Some people ask me if I have recommendations for Finnish media to use for immersion. I often tell them that they can find it themselves.
Often, this leads to puzzled looks, but today I want to share my tips on immersion online (using Finnish as an example because that's kinda my thing, of course), what you should look for, and why immersion can be slower than you'd like it to be!
Think of your media consumption in your target language. Do you know what people call a post in the language? (julkaisu, postaus) Do you know the verb for to post? (julkaista, postata) Do you know how to say essential words around posting (poistaa 'remove', lisätä 'add', muokata 'edit', kirjoitus 'writing', kuva 'photo', etc.). These kinds of essential media vocabulary are things that you WILL certainly need if you are navigating social media or talking to people offline about it. Pick up words like this as soon as possible.
Now, how does one, for example, find good immersive videos for language learning? If you are an absolute beginner, you might search for '(insert language) for beginners' or '(insert language) children's shows'. This is suitable for beginners, but in many cases, people remain at this initial stage for too long. What kind of media do you usually consume in your main language? How do you say that in your target language? Instead of searching 'suomen kieli' each time you want to try immersion, search for what you ACTUALLY want to watch: 'podcast', 'harvinaiset linnut' (rare birds), 'vlogi' (vlog), 'neulominen' (knitting). This will force your brain to actually try to understand the subject faster because you actually want to know about the subject.
This brings up another point; you won't know how to talk in everyday conversation if you do not consume the language like a native. A native speaker can talk about local political parties (what is a 'persu'? What does your friend mean by 'SDP'?), switch to talking about recent TV shows (What kind of show is 'uutiset'? When does 'Pikku Kakkonen' start?), and end the sentence by talking about their study goals (What does it mean to have 5 'opintopistettä'? What is 'yliopisto'?) If you want to actually have a fluent and fruitful conversation in your target language, you must consume non-learner material. Otherwise, you will not relate to your native friend as much.
Studying two new languages at uni so far (North Sámi and Hungarian), I have utilized immersion in both. I have a habit of watching and reading the news in Sámi and watching local TikTok content in the language. In Hungarian, I have been consuming YouTube content and watching lectures on linguistics. I often write down words I don't know and use them for conjugation and declension practice. It works wonders for me!
To communicate with my parents and extended family. At age 1 I started to feel a bit hungry and decided I should start speaking so that my parents would feed me.
Visiting friends in Turku, we came across two street names.
Tarkk'ampujankatu and Tarkkàmpujankatu (both Skarpskyttegatan in Swedish!)
The first compound word in this street name is the old form of the word tarkka-ampuja (sniper). Even so, these street names are written differently from each other!
This is a word that has had multiple spellings throughout its history. If we look at the Wiktionary entry for this word, we can see that 'tarkkampuja' and 'tarkk'ampuja' are given as alternative forms.
This blog dives deeper into the word and how its meaning may change depending on its written form.
Googling alternative forms for this word uncovers more non-standard spellings; 'tarkkámpuja' and 'tarkkàmpuja' both give results (the version with á was even used in a scientific text)
Helsinki also has a Tarkk'ampujankatu, however, it does not have alternative spellings. It is also very short and lowkey irrelevant for me so I cannot be bothered to go outside to get pictures of the road signs there...
i have been taking a little break unexpectedly, but I will try to come back especially now that the academic year is starting in the next few months. I have been thinking of what to post and I cannot think of anything...
I feel like i need to clarify that i have absolutely no beef with the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/ but it just makes no sense that it appears in estonian and võro
and it in fact does make sense in skolt sámi do not fight me because I am right
Hi (and sorry for the wait, I have been busy with some early exams)
(And also sorry for what I'm about to deliver; you just asked a Finnish university student about Estonian, and it will unavoidably turn into slander. We Finns have a thing where we always bully the Estonians for their language since it makes no sense, and they try to bully us back, but there are just too many inconsistencies in their language to accept this.)
The letter õ exists in Estonian (and in Võro), but it makes no sense why it exists. There is no reason why Proto-Uralic would produce this letter. The Skolt Sami õ is not even related to it.
Estonian has a -ga comitative, which does not exist in Finnish but does exist in most of the smaller Finnic languages in the area. Ingrian uses the -kA suffix with the genitive, Votic uses the -ka suffix with the genitive, Tver Karelian and Veps use -ke, and Võro uses -gAq. For once, Estonian is not completely alone!
