Finnish stuff

How much do you know about the other Uralic languages without googling? Which ones are you aware of? How would you describe them? Approximately how many Uralic languages do you think there are? How would you describe the average Uralic language?

Good question, yes I have!

I don't interact with "young" people much (very much confined to talking to my university professors and my classmates) but I love observing people's speech patterns especially on public transport. We also discuss this at university a lot.

I have noticed that especially young women do tend to copy English prosody in their speech. I've noted that, for example, when younger people speak Finnish (or the newer version of Stadin Slangi) the melody goes up when forming questions, just like it does in English. This is then also used in ordinary sentences, when one uses the "influencer accent", as you noted.

Young guys seem to be more influenced by the "tough guy" way to speak, and their way of speech seems to be more aggressive and "punchy". I think this is also due to the influence of the internet.

This is not a bad thing at all, but the Stadi way to speak has annoyed non-Helsinkians for a long time. Another feature which I find very common around here is the way people pronounce <s>, which is "sharper" than usual. There is even a book written about this, which I have read! It's called Stadin syntinen s.

Oh my!

I am really glad that you are liking the field! And I am very much honored to have influenced someone to start studying this, there's never too many of us! (I only know a handful of others who started studying the same thing around the time I started, and only a few of them will be getting their bachelors in this field at the same time as me, many changed their focus to other areas)

I've seen this mindset repeated over and over by people learning Finnish, especially when it comes to consonant gradation. I myself am a native speaker of Finnish (to the surprise of many, apparently), and most of the languages I had previously studied had nothing similar (or as difficult or "foreign" to understand), so I couldn't really say anything about it.

However, in uni, I started learning North Sámi. It also has gradation, just on a larger level and with different consonants in a different way. This allowed me to form an opinion:

If you don't get it, don't get it. Just memorize it well enough so you know how to apply it and when.

Do not wait or delay learning an important part of the language just because you are scared or confused. Do it scared and confused. If you want to learn the language, learn the language! It's that simple. You can try to start to understand the mechanics after spending 4 hours each night drilling practice questions.

With a life update!

I've been studying at university for the last few years, and am about to start my third year (time to write my bachelor's thesis soon! yay!!) and thought it would be nice to come back (hopefully I actually remember to do that this time) to this platform!

I've been posting my linguistics ramblings on SpaceHey (https://spacehey.com/juho) if anyone is interested, but I will try to save my text about Finnish on this account for you guys!

The thing is, I still do not know what to do with this account. I have been assisting quite a few people with learning Finnish now, so feel free to reach out to me still if you are interested in a free tutor! I really want to start doing paid tutoring later in life, and I need experience...

Feel free to leave your questions as asks if you want others to see them too; I love answering them! :)

Thank you to all of you who still follow me and have taken part in the community I set up before vanishing. I will try to be more active there as well now!

Often, this leads to puzzled looks, but today I want to share my tips on immersion online (using Finnish as an example because that's kinda my thing, of course), what you should look for, and why immersion can be slower than you'd like it to be!

Think of your media consumption in your target language. Do you know what people call a post in the language? (julkaisu, postaus) Do you know the verb for to post? (julkaista, postata) Do you know how to say essential words around posting (poistaa 'remove', lisätä 'add', muokata 'edit', kirjoitus 'writing', kuva 'photo', etc.). These kinds of essential media vocabulary are things that you WILL certainly need if you are navigating social media or talking to people offline about it. Pick up words like this as soon as possible.

Now, how does one, for example, find good immersive videos for language learning? If you are an absolute beginner, you might search for '(insert language) for beginners' or '(insert language) children's shows'. This is suitable for beginners, but in many cases, people remain at this initial stage for too long. What kind of media do you usually consume in your main language? How do you say that in your target language? Instead of searching 'suomen kieli' each time you want to try immersion, search for what you ACTUALLY want to watch: 'podcast', 'harvinaiset linnut' (rare birds), 'vlogi' (vlog), 'neulominen' (knitting). This will force your brain to actually try to understand the subject faster because you actually want to know about the subject.

This brings up another point; you won't know how to talk in everyday conversation if you do not consume the language like a native. A native speaker can talk about local political parties (what is a 'persu'? What does your friend mean by 'SDP'?), switch to talking about recent TV shows (What kind of show is 'uutiset'? When does 'Pikku Kakkonen' start?), and end the sentence by talking about their study goals (What does it mean to have 5 'opintopistettä'? What is 'yliopisto'?) If you want to actually have a fluent and fruitful conversation in your target language, you must consume non-learner material. Otherwise, you will not relate to your native friend as much.

Visiting friends in Turku, we came across two street names.

Tarkk'ampujankatu and Tarkkàmpujankatu (both Skarpskyttegatan in Swedish!)

The first compound word in this street name is the old form of the word tarkka-ampuja (sniper). Even so, these street names are written differently from each other!

This is a word that has had multiple spellings throughout its history. If we look at the Wiktionary entry for this word, we can see that 'tarkkampuja' and 'tarkk'ampuja' are given as alternative forms.

This blog dives deeper into the word and how its meaning may change depending on its written form.

Googling alternative forms for this word uncovers more non-standard spellings; 'tarkkámpuja' and 'tarkkàmpuja' both give results (the version with á was even used in a scientific text)

Helsinki also has a Tarkk'ampujankatu, however, it does not have alternative spellings. It is also very short and lowkey irrelevant for me so I cannot be bothered to go outside to get pictures of the road signs there...

i guess you are right... maybe finnish has something to learn from võro afterall

it had to be done

we have vowel harmony and you don't...

our 'ei' is also a verb which is CONJUGATED and yours is not...