Is Finnish a difficult language to learn?

[chickensexer]

lentokone lentää korkealla ilmassa

AARGH. Why not "korkealla ilmalla" or "korkeassa ilmassa" (= corresponding cases) ?! So much for Finnish being "logical" (not that I ever thought that it was more or less "logical" than any other language out there).

Well, because they are not corresponding to each other. They are corresponding to the airplane.
Lentokone on korkealla. high up
Lentokone on ilmassa. in the air

If you say korkealla ilmalla (on high weather) or korkeassa ilmassa (in high air) then korkea corresponds to ilma, and not airplane.

wow, so my guess was corect. yikes. do I qualify for having passed the citizenship language test?

[Hank W.]

i.e. getting your head round the fact that other languages "work" differently (use different concepts), that you'll have to learn to give up translating foreign concepts 1:1 into English etc. etc.

Finnish requires a lot of "deprogramming", not only the writing/alphabet/sounds, then the endings and evil changing letters, but the "mindset" behind the language... like there is no word for "please", but the leap is not to question of "why there isn't a word for please" but "why would someone need a word like that, when you can..." ?

[blaugrau]

lentokone lentää korkealla ilmassa

AARGH. Why not "korkealla ilmalla" or "korkeassa ilmassa" (= corresponding cases) ?! So much for Finnish being "logical" (not that I ever thought that it was more or less "logical" than any other language out there).

Well, because they are not corresponding to each other. They are corresponding to the airplane.
Lentokone on korkealla. high up
Lentokone on ilmassa. in the air

If you say korkealla ilmalla (on high weather) or korkeassa ilmassa (in high air) then korkea corresponds to ilma, and not airplane.

wow, so my guess was corect. yikes. do I qualify for having passed the citizenship language test?

thanks guys, this makes perfect sense. I was thinking in the direction of "in high air", and was expecting corresponding endings for that reason, but I can see now that this was a mistake! Cheers!

[enk]

Finnish is extremely difficult to learn, although you will see from Sinikala's post that it is quite possible to learn.

Although it's quite easy to see from his post that he has just recoded the
English words into Finnish instead of using proper Finnish. So mebbe it
is hard

-enk

[SaxonManFinland]

I find Finnish impossible, I cant remember the words after ten mins, and I just cant get my head around the words in Finnish.
How did you get on with Finnish?


(PS I'm from ireland, and I dont have a background in any other language.)

Back to the ORIGINAL QUESTION !!!

YES, it is difficult, especially for people who are not accomplished in the grammar rules of another language. IF you are then it makes more sense, but IF NOT it is a mumble jumble.
The majority of people go through despair, the younger you are, (or more language savvy) then the easier it is. I understand more Finnish now than when I lived there. It took time to sink in
Finnish takes a few years to learn the basics, BUT learning a few words (memory, stuff the grammar) is a good start. No one will understand you of course .

Mixing, working and living with Finns is the QUICKEST WAY. Death by Immersion.
Training courses takes about 3 years of confusion and then suddenly you are amazed you understood a few words on the news last night.

I doubt there are many mature foreigners who will ever reach a high level of written Finnish, but then that is true for most languages. 20 years in Finland, and you will read and speak brilliantly. Many technical, legal words phrases will be over your head, but then that also is true for most other languages.

The Eskimos have 50 different words for SNOW. Just be thankful you do not have to learn that language. BTW They are all Technically SWEAR WORDS.

[Karhunkoski]

I doubt there are many mature foreigners who will ever reach a high level of written Finnish, but then that is true for most languages. 20 years in Finland, and you will read and speak brilliantly. Many technical, legal words phrases will be over your head, but then that also is true for most other languages.

The Eskimos have 50 different words for SNOW. Just be thankful you do not have to learn that language. BTW They are all Technically SWEAR WORDS.

In case anyone takes this as genuine, no it isn't, absolute piffle. Not 50 words for snow, an old myth, and actually, I think "Eskimo" isn't actually a language...

[Rob A.]

I doubt there are many mature foreigners who will ever reach a high level of written Finnish, but then that is true for most languages. 20 years in Finland, and you will read and speak brilliantly. Many technical, legal words phrases will be over your head, but then that also is true for most other languages.

The Eskimos have 50 different words for SNOW. Just be thankful you do not have to learn that language. BTW They are all Technically SWEAR WORDS.

In case anyone takes this as genuine, no it isn't, absolute piffle. Not 50 words for snow, an old myth, and actually, I think "Eskimo" isn't actually a language...

Well...when I read SMFs post earlier I thought I would be charitable and let it pass, but since you've brought it up...yes, it's "absolute piffle"... ....(I think that's the first time I've ever used that expression..."piffle"...sounds like something an old English auntie would say... )

Anyway, the language is generally known as Inuit...but it gets complicated...the term I hear most often in Canada...is "Inuktitut"... The language, like Finnish, builds up words by adding affixes...so basically all these words for snow would be something like saying "wetsnow", "drysnow", "lightsnow", "blowingsnow", etc...in English, so it really is meaningless...

Here's something from wikipedia:

A popular belief exists that the Inuit have an unusually large number of words for snow. This is not accurate, and results from a misunderstanding of the nature of polysynthetic languages. In fact, The Inuit have only a few base roots for snow: 'qanniq-' ('qanik-' in some dialects), which is used most often like the verb to snow, and 'aput', which means snow as a substance. Parts of speech work very differently in the Inuit language than in English, so these definitions are somewhat misleading.

And since we are talking about vocabulary and numbers of words....some of you probably know that Finnish actually has a far larger vocabulary than English...

