American Reacts to the Finnish Language

[00:00:00]What's going on everyone?

[00:00:03]I'm just a typical average American here today to react and learn about the Finnish language.

[00:00:19]So, here in the United States, most of us only speak English. And it's actually very rare for an American to speak another language. So, today I thought it'd be very interesting to learn all about Finnish for the first time.

[00:00:47]Um which honestly, Finnish is a language you almost never hear about here in the United States.

[00:00:59]So, this will be interesting. Uh let's take a look.

[00:01:03]>> Today, I'm going to talk about the Finnish language. As you probably know, Finnish is the majority language spoken in Finland. It has about 5.4 million native speakers with 4.9 million of them living in Finland, which is about 90% of the population of Finland.

[00:01:19]>> Wait a minute.

[00:01:22]5 million native speakers, most of them in Finland.

[00:01:26]90% of the population of Finland speaks Finnish?

[00:01:33]What does the other 10% speak?

[00:01:36]I'm surprised 100% of Finland doesn't speak Finnish or maybe you have some like immigration, like people from other countries speaking other languages, but hm, interesting.

[00:01:50]>> It's one of the two official languages of Finland along with Swedish, which is spoken by about 5% of the population.

[00:01:56]>> What?

[00:01:58]What?

[00:02:02]What? Really? Since when? What? I didn't know that. I have never heard that.

[00:02:09]Okay.

[00:02:11]This See, this is why This is why this is good cuz this is just stuff that Americans don't know about. Like we we we don't learn about this.

[00:02:20]There's two official languages in Finland? Two? Not just Finnish?

[00:02:25]Swedish?

[00:02:28]So, there's a there's a lot of people in Finland who actually speak Swedish. 5%.

[00:02:34]I did not know that. How Why is that?

[00:02:38]It must have something to do with your history.

[00:02:40]>> And there are also Finnish speaking minorities across the border in Russia, in Norway, and in Sweden. You may have seen my video on the North Germanic languages. It's this one right here. And you might remember that I specifically excluded Finnish from that video. That's because even though Finland is a Nordic country with geographic and historical connections to Scandinavia, the Finnish language is not a North Germanic language. In fact, it's >> What?

[00:03:06]>> [laughter] >> So, Finland is unique.

[00:03:11]Like Finland is weird. In a good way.

[00:03:14]Like it's a Nordic country.

[00:03:18]But it's it the language, like the Finnish language has different history, different origins.

[00:03:25]This is I didn't know it was going to be like this. This is fascinating.

[00:03:28]>> not even an Indo-European language. It is part of the Finnic language group, which is a branch of the Uralic language family. Other members of the Finnic group are Estonian, Karelian, Ludic, Veps, Ingrian, Votic, and Livonian. But Finnish is the most widely spoken language in the Finnic language group.

[00:03:45]All the Finnic languages developed from Proto-Finnic, which was spoken around 3,000 years ago. The first stage was early Proto-Finnic. Then during the middle Proto-Finnic period, some changes took place in that language and it split into two, Proto-Samic, the ancestor of the Samic languages, and late Proto-Finnic, [music] which ultimately became the most recent ancestor of all the Finnic languages.

[00:04:08]>> Jeez.

[00:04:09]History is fascinating.

[00:04:11]Complicated.

[00:04:13]I don't know anything about Finnish history at all. Um it's definitely something that we don't learn about in school or anything, so this is pretty cool.

[00:04:24]The language of Finland has a a very long history. Uh thousands or hundreds of year No, thousands of years.

[00:04:30]>> It's worth noting that Finnish contains a significant number of Germanic loan words, some of them which are clearly ancient in origin. For example, kuningas, which means king, [music] tuoli, which means chair, and it comes from the same root as stool, and koulu, which means school. Cool. From words like these >> koulu koulu My first Finnish word.

[00:04:53]stool >> [laughter] >> I should have chosen a better word.

[00:04:56]koulu >> the same root as stool, and koulu, which means school.

[00:05:00]>> Oh, it means school, not stool. School.

[00:05:04]My first Finnish word, school. That's a little better. Okay. koulu >> Cool.

[00:05:09]>> [music] >> From words like these, we can see that the ancient Finns had extensive contact with Germanic peoples. Late Proto-Finnic diverged into three dialects, Eastern Proto-Finnic, Northern Proto-Finnic, and Southern Proto-Finnic. [music] These three dialects of late Proto-Finnic mixed with each other and the resulting mixes of influences developed into the dialects that make up the Finnish language.

[00:05:30]>> Oh, Finland has dialects.

