Jukka Aho wrote:Jaskahko wrote:I know, but why the standard is so abstract and not based clearly on any dialect, like it often is the case in other languages?
Well, of course Literary Finnish has its own history, including the battle of the dialects, so maybe we are now enjoying the fruits of the equality principle: Literary Finnish is a compromise, not having clear correspondence in the real, spoken Finnish.
If you’re aware of
the history of the development of literary Finnish, there's not much to wonder about. How we ended up where we are now is pretty well documented.
Yes, I know. I'm just wondering why there is no optimation when teaching foreign people...
Jukka Aho wrote:There are
many languages which exhibit some form of
diglossia. I think Finnish should be counted among them even though it isn’t listed in that Wikipedia article.
I agree! Some spoken dialects are almost as far from Literary Finnish than Estonian is, at least when it comes to understanding them as heard. It's like learning two different languages. Even Finns themselves cannot understand all the dialects well, unless they have relatives there, or some other experience to get used to a dialect.
Jukka Aho wrote:The structure of spoken language is different for practical reasons as well. Expressing ideas in speech as you go is a different thought process and a different mode of communication than trying to construct complex, concise written sentences with high information content. The signal-to-noise ratio is usually considerably better in written text and the language usage patterns required for keeping up that high SNR level are different as well. Maybe it even wouldn’t be the most optimal situation if you tried to make the spoken and the written forms of language completely identical.
True, syntax is very different when spoken without first "designing" the sentences. Maybe the agglutinativeness makes a big difference here: it is easier to say "kun mä olin menny(t)" than "mentyäni" which the literary language prefers (both meaning 'after I had gone'). I think that in English, for example, there are not so great differences, as the language is more isolative (analytic) also when written, corresponding to the first Finnish phrase.
Jukka Aho wrote:Also, basing the standard form of the language only on a single dialect would create a situation where the native speakers of that specific dialect would be in a privileged position when compared to the others... the avoidance of which is at least partially the reason for why the standard written form of Finnish ended up being the way it is today.
Yes, but I don't know is it any better that the literary language is no-one's native tongue...
