Conjugation of word 'se' with different verbs etc.

[yamoussoukro]

I'm a native Finnish, but I know many foreigners in Finland. There is one interesting thing I've noticed lately. Foreigners who have been studying Finnish for a long time(over 3-4 years) who can often speak very good Finnish often seem to make this same little mistake and it seems to be one of the last mistakes to remain on the way to fluency. It's the conjugation of word 'se'.
(se, sitä, siitä, siihen, sille, siltä etc.)

For example: What do you think about that?
Instead of Mitä ajattelet siitä? People might say: Mitä ajattelet siihen/sitä?

Because of that.
they might say: sitä vuoksi, instead of sen vuoksi.

(bad examples, but you'll get the idea.)

Now I'm not saying that I was perfect in any language I've studied, neither I want to be annoing person seekin all the little mistakes made buy others. I'm simly wondering why is that perhaps the most difficult thing in Finnish or is it just that it's not as important as some others, as people will understand you anyway.

Maybe it's the same reason why we Finns make lot of mistakes in prepositions in English, German or Spanish for example.

[kalmisto]

>> For example: What do you think about that?
Instead of Mitä ajattelet siitä? People might say: Mitä ajattelet siihen/sitä?<<

"Mitä ajattelet siihen?" does not sound so bad. I have never heard anybody say that but it would be easy to get used to a question like that because we can say "Mitä sanot siihen?".

I do not have an answer to your question. When I speak English or Swedish I often say "he" when talking about a woman and "she" when I talk about a man. I do not know why that happens. Swedes find this funny.

[Andrew_S]

The only annoying thing I remember about "se" when a beginner was the irregular looking form "siitä", not having an s. Doesn't look like an elative.

How about "se" (=it) when talking about people? I just use hän.

[yamoussoukro]

I guess Finnish is quite flexible in those. Now I remember that my Spanish teacher kept saying: Mitä ajattelet siinä? because in Spanish you would say: Que piensas en eso? Yet I understood it, and it kind made sense to me, Since it seems to mean; What are you thinking, while standing there and staring like that..(or something like that.)

[AnaBanana]

I know many foreigners have problems with pronunciation whatever comes to double vowels or consonants. That's the case with sitä and siitä, for example.

So it might be that the person knows what is the correct way, on his mind he's saying things correctly, but his pronunciation sucks and you, a native speaker, can easily tell the difference.

[suru]

It's true: i think it's the hardest thing in the Finnish language. But mostly I get the sitä and sen mixed up, like: Pesen sen/sitä, käytän sen/sitä. It's just hard to understand the logic behind it, and since I've been making these mistakes for so long, it's hard to replace them now with the correct form.
But, as it seems my bad Finnish is wearing off on other Finns (friends, colleagues etc) I'll just hope the all Finns will change their mind and my now faulty Finnish will be correct. Seems more likely to happen than that I learnt it finally...