Good question! A lot of research has addressed the question as to why children find language learning so much easier than adults. Children learn their first language amazingly quickly, and young children in bilingual (or multilingual) environments seem to have very little trouble learning more than one language. Part of the answer is probably a matter of attitude - children are not afraid of making mistakes, whereas adults are often much more hesitant when trying out their new language skills. However, research suggests that the crucial difference is due to the existence of a so-called "critical period". The critical period is a stage when the human brain is especially receptive to language learning. Some researchers argue that the critical period ends at around age 5 or even earlier, whereas others claim that the onset of puberty marks the end of the critical period. (... so we don't know the exact answer to that yet). In any case, it seems that after the critical period is over, something changes in the brain -- something kind of 'freezes up' so that we can no longer access the special 'language learning'-part of the brain in the same way that we could as children. However, fortunately this does not mean that adults cannot learn foreign languages! Adults have the advantage of being able to use certain strategies in focused ways in order to help them learn new vocabulary, for example. So even though adults usually don't learn languages as 'effortlessly' as children, there's still hope for us. :) Some good language learning tips for adults are available online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/languages/learn/index.shtml

Brian, I think it is easier to learn anything when you are younger not just languages. E.G. seventy percent of seventeen year olds pass their driving test wheareas for over fifties it is only around twenty five percent.

Hei,

This is not a question specifically about Finnish or
Finland. I was just wondering why it is so much easier for
young children to learn new languages than it is for adults.
For instance, my seven year old niece is learning to speak German with relative ease. I have great trouble speaking
new languages, though I find it easier to read a new
language than speak it. I always read and hear that it is
best to teach chidren new languages the younger they are.
Is there any psychological/biological explanation as to why
language acquistion is this way? Or is it simply because
older people are, generally, less receptive and less
enthusiastic about taking the time and expending the energy
necessary to learn a new language?

Hei,

I've received a few emails about how to wish Merry Christmas in Finnish, so here it is:
Hyvää Joulua ja Onnellista Uutta Vuotta! = Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Another alternative: Hauskaa Joulua ja Onnellista Uutta Vuotta!

A site with lots of interesting information about Christmas in Finland: http://www.finland.fi/finfo/english/xmas.html

terv. Elsi

Hei Jessica!

A good book for beginners is "Finnish - a complete course for beginners" (in the Teach Yourself series) by Terttu Leney. It's available at many bookstores, and also online at places like Amazon.com. If you want, you can also buy the tapes for the book. (Another book that I like is called 'From Start to Finnish' by Leila White, but I think that's only available in Finland.) I hope this helps. Best of luck with your studies!

terveisin
Elsi

Edited by author 12-09-2001 03:59 AM
Hei
My names Jessica and I will be marrying a Finnish man in January and I have started picking up books on how to learn Finnish. I was wondering if you could suggest a good starting book for a beginer. I think the lanugage is lovely and I have a living teacher with my fiance but want to learn better. Anything you could suggest would be helpful.

Kiitos paljon
Jessica

Hei Lee,

Let's see if I understood your questions correctly:

(a) Imperatives ('commands')
The imperative form of the verb is used for commands and requests. (E.g. 'Sit down!') The second person singular ('you') imperative is formed from the present tense for the singular first person (minä = I), minus the 'n' at the end. Here are some examples:

minä sanon = I say
sano = say!

minä istun = I sit
istu = sit!

If you want to address a command to more than one person, the second person plural form is used. To make this form, add -kaa/kää to the infinitive stem:

sanokaa 'say!' (when addressing more than one person or addressing a single person politely)
istukaa 'sit!'

(b) As for the genitive case, it is used to mark possession. So where in English one would say 'Liisa's car,' in Finnish you say 'Liisan auto'. The -n on Liisa is the genitive case marker, and is roughly equivalent to the English 's.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

terv. Elsi

Terve!
I'm learning the Information imperative (affirmative), Genetive singular and Imperative plural (affirmative) now and do not understand it. Could someone explain to me. My teacher is unable to explain it as to when/how to use it.

Kiitos!

Edited by author 10-29-2001 09:23 PM
Hei Elli!
Is Oiva W. Saarinen Finnish-Canadian? I'm not familiar with his work, unfortunately. I think books by both Laila Hietamies and Väinö Linna are definitely worth reading. Linna's work is much more 'serious' than Hietamies' books, though. So it kind of depends what you are in the mood for. :)

As for Finnish radio stations, it seems that KISS FM can no longer broadcast on the web because of copyright issues. However, YLE (http://www.yle.fi) has links to Finnish news broadcasts ('radiouutiset') as well as to 'live' radio stations ('kuuntele radiota').

