easier to learn?finnish or swedish?

[alvinj]

Hi
I would like to know your opinion on this topic.Which is easier to learn Finnish or Swedish?write your thoughts.

[EP]

It depends on what is your native language. If it is Estonian it is easier to learn Finnish, that is sure. If it is English it is easier to learn Swedish.

[kalmisto]

alvinj

I would say that Finnish is the easier language for Estonians and Swedish is the easier language for all others.

Here is a fantastic Swedish-English-Swedish dictionary for you :
http://tyda.se/set?lang=en

You can listen to the words being pronounced also !

[Rob A.]

....and I suppose it depends on what you mean by "easier".... I would say it would be much "quicker" for an English speaker to learn another Germanic or Romance language.....

With Finnish, I think a major "key" to learning is to try to forget most of what you think you know about how languages are "supposed" to work..... Finnish is sufficiently "different" that, essentially, you have to try to learn the way a Finnish child would.....but using the knowledge you gain about grammatical rules and conventions to help speed up the process a bit.....

In other words, try to think in a "Finnish way"....whatever that might mean. One advantage for an English-speaker over learning, say Asian languages, is that the mindset is still European and so is the alphabet, so you can see how this "different" language deals with the same subject matter (politics, religion, science, medicine, high-tech, etc.) as other European languages. [Which is why I would think that Finnish would be "easier" to learn than say Farsi or Punjabi, which are apparently more closely related to English than is Finnish].....

Well...my" two cents" worth...

[interleukin]

Swedish is a mixture of Icelandic, German and French (in my opinion). English is a mixture of Icelandic, German and French (in my opinion). Which parts got mixed, in which century or millennium and in which proportions, is very much different. But it still means that as far as vocabulary goes, you often see a Swedish word and don't know what it is. Then someone tells you what it means in English, and you realise that yeah, the Swedish word does look similar to the English one. Whether this relatedness of vocabularies is going to help you learn Swedish or just confuse you, that is another matter.

Finnish spelling is great, you mostly spell things and pronounce them the same way. Swedish is really random about spelling (I guess that comes from the French influences on the language). There are the tsh, tch, sch, sh, etc sounds that can be pronounced in a bunch of random ways and it can really get a bit silly sometimes. If you hear a Finn (or Icelander) swearing while speaking Swedish, it is likely that he/she is trying to produce those sounds.

[sammy]

If you hear a Finn (or Icelander) swearing while speaking Swedish, it is likely that he/she is trying to produce those sounds.

There's also the question of "Finnish-Swedish" which is -as far as pronunciation goes- differs quite a bit from rikssvenska (the "RP" Swedish you hear in Sweden). I have no idea which sounds more strange (or alternatively, familiar) to someone whose native language is, say, English.

[Pursuivant]

Swedish is a mixture of Icelandic, German and French (in my opinion). English is a mixture of Icelandic, German and French (in my opinion).

He is king.
Han är kung.
Hann er konungur.
Hän on kuningas.

King rides a horse.
Kungen riddar en häst.
Konungur ríður hesti.
Kuningas ratsastaa hevosella.

[interleukin]

Finnish-Swedish is what it sounds like when an Icelander speaks Swedish. It is much easier to understand (in my opinion), since there tends to be much clearer pronounciation than in Swedish-Swedish (not a total rule, nothing is). Swedes tend to drop the letter l or r or any other letter and have more non-nordic slang I guess. Finnish Swedish is going to have more Finnish slang (eg in Helsinki) or may be quite old fashioned (eg in Ostrobothnia).

I think to an English speaker, Finnish Swedish sounds more or less like Finnish, at least at the start. This is what my colleagues have told me, they did not know there was such a thing as Swedish speakers in Finland when they moved here, and it took them a long time to realise that some of the Finns around them were not actually speaking Finnish. Even to my untrained ear, when I first moved here, I sometimes had to listen a little while to hear the difference (even if I am fluent in Swedish). Of course the mega-mixing of words in dual-native-language people in Helsinki makes things quite confusing as well.

