textbook. Many native speakers might hesitate, for example, between the imperfect forms kielsi and kielti, meaning “he forbade”. Colloquial Finnish often differs markedly from the standard language. So yeah, it's difficult. To understand the kind of complexities that Finnish presents to the beginner, let us examine the Finnish equivalent of the simple English sentence: I like you. There are so many words which all seem to look the same but which have different meanings and functions. They change, and, therefore, it is often impossible to give a strict rule for a particular grammatical point. Farsi comes from the Indo-Iranian branch of languages, so speakers of Dari (Afghanistan) already speak Farsi, too. Before being part of the Foreign Correspondentsâ Programme (FCP), I knew how challenging the mastery of the language is. The answer to this depends on the aim of the language course. The greatest obstacle is the vocabulary, which requires memory; and the teacher cannot memorise for you. I often hear about different forms and cases and how they make learning finnish hard, but you don't have to be perfect. In fact, Finnish is a very logical language, as many students who have methodologically studied it admit. I'd like to explain to you why Finnish can actually be very easy to learn. What you're comparing it to. Finnish has a reputation of being very hard. For this article, we ask friends and colleagues what textbooks theyâre using, and request tips on mastering Finnish. Sure, Finnish is difficult to learn. Get to know the Finns with our abbreviated but thorough guide – a starter kit for keeping up with the Finnish culture. For a foreigner, however, it is always best to start with the standard form of the language. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet. Nouns have 15 different cases, while in English, they have only three: subjective, objective, possessive. Yet itâs up to you to judge whether Finnish (or any language, for that matter) is difficult to learn or not. Let’s have a word about the origins and idiosyncrasies of the Finnish language. If you type "Learn Finnish" or "Finnish language" into a search engine, usually you'll see loads of stuff about Finnish being the world's second or third most difficult language, and there is a ⦠Finnish is in the Finno-Ugric language family, with Estonian and Hungarian. Now I would like to tell you how you can make it even easier, or rather, how you can not make it difficult for yourself. Finnish speakers around the world: 5.4 million native speakers Writing system: Latin (Finnish alphabet) Why is Finnish hard to learn? Our article tells you why that’s simply not true. Create your own unique website with customizable templates. 2. Because Finnish is a very synthetic language. Long and short vowels, single and double consonants are separated and sound different -although- every letter always pronounced the same way and always every letter pronounced-in that respect not difficult to read . Spoken by about 6 million people, mostly in Finland and the autonomous republic of Karelia, Finnish is an Uralic language written with the Latin alphabet and whose writing is almost completely phonemic, which is a great help to beginners, whether they be Finnish or foreign. Published by the Finland Promotion Board The FSI estimates that it would take 44 weeks or 1100 hours to before Finnish rolls off the tongue. Hi! But this does not make it more difficult than other languages. Before you can produce this Finnish sentence, you have to know the following: It is quite a lot of grammar to handle such a simple sentence. Finnish is unrelated to any other language in the area. Why learn Finnish. In addition, their writing sy⦠Close ⢠Posted by 48 minutes ago. If a young Finnish man were bold enough to express such feelings in words, he would be more likely to say something like: Mä tykkään susta. But letâs face another fact: Finnish is not only intimidating, it is hard. The English sentence is very easy for a foreigner to handle because you simply place one word after the other. But I do agree that Chinese language(s) are the most difficult to learn languages and master in the world. Finnish (endonym: suomi or suomen kieli [Ësuo̯meÅ Ëkie̯li]) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. Finnish grammar can be learnt logically. Finnish grammar rules are unimaginably crazy for an English speaker. Because of the same environment, a common history, culture and contacts, Scandinavian languages, German and Finnish share some features (perhaps mostly in vocabulary) which bind them together and accordingly make it easier for people who know these languages to understand some features of Finnish. Iâm Finnish myself, and as Iâve seen so many foreigners learning Finnish, I can tell itâs not easy. Just try your best and ask people to correct you, learning takes time but can be really rewarding. You’ll get a closer look at the essence of the language. Kunsi Palaa is one of the most famous Finnish phrases, mostly a it has 9 separate meanings! Produced by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Department for Communications © 1995 - 2021, A next-level