Grammar: Introduction to Finnish language and pronunciation

Suomi - Finland
suomen kieli, suomi - Finnish (language)
suomalainen - Finnish (person)


Finnish sound system differs greatly from other languages and might sound hard and blunt at first. For Estonian, Japanese and some Javanese it might sound very familiar. Estonian is the closest spoken relative language. Hungarian is another, but not that close. We share some grammatical similarities with Korean, but I think that's just a coincidence.

Don't worry, it might sound weird, but fear not. Finnish kids learn to speak younger than many other language speakers, since the sound system is actually very natural.

We use Roman alphabet with three additional letters: ä, ö and å.

(This table is from: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/finnish.htm )

I'm not gonna try to make my own pronunciation guide, since the Internet is full of good ones.
http://www.unilang.org/view.php?res=53
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish.pronunciation.html

PS. If this blog gets enough readers, I'll start making sound files too.

Tervetuloa! Welcome!

I'm gonna open this blog next Monday, 27th of June 2011, when I get back from Korea. Updates every day, 6:30 AM.

I've stayed abroad for long and short periods, and every time I've wondered about many small and trivial things. And I've forgot to ask from my local friends or felt too stupid to do so. I've wished to find answers on-line, but no-one seems to write about normal, normal stuff. I wanted to help my friends who are gonna study in Finland next semester and people who work in Finland, as well as everyone interested in Finnish language and culture. I hope you will find this blog helpful.

Standard language is okay, but as you might have noticed: people don't speak standard language. That's why I try to give spoken language examples. I live in Oulu region, so most of my examples might have a bit of that color. Finland has a lot of dialects that differ greatly from standard Finnish. So if you are a Finnish speaker and find my examples questionable, please comment with your own example!

After I get the basic things posted, I plan on posting according to these themes:

Mondays: Why does it have to be like this? (Once you have been living in a country for a while, you start having complaints or something just doesn't make any sense. Ask me, and I try to answer!)
Tuesdays: Where can I get _________? (Do you haven an item you wanted to buy, but they don't sell it in the store you though would be logical? Ask, and I try to help!)
Wednesday: Vocabulary, grammar, short tips
Thursday: How to ________? (how to ride a bus, how to get a SIM-card, how to what?)
Friday: Every day conversations
Saturday: What's going on? (What is happening in Finland right now?)
Sunday: Culture insight

I plan on making the weekend post a bit longer and keep the weekday posts short - except for Mondays... that might need some more explaining. Of course I'm not sure about anything. I might get lazy at some point or I might not get requests. Then I'll just post something. But I try to stick to those themes until I figure out something awesome.

Please give feedback and request for stuff you want to know. If I get enough people asking for it, I'll start making audio files to help you with pronunciation.

PS. For a beginner it sure is easier to stick with phrases. I'm not a grammar expert and Finnish grammar is pretty complicated and confusing at first. So, let it follow later. I will answer your grammar questions too, if you have any, but I'm not gonna fill this blog with grammar yet.