Languages

Languages are interesting. Without them it would be really difficult to communicate with others.And it always helps when you can speak more than one language. Obviously it helps that I speak English since T does not speak Finnish. But since we are going to Finland in March and since my family doesn't speak English all that much, T wants to learn some Finnish. I have thought her some random words and she is able to make random sentences out of those words, few times she has totally surprised me with what she's able to do. But Finnish language is one of the 5 most difficult languages in the world, or so I've heard. And even though there's only 5,2 million of us, there are still many dialects of Finnish. So should I teach her proper Finnish which might sound stuffy but she'd be able to maybe read some and understand it or should I teach her my dialect? It is also kind a hard because the more you are exposed to a language, the easier you'll pick up on it. Other than me and my conversations with my mom on the phone, T is not exposed to Finnish. She called Rosetta Stone and asked for a Finnish language DVD, but they said there's no demand for it which is why they don't have it. Offered her Swedish...

Right now I can list 8 different Finnish dialects but there are more than that. Different words are spelled and pronounced differently depending on where you are and which dialect you are speaking. Words might have a different meaning depending on where you come from and some words have different meanings depending on the context. Which makes a quite a good laugh sometimes when T wants to surprise me and uses one of those online dictionaries that "translate" words and sentences to English or to Finnish.One time she wanted to say something nice to me in Finnish, looked up the words in a dictionary and came up with something totally opposite! I was looking at the e-mail trying to figure out what it meant and then had to call her and ask. We got a good laugh out of it though.

We have tried to do a word of the day, maybe expand to sentence of the day but after few days I forget. I will try to do better though. It's important to her that she can say few sentences in Finnish and be polite when she talks with my family and friends so we will focus on that.

The dialects are not necessarily something that a foreigner can pick up on when they try to understand Finnish. Dialects differ in words, speed and tone. The word "I" is minä in Finnish. Where I come from we either use mä or mää. In other parts of the country it can be mie or something else. In Finnish language to, for, from etc are added to the word instead of being separate words so for me would be minulle or if you speak my dialect, mulle. From me would be minulta or multa. Multa also means the dirt you put your flowers in or grow your veggies in so you will need to be able to distinguish the difference between the meanings.

As far as verbs go, the verbs are used according to who is doing the action. When you say I run, you run, he runs, the only time the verb changes is with a third person.In Finnish that is not the case.

I minä
You sinä
he/she hän
we me
you te
they he

so if we use the verb to run or juosta, this is how it would go

I: minä juoksen
you: sinä juokset
he: hän juoksee
we: me juoksemme
you: te juoksette
they: he juoksevat.

Why all of a sudden a word that has no k's in it has k's, is one of the complexities of Finnish language that I learned when I was in maybe 7th grade but have forgot all about it. I know how to speak it so I don't need to know the rules. Lets just say that there are exceptions after exceptions and sometimes depending on the letters in the words, some will disappear and other will appear instead.

To go back to to, for, from, in etc... if we were to use my name

For Jenni: Jennille
From Jenni: Jenniltä
In Jenni: Jennissä
Jenni has...: Jennillä on
Don't look at Jenni: Jenniä.

If we used my brother's name Arttu
Artulle
Artulta
Artussa
Artulla
Arttua.

You see that in the first 4 cases there's a t missing in his name but in the 5th one there's 2. Also, instead of ending with ä it ends with a. One of the things that have rules to remember but because I speak the language I know when it goes with ä and when with a.

I now finish my Finnish lesson. Gotta do some work...or homework. Later