a few questions about finnish words..=)

[benjamiinn]

Hi =)

I need help with some finnish words

in this book it says : Käykö teille 500 markan seteli?

Im wondering where that word : käykö - comes from?
what should käy be xD

and this one: Olkaa hyvä ja allekirjoittakaa sekit.
why is it not ---- ---- -- ---------- sekkejä?

=D,this is enough for the first , but ye I have many more questions, ehm there should be a chat room here =D

Benjamin

[Jukka Aho]

in this book it says : Käykö teille 500 markan seteli?

Im wondering where that word : käykö - comes from?
what should käy be xD

It’s the verb käydä which has many uses and meanings in Finnish, but here the meaning is “to be OK for someone”, “to do” (as in “it will have to do”); “to be acceptable”.

“Is it OK with you that I pay with a 500 mk bill / Is it acceptable / Do you / would you accept it if I offer you one?”

The Finnish markka was replaced with euros in 2002 so they probably wouldn’t accept it by now. :)

and this one: Olkaa hyvä ja allekirjoittakaa sekit.
why is it not ---- ---- -- ---------- sekkejä?

Because it’s “these checks here” and not “some random checks”. See here for a hopefully not-too-bewildering explanation on how to choose the correct case for your objects.

=D,this is enough for the first , but ye I have many more questions, ehm there should be a chat room here =D

Keep the questions coming!

(And there actually is an unofficial Finland Forum chat room. See this thread for more information... or send a private message to me if you want to try it out but get stumped by some technical problem.)
 

[EP]

Olkaa hyvä ja allekirjoittakaa sekit.

why is it not ---- ---- -- ---------- sekkejä?

Shekit (have they nowadays dropped the h?) means these particular cheques that I am holding in my hand. Shekkejä would be a very unmeasurable pile of cheques and you don´t even have to sign all of them, just some.

The basic form of "käykö" (<-- a question) is "käydä". The explanation and different translations in a Finnish-English dictionary are 15 cm long. "Is 500 marks bill suitable?"

[EP]

Jukka was faster.

[Upphew]

Ei oo häpee olla nopee.

[benjamiinn]

ok kiitoksia paljon

i will work through those informations you gave me =)

yes to me it's also the thing with the cases and objects in the Finnish language that are the most difficult to understand , as that wikipedia page says =)

i go check out that chat room, and where should i post new questions?just in this thread?

Ben

[Jukka Aho]

i go check out that chat room, and where should i post new questions?just in this thread?

If they’re just a bunch of random, thematically unrelated little questions – like those two you posted above – this thread is as good as any... but if you have a single well-defined question about some specific aspect of the language – such as a certain grammatical feature or a recurring expression which you don’t yet fully understand – better make it a new thread on its own and figure out a good, descriptive subject line for it.

[benjamiinn]

ok =)

so..do you think I should study all the case endings and objects on that wikipedia site first, before I go on with my Finnish learn book?
because this book doesnt give so much grammar explanations, quite annoying,

[Jukka Aho]

so..do you think I should study all the case endings and objects on that wikipedia site first, before I go on with my Finnish learn book? because this book doesnt give so much grammar explanations, quite annoying,

It’s difficult to say on behalf of someone else; people learn with different styles. That said, there are many resources on various aspects of the Finnish grammar on the web. If your text book is a bit light on grammar, you might want to take a look at e.g. the grammar section on the Uusi kielemme website and on Kimberli Mäkäräinen’s and Jukka K. Korpela’s websites. Other than that, the old threads here on the Kielikoulu forum should contain lots of interesting information as well... although not necessarily in a too organized format.

[benjamiinn]

ok thx=)

so the book I have* is called Teach Yourself Finnish,i like it but there are just a little too few grammatical explanations.


okay i will take a look at the grammar websites u gave me

thx=)

[AldenG]

It can be interesting to read about all the cases and get a sense of what they're for and possibly where they come from. But you won't really learn how to use them by studying them in isolation like that, especially since so much about cases rests on idiomatic and often counterintuitive usage.

I think it's more productive to focus on common phrases. In particular, I think it's best to learn verbs and cases together. Generally the verb you choose will dictate the case you need. And given the descriptions of what cases "mean" you can construct a fairly rational explanation of why a certain verb wants a certain case, but in the end it simply is the way it is.

