Ask a Finnish Teacher
  • Blog
  • About
  • Ask a Question
  • Private lessons
  • Finnish courses
Picture

Is Finnish Difficult?

27/3/2018

 
One of the questions that I get asked most often is this one. Sure, Finnish is difficult to learn. Learning any language from scratch is difficult, and Finnish grammar is notoriously complex, with 15 cases that may or may not look totally different in their singular and plural forms.  So yeah, it's difficult. 

The level of difficulty you're likely to face depends on a couple of factors.

1. What you're comparing it to.  There are approximately 7000 languages spoken in the world today (it depends on how you count), and I can guarantee you that Finnish is not the most difficult one. 

2. What languages you already speak. If you're already fluent in Estonian, you'll learn Finnish pretty quickly. The big Indo-European languages like English, French, German and Russian are all related, and so they share a lot of grammar and vocabulary. Finnish and Estonian are from an entirely different family of languages, the Finno-Ugric languages. However, Finnish has a lot of loan words from its Indo-European neighbors, so it helps if you know one or more of them. 

3. How many languages you already speak. People tend to think that there's only so much room in our brains for languages, as if our brains are bookshelves, and small ones at that. Or memory sticks with exactly one gigabit of storage space, and when it's full it's full, so you must choose carefully. That's not how learning works. The more languages you know - any languages, no matter how much or little you know - the easier it gets to learn a new language. If you're an adult who only speaks one language, English, for example, you'll have to work a lot harder than someone who's bilingual from childhood and has already studied several foreign languages. But if you only speak one language, fear not! I've seen many, many people in your position learn Finnish and you can, too. But you have to want it. 

4. How motivated you are. Learning any new language well is a huge goal and takes a lot of time to reach, and you need to really commit to get there. It helps a lot if you have a concrete reason to want to learn - maybe you live in Finland, or have a Finnish family member. Or maybe you want to spend a holiday in Finland and be able to order your korvapuusti in Finnish. 

5. How much of a perfectionist you are. To learn any new language from the very beginning you have to be willing to make a lot of mistakes and continuously make a fool of yourself for a very long time. Perfectionism is the enemy of learning anything, but it becomes a huge problem with a language that inspires memes like this: 

​
Picture
Svitlana
27/3/2018 21:13:21

Good article!
I support each part of it :-)

As for me, I’d like to read Ginnush spoken phrases as much as it’s possible. Those one that one cannot usually find in a book but just can hear from native speaker.

Kiitos kovasti ja kivaa jatkoa!

Svitlana
27/3/2018 21:14:43

Finnish spoken phrases :-)

Mari
27/3/2018 21:55:56

Kiitos Svitlana!

And yes, spoken language is super important to learn, you're on the right track :)

Feik
28/3/2018 01:29:37

How do I know which Finnish i-word is "new" and which "old"? kieli: kielen vs tiimi: tiimin?

Mari
28/3/2018 09:10:42

Hei Feik!

The short answer is, you can't usually know just by looking, you just have to learn them by heart. I'll see if I can knock out a blog post with the long version soon!

Ansa
31/3/2018 02:53:21

Suomi--Suomen
Ruotsi ruotsin
U can know it if the word comes originaly from English language then I come
Kieli-kielen originaly finish word
Tiimi-tiimin originaly came english
So if the Word originally came english I does't change
Kiitti

Jari Juslin
29/3/2018 20:17:25

Some hints can be derived from the word itself: the word tiimi, for example, is direct mutilation from English word "team". This suggests it's rather recent addition.


Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018

Ask a Finnish Teacher / Toiminimi Mari Nikonen


BUSINESS ID (Y-Tunnus) 2930787-4 
​VAT NUMBER FI29307874 

​Kaupintie 11 B
00440 Helsinki

If you'd like to send me something in the mail, please email me for my postal address. 

​mari@askafinnishteacher.com
​+358 40 554 29 55


© COPYRIGHT 2015-2022 Mari nikonen. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Blog
  • About
  • Ask a Question
  • Private lessons
  • Finnish courses