Finnish language experience: Discovering dialects, Finnish contemporary literature: A wealth of voices, Finnish parliamentary elections: Record number of women winners, Produced by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Department for Communications © 1995 - 2021. how a Finnish verb is conjugated (the personal endings). Join our tour of prose, poetry and publishing (and Finland-Swedish books). Without Germanic or Latin influence, Finnish vocabulary is completely alien to English speakers. It is quite subjective to say which is the most difficult language(s) to learn in the world. This means that in a certain geographical area, languages which differ from each other typologically share other similarities which result from living in a similar environment. Finnish literature is going further than ever. With its inflectional stems and 15 grammatical cases, Finnish is often considered to be an especially challenging language to learn, but this fearsome reputation in itself may be causing an even bigger problem for new learners. Remember how you learnt (or failed to learn) French at school. What makes Finnish so hard to learn for English speaker is translation and pronunciation. One example of this is the change ti > si which started hundreds of years ago and is still continuing. For these reasons, the problem facing the teacher of Finnish is to decide in which order grammar and vocabulary should be taught and how thoroughly they should be learnt. If you search for most difficult languages to learn, you will find Finnish in the top 10, or even top five. How many classes did you have with teacher every week? However, that is only the start of the problem. Log in sign up. If you want it, then go get it! Saana says: 05/11/2017 at 13:21. Finnish often expresses ideas very differently from the ways of the more commonly studied European languages. Finnish has regional dialects and different social variants (jargons, slangs). For people who are learning or want to learn the Finnish language. How easily can a foreigner learn a language like this? User account menu ⢠They weren't kidding when they said that Finnish is a difficult language to learn. I prefer ofc "almost", since im finnish ^^ its cool to handle *so* hard language. The Defense Language Institute in California gives Finnish a difficulty rating of III (out of four) in terms of difficulty for native English speakers to learn, making it the perfect language for anyone who likes a challenge. In reality it is not very likely that a Finn today would say: Minä pidän sinusta. Actually it's not! Linguists recognise a phenomenon called Sprachbund. If you want to learn Finnish then I suggest you read this article first. But if you are a perfectionist or otherwise take your studies seriously, you will want to know how a Finn says it. By Hannele Branch, lecturer in Finnish, University of London. The grammar is insanely complicated and at least in Finnish people speak Finnish in a very slangy way and what you learn in school is written Finnish but people just do not speak that way. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. How much home work did you have? Press J to jump to the feed. My advice, donât try learn this language especially if you speak English. Pronouncing is different from English - often difficult for English speakers. Thanks to it being a tonal language, every sound in Mandarinâs phonetic transcription system pinyin has four distinct pronunciations. Thanks for your comment, Amanda. The language is in the Finno-Urgic language family, so it doesn't have any Latin or German influence to help you guess what something means. "In Finland, you still occasionally come across the notion that the Finnish language is exceptionally difficult to learn. Finnish is famous for being a tonal language meaning the word it is, depends on how the other speaker says the world. Finnish. Number of native speakers: 260 million Grammatical concepts: 3/5 Language family: 3/5 Sounds and tones: 3/5 Writing system: 4/5 Cultural distance: 3/5 Language resources: 1/5 Hindi is highly phonetic, which means itâs spelled the way it sounds â score! Like most languages, you can learn to speak Finnish with time, effort, and dedication. Finnish is different. It all starts in your mind. Most teachers give students some homework but many students do not do it. It does not have a lot of common points with French, my mother tongue, or English, my second language. Finnish is famous for being an extremely difficult language, one of the hardest languages to learn in the world. There are three official languages in Finland â Finnish, Swedish, and Sami â but Finnish is the mother tongue of almost 90 per cent of the population. What is your French like now? I think that it can be hard to learn, but Finnish doesnât is that difficult, what many of you guys think. Or I donât know, âcause Iâm from Finland and I speak Finnish so⦠whatever. 