kareina

Between having so many delightful Finnish cousins only a few hours from where I live, and having a number of SCA friends who are Finnish, I have decided to enroll in a Finnish language course, and lord_kjar signed up too. Since my mother is still here for two more weeks she came along to the class tonight.

The teacher's mother is Finnish, and his Father Swedish, and some of his ancestors are Sami (he didn't specify, just claimed to be 100% Finnish, 100% Swedish, and 100% Sami, too). He is teaching in Swedish, and comparing the difference between Swedish and Finnish, but he enjoyed having Mom, who can't speak Swedish at all, in the room, because it made him think about how Finnish and English compare (of course he is also fluent in English, but not used to comparing those two languages, since he is normally teaching Swedish speakers).

He started out with the vowels, quickly skipping over most of them, which are the same in Swedish and English, and focusing on the "problem three" for most Swedes: O, U, and Y.

O is pronounced the same as the Swedish å, which is much like the English o.
U is pronounced the same as the Swedish o, which is rather like what an owl says in English Whooo, but without actually pronouncing the "wh".
Y is pronounced like the Swedish u, which is more like the ooo sound in the English phrase of disgust "ewwwww". Confused? I was.

Then he gave us some examples:

Oulu (a city in northern Finland) is pronounced as though it were spelled Åolo in Swedish, but I would have spelled it Oh-ooo-loo.
Uutiset (news) is pronounced as though it were spelled ootiset in Swedish, but I would have spelled it ooo-ooo-tee-set.
Ylitornio (a smaller town in Finland) is pronounced as though it were spelled Ulitårniå, but I would have spelled it Whooo-li-torn-eee-oh.

The next topic was double letters, of which there are many in Finnish. He said that two of the same vowel in a row are pronounced together, but much loooonger than normal, but two of the same consonant in a row you just pronounce both of them, but put the syllable break between them. For example:

kukka (flower) is pronounced kook-ka but
kuka (who) is pronounced kook-a
mutta (however/but) is pronounced moot-ta

Then we started listing pronouns:

minä (I)
sinä (you)
me (we)
te (you plural)
hän (he/she)
se (that)
he (they)

And "to be" (see above for which pronoun is which):

minä olen
sinä olet
me olemme
te olette
hän on
se on
he olevat (edited to add: ask the teacher: Peppi says this should be "he ovat", but my handwriting is very clear here, and I wrote the longer version.)

Then he taught us to say a bunch of "I am___" phrases—each of us needed to provide a concept to use for the last word:

Minä olen väsynyt. (I am tired.)
Minä olen Ruotsalainen. (I am Swedish.)
Minä olen tutkija. (I am a researcher.)
Minä olen iloinen. (I am happy.)
Minä olen voimakas. (I am strong (in the physical sense).)
Minä olen vihainen. (I am angry.)
Minä olen vanha. (I am old.)
Minä olen loppunut. (I am done.)

The teacher decided when the last of us suggested "minä olen loppunut" that meant it was a good time for a coffee break, during which I asked him for how to say that I research geology, which is: Minä olen geologian tutkija. Then he also told us that looginen selitys = logical explanation.

After fika he had us each suggest a "greeting phrase" and told us how to say it in Finnish:

hei = hi (as also does moi and terve)
hyvää huomenta = good morning
heippa = good bye (as also does hei hei)
näkemiin = see you later/so long/goodbye
tervetuloa = welcome! (in this case the "terve" is the "well" (or good) while the "tuloa" is "come", even though above "terve" = "hi")
nähdään kuin nähdään = we will see one another again when we see one another ("vi ses när vi ses" in Swedish"
hyvää päivää = good day
kuinka (sinä) voit? = how are you doing/feeling?
Menneekö hyvin? = are things going well?

Then we did the numbers, first saying them together, then counting around the room, each person saying the next number in the sequence. There were enough of us in the room that each time it went around we got to say the number after the one we said on the last repeat, and we kept on counting from 1-10 till each of us had said all ten of them. My mother had the best pronunciation of the lot of us, and he always enthusiastically praised her for the way she said each number.

1 yksi
2 kaksi
3 kolme
4 neljä
5 viisi
6 kuusi (this also means spruce tree)
7 seitsemän
8 kahdeksan
9 yhdeksän
10 kymmenen

I have been able to count to 10 in Finnish since I was child, but this was the first time I have seen them in writing, and the spelling of many surprised me (wait—all those "g's" I was hearing are "k's"?), and both mom and I were convinced that kymmenen should have ended in "ta" instead of "en", but neither of us thought to ask the teacher about that in class, so we should do so next week.

I had just assumed that it was my bad hearing, till after we got home, and mom said that she thought it ended in "ta"—if I had known it wasn't just me, I'd have said something). On the other hand, there was one word that he automatically pronounced with an extra "a" in it, and then he explained that it is a northern Finland dialect thing, particularly in the older generation, and gave us two examples:

kahvi (coffee) is sometimes pronounced with a very short "a" sound in the middle: kah(a)vi
talvi (witner, and also part of my SCA name) is sometimes pronounced: tal(a)vi

We ended with the days of the week:

maanantai = Monday
tiistai = Tuesday
keskiviikko = Wednesday (literally "middle of the week", where "viikko" = week)
torstai = Thursday
perjantai = Friday
lauantai = Saturday
sunnuntai = Sunday

Keep in mind, that while I give translations for all of the new words into English, my class notes actually list (usually) only the Finnish and Swedish. This class is going to really help my Swedish, as well as introducing me to Finnish.

Next week (the course meets only one evening a week) we will try to get through chapters one and two in the book (which he gave us tonight).