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|name=Finnish |nativename=suomi |states= Finland , Estonia , Sweden ( Torne Valley ), Norway ( Finnmark ), Northwestern Russia ( Karelia ) |region= Northern Europe |speakers=6 million |familycolor=Uralic |fam2= Finno-Ugric |fam3= Finno-Permic |fam4= Finno-Volgaic |fam5= Finno-Lappic |fam6= Baltic-Finnic |nation= Finland , European Union |agency=Language Planning Department of the Research Institute For The Languages Of Finland {Link without Title} |iso1=fi|iso2=fin|iso3=fin}} Finnish ('''') is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (92%) and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is also an Official Language in Finland and an official minority language in Sweden , in the form of standard Finnish as well as Meänkieli , and in Norway in the form of Kven . Finnish is a member of the Finno-Ugric Language Family and is classified as an Agglutinative Language . It modifies the forms of both Noun and Adjective depending on their roles in the Sentence . It has a reputation for being difficult to understand and learn. This is mostly because there are few languages closely related to it, making the vocabulary unfamiliar. History It is believed that the , but kept on influencing each other. Therefore, the Eastern Finnish dialects are genetically Eastern proto-Finnic, with many Eastern features, and the Southwestern Finnish dialects have many genuine Estonian influences. The first written form of Finnish was created by Mikael Agricola , a Finnish Bishop in the 16th century. He based his Orthography on Swedish , German , and Latin . Later the written form was revised by many people. The Reformation marked the real beginning of writing in Finnish. In the 16th Century major literary achievements were composed in Finnish by people like Paavali Juusten, Erik Sorolainen, and Jaakko Finno, as well as Agricola himself. In the 17th Century books were written in Finland in Finnish, Danish , Norwegian , Estonian , German, and Swedish. However, the most important books were still written in Latin. Finnish and Swedish were small languages of lesser importance. Finnish had a larger array of different fricatives, but has lost most of them, leaving , and medially . The process can be described as finding a similar-sounding non-fricative phoneme. Fricative deletion has removed the Voiced Velar Fricative , e.g. ''parghutin'' ] becoming modern ''paruttiin''. The same may also be found debuccalized, e.g. ''lughun'' → ''luvun''. Assibilation together with Vocalization has transformed the Voiced Palatal Fricative , e.g. Illative ending becoming ''-han'' in ''maahan'' but ''-eseen'' in ''huoneeseen''. Postalveolar has become , or . Agricola's work The basis for the numerous conventions in the Finnish Standard Language is found in Agricola's work, particularly with respect to spelling. Agricola's language was based on Western Finnish , thus that Phonology found its way into the standard Finnish Spelling . Agricola used ''dh'' or ''d'' to represent the Voiced Dental Fricative (English ''th'' in ''this'') and ''tz'' or ''z'' to represent the Unvoiced Dental Fricative (the ''th'' in ''thin''). Later, when these sounds disappeared or changed in the different dialects, no one knew how to pronounce them. (Today, the sound is only in a few particular accents in Western Finland.) However, the spelling remained unchanged, so the standard language pronunciation of ''d'' and ''z'' was loaned from German (''z'' = and ''d'' = ), producing the "soft D" problem (see Finnish Phonology ). Later, ''z'' came to be written ''ts''. In the standard language, remained , e.g. ''sydän''. In the eastern part of Finland, became ''j'', ''v'', or disappeared. In the west, it became ''r'', ''l'' or ''d''. The sound became ''ht'' or ''tt'' (e.g. ''meþþä'' → ''mehtä, mettä'') in the east and some Western dialects, but became ''ts'' in the standard language and many Western dialects (''meþþä'' → ''metsä''). Agricola made up some words during translation of the New Testament . Some of these words are still in use, e.g. ''armo'' "mercy", ''vanhurskas'' "righteous". Agricola used about 8500 words and 60% of them are still in use. Either ''ch'', ''c'' or ''h'' were used for the Voiceless Velar Fricative (the Ach-laut , ). In modern Finnish, the difference between and has been lost in phonemic terms; while velar friction might appear in 'h', spelling does not reflect it. For example, Agricola's spelling ''techtin'' becomes modern ''tehtiin''. Agricola used ''gh'' or ''g'' to represent the Voiced Velar Fricative . This sound was later lost and also suppressed in spelling, except if it appeared Intervocalic ally, when it became 'v'. Classification Finnish is a member of the Finno-Ugric Branch of the Uralic Language Family (which also includes Hungarian ). Finnish is a Synthetic Language of the Agglutinative type. Some fusion is found in Spoken Finnish . It modifies Noun and Verb forms depending on their role in the Sentence . Among the grammatical features that demonstrate Finnish's affiliation with the Finno-Ugric Languages are:
