How Finnish sounds for the foreign people?

ojanm · Post by **ojanm** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:28 pm

Speaking of Hungarians, I find the following video amusing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGn8zhDwxIU

It sounds like he's switching to Finnish for a moment.

**Sponsor:**

Hank W. · Post by **Hank W.** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:43 pm

Well, there's Estonian for comparison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SILr4-bk1k4

You can get the gist of the guy, maybe 60-70% if you know Finnish. One just needs to be creative in listening.

And then Finnish...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNprFzBKDio

I think theres a definite 'Ugric' element in there

muhaha · Post by **muhaha** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 8:20 pm

sammy wrote: Now, to get back to the topic - does anyone know if such humorous "misheard lyrics presentations" have been made of some Finnish-language songs...?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DD4EJ6OJKlI

This song sounds Finnish. Ne vei mun sanomalehden.

fileexit · Post by **fileexit** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 10:51 pm

a friend of mine once described the Finnish language sound like a two stroke engine sound... accurate description in my opinion!

No disrespect, but honestly, the Finnish language is not that beautiful language (there are worse, if you happen to have Descovery channel

)

I know nothing in Finnish, but I notice that even finns have hard time pronouncing it... i hear a lot of pauses and sound breaks during there talks.. and a lot of stop-to-breath moments...what's going on! I also noticed absence of "sh", even when speaking English (or Englis

) and a whole bunch of "ssa" all over the conversation...

If you are an engineer, you would understand when I say it sounds like digital PCM signal consisting of only 2 level (0, +5V) 0 is silence and +5 for any letter

Other languages produce a smoother analog signal, where letters and words cross over to create the smooth signal envelope. In Finnish, there is no cross over and the sound signal is always descrete!!!

I also noticed the harsh voices most finns have... to me, even woman have such a rough voice (relatively speaking). In addition, Finnish voice volumes is much higher than any other language i heard... I never meet so many high-volume voices in my life!!

Again, if you are an engineer you would agree with me when I say there is a lot of low frequency sound in Finnish language (sound close to the Bass) and extremely high frequency vibrations, but nothing in the middle... The high freq manifests itself when the Finns pause in a talk saying: aaaaaah (during a pause to think moment)

Funny enough, if Finns speak English, they really remind me of Italians speaking English

Matula · Post by **Matula** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 12:28 pm

fileexit wrote:In addition, Finnish voice volumes is much higher than any other language i heard... I never meet so many high-volume voices in my life!!

This is so not true. I bet you've never been in Germany.

kalmisto · Post by **kalmisto** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 2:53 pm

>> I know nothing in Finnish, but I notice that even finns have hard time pronouncing it... i hear a lot of pauses and sound breaks during there talks.. and a lot of stop-to-breath moments...what's going on! I also noticed absence of "sh", even when speaking English (or Englis ) and a whole bunch of "ssa" all over the conversation... <<

We Finns do not usually find Finnish difficult to pronounce. I have met a Finn or two ( old people ) who could not pronounce the letter "d". The reason for this is that they never use it when they speak their own dialect.

Some Finns have trouble with the pronunciation of words which have a foreign origin. Genuine Finnish words do not cause them any trouble.

The "pauses and sound brakes...and a lot of stop-to breathe moments" are not there because Finns find Finnish difficult to pronounce. There are other explanations for them.

There is no "sh" sound in Finnish. We only have one "s" sound in Finnish and that is similar to the "s" in the English word "so".

"ssa/ssä" is a very common case ending in Finnish :

auto = a car
autossa = in a car

kylmä auto = a cold car
kylmässä autossa = in a cold car

amymone · Post by **amymone** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 3:20 pm

well, I definitely love how finnish sounds.
find it also very musical... how weird is that?

kalmisto · Post by **kalmisto** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 11:03 pm

>> I also noticed the harsh voices most finns have... to me, even woman have such a rough voice (relatively speaking). In addition, Finnish voice volumes is much higher than any other language i heard... I never meet so many high-volume voices in my life!! <<

Many foreigners find Finnish hard sounding. Stuart McNaughton is one of them : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2557589.stm

All languages can not be beautiful and they do not have to be. I do not have any trouble with that.

Dixie · Post by **Dixie** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 8:00 am

Perhaps the most enjoyable letter in the Finnish language could be a first syllable ending in the letter "h", for instance, johdosta, as it represents a distinct pause, as a perhaps unexpected sound, very distinct, very Finnish!

Let one add, please, the letter "r", which indeed does "purr" at the tip of one's tongue.

kalmisto · Post by **kalmisto** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:08 pm

>> Let one add, please, the letter "r", which indeed does "purr" at the tip of one's tongue. <<

My first name is Pertti. Write Perrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtti in the text field of this speech synthesizer of Finnish, then click on "Kuuntele puhe" ! :

http://www.mikropuhe.com/demo.asp?f=907573265727

Munlaw · Post by **Munlaw** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 9:50 pm

Out of all the Ugric languages, Finnish sounds the nicest, followed by Estonian, followed by Hungarian...

muhaha · Post by **muhaha** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 11:05 pm

Munlaw wrote:Out of all the Ugric languages, Finnish sounds the nicest, followed by Estonian, followed by Hungarian...

Actually Finnish and Estonian are "Baltic-Finnic" and Hungarian is "Ugric". Both branches are Finno-Ugric but Hungarian is as strange to a Finn as any other language.

Hank W. · Post by **Hank W.** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 11:17 pm

Finnish/dialects- karelian/dialects/estonian/dialects/liivi/dialects.. after that you can talk about sami/dialects and hungarian and the siberian languages... some are closer some are more distant, but its not the geographical distance we talk about necessarily. Sami and Finnish are more or less mutually unintelligible for example.

peppetto · Post by **peppetto** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 5:47 pm

Is Karelian and Finnish language just the same? And if it not if this means ,that karelian people are not finnish-than why some of karelian people live in Finland?By the way I had traveled in the train Sankt Peterburg-Helsinki with a very old man ,who told me,that he is finnish,living and born in Sankt Petersburg-it must be karelian[probably],but he spoke freely to the Finnish police and custom officers and it his language probably was karelian....but the finnish people understood him...

Hank W. · Post by **Hank W.** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 6:02 pm

Karelian is close enough you can understand it more or less... there is karelian dialect ofFinnish and then there is a karelian language that is a bit more distanced to warrant it being called a language. The old man in the train may well have been an Ingrian - all that area around St. Petersburg was populated with Finnish-speaking peoples, Ingrians immigrated in the 1600's and 1700'due to some religious disputes as well as economic reasons

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