#uralics

Okay, so I don’t know what you already know about Finnish, maybe you’ve seen the claims that it’s the most difficult language to learn, listen to Finnish rock/metal, heard that Tolkien used Finnish as an inspiration for Quenya (one of the Elvish languages) or just have seen the memes about the length of Finnish words.

Now, based on the chats I’ve had with people learning Finnish I can promise you that it isn’t as daunting as people like to claim. It’s a bit weird and a lot different if your language background is English or really, any Indo-European languages. (NB: Finnish and Swedish aren’t similar as they are from different language families, Swedish has influenced the word order in Finnish and given us some loans, but that’s all, Estonian and Karelian are probably the most similar languages (oh yea and also meänkieli))

But here’s some basics about Finnish without getting too much into the building blocks of the language:

The Finnish language is spoken in Finland as a native language by 4.9 million people and as a second language[1] by 0.5 million people additionally there are estimates of 0,5 to 0,7 million people speaking the language outside of Finland.

The most important distinction when considering the Finnish language is the distinction between the so called written (kirjakieli) and spoken (puhekieli) Finnish, it isn’t that there’s a clear difference in how Finns speak and write – the need to draw a distinction between the two arises from the need to separate formal and standardized (written/kirjakieli) from informal and dialectal (spoken/puhekieli). This is because the formal version of Finnish has been mostly artificially created – with major developments in the 16th and 19th centuries, while the informal version is simply many a different dialects wearing a blue-and-white trench coat.

Now, just a bit abt the memes because I get that their ridiculousness is lost on people who don’t know the language:

- epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän

- lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas

- juoksentelisinkohan

- riiuuyöaie/hääyöaie

- hyppytyynytyydytys

Okay, so yea daunting, right? Especially the two first ones are nigh nonsensical even to a native once you start beaking them down, like no one has energy to deal w/ compounds that long. The second two are a bit shorter and make sense, but along w/ the rest of them, “just because the language can do this” words, they don’t really get used as anything but entertainment.

THE LAST ONE THO????? It has never made sense to me? I don’t know who came up with it but like looking at it and even with knowing it’s supposed meaning, I still don’t get it and you shouldn’t trust it.

Okay, so yea gonna share w/ you also the secret abt those long-ass word lists of how many forms a single word in Finnish can take, bc like seriously, it’s just like yea no.

Okay, so we have fifteen cases, all nominals can take them.

Wait, nominals?

Yea, so Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives and Numerals.

They all basically function the same when it comes to inflections.

(we are gonna just dismiss the fact that there are special verb types that can take cases as well as some particles have some inflections but those don’t matter rn)

Now, yea, only fifteen cases but a single word can have a million forms???

That’s because there’re case-independent suffixes and clitics that can be added into the end of any word, but they have mostly a fixed meaning so like piling each of them x15 xwhatever number of other things you can add on is just making the agglutinativity seem more daunting rather than showing off all the forms of the word “dog”.