Features that demonstrate the unrelatedness of Finnish to Indo-European are:
There are various theories about the time and place where Finno-Ugric originated; according to the most recent theory Hungarian and Finnish are divided by 6000 years of separate development. Speakers of a Finno-Ugrian language have been living in the region of current Finland since at least 3000 BC. The theory is that Proto-Finnish was divided into three dialects, southern, northern and eastern; standard Finnish represents the northern variety, Eastern Finnish stems from the eastern dialect. Finnish borrowed several words from other Finnic languages such as Estonian, Vepsian, Vote and Lude. Some grammatical features were also borrowed. More recently, Finnish has borrowed from Swedish and the other Germanic languages. Geographic distribution Finnish is spoken by about 6 million people, mainly in Finland . There are Finnish-speaking minorities in Sweden , Norway , Russia and Estonia . A few hundred thousand recently Emigrated Finns live in Sweden. Significant emigration took place in the 1970's, with Finland struggling under unemployment but Sweden providing jobs in e.g. the car industry. In the Americas, there are also immigrant communities. In North America, these are found in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and adjacent areas around Lake Superior . In South America small communities are found in Argentina and Brazil . Official status Finnish is one of two Official Language s of Finland (the other being Swedish , spoken by a 5% minority) and thus an official language of the European Union . It enjoys the status of an Official Minority Language In Sweden . Dialects The Finnish dialects are divided into two distinct groups, the Western dialects and the Eastern dialects. {Link without Title} The dialects are entirely mutually intelligible and characterized only by minor changes in vowels, diphthongs and rhythm, and as such, they are better classified as Accent s. For the most part, the dialects operate on the same phonology, grammar and vocabulary. There are only marginal examples of sounds or grammatical constructions isolated to some dialect, not found in standard Finnish. Two examples are the Voiced Dental Fricative found in Rauma dialect and the Eastern Excessive Case . The classification of closely related dialects spoken outside of Finland is a politically sensitive issue that has been more or less controversial since Finland's independence in 1917. The speakers of Karelian Language in Russia and of Meänkieli in Sweden are typically considered oppressed minorities. Karelian is different enough from standard Finnish to have its own orthography. Meänkieli is a northern dialect, entirely intelligible and interchangeable with any other Finnish dialect that got the status as a minority language in Sweden for historical and political reasons. Western dialects The South-West dialects ''(lounaismurteet)'' are spoken in Finland Proper and Satakunta . Their typical feature is abbreviation of word-final vowels, and in many respects, they resemble Estonian . The Tavastian dialects ''(hämäläismurteet)'' are spoken in Tavastia . They are closest to the standard language, but feature some slight vowel changes, such as the opening of diphthong-final vowels (''tie → tiä'', ''miekka → miakka'', ''kuolisi → kualis''). The Southern Ostrobothnian dialects ''(eteläpohjalaiset murteet)'' are spoken in Southern Ostrobothnia . Their most notable feature is pronunciation of 'd' as a tapped or even fully trilled /r/. The Middle and North Ostrobothnia dialects ''(keski- ja pohjoispohjalaiset murteet)'' which are spoken in Central and Northern Ostrobothnia . The Far-Northern dialects ''(peräpohjalaiset murteet)'' are spoken in Lapland . These dialects spoken in the western parts of Lapland are recognizable by retention of extraneous 'h' sounds in positions where they are not found in other dialects. One of the Far-Northern dialects, Meänkieli , which is spoken on the Swedish side of the border that was created in 1809 , is taught in some Swedish schools as a distinct Standardized Language . The categorization of Meänkieli as a separate language is controversial among the Finns, who see no linguistic criteria, only political reasons, for treating Meänkieli differently than other dialects of Finnish. The Ruija dialect ''(Ruijan murre)'' is spoken in Finnmark (Finnish ''Ruija),'' in Norway . It is remnant from Finnish emigrants in the 18th and 19th Centuries . Eastern dialects See Also: East Finnish The Eastern dialects consist of the widespread Savonian dialects ''(savolaismurteet)'' spoken in Savo and near-by areas. The South-Eastern dialects ''(kaakkoismurteet)'' are spoken in South Karelia , on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ingria . They retain the phonetic Palatalization found in all Uralic languages except Western Finnish. Per Finnish orthography, this is denoted with a 'j', e.g. ''vesj'', cf. standard ''vesi''. Usually, a distinction is made between a more distantly related Karelian Language that is spoken in those parts of Karelia that never have been ruled from the West. However, the terms ''Karelian'' and ''Karelian dialects'' are often used without distinctions, primarily denoting dialects spoken on the Karelian Isthmus and in Ingria , i.e. in the Saint Petersburg area, but in a way that diplomatically may leave open for interpretation the question of whether the speaker considers the ''Karelian language'' a dialect of Finnish or not. Hence, the many refugees from Finnish Karelia , that were evacuated during World War II and resettled all over Finland, speak ''Savonian dialects,'' although their dialects in everyday speech often are referred to as ''Karelian.'' Formal and informal Finnish See Also: Spoken Finnish There are two main Varieties of Finnish used throughout the country. One is the "standard language" (''yleiskieli''), and the other is the " Spoken Language " ''puhekieli''. The standard language is used in formal situations like church sermons, political speeches and newscasts. Its written form, the "book language" (''kirjakieli''), is used nearly in all of the written texts, not always excluding even the dialogue of common people in popular prose. The term "standard language" does not actually exactly coincide with the term ''yleiskieli'', because the definition is that ''yleiskieli'' lacks the everyday colloquial Register . The spoken language, on the other hand, is the main variety of Finnish to be used in popular TV and radio shows, at workplaces and it is sometimes preferred to speaking a dialect in personal communication. Also, the standard language is quite rare in personal letters and in conversations on the Internet, where strict "correctness" is not in force. The differences between the two are comparable to differences between Standard English and some English Ethnolect . The spoken language has mostly developed naturally from earlier forms of Finnish, and spread from main cultural and political centers. The book language, however, has always been a consciously constructed medium for literature. It preserves grammatical patterns that have mostly vanished from the colloquial varieties and, as its main application is writing, it features complex syntactic patterns that are not easy to handle when used in speech. The spoken language develops significantly faster, and the grammatical and phonological simplifications includes also the most common pronouns and suffixes, which sums up to frequent but modest differences. Some sound changes have been left out from the formal language, such as the irregularization of some common verbs by assimilation, e.g. ''tule-'' → ''tuu-''. Finnish children usually acquire the knowledge of the standard language when educated in school, but many children who read much learn it as their written " First Language ". Written language certainly still exerts a considerable influence upon the spoken word, due to the fact that illiteracy is nonexistent and that many Finns are avid readers. In fact, it is still not entirely uncommon to meet people who "talk like a book" (''puhuvat kirjakieltä''), although this habit is perceived as typical of "old elementary school teachers" and somewhat pedantic. More common is the intrusion of typically book-like constructions into a basically colloquial discourse, as a kind of loan or quote from written or formal Finnish. It should also be noted that it is quite common to hear book-like and polished speech on radio or TV, and the constant exposure to such carefully prepared language tends to lead to the adoption of book-like constructions even in everyday language. However, a foreign learner of Finnish who aims to live and work in Finland should try to acquire a grasp of the most common colloquial reductions in speech, because anybody not conversant with the talk of the street would feel somewhat at a loss in a relaxed speech situation, even if he were entirely able to understand the formal language of the news media. The orthography of the informal language follows