Pursuivant:
There you go, even more evidence for my (slightly controversial ) opinion that most major languages in Europe (Finnish obviously included) are derived from and are basically Icelandic dialects.

[Rob A.]

Swedish is a mixture of Icelandic, German and French (in my opinion). English is a mixture of Icelandic, German and French (in my opinion). Which parts got mixed, in which century or millennium and in which proportions, is very much different. But it still means that as far as vocabulary goes, you often see a Swedish word and don't know what it is. Then someone tells you what it means in English, and you realise that yeah, the Swedish word does look similar to the English one. Whether this relatedness of vocabularies is going to help you learn Swedish or just confuse you, that is another matter.

...and there is a lot of truth in your opinion.... ..... I think the way linguists look at it, is that Icelandic is, perhaps, the most conservative of the Germanic languages...having retained many features that have fallen away in other related languages....

Vocabulary, of course, is one measure of relatedness, though not the most important...language structure and grammar, etc., tend to be more significant....and then there is orthography.... I don't know that much about Icelandic, but at some point runic inscriptions gave way...likely under the influence of church missionaries, ...to the Latin alphabet, though Icelandic....sensibly in my humble opinion... ...did, in its conservative way, hang onto these two useful characters....þ and ð ..."thorn" and "eth"...which have the two basic English sounds for "th"..) English lost these two characters...though not the sounds...long ago....

I would suspect the Icelandic language's conservatism relates to the extreme isolation of the country, particularly in the "Viking" period..... Finnish is also viewed as a conservative language, but likely for somewhat different reasons....not so much the country's isolation, but more the uniqueness of the language... words such as kuningas in Finnish...are believed to be almost identical to the same word in the now extinct Germanic Gothic language spoken on the south side of the Baltic....

And hevonen came from the Greek, hippo .... Only a linguists......can see the connection between these words and the Latin word, equus and maybe even caballus... The English word, "horse", arose back in the day when it was considered bad juju to speak directly the name of a deified animal....it was a euphemism related to the ancient Indo-European word for "run".....

OK....OK....linguistics lesson over....

[tuulen]

It depends on what is your native language. If it is Estonian it is easier to learn Finnish, that is sure. If it is English it is easier to learn Swedish.

Yes, it depends on your native language. For instance, as an English speaker I found German much easier than Finnish.

Swedish is a Germanic language, too, but I have never studied Swedish and so I cannot directly compare Finnish and Swedish.

[kalmisto]

"How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons" :
http://francisstrand.blogspot.com/2007_ ... chive.html

"Francis Strand is a 49-year-old American editor living in Stockholm. He is married to a Swedish man, which is legal in Sweden. The two met in Barcelona in July 1998 and were married in June 2000. Strand has "a high opinion of Swedes." Although he loves the country and people, HIS ATTEMPTS TO BECOME FLUENT IN SWEDISH HAVE BEEN MEDIOCRE AT BEST. "

[Pursuivant]

It has been proven you don't learn Danish with a hot potato in your mouth, neither Swedish with a...

/hämtar min rock

[opinto]

Det är ett veldigt bra ordboq Hva ! Qalmisto tusen taqq finns det en finsqa Svensq finsqa ordboq ?
Jag tror at Svensqa är lätare än Soomoqiili men man kan talar Svensqa med Soomenrootsilainen i Finland de är Svensqa med finsqa aqsenten oq lär sig finsqa tilsammans
jag lysna til Yle Puhe yritän oppia Soomo ja Rootsi.

[kalmisto]

Qalmisto tusen taqq finns det en finsqa Svensq finsqa ordboq ?

You can use the Google translator as a Finnish-Swedish-Finnish dictionary or you can use it to translate sentences from one language to another.

I did not think that Google could translate "Aamutuimaan lähdin uimaan" correctly to Swedish but I was wrong :
http://translate.google.com/#fi|sv|Aamu ... n%20uimaan.