Swedish or Finnish?
and all the Swedes I know (eg my husband, my mother in law and all my husband's friends) speak perfect English.... so don't waste your time learning Swedish. Concentrate on Finnish.
Advice.... practise listening (something that the courses seem to omit) eg: soaps on TV, radio, what the LOLs are saying on the bus, anything. And read as much as you can. Build up your passive vocab (perfect grammar is useless if you don't know any words) And try writing a dairy - just a couple of lines - every evening. One of the stupidist things about the Finnish courses is they don't teach the past tense until Part Three when in fact you need it asap if you are to have an intelligent conversation with anyone! Try to learn chunks (eg whole phrases) rather than odd words.
Advice.... practise listening (something that the courses seem to omit) eg: soaps on TV, radio, what the LOLs are saying on the bus, anything. And read as much as you can. Build up your passive vocab (perfect grammar is useless if you don't know any words)
And try writing a dairy - just a couple of lines - every evening. One of the stupidist things about the Finnish courses is they don't teach the past tense until Part Three when in fact you need it asap if you are to have an intelligent conversation with anyone! Try to learn chunks (eg whole phrases) rather than odd words.
Well I've started learning Finnish. Hopefully the tenses shouldn't be too bad, but that all depends on which case I'm using and which mood it's in! I'm sure the Finns don't have to think about moods, tenses and cases whenever they speak, just like we English don't have to think about tenses etc when we speak... it comes naturally. Lucky Finns, eh?
15 votes to none... Svenska doesn't stand a chance!
Thanks for all your help... and about that diary thing... that's a pretty good idea. I'll probably do that
15 votes to none... Svenska doesn't stand a chance!
Thanks for all your help... and about that diary thing... that's a pretty good idea. I'll probably do that
No cube to the left of nothing is between two cubes.
Ready...steady...off you go!Clive wrote:Well I've started learning Finnish.
And you do not have to be reminded that you may (haha: MAY, i.e. are allowed to) post the most difficult questions here at Kielikoulu and some people (incl. me) will try to answer them.
But you MAY NOT post such questions where the answer can be easily obtained from your teacher, your grammar books, or your books and tapes.
But you knew that, I just wanted to use both of those May's.
And to soften the whole lot, I'm not being overly serious here.
In fact, ignore just about everything after the starting pistol.
Well if not one person has voted for learning Swedish, I might as well. If you are only going to learn ONE language, and plan to live in Finland, then yes Finnish would be the correct choice.
But that said, there is no need to totally discount Swedsih as an option. Knowing Swedish can have some advantages, especially if you ever get sick of living in Finland, and want to move to Sweden (don't everybody hate for saying it though). You would certainly get more mileage out of knowing Swedish, because it would be easier to also migrite/do business/travel etc in Norway and Denmark (not EASY, but easIER).
If you think of it another way too, if you go all out and learn Swedish, while living in Finland, you are still likely to pick up a lot of Finnish as you go about day-to-day things here; but this all depends on how long you plan to stay in Finland anyway.
Unfortunately, the unrewarding thing about learning Finnish, is that once you leave the country it is not much use - unlike say Ger Fre or Sp (or even English or Chinese). You really have to be committed to learn Finnish.
sorry to muddy the waters
J
But that said, there is no need to totally discount Swedsih as an option. Knowing Swedish can have some advantages, especially if you ever get sick of living in Finland, and want to move to Sweden (don't everybody hate for saying it though). You would certainly get more mileage out of knowing Swedish, because it would be easier to also migrite/do business/travel etc in Norway and Denmark (not EASY, but easIER).
If you think of it another way too, if you go all out and learn Swedish, while living in Finland, you are still likely to pick up a lot of Finnish as you go about day-to-day things here; but this all depends on how long you plan to stay in Finland anyway.
Unfortunately, the unrewarding thing about learning Finnish, is that once you leave the country it is not much use - unlike say Ger Fre or Sp (or even English or Chinese). You really have to be committed to learn Finnish.
sorry to muddy the waters
J
and I forgot to mention:
That "Swedish speaking people" speak perfect english is not a good arguement because lots of "Finnish speaking people" also speak perfect (well, not perfect, but reasonable) English also. So you shouldn't learn Finnish either.