that of the formal language. However, sometimes Sandhi may be transcribed, especially the internal ones, e.g. ''menenpä'' → ''menempä''. This never takes place in formal language; some people believe that the sandhi should not be even pronounced in formal language. Examples :formal language — colloquial language he menevät — ne menee onko(s) teillä — onks teil(lä) me emme sano — me ei sanota (minun) kirjani — mu(ŋ) kirja kuusikymmentäviisi — kuus(kyt)viis tulen — tuun punainen — punane(n) korjannee — kai korjaa mentyämme — kumme oltii(m) menty :Note that there are noticeable differences within dialects. These examples are mostly from spoken language which is spoken in the Capital area (Helsinki dialect). Phonology See Also: Finnish phonology of the Finnish vowel harmony system. The front vowels are in blue, neutral in green and back in yellow.]] Characteristic features of Finnish (common to other Finno-Ugric languages) are Vowel Harmony and an agglutinative morphology; due to the extensive use of the latter, words can be quite long. The main stress is always on the first syllable. There are eight vowels, whose lexical and grammatical role is highly important, and which are unusually strictly controlled, so that there is almost no , where i and '''e''' are neutral. One phoneme is the Chroneme , such that Finnish appears to have long and short vowels and consonants; thus, long vowels behave as vowels followed by a consonant, not as lengthened vowels. The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, with the exception of '''u''', which is centralized with respect to '''uu'''. There are eighteen phonemic diphthongs; like vowels, diphthongs do not have allophony. Finnish has a consonant inventory of small to moderate size, where voicing is not distinctive, and there are only glottal and unvoiced alveolar fricatives. Almost all consonants are either alveolar or pronounced so that the tongue does not have to move away from the alveolar ridge. Consonants are as follows, where consonants in parenthesis are found only in a few recent loans. # is the equivalent of under weakening Consonant Gradation , and thus occurs only medially, or in non-native words; it is actually more of an alveolar Tap rather than a true voiced stop, and the dialectal realization varies wildly; see main article. # The Glottal Stop is not a phoneme, but is found as a result of lenition of between a long vocalic sound and a short vowel in words such as ''ruo'on'' ← ''ruoko''. It can also be analyzed as a Hiatus . # The short Velar Nasal is an allophone of in , and the long velar nasal , written ''ng'', is the equivalent of under weakening Consonant Gradation (type of Lenition ) and thus occurs only medially. Almost all consonant have phonemic Geminate d forms. These are independent, but occur only medially when phonemic. Independent consonant clusters are not allowed in native words, except for a small set of two-consonant Syllable Coda , e.g. 'rs' in ''torstai''. However, due to a number of loanwords using them, e.g. ''strutsi'' "ostrich", Finnish speakers can pronounce them, even if it is somewhat awkward. As a Finno-Ugric language, it is somewhat special in three respects: noninitial labial vowels, loss of fricatives and Palatalization . An interesting feature of Fennic phonology is the development of labial vowels in non-initial syllables. Proto-Uralic had only 'a' and 'i' and their vowel harmonic allophones in non-initial syllables, but modern Finnish allows other vowels in non-initial syllables, albeit they are uncommon compared to 'a', 'ä' and 'i'. Palatalization is characteristic to Finno-Ugric languages, but standard Finnish has lost it. The palatalization is replaced by ; the sound has become independent, in spelling as in pronunciation; it becomes in a word-final position. The Eastern dialects and the Karelian Language retain palatalization. For example, the Karelian word ''d'uuri'' , with a palatalized , is reflected by ''juuri'' in Finnish; and Savo Dialect ''vesj'' is ''vesi'' in standard Finnish. Finnish has only two fricatives, namely and . All other fricatives are recognized as foreign, of which Finnish speakers can usually reliably distinguish and . Morphophonology Finnish has a thick layer of morphophonology between grammar ("logic") and phonology ("sounds"). The most important processes are Vowel Harmony and Consonant Gradation . Vowel harmony is a redundancy feature, which means that the feature is uniform within a word, and so it is necessary to interpret it only once for a given word. It is meaning-distinguishing in the initial syllable, and suffixes follow; so, if the listener hears [±back in any part of the word, he can derive [±back] for the initial syllable.