[00:05:33]So, that is where Jeez. We don't really have dialects in the United States.

[00:05:39]We have different accents, but that's different. We have different slang, that's different. Dialect is like a almost a a slightly different version of a language, right? Like can someone from northern Finland understand someone from like southern Finland or like different regions or I I kind of understand dialects a little.

[00:06:04]>> Around the 12th century and 13th century CE, Sweden conquered Finland and made it a province of their country. And for the next few hundred years, Swedish was the language of administration. And during this time >> Oh.

[00:06:17]That's why Swedish is an official language in Finland.

[00:06:23]Sweden conquered Finland.

[00:06:26]Wow.

[00:06:27]And it was the official language.

[00:06:29]That makes total sense now knowing that.

[00:06:32]>> And during this time, Middle Low German was the lingua franca of commerce in the area, and Latin was the language of religion. Swedish and Middle Low German left an additional Germanic influence on Finnish, which during that time was strictly a language of daily communication.

[00:06:46]>> So Finnish language has been influenced by Swedish, it's been influenced by the Germanic tri- tribes or people that you did trade with. So there's a lot of interesting influence on like a modern Finnish language.

[00:07:03]>> Finnish did not really become a written language until the 16th century when a Finnish bishop named Mikael Agricola created the first comprehensive writing system for the language. He based that system on the orthography of German, Swedish, and Latin, and it still forms the basis of the Finnish writing system today, although there have been changes since then. In 1809, Russia seized Finland from Sweden in a war and made it an autonomous state as part of the Russian Empire.

[00:07:28]>> What?

[00:07:30]Finland's history is crazy.

[00:07:35]Again, they don't teach us about this in in American school.

[00:07:41]Russia owned Finland?

[00:07:47]What?

[00:07:48]>> The official language and the language of the elite remained Swedish, but Finnish national feeling and a desire to make the Finnish language dominant began to increase. In >> Cuz this was under Russia's rule. Oh my god.

[00:08:01]Sweden Swedish was a language, but there's Finnish and and obviously a big sense of Finnish pride when Russia is like trying to take you over.

[00:08:11]>> In 1835 these feelings were amplified by the publication of Kalevala, a work of epic poetry written by Elias Lönnrot with stories from Karelian and Finnish folklore and mythology.

[00:08:22]>> [music] >> Lönnrot also played an important role in the development of standard Finnish. In 1863 Finnish became an official language in Finland alongside the Swedish language.

[00:08:32]>> Wow, 150 years ago.

[00:08:35]Not that long in the grand scheme of everything. Like just 150 years ago Finnish became an official language.

[00:08:42]>> And they both remain official languages today. And with a new sense of national identity emerging Finland eventually gained independence from Russia in 1917.

[00:08:51]Before standard Finnish was created, the Finnish language consisted of a number of dialects that could be roughly divided into Eastern and Western dialects.

[00:08:59]>> Oh, it's Eastern and Western?

[00:09:02]Wow, there's a ton of Finnish dialects.

[00:09:05]Cut up into like seven or more. Oh my god, there is a ton of dialects. Can you all like understand each other? I think you can if I understand dialects.

[00:09:16]You can understand each other, but some of the words are different, I think.

[00:09:20]>> The Western dialects are the ones upon which standard Finnish was largely based. From what I understand, these days the dialects mostly consist of differences in accent, but outside of Finland there are a few >> Oh.

[00:09:32]Oh, it's just like a different accent.

[00:09:34]Oh.

[00:09:35]That's all it is?

[00:09:37]So, there's different finish accents.

[00:09:40]I thought it was like different words and phrases and stuff. That's not that crazy.

[00:09:44]>> Two interesting dialects that are officially considered to be different languages, even though they are intelligible with standard finish. This includes the Karelian language in Russia, Meänkieli, which is spoken by a Finnish minority in Sweden, and Kven, which is spoken by a minority in Norway.

[00:09:58][music] >> Oh, there's Oh my god.

[00:10:02]This just keeps going.

[00:10:04]There's dialects in other countries based on Finnish that are that are slightly different.

[00:10:12]>> So, what is the Finnish language like?

[00:10:14]Well, it shares some features with the other members of the Finnic language group. Some of those features are no grammatical gender.

[00:10:20]>> [music] >> There is no distinction between masculine, feminine, or neuter.

[00:10:24]>> Nice.

[00:10:26]Like English.

[00:10:28]I like that.

[00:10:29]>> Not even in the personal pronouns. Hän means both he and she.

[00:10:33]>> What?