Actually, in my experience, SPEAKING ENGLISH is a real disadvantage to learning ANY language, especially so in Finland, because everyone speaks it, thus making it harder to refrain from using it and trying to speak in your new (chosen) language.
J
That "Swedish speaking people" speak perfect english is not a good arguement because lots of "Finnish speaking people" also speak perfect (well, not perfect, but reasonable) English also. So you shouldn't learn Finnish either.
Actually, in my experience, SPEAKING ENGLISH is a real disadvantage to learning ANY language, especially so in Finland, because everyone speaks it, thus making it harder to refrain from using it and trying to speak in your new (chosen) language.
J
Well, my distorted opininion (I'm a fluent Finn so I have no real say) is that the tenses, cases, moods, and voices are just mathematics really. Consonant gradation, word changes and speech patterns are those where you get to play St. George and the dragon.Hopefully the tenses shouldn't be too bad, but that all depends on which case I'm using and which mood it's in!
The tenses are four, same as in English, and built in a similar fashion. No two perfect tenses as in Italian, and in French. The moods are four as well but you hardly ever need the 'potential'. 'Imperative' is easy as you will probably only give straight orders, no need to go for the 3rd person. The 'conditional' has a recognizable "isi" pattern in each form. The 'indicative' is of course the bread and butter of the language, so you have to learn it thoroughly.
Voices, i.e. active and passive, although different from English, have the same basic mechanisms working under the hood.
Cases. Well, cough. But hey, you'll probably need only about ten of them in a normal environment. If you know any Latin, or ... ok.
Swedish lacks all the fancy stuff. And you can even consider yourself to be an archaeologist: delving into an ancient language where there still are old, long-forgotten cases and moods from the Stone Age..
The only thing you have left in English is forms like "whom". Or is that just about THE only thing? I'm talking about cases.
Finnish, language of the Neanderthals! Come and experience...
21:1... the future doesn't look bright for Swedish, apologies to 03005061. I've already printed off 19 pages of Finnish vocabulary and grammar and I bought myself a little exercise book especially for it... no Finnish teacher as of yet but I've taught myself a great amount of Dutch in the past and I was fine when I went to Holland I hope I get the same luck with Finnish.
I hope I get the same luck with Finnish.No cube to the left of nothing is between two cubes.
Errr.... Don't forget that, beside the alphabet, English is closer of Hindi than it is of Finnish... And from a finnish point of view, English, Dutch and German are like dialects of the same language... I mean : Finnish is really appart.Clive wrote:I've taught myself a great amount of Dutch in the past and I was fine when I went to Holland
I quite agree with the arguments of 03005061. Especially that learning Swedish could be good if you plan to visit or live at some other twist in your life in scandinavian countries or Iceland.
/Paul
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Hank W.
- The Motorhead
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Well, Finnish and Estonian are "related". There is a lot of words that are familiar, some archaic/dialect usages of Finnish in standard Estonian you can get the drift of, and a load of "faux amis".
Estonian sounds to a Finn like someone on a bad trip. I mean if I describe my morning in Estonian a Finn would hear something like:
In the morrow I woke up. I had laid cheap all night, for there was a grave with criminals under my windower. Oldmomma woke up and beat coffee melt. Olddad started fumigating. The little boyo also woke up, and momentarily started to growl. The bag ran bay the door. I screamed to oldmomma that I shall play the car to the castle. Oldmomma screamed, You ought not rape money.
Well, one night I was speaking and a young Estonian girl was complaining she'd been in Finland and "couldn't understand a thing people said".
Estonian sounds to a Finn like someone on a bad trip. I mean if I describe my morning in Estonian a Finn would hear something like:
In the morrow I woke up. I had laid cheap all night, for there was a grave with criminals under my windower. Oldmomma woke up and beat coffee melt. Olddad started fumigating. The little boyo also woke up, and momentarily started to growl. The bag ran bay the door. I screamed to oldmomma that I shall play the car to the castle. Oldmomma screamed, You ought not rape money.
Well, one night I was speaking and a young Estonian girl was complaining she'd been in Finland and "couldn't understand a thing people said".
Cheers, Hank W.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.