Thank you very much for the Estonian info!

terveisin
Elsi

Kiitos for responding. I have three different books and I am not sure which one to read first because I have heard that they are all good. 1) Red Moon over White Sea by Laila Hietamies, 2) Under the North Star by Vaino Linna, 3) Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Oiva W. Saarinen. Can anyone suggestion which is the best for someone who has not read much finnish literature but understands the finnish character?

Hei Elsi ja Audra, Eesti/Viro or Estonian is now available in a on line course format at www.passport.ca/~reaksim/estonian/ I only checked it out briefly but it looks reasonable. Also, there are a few Estonian radio stations online that you can listen to. I have had more luck with them than getting on line with the finnish ones. Has anyone been able to get to NOVA or KISS radio stations?

Edited by author 10-03-2001 02:10 AM
Hei Elli,
Thanks for visiting the site! As for new books written by Finns -- well, I read them in Finnish (and often buy them at http://www.akateeminen.com - they deliver to the U.S.), but a number of Finnish novels have also been translated into English (available for example at http://www.memoriesoffinland.com , and the new translation of Laila Hietamies' book is available at http://www.finnishdesigns.com).
So, here's a question for all those who visit this bulletin board: What Finnish books (either in Finnish or translated into English) have you read lately?

I just came across this site and was surprised at how interesting it is. I have heard about the Finfest but never attended because I thought it was more interesting if you are over 50years. Besides the Egptian, has anyone read any new books written by finns?

Terveisia Suomesta! Greetings from Finland! I can't check email here very often, so I apologize for the silence on my part. Thanks to Linda for posting. Hyvaa kesaa kaikille!

terveisin
Elsi

Audra,

Here are the words you're looking for:

Dog = Koira
Snow = Lumi

I was able to get these for you from http://www.freedict.com/onldict/fin.html

I thought that's what they were in Finnish, but I wanted to double check before I posted anything.

Linda

Hi there. My husband and I just purchased a puppy ( a west highland terrier) and we were wondering what the finnish words were for "dog" or "snow". I have a pen pal in Finland, we've been writing for almost 20 years, but by time I ask her though the mail and get a response, the dog may be a lot older! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

Tere Elsi!

I don't know of anyone in the immediate Philadelphia area who offers lessons in Estonian. I can ask around, though. If you have any questions about the language, I can certainly make an attempt to answer them for you.

I, myself, would be interested in getting more up to speed on my Finnish -- this is why I found your site so intriguiging.

I was at FinnFest also and had a blast! My friend, Maarit, and I performed at the classical music concerts there. Performing at St. Mary's Chapel was a wonderful experience! The acoustics were marvelous!

Listening to Finnish being spoken all around me was fun. I could understand most of it, depending on who was speaking and what part of the country they were from.

Linda

Elsi, Kiitoksia oikein paljon (this is a start, pretty soon I'll be reading
The Egyptian in Finnish ;o)) for the summary and the link.

The Egyptian is one of my favorite novels, and the movie version is
good as well.

Edited by author 07-31-2001 03:42 PM
Hi Brian!
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed FinnFest. I had fun there too - it felt like a mini-trip to Finland! To answer your question about how difficult it is to learn Finnish, I would say that (in my opinion) Finnish is, in some respects, harder for an English speaker to learn than French, German or Spanish -- largely because English is related to French, German and Spanish and thus there are some similarities between the languages that can help learners. Finnish is so different that 'guessing' usually isn't very helpful. Also, Finnish has lots of inflectional morphology, i.e. various endings on nouns and verbs, and these take time to learn. However, other aspects of Finnish are easy to learn: For example, it has a very regular spelling system and no grammatical gender (no worrying about der/die/das or le/la...).
Moreover, one of the advantages of studying Finnish is this: Not many people study Finnish as a foreign language, and so Finns tend to be very impressed & happy when they meet someone who has bothered to learn some Finnish, even if it's only a few words and phrases

Here's a page entitled 'Is Finnish difficult?': http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/finnish10.html
Its author concludes that Finnish is not difficult, just different. :)

I just wanted to say that I enjoyed FinnFest. Everyone was
warm, polite,and helpful. It was very well organized. I'm
not Finnish but I'm interested in Finnish culture, so when
I saw in the newspaper that Finnfest was taking place at
Villanova, not far from where I live, I knew how my
weekend would be spent. As far as the Finnish language, I
tried learning it from a beginners book but didn't get too
far. Learning foreign languages was always one of my worst
subjects in school. How would you compare the difficulty of
learning Finnish for an English speaker to that of, say, learning German, French, or Spanish.