Yes, it's true and the proof is quite easy...Now relax, I didn't come up with this, I read about it.... :

yksinkertainen, kaksinkertainen, kolminkertainen ...ad infinitum/ad nauseum...

The point, of course, is that comparing languages on such a basis is meaningless...Finnish builds words in different ways than does English...

[llewellyn]

Back to your question.

Finnish is extremely difficult to learn, although you will see from Sinikala's post that it is quite possible to learn.

Well, but isn't all that quite relative? Is Finnish more "extremely difficult" to learn for a native English speaker than Mandarin or Vietnamese? I would say that it most probably is quite a bit easier. The unspoken scenario seems always to be that the comparison is with a Germanic or Romance language that in many ways are quite close to English. But there are more languages in the world than those few spoken in Western Europe and in the countries colonized by the Western Europeans. Is Finnish "extremely difficult" to learn for an Estonian speaker?

[Hank W.]

[
Well, but isn't all that quite relative? Is Finnish more "extremely difficult" to learn for a native English speaker

I think it all depends how dense you are.

[Karhunkoski]

Back to your question.

Finnish is extremely difficult to learn, although you will see from Sinikala's post that it is quite possible to learn.

Well, but isn't all that quite relative? Is Finnish more "extremely difficult" to learn for a native English speaker than Mandarin or Vietnamese? I would say that it most probably is quite a bit easier. The unspoken scenario seems always to be that the comparison is with a Germanic or Romance language that in many ways are quite close to English. But there are more languages in the world than those few spoken in Western Europe and in the countries colonized by the Western Europeans. Is Finnish "extremely difficult" to learn for an Estonian speaker?

Yes, of course it's relative, however the OP:

(PS I'm from ireland, and I dont have a background in any other language.)

...not Chinese, nor Vietnamese, but perhaps you think it odd that I chose to focus my thoughts on the Finnish/English language pair rather than open discussion on worldwide students of the Finnish language?


The evidence is clear though: you see many foreigners trying to learn Finnish and whilst some master the language very well, they tend to be in a minority. But of course, they must be just "dense", eh Hank?

[llewellyn]

...not Chinese, nor Vietnamese, but perhaps you think it odd that I chose to focus my thoughts on the Finnish/English language pair rather than open discussion on worldwide students of the Finnish language?


The evidence is clear though: you see many foreigners trying to learn Finnish and whilst some master the language very well, they tend to be in a minority. But of course, they must be just "dense", eh Hank?

Well, it just sounded like a very categorical statement and not relating to just one particular case. No offense intended, hopefully none taken. In any case the problems are not completely insurmountable and I would say that one major thing - independent of grammar or language family - is that so many people do speak English here. If you live in the Helsinki region and you are a native English speaker, you might not so desperately need Finnish to survive or to have a social life. This would go for other university towns as well, depending of course on personal circumstances and background.

[Karhunkoski]

No offence taken, non intended with my reply either

I think perhaps part of my point was also that it is difficult to compare a Finn learning English with a Brit learning Finnish (assuming both were educated in their homeland), for the reasons listed earlier in this thread. I strongly agree with your point re those living in HKI having less need/motivation to learn - I'm sure my own progress would have been worse if I lived there.

But I stand by my original statement, Finnish is extremely difficult to learn for most foreigners, not impossible though I've met people from all over the world who have learned English and people from all over the world who have studied Finnish (in Finland). Neither is an easy task, although for some reason there seem to be more language failures amongst those learning Finnish than English. To me the simple conclusion is that Finnish must be "extremely difficult", but of course it could just be a coincidence.

[llewellyn]

No offence taken, non intended with my reply either

I think perhaps part of my point was also that it is difficult to compare a Finn learning English with a Brit learning Finnish (assuming both were educated in their homeland), for the reasons listed earlier in this thread. I strongly agree with your point re those living in HKI having less need/motivation to learn - I'm sure my own progress would have been worse if I lived there.

But I stand by my original statement, Finnish is extremely difficult to learn for most foreigners, not impossible though I've met people from all over the world who have learned English and people from all over the world who have studied Finnish (in Finland). Neither is an easy task, although for some reason there seem to be more language failures amongst those learning Finnish than English. To me the simple conclusion is that Finnish must be "extremely difficult", but of course it could just be a coincidence.

Well, English being the global language of business, science and entertainment... I guess my point was that there are even, gasp, stranger languages in the world than Finnish from the point of view of a native English speaker and that from some global perspective Germanic and Romance languages are themselves pretty strange too. So, it is not uniquely difficult to learn Finnish and Finnish is not a uniquely "obscure" language - though of course I would argue that no language is obscure. This might be a somewhat difficult state of affairs to perceive should you yourself be a native speaker of the (currently) metropolitan language - anyway, barring some historical coincidences we might all be learning Hopi or Mongolian as the global language of communication.

[Hank W.]

The evidence is clear though: you see many foreigners trying to learn Finnish and whilst some master the language very well, they tend to be in a minority. But of course, they must be just "dense", eh Hank?

Well, then again as we know kids are very quick to learn languages, people who can learn languages at an older age must then still possess and infantile brain I know I am getting real "dense" learning languages, had to give up even trying anything that has an intonation as I am totally tone deaf.

[Karhunkoski]

Anyway, I'm keen to hear how Mikkeli gets on with his language learning.

I must say, if I had known what a ball ache it was going to be. I'm not sure I would have bothered starting, and I had a Finnish passport already together with a social network, so there even less motivation to learn....