How long does it take to learn the Finnish language?

[Aquila]

Well:

If I understand your principke right, you say something like:

If

There is a geographical formation (body) with a certain name,

And

There is a town/city around or very close at that formation (body) with the same name.

Then

You use the adessive for the city

and

the inessive for the formation.

and

again inessive for the district around if also this has the same name.


Ths eproblem with your principle is simply that it is unusable in most cases without knowing the geography in intricate detaills,

And it is probably wrong in many cases of city names.

[sinikala]

And what obvious geographical formation is there inside Tampere?

Näsinneula?

I think there was a similar discussion when I joined the board a few years ago ... someone IIRC suggested that there were rapids after which the city was named...

http://www.history.tampere.fi/city/index2.htm

I thought it was you... must have been someone else.

[sinikala]

Ths eproblem with your principle is simply that it is unusable in most cases without knowing the geography in intricate detaills

There is no problem with her "principle", it's the accepted explanation. Useable? There are just a list of place names /name types you have to know that take -lla not -ssa.

And it is probably wrong in many cases of city names.

Name one.

[Rob A.]

You wrote: "It does bother me when someone goes around with a halfbaked theory
trying to teach other people what the correct form would be when,
AFAIK, that person isn't even very capable in the language."

And it bothers me when some arrogant intellectual sings out some principle that sound fine, but is really unusable in most but some selected cases.

Your principle about "geographical bodies" is as halfbaked as mine hints.

enk is more than a "mere" intellectual... However, you seem to be unusually stubborn about your point of view... I imagine there is some other "agenda" that is behind this. The short answer is that Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language that comes from a different line than does "Scandinavian" (i.e....Norwegian) and English. And certainly Finnish has been influenced by the languages around it...

That any language has constructions that may arise to avoid confusion doesn't sound particularly profound to me... afterall "communication" is at the heart of any language. In English you say things like ..."in a city", "in a town", "on a farm", "on an island"... You can often use "at", though sometimes it sounds a bit odd ...but you can say "at school" or "in school" and so on... yet you say "at work" not "in work"... I guess there are rules for this, but I've never, to the best of my knowledge... ...learned any...

Anyway, if it works for you, then use it...but the rest of us might expect a more convincing argument before we might be inclined to agree...

[Aquila]

I know very well that Finnish is a Finno/ugric and again Uralic langiage.

And that Scandinavian languages are germanic and again indo/eurpean

and if there is some genetic link between Uralic and Indoeuropean, that is at an even deeper level.

But -- languages living in proximity to each other tend to get similarities in the ways lingual elemets are used. In that respect Finnish is a European language and to some extend a Scandinavian language.

-------------------------------------------

Besides - it was Enk that seeded the arrogant tone against me here, and she only get back what she seeded. She was arrogant -- and she gets back an answar of the same style.

[Københavner]

I know very well that Finnish is a Finno/ugric and again Uralic langiage.

And that Scandinavian languages are germanic and again indo/eurpean

and if there is some genetic link between Uralic and Indoeuropean, that is at an even deeper level.

But -- languages living in proximity to each other tend to get similarities in the ways lingual elemets are used. In that respect Finnish is a European language and to some extend a Scandinavian language.

I don't know. Finnish does transform a lot of foreign words it borrows and very few are immediately recognizable if you don't know what they mean beforehand. Radio and auto are among the few that were not radically 'finnicized' .

If you have prior knowledge of these words, you can spot those with obvious Swedish/Germanic origins like tytär or sisar while others are international words like insinööri.

But supposedly, Finnish has thousands of loan words taken throughout the ages and if it weren't for some linguistic ressources confirming their true origins, most would be none the wiser (jala is a true Uralic word, if I remember correctly).

As for the supposed genetic link with indo-european languages, well, it's hard to say. The language is not as foreign as, say, Chinese or native American languages. And there are things that are vaguely familiar about finnish like the syntax, some pronouns and even some of the grammatical cases. But I don't think one can really argue definitely that those are genetic links instead of mutual influence.

P.S. I never heard spoken Sami before a few days ago (don't know which dialect though) but I was surprised by how Finnish-like it sounded.

[Jukka Aho]

languages living in proximity to each other tend to get similarities in the ways lingual elemets are used. In that respect Finnish is a European language and to some extend a Scandinavian language.

I don't know.

It’s often said that language (and all the baggage that idioms, proverbs, commonly used analogies, manners of speaking, commonly understood jokes, fables, anecdotes, etc. carry) shapes your thought processes and worldview, and I’ve sometimes seen it claimed that even though the grammar/syntax and vocabulary is different, Finnish has absorbed lots of these kind of things from Swedish. (I think one of the examples given was “kirjoittaa ylös” – “skriva upp” – which would be “to write down” in English! –, and there were other similar little things and sayings, but I can’t recall them now.) I’m not sure how valid this view is but I think that is what Aquila is referring to.

[Københavner]

languages living in proximity to each other tend to get similarities in the ways lingual elemets are used. In that respect Finnish is a European language and to some extend a Scandinavian language.

I don't know.