Consider tuntua, to feel. Most of the time you will have a situation like

[esim. pyyhe]...tuntuu märältä... The towel feels wet
...tuntuu oudolta, että... It feels/seems odd that...
...tuntuu olevan... [esim. vaikea] It seems to be.... or [a thing] seems to be...
(note: "tuntuu vaikealta" and "tuntuu olevan vaikea" are different observations; the first is personal, the second more observational about other people)
...tuntuu tekevän... [esim. niin, että] (less common, hard to give a general-purpose translation)


Most of the time, the requirements of the verb will override any other logic you might apply to choosing a case. Some verbs will give you quite a choice of cases, depending on what kind of thing you're trying to say, but again the characterizations of the case merely explain or rationalize the usage. The usage is what it is because that's the way it is. So having these expressions roll naturally off your tongue or keyboard is much, much more useful (most of the time) than being able to look at a case in isolation and say "Case X applies to situations a, b, and c with exceptions d, e, and f."

For each pattern you learn, there are often a variety of verbs that fit the usage pattern. For instance, the patterns above could also use näyttää, to look or appear, with a corresponding change in meaning.

So having been where you are and wishing I had studied some things differently, I would say focus on the phrases and particularly verb-case combinations. Or instead of focusing on an entire case, focus on one of that case's usage patterns at a time, learning the types of verbs you can plug into that pattern.

That's where your understanding will eventually end up, anyway. It's just a matter of finding the most direct learning path to reach that point.

[AldenG]

To simplify, these patterns and phrases are the true building blocks of relaxed, easily flowing Finnish, whether spoken or written. Vocabulary (in the sense of individual words) is an important enabling factor, but trying to get a solid grasp of Finnish by studying individual words is like trying to learn biology by studying the periodic table of elements. The functional elements and processes of biology are bigger than that, and the functional elements of languages (especially such a highly inflected and idiomatic language as Finnish) are in recurring combinations and patterns of words more than in the words themselves.

[Jukka Aho]

Learning Finnish by memorizing phrases was just recently discussed in this thread where rob34 tells us about using a free computer program called mnemosyne for that purpose.

[AldenG]

Here's another example of what I mean about verbs.

Tie loppuu tähan. The road ends here. (You'll have to continue on a footpath.)
Tie päättyy tähän. The road ends here. (The destination of the road is this point.)
Juna pysähtyy tässä. The train stops/rests here.

You could construct an explanation for why loppua and päättyä required a different case than pysähtyä. You could say that loppua and päättyä represent a process of stopping that culminates in the endpoint, while pysähtyä is something that just happens at a particular place without a lead-up to it.

But is that really why they are different? And does knowing that make you more likely to use the right case? Perhaps.

But then again I doubt whether native speakers really feel it that way or think about it that way. More likely it's just habit. They say it because they're used to saying it. If history and convention were otherwise, they'd say it some other way just as naturally through sheer force of habit.

So step one is to focus on the verb and learn it together with the case it requires for a particular situation. Step two is to center your study around entire phrases. If you're going to memorize verbs and their meanings, don't memorize them in isolation. Memorize them in phrases or sentences that illustrate each major usage. And do that with every kind of word you memorize. Those phrases are the beating heart of the language. Smaller elements are just pieces of the flesh.

[benjamiinn]

OK I see =),sorry i didnt understand everything , but so it's very important to learn what cases go together with the verbs?
i dont know how i would do that hmm, i guess it comes quite naturally when i study sentences right?

ok ya , that wikipedia page about all the different cases is very much dry theory , but i will use it to check what case some word is in , for example i dont understand the difference yet between the partitiv and the accusativ.

oh that book i have , teach yourself finnish , is even in your *recommended books* section, so it can't be so bad right?I got that audio CD too,
and I think it's good for a start because it's the only learning system I have that has a *clear structure*.

I split every sentence into its words and try to find out where they come from , cause like i said, the book doesn't give so much information sometimes, ya and then I learn them as vocabulary , on a site called www.spellic.com, there u can make your own exercises .=)

anyways, i think a good point of studying something is just the number of repetitions you say/write/think about it , isn't that so? and revision..

when i think back at how i started to learn Engllish, the english teacher introduced herself and then started right away to tell us the names of things she had on her desk , so with some easy vocabulary , and then we analyzed small texts , and conversations, its pretty much the same thing that this book does =),
and the other english teacher gave us vocabulary where we not only had to study the french/german words for the meaning, but a whole sentence
that system is good too i think.

haha as u can see my answers are a real mess, but im only at the very beginning with the Finnish language , ill study some more in my book and come here when i got questions