Minun ystäväni / mun ystävä

[Jiri]

Hi,
In Finnish when you use the -ni or -me ending like in minun ystäväni or meidän isämme, is it considered more affectionate?

In what situations would you use "minun ystäväni" instead of "mun ystävä"?

Thanks,
Jiri

[jahasjahas]

No, not really. Dropping the possessive suffix (-ni, -mme, etc) and using "mun" instead of "minun" are properties of spoken/colloquial Finnish (puhekieli).

If you're trying to sound official/serious/proper/solemn (when giving a speech, for example), you might want to use the written language / kirjakieli version even when speaking.

Note that you can drop the "minun/mun" pronoun as long as you keep the possessive suffix, although in spoken language it's usually the opposite (keep the pronoun, drop the suffix).

[Keravalainen]

Hi!
"Minun ystäväni" or just "Ystäväni" are proper Finnish and understood by all, and is much recommended for a foreign speaker.

"Mun ystävä" is colloquial Finnish . If you attempt to use colloquial Finnish without really knowing the proper language well, you sound uneducated and really a bit stupid. - - That sounds really like "Pizzeria Finnish".
- - "Mun ystäväni" already sound a bit better.

Just take this as a native speaker's humble opinion.

[jahasjahas]

How are they going to learn to understand colloquial Finnish if they never use it?

Why would they want to learn to speak like written Finnish when native speakers don't do that?

[ritan7471]

How are they going to learn to understand colloquial Finnish if they never use it?

Why would they want to learn to speak like written Finnish when native speakers don't do that?

Yes, thank you for pointing that out! I have been learning "book Finnish" for a while, but am totally crippled when my coworkers talk to each other at lunch because I don't understand colloquial Finnish at all.

[Keravalainen]

Hi!

It's naturally important to learn to understand also colloquial Finnish. You'll be hear that here every day.
However, a foreigner will be better understood by Finns when not trying to speak in colloquial language without really knowing the language very well.

I might try to understand a dialect like cockney English if I was living there, but wouldn't have any need ever to try to speak it myself.
- - Speaking a dialect wouldn't increase my chances to get along and survive in Britain as a foreigner. Speaking proper English might do that.

The same applies to living in Finland. Learn to speak proper Finnish as well as you can, so you'll be understood by everyone and will not be looked down for your language

[jahasjahas]

There is no "proper" language. There are words and grammatical features that are associated with kirjakieli or puhekieli. There is a continuum from "Oletko sinä tulossa?" to "Oletko sä tulossa?" to "Ootko sä tulossa?" to "Ooksä tulos?" to "Ooks tulos?", and none of it is wrong.

Sure, speaking in a certain way will make you look better in a job interview. But since 99% of your life is not spent interviewing, you're better off learning something you can use right now, and then fine-tuning the differences of kirjakieli and puhekieli later.

I would be very interested to read studies on how non-native speakers learn kirjakieli and puhekieli. Maybe concentrating on one or the other in the beginning is more efficient, who knows. But in the mean time, avoiding puhekieli out of a fear of sounding stupid... sounds stupid.

(EDIT: I found something already. This book has several articles on learning puhekieli: TUTKIELMIA OPPIJANKIELESTÄ III)

[jahasjahas]

It seems that language teachers concentrate on kirjakieli (which as a spoken form is also called yleiskieli, the "general language" that news anchors speak) while thinking "they should really learn puhekieli, too, or they won't understand anyone".

A funny observation: the puhekieli elements that learners adopt first are minä->mä, minun->mun and dropping the possessive suffix - the very things OP asked about.

[Jukka Aho]

Sure, speaking in a certain way will make you look better in a job interview.

Even there, a native speaker would use puhekieli, not kirjakieli — except if you’re some sort of a “Rainman” type. (Maybe a more formal variant than when chatting with friends but puhekieli still.)

Kirjakieli, by definition, is “written language”. (That’s what the word means when translated!) This standard form of language allows exchange of ideas using standard grammar and patterns which pack a lot of information in a single sentence.

But expressions which look good on paper are often ill-suited for natural verbal conversation. Even if you speak formally, you still don’t construct your sentences the exact same way you would on paper. In such cases, you’re rather using the spoken variant of yleiskieli than kirjakieli. (Kirjakieli, as such, is not really even meant to be spoken.)

That said, from time to time, you hear kirjakieli being spoken... but that’s usually when someone’s reading aloud a newspaper article, or an excerpt from a book, or when they’re giving a formal speech which they have written in advance. A narrator in a TV documentary will most likely use kirjakieli as he reads all his lines straight from a script. A newscaster reading a story from a teleprompter is also using kirjakieli. But you’re not likely to hear a conversation in kirjakieli unless both speakers are reading their lines from a script and the scriptwriter never made any effort to make the exchange sound natural.

[snorlonikins]

How you're taught to speak Finnish and how it's spoken colloquially is a bit like learning to drive a car, you don't really start learning until you pass your test.