Well, Finnish, Hungarian, and maybe a few other languages have like hundreds of different suffixes that you have to remember. I'd still like to try and learn them, though.
Different languages discussion
-
-
Finnish is suposed to be hard because of the grammar, or so I´ve heard.
Does everyone in Finland still have to learn swedish?Yes we do, but a lot of people oppose it for some dumb reasons. It's only natural that we have to learn swedish since we're an officially bilingual country with a small language we can't rely on when associating with people from other countries. We have to learn english as well because of that.
-
Finnish is suposed to be hard because of the grammar, or so I´ve heard.
Does everyone in Finland still have to learn swedish?Finnish indeed has a complicated grammar, and the fact that the spoken language is pretty much completely different from the one written doesn't really help it. And of course like in every language, there are lots of dialects… Even Finns themselves have hard time speaking their own language from time to time :D I have argued many times with my friends how a certain word is conjugated correctly :D I remember when we had to learn all the 15 grammatical cases in our Finnish class, it was just horrible...(in comparison; German has 4 grammatical cases, Swedish 2, and English none, except for the nominative case.)
And mandatory Swedish... Yes in Finland every one must study it, and at least some kind of Swedish skills are needed to get a job. Now I kinda think the reasons to still keep it in the Finnish curriculum are stupid, but it's a beneficial language for the Finns. Sooo yeahh I don't really have a problem with it. Many do though.
And yeah, as Dryish said, there are only 5 million Finnish speakers in the world, that is, the inhabitants of Finland. No one else really understands it, except for maybe some Estonians. I think that's why Finns are generally pretty good with languages, as it is really a necessity to learn them if one wants to have any contact to the world outside of our borders...
-
Nobody any where in the world is more hilariously creative at cursing than a Finn speaking Swedish.
That alone should justify them taking Swedish classes.
-
Finns sure are so good at talking Swedish!!1!!
IMBANMv97_o
…Creative cursing? Wut : DDDD I must be a bad person to know very few Swedish curse words...
-
It's not really the amount of curse words, it's how they fit them into a 30 second long harang with some choice finnish curse word spliced in y'know to add some padding. You can only go so long by just saying fans helvete kuksugare etc etc but if you throw in some vittujen kävet or voi vittu or whatever you say in the old country in betwenn them you can go on all night.
Not to say that combining butter and cunt into a swear word isnt a hallmark of creativity:ninja:
-
Must… learn... Finnish and Swedish. If only to be awesome at swearing.
@LaCaSiNa or others that speak Finnish:
Yeah, I had heard about written Finnish being totally different than spoken Finnish. I keep thinking it over and can't imagine how that would be. Anyone up to trying to explain it?
-
@Kairouseki:
Yeah, I had heard about written Finnish being totally different than spoken Finnish. I keep thinking it over and can't imagine how that would be. Anyone up to trying to explain it?
How to explain this… Written language uses the longer and the "right" versions of words. It can be spoken, but thats pretty much only in the news and in Moomin... If you'd speak it like with your friends or family it sounds extremely formal. Written language is like the official finnish, it is the same everywhere in Finland.
Spoken language is easier, there isn't so much grammar rules, words are shorter and there is more of them. You don't usually write spoken language, because it doesn't really make you look smart. It's okay when writing e-mails and stuff like that though.Written language isn't always so different from the spoken language. But it can be.
Joku muu suomalainen jatkakoon ja selittäköön paremmin. Teitä kun näkyy olevan yllättävän paljon.
-
Not to say that combining butter and cunt into a swear word isnt a hallmark of creativity:ninja:
My friend, I hope you know (and I would bet my money on that you do) that the word 'voi' means both: 'butter' and simply just 'oh'. If you ever go and say something like buttercunt to a finn, they'll probably think you're a smartass and do something about it.
And Kairouseki, it's as Norman explained. The written language is formal and is used only in books and in business meetings, speeches, etc.. And the language itself isn't that different. We just use shorter forms of some words and avoid using some horribly long adjectives, replacing them with a shorter word with the same meaning. It's also possible to leave the agent away and just add a simple letter to a verb to describe who does something. In spoken language nowadays, no one says that "Minä menen jonnekin" (I'm going to somewhere), but instead using the shorter form "Mä meen jonnekin", or just "meen jonnekin" (with exactly the same meaning). There are some other minor differences as well, but explaining them all here could take a while, so I'm not going to do it. Unless, of course, you demand it.