Grammar See Also: Finnish grammar The , where accusative denotes actions completed as intended (''Ammuin hirven'' "I shot the elk dead"), and partitive denotes incomplete actions (''Ammuin hirveä'' "I shot at the elk"). Often this is confused with perfectivity, but the only element of perfectivity there is in Finnish is that there are some perfective verbs. Transitivity is distinguished by different verbs for transitive and intransitive, e.g. ''ratkaista'' "to solve something" vs. ''ratketa'' "to be solved by itself". There are several Frequentative and Momentane verb categories. Verbs gain personal suffixes for each person; these suffixes are grammatically more important than pronouns, which are often not used at all. The infinitive is not the uninflected form but has a suffix ''-ta'' or ''-da''; the closest one to an uninflected form is the third person singular imperative. There are four persons, first, second, third and impersonal (often called "passive"). There are four tenses, namely present, past, perfect and pluperfect; the system mirrors the Germanic system. The future tense is not needed due to context and the telic contrast. For example, ''luen kirjan'' "I read a book (completely)" indicates a future, when ''luen kirjaa'' "I read a book (not yet complete)" indicates present. Nouns may be suffixed with the markers for the aforementioned Accusative Case and Partitive Case , the Genitive Case , eight different Locatives , and a few other cases. The case marker must be added not only to the main noun, but also to its modifiers; e.g. ''suure+ssa talo+ssa'', literally "big-in house-in". Possession is marked with a Possessive Suffix ; separate Possessive Pronoun s are unknown. Pronouns gain suffixes just as nouns do. Lexicon See the lists of at Wiktionary , the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project. Finnish extensively employs regular agglutination. It has a smaller core vocabulary than, for example, English , and uses derivative suffixes to a greater extent. As an example, take the word ''kirja'' "a book", from which one can form derivatives ''kirjain'' "a letter" (of the Alphabet ), ''kirje'' "a piece of correspondence, a letter", ''kirjasto'' "a library", ''kirjailija'' "an author", ''kirjallisuus'' "literature", ''kirjoittaa'' "to write", ''kirjoittaja'' "a writer", ''kirjallinen'' "something in written form", ''kirjata'' "to write down, register, record", ''kirjasin'' "a font", and others. Here are some of the more common such suffixes. Which of each pair is used depends on the word being suffixed in accordance with the rules of Vowel Harmony .
Verbal suffixes are extremely diverse; several Frequentative s and Momentane s differentiating Causative , volitional-unpredictable and Anticausative are found, often combined with each other. For example, ''hypätä'' "to jump", ''hypäyttää'' "to make someone jump once", ''hyppyytellä'' "to make someone jump repeatedly", ''hypähtää'' "to jump suddenly" (in Anticausative meaning), ''hypellä'' "to jump around repeatedly". Often the diversity and compactness of this agglutination is illustrated with ''juoksentelisinkohan'' "I wonder if I should run around aimlessly". Borrowing Over the course of many centuries, the Finnish language has borrowed a great many words from a wide variety of languages. Indeed, some estimates put the core Finno-Ugric vocabulary surviving in Finnish at only around 300 word roots. (However, due to neologisms, the plain figure is misleading.) The first loan words into Finno-Ugric languages seem to come from very early Indo-European Languages , and later mainly from Indo-Iranian , Turkic , Baltic , Germanic , and Slavic languages.