It’s often said that language (and all the baggage that idioms, proverbs, commonly used analogies, manners of speaking, commonly understood jokes, fables, anecdotes, etc. carry) shapes your thought processes and worldview, and I’ve sometimes seen it claimed that even though the grammar/syntax and vocabulary is different, Finnish has absorbed lots of these kind of things from Swedish. (I think one of the examples given was “kirjoittaa ylös” – “skriva upp” – which would be “to write down” in English! –, and there were other similar little things and sayings, but I can’t recall them now.) I’m not sure how valid this view is but I think that is what Aquila is referring to.

I have no problem with this. The same phenomenon happens with French Canadian with the English influence on it and you have to delearn them when interacting with French speakers from Europe.

I'm only disputing the genetic link with Indo-European languages.

[Aquila]

What I was talking about, is the mutual influence between Finnish and Scandinavian.

This influence is not only through loanword, but the way native elements are used, is also influenced.

Many things in the Finnish language that seem exotic and difficult for a person with English as a native language, are not som strange for a Swede, Dane or Norwegian, simply because corresponding elements are used in the same way.

An example of this is the use of prepositions / cases with geographical names.

Where it is natural tu use inessive in fiinnish, you would use the preposition "I" in Norwegian. Where it is natural to use adessive, the preposition "på" is used.

At in those cases where you clearly can see that a town is built around a grographical body and the name originates from that body, the principle stated by Enk can be used also for the use of the preposition "på" in Norwegian names. (But often this is not clear without being very good at history or geography)

So, the use of cases by geographical names follow principles that are common Scandinavian, and not specific Finnish.

By the way, when talking about loanwords. The word "boy" is Swedish is "Pojke", which is a Finnish loanword. (Poika)

[Matula]

By the way, when talking about loanwords. The word "boy" is Swedish is "Pojke", which is a Finnish loanword. (Poika)

I think it's the other way around. Swedish was the language of nobility which gave influence to the language of peasants (Finnish).

[Københavner]

Where it is natural tu use inessive in fiinnish, you would use the preposition "I" in Norwegian. Where it is natural to use adessive, the preposition "på" is used.

På arbejde/työssä (inessive).

Hmmm, doesn't seem to work in all cases.

[Aquila]

No, it does not work in all instances, but the tradition is fairly close with geographical names.

By the way: "työlla" would in most instnces mean, "by work" or "through work" as far as I know. (Instrumental meaning)

[Hank W.]

[someone IIRC suggested that there were rapids after which the city was named...

[Rob A.]

OK...Aquila...I'm following what you are saying... I think only that you might be "reading" a bit too much into any similarities... I think my concerns are similar to Københavner.... You know, people taking minor similarities between languages and reading all sorts of significance into it...building elaborate theories of genetic relatedness and so forth... I seem to remember reading somewhere about Japanese and Finnish being related languages because of, I think it was the word, "yksi" or "hei" or something... Some of us, including me, may be a bit "hyper alert" to this flaky stuff... Now I'm not saying you are doing this, but linguistics is complicated enough without people drawing grand conclusions from tiny similarities...

And, I'm sure Finns think at lot more like Swedes than they would want to admit...but, hey, who am I??...so forget I said that...

I often find little things as I learn Finnish that don't seem so different from English...but I tend to assume it has more to do with how human minds work rather than any great similarity between the languages...but again maybe I'm wrong...English is a germanic language like Norwegian, so maybe it's some ancient germanic or indo-european influence...

I'm not so sure about Jukka's example though..."...Finnish has absorbed lots of these kind of things from Swedish. (I think one of the examples given was “kirjoittaa ylös” – “skriva upp” – which would be “to write down” in English! –, and there were other similar little things and sayings...". It is not at all unusual in English to say you are going to "write up" something. ...usually in the sense of "I'm going to write up a report on this." And you could say, "I'm going to write this up (or down) before I forget it."...

[Aquila]

The expression "kirjoittaa ylös" looks a little strange. It does not sound good, but is it faulty for that reasson?

I often use a trick to find out if an expression really is in use with any significant frequency. I go to Google, and search the expression.

for "kirjoittaa ylös", I got 11100 hits.

You find many other similarities between Germanic and Finnish, for example the tenses preterite, perfect and pluperfect. The uses of these tenses match wery well the Scandinavian and English usage.

To use these tenses in finnish falls very easy.

There is one languge I know nearly completely, namely Italian. But because the usage of all elements in Italian is very different from that in Scandinavian, I experience Italian to be a very heavy language to use. Even though Italian is Indo-european, there is nearly no word or grammatical element that correspond well well with scandinavian elements. Italian has tenses called preterite, perfect and pluperfect, but those are used totally different from the usage in Norwegian and Finnish.

(But, logiclly, I think the Italian tenses are more useful that the scandinavian ones.)

To make sentenses in Finnish on the other hand is very easy, because you find so much that correspond in meaning and usage, and when the usage is different, the rules are quite simple.

I can take an example: The finnish work "kuorma-auto" corresponds very well to the Norwegian word "Lastebil".

But what word should I use in Italian? Well probably "Camion", but before I use that word, I would have to think twice, because the word "Camion" has quite different boundaries of meaning.

And even in English I have to think: Shall I say "van" or "trailer" or "truck" when it is natural for me to say "lastebil" in Norwegian?

But, it is not necessarily so that the influence has been only one way. Some scholars thinks that proto-germanic has been significantly influenced by the finno-ugric languahges.