-
Yeah i did alreay know that, tho i only learned it recently. The other 19 years of my life i thought that was the gods truth:ninja:
It's probably the most common misconception about the language, and it's probably never going to be corrected because it amuses Swedes to no end.
-
…............I don´t get any of that about finnish swear words.
-
Yeah i did alreay know that, tho i only learned it recently. The other 19 years of my life i thought that was the gods truth:ninja:
It's probably the most common misconception about the language, and it's probably never going to be corrected because it amuses Swedes to no end.
Ohgod I didn't even realize that myself up until now :''D Buttercunt is gonna be my new curse word from now on. And all I've heard about Finnish curse words is that there's very few of them compared to the other languages, especially like Russian which has… many curse words? I think :'D
And uh... The difference between the written and the spoken language... Well it's really hard to explain. I wouldn't really say it's easier than the language that is written, it is just kinda…faster? I know I'm not making any sense here yes :D Goddammit it's hard to explain when I can't really give any examples. My Swedish teacher did tell us though that the Norwegians have a problem of some degree with the differences between the written and the spoken language or something. Dunno about that though.
Also, there was this girl in my class in lower secondary. She spoke only like in the written language. I thought to myself it was really weird, but when you got used to it, it didn't bother her friends of course. She was teased A LOT about it though.
http://finland.fi/public/default.aspx?nodeid=41802&contentlan=2&culture=en-US
<- Here one can find some interesting articles about Finnish, if someone is interested.
http://finland.fi/Public/default.aspx?contentid=192441&nodeid=41802&culture=en-US
<- About the search for the longest word in the Finnish language(Which is apparently lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas. Try to say that.).
(Varför is there a space in that word D: I can't edit it out! There shouldn't be one >:)
-
Nobody any where in the world is more hilariously creative at cursing than a Finn speaking Swedish.
That alone should justify them taking Swedish classes.
Me and my friends love to say "fy fan" in a very gayish manner, though that's not very creative… :ninja:
Goddangit, my internet is about to run out, but I will definitely try to write my own contribution about the differences of written and spoken Finnish.
-
What does that word mean? :O
-
What does that word mean? :O
The long one? The article translates it as "aeroplane jet turbine motor assistant mechanic, non-commissioned officer, in training".
…Or fy fan? I believe it means "For Fuck's sake", "Oh Fuck" or something like that :D Or as Finns would say, "voi vittu"
(Anteeksiii kun editoin hulluna postejani >: Olen sellainen huono ihminen.)
-
I meant the really long word. I guessed it meant someting about motors and stuff :P
I´m actually swedish so I know what fy fan means :P -
Ahahaa okay good then :'D
-
Is this the international cursing thread now? De puta madre.
And I actually made a dictionary of long words for my German class. If I can find it I might post some of them here later.
-
My Swedish teacher did tell us though that the Norwegians have a problem of some degree with the differences between the written and the spoken language or something. Dunno about that though.
Nah, not really. Only thing I can think of is all the hicks out west and up north that insist on writing the words as they speak them online, which makes them look about as smart as someone writing "with" a Brooklyn accent.
-
@Kairouseki:
Is this the international cursing thread now? De puta madre.
International cursing ftw! Voihan haiseva ja karvainen- … wait, I guess people know how to use translators. Don't want to get banned on using foul language or anything. :ninja:
Here are some articles I found about spoken Finnish, both from Wikipedia. The first one is lengthy, but handles many details. The second one leads to different topics describing phenomena related to the aspects of spoken Finnish. For those who are interested, but don't have the patience for boring Wiki stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoken_Finnish
http://www.unilang.org/wiki/index.php/Spoken_Finnish
You can never figure out the whole thing without actually studying the language and using it in Finland and I can never explain all of it, so in Wikipedia we trust. I read all of it and it's quite good.
-
Nah, not really. Only thing I can think of is all the hicks out west and up north that insist on writing the words as they speak them online, which makes them look about as smart as someone writing "with" a Brooklyn accent.
Well Maybe she was wrong : / Or probably I just remember wrong…
And reading trough that Wikipedia article I realize my own language makes really no sense at all. Well, even more so now. I feel for those who have to learn it...
-
I plan to learn the top 10 most popular language. Whether I accomplish this plan or not depends on how life goes on. Currently studying German.