More recently, Swedish has been a prolific source of borrowings. Present-day Finland belonged to the kingdom of Sweden from the 12th Century and was ceded to Russia in 1809 , becoming autonomous. The upper class held Swedish as their primary language even after this, because Russia did not have a written law nor legal bureaucracies and left the Swedish-originated system mostly intact. When Finnish was accepted as an official language, it gained only legal "equal status" with Swedish, which persists even today. It is still the case today that about 6% of Finnish nationals, the Finland-Swedes , have Swedish as their Mother Tongue . During the period of autonomy, Russian did not gain much ground as a language of the people or the government. Nevertheless, a range of words were subsequently acquired from Russian (especially in older Helsinki Slang ) but not to the same extent as with Swedish. In all these cases, borrowing has been partly a result of geographical proximity. Typical Russian loanwords are old or very old, thus hard to recognize as such, and concern everyday concepts, e.g. ''papu'' "bean", ''sini'' "( N. ) blue" and ''pappi'' "priest". For example, ''Raamattu'' ("Bible") is a loanword from Russian, also other religious words are loaned from Russian. This is mainly believed to be result of trade with Novogorod 9th century and so on and the Orthodox converting in 13th century. There is a list of Russian loans to Finnish on the Finnish Wikipedia: {Link without Title} Most recently, and with increasing impact, English has been the source of new — this is now probably the most important source of all non-face-to-face exposure to English. The importance of English as the language of global commerce has led many non-English companies, including Finland's Nokia , to adopt English as their official operating language. Recently, it has been observed that English borrowings are not only ousting existing Finnish words, but also previous borrowings, for example the switch from ''treffailla'' "to date" (from Swedish, ''träffa'') to ''deittailla'' from English "to go for a date". Calque s from English are also found, e.g ''kovalevy'' (hard disk). Grammatical calques are also found, for example, the replacement of the impersonal (''passiivi'') with the English-style "you-impersonal", e. g. ''sä et voi'' "you cannot", instead of ''ei voi''. However, this does not mean that Finnish is threatened by English. Borrowing is normal language evolution, and neologisms are coined actively not only by the government, but also by the media. Moreover, Finnish and English have a considerably different Grammar , Phonology and Phonotactics , discouraging direct borrowing. English loan words in Finnish slang include ''pleikkari'' "PlayStation", ''hodari'' "hot dog", ''hedari'' "headache" (native word being ''päänsärky'', and native slang words including ''jysäri''). Often these loanwords have a humorous origin, and certainly have that effect when used, rarely used in a negative mood or in formal language. Neologisms Some modern terms have been synthesised rather than borrowed, for example: puhelin tietokone levyke sähköposti The generic term for a diskette is ''levyke'', but colloquially diskettes are referred to as ''lerppu'' (the now obsolete 5¼-inch Floppy , derived from the word ''floppy'') and ''korppu'' (the 3½-inch Floppy , Finnish word for "rusk" or "biscuit" that obviously fits the description of the more rigid diskette and nicely resembles ''lerppu''). The colloquial word ''romppu'' for the CD-ROM was invented in a contest by the magazine Suomen Kuvalehti when CD-ROM drives were becoming common in PCs in the early 1990s. This word led quickly into another neologism, ''romputin'' (CD-ROM drive) Finnish loans to other languages See Also: List of English words of Finnish origin Orthography The Finnish orthography is morphemic, and the morphemic notation is built upon the Phonetic principle: with just a few subtle exceptions, within a single morpheme, each phoneme (distinct sound) of the language is represented by exactly one grapheme (independent letter), and each grapheme represents exactly one phoneme, if the morpheme is pronounced in isolation. This makes the language easy for its speakers to spell, and facilitates learning to read and write. Some orthographical notes:
The letters '' ä '' and '' ö '' [ø , although drawn as Umlauted ''a'' and ''o'', are not Umlaut s and are considered independent graphemes; the letter shapes have been copied from Swedish. An appropriate parallel from the Latin alphabet are the characters ''C'' and ''G'' (uppercase), which historically have a closer kinship than many other characters (''G'' is a derivation of ''C'') but are considered distinct letters, and changing one for the other will change meanings (''cut'' vs. ''gut''). If the graphemes ''ä'' and ''ö'' are not accessible due to technical limitations, they must be replaced with ''a'' and ''o'', respectively. As they are not umlauts, it is wrong to write them as umlaut Digraph s ''ae, oe,'' as in German. Sequences ''ae and oe'' are distinct phonemes from ''ä and ö'', e.g. ''haen'' "I seek" vs. ''hän'' "he". The sounds ''š'' and ''ž'' are not a part of Finnish language itself. Although they occur in some rare loanwords, their principal use is transcription of foreign names. For technical reasons or convenience, the graphemes ''sh'' and ''zh'' are often used in quickly or less carefully written texts instead of ''š'' and ''ž''. This is a deviation from the phonetic principle, and as such is liable to cause confusion, but the damage is minimal as the transcribed words are foreign in any case. Finnish does not use the sounds ''z'', ''š'' or ''ž'', but for the sake of exactitude, they can be included in spelling. (The recommendation cites the Russian play Hovanshtshina as an example.) Many speakers pronounce all of them ''s'', or distinguish only between ''s'' and ''š'', because Finnish has no voiced sibilants. Language example Hyväntahtoinen aurinko katseli heitä. Se ei missään tapauksessa ollut heille vihainen. Kenties tunsi jonkinlaista myötätuntoa heitä kohtaan. Aika velikultia. Basic greetings
Important words
¹ ''-te is added to make the sentence formal. Otherwise, without the added "-te", it is informal. It is also added when talking to more than one person.'' Bibliography English books
:This is the first of 2 volumes, each of which has an associated exercises book. There is also a reader. :Volume 1 is grammar based, but takes things in nice small steps, so it isn't intimidating. It generally teaches the written language, but does point out the main differences in the spoken language. By the end of volume 1 you would have quite a good grasp of the language for everyday purposes.
:Quite good: the pace is quite fast as it covers all of FFF1 and some of FFF2, and includes exercises. :There are a couple of irritations: the chapters are long and rambling without any clear focus, and the vocabularies don't always contain all the words used in the dialogs.
:This book tries to cover most of what you need to know in 300 pages: from complete beginner to familiarity with both the written and spoken languages. It uses an original approach to the grammar which is challenging, but well worth tackling. :The book is intended for beginners willing to invest some time and energy into learning Finnish, as well as for those who have a fair grasp of the language already, but would like to improve their understanding of more colloquial aspects of Finnish — aspects largely neglected in other grammars. The spoken language dialogues are especially useful, as they let you know what you can expect to hear, rather than what you will read in the newspaper. The grammatical explanations are built around the dialogues, not cloned from previous grammars.
:This book is much like ''Colloquial Finnish'' but deals mainly with the written form of the language (although pronunciation is dealt with). It is not laid out in a lesson-based format, so is suitable for those who are familiar with the language but need to consolidate their grammar, although 'no prior knowledge is assumed on the part of the reader'. If you are a beginner, use this as a reference to back up your course book. Finnish books
:Together, these books and their associated exercise books form a fairly complete course in Finnish, roughly equivalent to the ''Finnish for Foreigners'' books. However, the production quality is rather spare: typewriter font throughout and poor layout. This book is not of so much use without a teacher.
:It is an attempt to cover how Finnish is actually spoken. However, it is not designed to teach Finnish, and pulls no punches about the language, so the reader needs a good grasp to make use of it. There are no exercises.
:Finnish relies heavily on changing the endings of words to indicate their role in a sentence. For example, there is one verb which means both "lend" or "borrow", but the direction is indicated by the ending of the person you are lending to or borrowing from. This book contains the rules for this and hundreds of similar situations.
:A comprehensive treatment of Finnish grammar, concentrating on the written language. Useful for reference only.
:A Finnish- Helsinki -Finnish dictionary. Useful to residents.
:A comprehensive coverage of the history of both written and spoken Finnish, including a detailed discussion of the regional variations found in the spoken language. The web presence of Finnish is also worth noting. There are about 50 million pages marked as Finnish. There are several e-books for learning Finnish: See also
External links
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