[00:10:36]There's no difference in masculine or feminine even with talking about yourself?

[00:10:42]Like he or she?

[00:10:46]Am I understanding this correctly?

[00:10:49]Is that Is that true?

[00:10:50]>> he. An interest- >> Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. They just They just said it.

[00:10:54]Hän, how do you pronounce that?

[00:10:57]Means both he and she.

[00:10:59]Oh >> nouns. Hän means both he and she.

[00:11:02]>> Hän.

[00:11:05]I just can't imagine like that being part of your language where you don't you don't have a word for he or she.

[00:11:13]I guess it's not necessary. Obviously, it's not necessary if if the Finnish language doesn't have it. I just didn't realize there was languages that didn't distinguish between that.

[00:11:25]>> And interestingly, Finland was one of the first countries to grant women the right to vote, and it was one of the first to to a female president. So, maybe gender equality is just built into the language and way of thinking. Hey, you never know. Next, no articles.

[00:11:38]Articles are the words like a or the in English.

[00:11:42]>> What?

[00:11:44]I need to like hear some Finnish.

[00:11:47]This is like so different.

[00:11:50]No he or she, no pro no difference in gender.

[00:11:54]Um which makes sense for like a chair. Like I know like in French you have to be like une chair or un like if it's if the chair is a girl or boy or I don't I don't know.

[00:12:06]Um in Spanish, I think.

[00:12:08]So, I like that you guys don't do that.

[00:12:11]No articles? Like a or the?

[00:12:16]How do you guys even understand me right now? That's >> [laughter] >> English seems so different from Finnish.

[00:12:24]No, that So, you just say like chair.

[00:12:29]>> [laughter] >> I sit in chair.

[00:12:33]Not the chair.

[00:12:36]I mean I guess it it works, right? It works.

[00:12:40]>> [laughter] >> English speakers often wonder how you can communicate without those articles, but the context usually provides enough meaning that you don't actually need the articles. Right. Next, Finnish has some prepositions. In English, those are words showing location or relationship like to or at or on, but Finnish has many more postpositions. These are similar to prepositions in function, but they come after the word that they add meaning to rather than before.

[00:13:04]>> Oh.

[00:13:04]>> Here's an example sentence with a postposition. [music] This sentence means the market is in the center of town. [music] Tori means market. On is similar to is.

[00:13:15]Kaupungin is town. The n at the end of kaupungin is the genitive case showing possession. And then after kaupungin we have keskellä, which is the postposition, which means in the middle.

[00:13:26]>> So, you're you you know what the subject is, what they're talking about, like the town. The market is in the town.

[00:13:36]And then you get more specific saying it's in the middle.

[00:13:41]Which actually kind of makes sense.

[00:13:44]In English, we're like, the market is in the the the in the middle of what? What?

[00:13:50]What? What? The town. You have to wait till the end of the sentence to know what they're even talking about.

[00:13:56]So, actually this logically might might actually make more sense logically.

[00:14:01]>> So, it's a postposition because it comes after the noun kaupungi. Next, lots of grammatical cases, 15 to be precise.

[00:14:07]That means that nouns, personal pronouns, and adjectives have 15 different forms depending on their function in the sentence. We can't look at all 15 right now, but let's look at an example. Finnish has the accusative case, which marks a direct object, and that's common in lots of languages. It can be shown with an n at the end of the word, or it can be shown with nothing, just left blank at the end of the word.

[00:14:28]But, there's also something called the partitive case. This also >> I got to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what we're saying. The this is a little confusing.

[00:14:36]>> also marks a direct object if the object is only part of a whole, or if the action is incomplete, or if the action is negative.

[00:14:43]>> Huh.

[00:14:45]>> This sentence [music] means, "Will you eat the fish?" Syöt means you eat. -ko is a question marker. Kala is fish, and the n at the end of kala is the accusative case showing that the action will be completed and that the whole fish will be eaten.

[00:14:59]>> Whoa.

[00:15:01]Whoa.

[00:15:03]So, you can you can um communicate a lot of information.

[00:15:09]That So, I kind of understand with this example.

[00:15:12]Just by adding an n, you're communicating all this information instead of saying w- will you eat the the whole fish?

[00:15:21]>> means >> do you eat fish? So, again, syöt is you eat, kö is the question marker, kalaa is fish, and the a at the end of kalaa is the partitive case, which shows that there's no completed action.

[00:15:32]There's no completed action because there's no specific fish being eaten.