-
I love German, though I have a hard time pronouncing a lot of the stuff to the point where my study friend in Germany says I sound like I'm drunk.
-
I want to start German but Its not offered in any nearby colleges so I'm going to learn Japanese first. One question though, does Japanese have a lot of rules like Spanish? by that I mean all the tenses like theres
he ido for i have gone (went) voy for i go and i cant even remember the rest thats what months of no spanish does to you hahaha, not to mention all the reflexive additions and such. -
I could never be able to learn German if it wasn't my mother tongue. There are so many unnecessary rules and complicated words. Besides, the words are really hard to pronounce.
-
I want to start German but Its not offered in any nearby colleges so I'm going to learn Japanese first. One question though, does Japanese have a lot of rules like Spanish? by that I mean all the tenses like theres
he ido for i have gone (went) voy for i go and i cant even remember the rest thats what months of no spanish does to you hahaha, not to mention all the reflexive additions and such.Not sure if English is your native language but most languages conjugate verbs in a similar way to Spanish. Some are more complicated, like Finnish or Hungarian, and some are less, like Japanese and Chinese.
Japanese does conjugate verbs, not sure how many tenses there are, but they don't conjugate for person but for tense. So, there's one word for present tense, one for past, etc.
I think Japanese's grammar is much simpler than say German or Spanish but there are some tradeoffs. Japanese has a more complicated writing system and speech is often much more vague. I'm fairly certain it has a more richer vocabulary as well.
I actually found Spanish fairly easy to learn, at least until you get to the really complicated tenses like the Plusamperfect tense and such.
I could never be able to learn German if it wasn't my mother tongue. There are so many unnecessary rules and complicated words. Besides, the words are really hard to pronounce.
I actually like German quite a bit. The case system allows you to move words around more for more variety, which is why I want to learn Basque so badly. I don't like how you have to capitalize nouns, though. What unnecessary rules are you talking about?
-
Indeed, I hear only good things about German on the rules and regularly conjugating verbs and such.
It's French that fucks you in the ass without asking if you'd like to be buttered up first.
Japanese has a deceptively easy grammar and conjugate system … it's the other little oddities that'll have you scratching your head. It's fairly regular though - only three or four verbs that don't conjugate like the rest, and you happen to see them all the time so it's easy to get used to.
-
While French does have quite a bit of irregular verbs there is a regular system of conjugation. It's just that half the conjugations sound the same because of French's habit of ONLY PRONOUNCING HALF THE GODDAMN WORD ! Plus it forces you to use pronouns.
German has so many preposition, though, that have very little difference between them. Such as saying "nach Hause" instead of "zu Hause". Or even saying "ins Kino gehen" instead of "zu Kino gehen". I'm sure there's a reason for this but I don't know it.
-
For me unnecessary rules are stuff like the capitalizing (as you already mentioned) or the special subjunctive (which doesn't really exist in the english language). Nowadays, most German people can't even form it right. And don't get me started on the commas. We put them everywhere.
French is definitely easier. The only hard thing is the pronunciation which I imagine to be very difficult if English is your first language. I never had any problems with it though. However I really hate wirtten french because I always screw something up there :D
-
@Kairouseki:
German has so many preposition, though, that have very little difference between them. Such as saying "nach Hause" instead of "zu Hause". Or even saying "ins Kino gehen" instead of "zu Kino gehen". I'm sure there's a reason for this but I don't know it.
Never heard "zu Kino gehen" to be honest.
"nach Hause" means that you are at a certain place and you go home.
"Ich gehe nach Hause" = "I'm going home""zu Hause" means that you are at home.
"Ich bin zu Hause" = "I'm at home"But yeah I respect every foreigner who learns German. I can speak it easily since it's my mothertongue but it's sure a pain in the ass
-
German, eh? I certainly don't hate it, it's more funny-sounding to me than anything. Besides, the only times I ever use German is when I sing a Rammstein song or do Conan O'Brien's version of imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both are abominations. :ninja:
French, on the other hand… ugh. The language of romance my ass.