Estonian is one of the few Uralic languages where the verb for "no" is not conjugated according to person. While the Finns would say things like "Minä en osaa viroa." (ei > en; 1ps) the Estonians say "Ma ei oska eesti keelt." (ei stays unchanged). Most of the other Uralic languages function similarly to Finnish, so I have no idea what the Estonians are on
The Estonians have set many interesting rules for their language; for example, the letters a, e, i, and u are the only vowels that are permitted outside of the first syllable for some reason. Ä, õ, ö, and ü are not allowed outside of the first syllable, and o is kind of in the middle where it's allowed to be wherever in certain situations.
Estonian does not have vowel harmony, unlike some of its siblings in the Uralic family. (BORING!)
An extra fact: Some Estonians do not recognize the Võro language at all, calling it a dialect. It is spoken in South Estonia, has its own written standard, and is recognized by most scholars in the field. This language is pretty fun and unique in my opinion: they use the letter <q> for the glottal stop, which in my opinion should be more used (maybe Finnish will pick it up in the year 3000...) This language looks so cute in my opinion: compare Võro "maq tulõ-õiq" to Estonian "ma ei tule" (I do not come).
Thanks for reading all that, and sorry to the 1 Estonian online.
The Uralic languages are of course, very similar to Finnish in terms of vocabulary, and the closer to Finland you go the more similar the languages generally are (talking only about the Finnic branch here really, Finns cannot usually understand the Sámi languages at all even though some of them are spoken in Finland. There is shared vocabulary, but it doesn't take you far due to the sound changes, etc.) For the uninitiated, these Finnic languages would be languages like Karelian, Veps, Estonian, Võro, Livonian, Votic, Ludic, and Ingrian (not forgetting the many different dialects all these languages have!!)
The farther east you go (or south, in the case of Hungarian), the less Finns understand. However, you will come across many similarities, even in the Easternmost languages like Nganasan, if you know where to look!
Here is the map of the Uralic languages for those who've never seen it! (Yep, all related to Finnish.)
If you want to know which languages are similar to Finnish in structure, you may peruse through WALS. It compares the structure of the world's languages to each other. For example:
Here, we can see the syllable structure types of selected languages. Finnish is one of the only languages in Europe whose structure is described as "moderately complex" instead of the "general European" "complex" syllable structure. This syllable structure is most often seen in Middle African and Asian languages.
Another example:
Here is the data from the order of the genitive and the noun. Finnish places the genitive before the noun; meanwhile, many Central European, African, and Southeast Asian languages place the noun before the genitive.
In short, the Finnic languages are the most similar to Finnish, but looking at a broader scale, there are very few languages that wouldn't share at least one similar attribute.
Is finnish the outlier (in uralic languages) by having diffrent types of no's depending on whos talking?
Hi!
Not at all. The Uralic languages are known for having a negation verb that is conjugated according to person. Only a few Uralic languages do not have this feature, mainly Hungarian and Estonian. It is speculated that this feature existed in Proto-Uralic, and whichever language no longer has it, has lost it.
The Uralic negative verb is reconstructed as *e- and can mostly be found in the rest of the languages.
Here are some examples of how this verb functions in some other Uralic languages;
(1~3ps)
FINNISH - en, et, ei
VOTIC - en, ed, eb
LIVONIAN - ä'b, ä'b, iz
KOMI - og, on, oz
MOKSHA - ašeń, ašeť, ašeź
N. SÁMI - in, it, ii
S. SÁMI - im, ih, ij
A. SÁMI - jim, jik, ij
In general, there are very few features which make Finnish an outlier in the Uralic language family. I would say that this language is very stereotypical and preserves so many features from Proto-Uralic (and other language families, like Germanic). You might hear Finnish being called a "language fridge" for this reason.
happening in my discord server! if you are over 15 (preferably way over) you can join! the conlang started yesterday, and if you join the effort this week, you get a shiny role! We are making a conlang based on the community's vote!
I was just writing notes on a lecture while having a headache and accidentally created the best word we should start using actually
jotkus
jot- from "jotkut"
-kus from "joskus"
Therefore, this word expresses both "which, someone(s)" and "sometime".
The fun thing here is that both jotkut and joskus come from the same word "joku":
Jotkut is the nominative plural of "joku". Joku is actually a compound word of "jo-" (as seen in "joka") and "-ku" (as seen in "kuka"). Joskus comes from "joku" and the lative singular -s (as seen in "kauas")
This new construction of mine would therefore include
jo- + -t + -ku + -s
which + plural + who + lative adverb
I have spent enough time procrastinating writing the rest of the notes now...
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