[00:15:36]This is just a general question. [music] Next, you may have noticed in the above example sentences that the present tense and future tense are the same. That's right, in Finnish there is no future tense, but the future can be indicated in a couple of ways.

[00:15:51]>> It It It seems like in Finnish you guys omit a lot of things, like gender, he she with the pronouns. Um these uh preposition ways of forming your prepositions and questions and like lots of things that English has, you guys just don't have, like the word the even.

[00:16:16]But it all works. It makes So does that mean Finnish is actually a sit more simple and logical way to structure a language?

[00:16:25]>> When you see a present tense verb with an accusative case object like this, that indicates the future because it shows that the action will be complete at some point. When you see a present tense verb with the partitive case like this, that indicates present tense because the action is not a completed action, so it must be happening now.

[00:16:43]>> Like you you can communicate so much information with less words. That's amazing.

[00:16:51]>> The future can also be clarified with a time expression. Here's an example demonstrating that there is no future tense in Finnish.

[00:16:58]>> Luen.

[00:16:59]>> [music] >> This means I read.

[00:17:00]>> Luen huomenna.

[00:17:02]>> This means I will read tomorrow.

[00:17:04]Huomenna means tomorrow, and that time expression is what indicates that this action will take place in the future.

[00:17:09]Next, there are a lot of long words in Finnish because of agglutination and because of compound words. Finnish is an agglutinative language, meaning that words can be formed by attaching together pieces that add meaning to the word.

[00:17:21]>> Oh my. So, it's a lot of long words.

[00:17:28]>> [clears throat] >> Maybe this is all logical, but it seems like that would be very confusing.

[00:17:33]Taloisekanninkko.

[00:17:36]Like, you just have to keep It's just a lot.

[00:17:39]>> without those pieces changing. You just attach them together. In English, we might use separate words like conjunctions and prepositions, but in Finnish, special endings can be added to a word stem. Here's an example.

[00:17:50]>> Again, it's kind of like a way of shortening things.

[00:17:54]You guys can probably speak so quickly and communicate a lot of information.

[00:18:00]This almost makes English seem very clunky and unnecessary.

[00:18:05]It's fascinating. Like, I've never thought of it that way.

[00:18:07]>> We'll starting with the word for house.

[00:18:09]>> [music] >> talo talossa taloissa taloissani taloissanikin taloissanikinko >> Oh my god.

[00:18:19]Okay.

[00:18:20]>> And a few additional features of Finnish. Number one, the main stress always goes on the first syllable of the word. Number two, there is no equivalent of the verb to have in Finnish. Number three, Finnish has negative verb conjugations. That means >> What do you mean you don't have the word to have?

[00:18:36]How do you What it I have a soda.

[00:18:41]I have a soda. How do you say that? How do you say that? What? What?

[00:18:46]>> is that instead of using a negation word like not, it has an entirely different form of the verb to show that it's negative. Finnish is clearly a very interesting language that might be quite different from the languages that you're used to speaking and learning. But, is Finnish as hard to learn as people say it is? Well, I can't tell you from personal experience, but it seems to me that if you've never learned a language from the Finnic group or from the Uralic language family before, then you'll probably have to bend your mind a little bit to under >> I agree.

[00:19:12]I agree.

[00:19:13]Um This sounds complicated. It sounds logical.

[00:19:19]It's It's actually very cool.

[00:19:21]But it sounds very, very different from English, which so if you're if you're Finnish and you understand me, good like good job. Like good for you.

[00:19:31]That's amazing cuz of there I don't think I could ever learn Finnish. This sounds very hard.

[00:19:36]>> stand how that language works and that'll probably take more focus [music] and effort than learning a language that's more similar to your own. But as is always the case, your passion for any language or culture will carry you through the challenges of learning that language. So if you're fascinated by Finnish, >> Okay. Well, this was fascinating. I mean, I I learned about some Finnish history, the history of the Finnish language, how the language is structured.

[00:20:03]Your history is in incredible and complicated and dramatic and I had no idea. And there's probably so much more I don't know.

[00:20:12]And your language is so different from English.

[00:20:15]And it's fascinating.

[00:20:17]Like I didn't know you could do language so differently.

[00:20:23]Um it it it's actually really fun to learn about. So Finnish is awesome. I liked this. Uh anyway, if you enjoyed this, feel free to give this video a like or leave a a comment, especially if you're Finnish and you understand all this. You know, what are your thoughts about this?

[00:20:43]That'd be cool to hear about. And uh if you're interested in more videos like this, feel free to uh subscribe for more.

[00:20:52]And until then, thanks for watching and see you next time.