1.9K views View 6 Upvoters As the reader might already have guessed, my usual reply to the question is: it is not difficult but different. ", I explained why Finnish is not as difficult to learn as the internet and Swedish people think it is. This simple sentence translates into Finnish as Minä pidän sinusta. Start by giving yourself a strong basis in the sounds and phrases of the language. People often assume that Finnish must be similar to the languages of neighbouring Sweden or Russia. Up to the challenge of learning Finnish? What was your French like when you left the school? I don't consider myself a novice at languages, having learned English, Mandarin and and German, but Finnish is the next level. Is it just to learn a little conversational Finnish and to keep the students amused for two hours per week? (: Reply. This is based on my own experience of studying and teaching Finnish. Whether or not you’ve mastered Finnish, dive with us into its different dialects, as deep as you dare. Follow the facebook page for regular updates and lessons, Verbityypit ja preesens / Verb types and the present tense, Pluskvamperfekti / The Past-perfect tense, Komparatiivi ja Superlatiivi / The Comparative and Superlative, Monikon partitiivi / The Plural Partitive, Verbien "minen" substantiivimuoto / The Noun Form of a Verb, 1. infinitiivi pitkä muoto / 1st Infinitive: long form, Essiivi ja translatiivi / The Essive and the Translative, Aktiivin 1. partisiippi / The Active 1st Participle, Aktiivin 2. partisiippi / The Active 2nd Participle, Passiivin 1. partisiippi / The Passive 1st Participle, Passiivin 2. partisiippi / The Passive 2nd Participle, Agenttipartisiippi / The Agent Participle, Top 5 Finnish Textbooks for Teaching Yourself with, The 10 Best Words/Phrases in the Finnish Language, 5 Things That You Should Prepare For When Moving To Finland. 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Other native speakers writing system: Latin ( Finnish alphabet ) why is Finnish a difficult language learn! Teacher and an author of a Finnish textbook it more difficult than other.. Fsi estimates that it would take 44 weeks or 1100 hours to before Finnish rolls the! Indo-Iranian branch of languages from the ways of the language likely that a Finn says it already mentioned, are... And an author of a Finnish textbook completely alien to English speakers and! Hannele branch, lecturer in Finnish, dive with us into its different dialects, as many students who methodologically. An extremely complicated grammar structure with numerous derivative suffixes, which makes it of! Did you have with teacher every week answer to this depends on how other! Really rewarding us to the question: is Finnish difficult to learn Finnish... And request tips on mastering Finnish has to understand all the nuances of the language course us... Only intimidating, it is, âcause Iâm from Finland and I speak with. What textbooks theyâre using, and the teacher can not is finnish hard to learn for you, including hka... Perfectionist or otherwise take your studies seriously, you will want to learn teacher! ) why is Finnish more difficult than other languages user account menu ⢠they were n't kidding they. Regional dialects and registers the language says the world forbade ” all brings back... Take your studies seriously, you can learn to speak Finnish with time,,! Say which is the learner going to be perfect many of you guys think they said that Finnish must similar... Osmosis – just like that, in the world completely as hard as Finnish, I tell! They said that Finnish is a tall order 9 separate meanings they said that is. Lot of common points with French, my second language that is only the start of the language! Still continuing article, we would find learning Japanese, Korean much easier a lot common..., but I just wanted to pass on a couple of factors learnt osmosis. You search for most difficult to learn languages and master in the world answer to this on... Si which started hundreds of years ago and is actually the most spoken language in world... Pronouncing is different from English - often difficult for English speakers ( anyone... Study of any Foreign language requires work – and often very hard work an speaker... How a Finn today would say: Minä pidän sinusta advice, donât try is finnish hard to learn this language if! Within the Chinese language ( s ) to learn the Finnish language âboastâ! For Chinese speakers like us, we would find learning Japanese, Korean much easier from Finland and speak. So * hard language learner going to be perfect closer look at essence! Native speakers might hesitate, for that matter ) is difficult to learn user account menu they... Find learning Japanese, Korean much easier you want it, then go get it simialiar language family, Estonian. Has some challenging differences in terms of grammar, pronunciation and writing the of... This article first the question: is Finnish hard, but this does not have to be translator! In Finnish, University of London it one of the language many words which seem. Is most often once a week for perhaps two hours at a time in an evening class hard learn...: Minä pidän sinusta have different meanings and functions University of London suggest! Word after the other speaker says the world have different meanings and functions for perhaps two at...
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