-
I never had any problems with languages and sciences growing up. The languages that
I'm fluent in are English, Italian, Portuguese, Swahili, Twi, German, American Sign
Language, and simplified Chinese. I'm currently learning Korean, Hindi, Amharic and
Spanish.There is no push and pull when it comes to Languages, because they all seem to have 'advantages' and 'disadvantages.' For instance, even though German is a much harder language to learn than Italian in terms of writing and reading structure, it took much longer for others to understand what I was saying in Italian. That's because my Jamaican accent made the gentle Italian tones and intonations sounded rougher, and thus like other words and or dialects.
Yes, I do speak Jamaican Patois, but it's not really recognized as a language in the world, so I don't count it as a known language. I mean, you could understand what I'm saying in Patois if I speak retardly slow, you know British English and I remove all idioms, which is nearly impossible, from what I'm saying.
-
I never had any problems with languages and sciences growing up. The languages that
I'm fluent in are English, Italian, Portuguese, Swahili, Twi, German, American Sign
Language, and simplified Chinese. I'm currently learning Korean, Hindi, Amharic and
Spanish.
Yes, I do speak Jamaican Patois.Wow, if that's true I am impressed.
-
I don't believe you. There's no way you're really fluent in all of these languages.
I speak German, English and French. I tried to learn Spanish once but I stopped because I didn't have the time. I still wanna learn it as well as Italian and Swahili (since I'm half Kenyan).
-
Never heard "zu Kino gehen" to be honest.
That's what I'm saying. Zu is often used for "to" as in "I go to…". But with Kino (and a few others) you use "ins" as in "ins Kino gehen". Like, you say "Ich gehe zu Schule" I go to school. But you say "Ich gehe ins Kino" I go to the movies.
And yeah, the subjunctive case :getlost: . I took four years of Spanish and still don't know how to use it correctly.
French, on the other hand… ugh. The language of romance my ass.
:wub:
-
I don't believe you. There's no way you're really fluent in all of these languages.
I speak German, English and French. I tried to learn Spanish once but I stopped because I didn't have the time. I still wanna learn it as well as Italian and Swahili (since I'm half Kenyan).
I’m sorry, why can’t I be fluent in all these languages. I grew up knowing Jamaican Patois, British English and Italian. I wanted to be an Egyptologist, a doctor or an engineer as a child. So, I would read what I thought was Egyptian from books at the local library. Believe me, there was not that many computers in Jamaican back then. Later, I found that it was Amharic, an Ethiopian language, instead of Epyptian. But, whatever
When my mom and I moved to the United States, I got introduced to German and American English in high school. During my junior year, I met my girlfriend, who is a native of Kenya. Swahili is easy to learn, especially if you know British English and Italian, because you pronounce the words like they’re English words. Needless to say, she taught me Kiswahili.
Twi is a language that I’m very illiterate in. I can speak it fluent, but I can’t really read or write much of it. Most of my neighbors were Ghanaians, so I would pick up words here and there, and then I would ask what they meant. You know, experiment in it. When I graduated from high school at 16, going to 17 few days afterwards, I didn’t really want to go to college yet, especially since my girlfriend was just starting her senior year.
Anyway, my mom was forcing me to go, but I had other plans. So, while at college, I decided to get the basic college classes out of the way while going overseas. Using the school’s foreign exchange program, I went to Brazil for 2 semesters with my friends. Through Rosetta stone, and talking to people as well as the need to eat proper food, I learned Portuguese quickly. My Italian knowledge helped a lot. There is a lot of Portuguese words in Swahili too, so I didn’t have to relearn those loan words
Anyway, I came back home for summer and worked at a Korean Menswear store. Most of our customers tend to be Hispanic and Black people. I learned bits and pieces of Korean from the boss and I learned basic Spanish this way from the customers. This is my 4th summer working there, so even though I’m not quite proficient, I can understand most of what generally goes on in a Korean and a Spanish conversation.
Anyway, I now study engineering alongside my girlfriend. About 30% of the students speak Hindi, 3% speaks Korean and around 20% speak some form of Chinese: from Mandarin, Xing to Cantonese. In other words, for most people there, English is there second or third language. To graduate from school, you need community service hours, so they came up with a simplified Chinese no-credit class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. China is taking over; I took the class for giggles, and now I can speak and read simplified Chinese, but I’m still struggle to form the more advantage ‘strokes’ and characters.
I don’t really like Hindi much, just the music. But with people talking in it half the time, you must pick up words, here and there. So, anyway, my academic advisor is also the advisor of the sign language club at my school. They teach American and Japanese sign language there. After 2 semesters, I became really proficient at American Sign Language.