Tere Linda! Tänan! By the way, I'm looking for someone in the Philadelphia area to help me learn Estonian. Do you know of anyone?

Tere! Tere! Found your web page and this message board through the FinnFest web site. I never realized there was such a vast Finnish community near where I live in PA. Since my ancestry is Estonian, this is a wonderful find!

Since the focus here seems to be on languages, I thought I might share a web site with you that someone forwarded to me a while back. It's a page done by a Japanese scholar on Finno-Ugric and other Baltic languages. There are some pretty neat links there you might enjoy:

http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/kmatsum/

Näkemiin! (see? I know at least one word of Finnish :-)

Edited by author 06-24-2001 10:48 PM
A site with English/Finnish vocabulary quizzes (colors, numbers, days of the week etc.):
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/v/f/

This is an interesting site with tips and advice for successful language learning:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/languages/learn/index.shtml

Edited by author 06-13-2001 12:14 AM
Some interesting sites:

FinnFest 2001 http://www.finnfest2001.org
Finnish-American Society of the Delaware Valley http://www.finnsphila.org
A huge collection of Finland-related links (scan down the page) http://www.Etusivu.net/linkit/

Deleted by author 05-22-2001 04:06 PM

Hi Could someone please translate the folowing two phrases into Finnish for me:

"Congratulations, Meghan! Have a great trip!"

I am already thanking you for your kind and prompt reply.
Please rely to: [email protected]

Hi Lee, I'm very glad to hear the site is helpful! If you have any comments or requests/questions, please let me know. Best of luck with your Finnish studies.

This is a great site. I've learn so much on it beside I have a book 'Finnish for Foreigner'. Looking forward for new words everyday. Keep up the good work!

This is a great site (from Virtual Finland) with a good overview of Finnish. It has information about the case endings, word order etc -- all kinds of things you might be wondering about. It's not a 'Finnish lesson' -- more like a magazine article discussing the characteristics of the language.

http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/finnlang.html

Here are some interesting web links I've found:

(1)Did you know that http://www.travlang.com will mail you a new word every day in the language of your choice? The list includes Finnish too.

(2) For a fairly advanced Finnish course, try http://www.edu.fi/oppimateriaalit/ymmarrasuomea/
The site has reading comprehension passages (also audio versions), comprehension questions (with answers available online), a summary of grammar, verb conjugation list etc.
This is one of the best 'advanced Finnish' sites I've seen so far.

There were some spacing/formatting problems with the first set of January review exercises. I think I've fixed those now. Please let me know if you have any trouble viewing the pages.

I posted some links to online radio broadcasts in Finnish. The links are listed under the class links for November 26. The first link takes you to the homepage of www.yle.fi, which has links to various radio stations as well as video clips of daily news. The second link takes you to a long list of various Finnish radio stations online. Have fun listening!

Words of foreign origin in Finnish:

Esko asked me if there are words in Finnish that are derived from Latin - a good question. As far as I know, Finnish contains many words that originated in various language families. Here are some examples:
* Very early loans from Indo-European languages: nimi (name), vesi (water), lehti (leaf)
* Loans from Baltic languages: lohi (salmon), silta (bridge), tuhat (thousand)
* Slavic/Old Russian loans: ikkuna (window), risti (cross)
* Swedish loans: katu (street), lasi (glass), tuoli (chair)
* Germanic loans: kulta (gold), lammas (sheep), kana (chicken), kauppa (shop)

I am not sure whether there are any words that came into Finnish via *direct* contact with Latin - it seems more likely that words of Latin origin could have come into Finnish via Swedish or another language (e.g. "school"; in Latin it's 'schola,' in Swedish it's 'skola,' in Finnish it's 'koulu.')

(More info at http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/sugl/kulonen/Finf13uk.htm)

And in case you were curious, out of the basic word roots in Finnish today, 49 % are probably of Finno-Ugric origin (i.e. not borrowed from other languages), 46 % originally came from some other language, and the origins of the remaining 5 % of the roots are unclear (at least this is what some of the researchers claim).

Hei Fellow Suomi Koulu classmates:
Class will be at my house this Thursday, November 9th. I look forward to seeing you all. If my directions are not clear don't hesitate to call: 610/265-=1452. By the way, thank you Elsi for this opportunity!
Nakemiin, Marilyn

Welcome to the Finnish discussion forum! Tervetuloa! This is your chance to ask any and all questions you may have about the Finnish language, Finnish culture, Finnish people etc. I will check this site regularly and post answers to the questions. Also, if you see a question that you'd like to answer or comment on, feel free.

To get back to the Suomi-Koulu homepage, go to "http://www.geocities.com/elsimiia"

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Elsi
[email protected]