from what i know it's in top 3 hardest languages to learn
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-08 23:22
It has like 15 grammatical cases.
This means for one tense (present, past, future) you'll be learning 15 different endings for each type of noun/verb/whatever... multiplied by the number of genders and whether or not it changes with plurals, et cetera. And when to use them all.
I'm not learning Finnish, but am learning Icelandic so I assume in that regard they're somewhat similar.
Not really, considering Icelandic is a German language and Finnish is basically a Uralic isolate. They're not related at all.
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-09 11:52
>>4
I didn't mean the languages being related, I meant how they have cases and that the endings change per case.
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-09 12:25
Finnish is not necessarily more difficult than other languages. Actually it is quite logical. It is just completely different from any language that we speak.
There are barely any words which you can guess based on your current vocabulary, so you'll have to memorize seemingly random accumulations of letters.
example:
köyhä - poor
tykätä - to like
rautatieasema - train station
So either you are really creative with memory hooks or you'll just have to learn vocabulary constantly.
The same goes for the grammar. The usage of the different suffixes, the partitive and so on looks just intimidating to anyone who doesn't know any Finno-Ugric language.
It is, of course, possible to learn Finnish. It just won't come as easily to you as another Germanic or Romanic language.
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-09 14:04
impossible to complete curriculum -- always the opposite of person trying to learn it, unless teachers are involved - not a one person course of study
>>8
At first I thought it was a Fennicism as the Romance languages are called "romaaniset kielet" in Finnish, but then I checked Wikipedia and discovered that they can be called "Romanic languages" as well in English (along with "Latin languages" or "Neolatin languages").
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-11 0:09
>>9
SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU NIGGER ITS ROMANCE LANGUAGES
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-11 2:10
>>9
Romanic languages should be the default name for Latin languages. It sounds less pansy that way.
Finnish is not necessarily hard, but it's definitely different.
Your best option is to forget all you know about grammar structures etc. from other languages and completely start over. You will need suffixes, lots of suffixes, there are no prepositions or articles.
It's easy to pronounce though once you get the hang of it, because the pronunciation of each letter is always the same.
And don't fear the grammatical cases. True, there's a fuckton of them, but once you start to understand how they work it gets easier.
Also, compound words, learn them well, it gets fucking irritating when teenagers fuck them up constantly when it's not really that hard ("can you put an adjective between them? No? Bingo! You have a compound word!")
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-14 22:19
Dacula & Napolean were Latinos... ODALY VATO!
Name:
Anonymous2010-02-15 10:32
>>5 they have cases and that the endings change per case
Except that, as opposed to the 4 cases in Germanic languages, there are some 15 cases in Finnish. Mostly (but not only) cos there's no prepositions. Enjoyable little things like that.
>>30 * African American African American African American African American "African American".
Name:
Anonymous2010-06-26 5:47
>>14
but 'ennen' and 'ilman' are prepositions. It's kinda like 'ago' is a postposition in English, not the dominant pattern, but still in there for some reason.
>>3
Grammatical case has nothing to do with tense. Also, case formations are pretty fucking regular in Finnish, and a lot of them aren't used that often. I'd say declension is more difficult in German, Latin, or Russian because it's less predictable for new words and there are multiple declension patterns. In Finnish there's only one.
Name:
Anonymous2010-06-29 13:26
>>32
>it's less predictable for new words and there are multiple declension patterns
It IS predictable from genitive plural.
However, about multiple patterns, you're right.
Name:
Anonymous2010-06-30 9:24
Example of how awesome Finnish is:
-Kokko! Koo kokoon koko kokko.
-Koko kokkoko?
-Koko kokko.
translation:
-Kokko! Gather the whole bonfire.
-The whole bonfire?
-Yes, the whole bonfire.