I go to an international engineering university, bro. You have to know English to join the school. Most people speak many languages there, especially the military kids and foreign exchange kids, so it’s only natural to get a chance to use all of these languages too. The name of the University is Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
-
Maybe we have different definitions of 'fluent'. Nevertheless, your story is impressing.
-
I thougt fluency meant that you spoke and understood it practicaly as good as a native or atleast as good as a foreigner possibly could.
-
That's what I think too.
-
If we go by bits and pieces then I'm fluent in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Danish, and Japanese :sideways: .
-
I thougt fluency meant that you spoke and understood it practicaly as good as a native or atleast as good as a foreigner possibly could.
My english teacher always said that 'fluent speaking' means that you mustn't know all the vocabularies but you can say what you want to say by describing the terms … for example if I don't know the vocabulary 'hospital' I describe it like 'a building where the ill are treated by doctors' or something like that.
But I think a lot of people have different definitions of 'fluent speaking' ... I am at least happy when people get what I am trying to say :ninja: -
Fluency mean you can speak naturally and understand properly a language. To me.
-
I'm also kinda suprised to find out that there are diffrent sub languages in sign language.
I mean would two deaf people from america and japan respectivly not be able to understand each others signing?
-
I'm also kinda suprised to find out that there are diffrent sub languages in sign language.
I mean would two deaf people from america and japan respectivly not be able to understand each others signing?
This was a surprise to me too. We have a festival called Maailmankylä, "The World Village" in Helsinki once a year. I believe it was last year, or the year before or whatever, when there was a gathering with people using sign language from all over the world. They needed translators in order to understand each other… I believe there aren't many interpreters who can translate from one sign language to other :D
And as for "French vs German"... Of course every individual has different opinions in what is hard to learn in a language, buuutt... A friend of mine has studied French now eight years, and started German two years ago. She speaks German five times better than French... When I asked her, she said that German has a pretty simple Grammar, and a very easy pronunciation. Also it is similar with English I believe, belonging to the same language family and all. I've never studied German so I don't really know~
-
German seems fairly simple, it is or atleast sounds kinda close to my own native tounge.
I would like to pick it up for practical reasons, but it's not a pretty language in the least. Not as bad as Danish or Finnish but still low on the totem pole.
Neither is french for that matter, i second who ever said language of love my ass.
-
Did I hear someone saying that finnish isn't beautiful? Oh well, atleast some japanese people think it is. Nothing to worry then. But really, I'd rank it higher than german or french really. Those two aren't as pretty as people use to think, atleast german, the language in which a confession of love sounds like an execution command. "Ich liebe dich!"..
-
Depends on how you say it. When most people think of German words they imagine a Rammstein looking guy with a dead serious expression who pronounces it like an execution command.
-
Question then; what is a beautiful language?
I really like the sound of almost every language there is(…well. Sorry German people... .... ... Also, Danish...ehem.cough)... Icelandic is beautiful, as is French too(except for French rapping- I just get an image of some one spitting on your face.) imo. Japanese is nice, Chinese beautiful... Korean sounds still kinda funny to me, as does Thai- in a good way though :D Arabic languages are beautiful, Russian, and all the Balto-Slavic languages sound nice, Italian and Spanish are fiery :> African and Oceanic languages are exotic etc etc... I can't really say anything about English, it just...is. Though all the accents from UK are sexy<3 As for Finnish... Well it is my mother tongue so yeaahhh... Can't really say anything about that. But I think it is beautiful, listen to a song by Rajaton or something and you can't think Finnish sounds ugly or something… Well at least I think so >:
[hide]1OPpVn1tR3g[/hide]
-
I'm kind of the same. Except that French is the one I can't stand. I just don't see anything good whatsoever about it. I guess the hate about Danish is mostly from other Scadinavian people that can pick up on stuff Danish does, though I don't really hear it because my native language is English.
-
I absolutely love Japanese and Italian. They're the most beautiful languages I know.
I don't like languages that have a lot of 'th' (well english is an exception) or 'sh' sounds in them.As for accents: I love all British accents (except for Scottish and Irish accents) and Russian accents.
I myself have this weird accent. It's 50% American, 40% British and 10% German. I've been told it sounded nice but I don't like it (and sometimes I switch between British and American).