Finnish Language Analysis

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1. Introduction People generally have the belief that if they knew or master one of the Scandinavian languages, they can easily learn other languages in the group because of the similarities in vocabulary and sometimes grammar. However, this assumption is generally incorrect especially in the case of Finnish due to the language’s special origin. This origin and many other attributes of the Finnish language cause people to assume that Finnish is a hard language to learn, but in fact, it is not hard but just different (Branch, n.d.). Therefore, it requires a different approach to learn. This paper aims to explore different aspects of the Finnish language, the some similarities between Finnish and other language, and provide a personal recommendation…show more content…
Compare to other languages such as French and German, the consonants to vowels ratio of Finnish is relatively high, which is 96 consonants to every 100 vowels. Another attribute of sound of Finnish is the primary stress in words lands in the first syllable. Furthermore, the length of sounds is very crucial and noticeable attributes of Finnish language. There are short and long variants for most of the consonants and vowels. Writing can made clear the distinction between short and long variants by doubling the letter for the long sound. In addition, the general intonation pattern in a sentence is declining even when it is a question. Finally, the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is clear, which made Finnish a phonetic language, and diphthongs is applicable to the Finnish as well. In general, each letter illustrate the same sound and that sound only, and the sounds of the component of the words is…show more content…
For example: “pojke” in Swedish is similar to “poikka” in Finnish which mean boy, “sedan” in Swedish is similar to “sitten” in Finnish which mean then or next, and “gravadlax” is similar to “graavilohi” in Finnish which mean a Gravlax (a Nordic dish made of raw salmon, salt, sugar and dill) 3.5. Finnish and Japanese Both Japanese and Finnish use difference in sound length to distinguish words (e.g. "おばさん [obasan]" = "aunt" while "おばあさん [obaasan] = "grandma" and in Finnish "tapaan" = "I meet" while "tapan" = "I kill"). Furthermore, both languages use endings to indicate a different form of the word. For instance, the Japanese ending や ("-ya") as in 寿司屋 ("sushi-ya" I think), means a store (so, sushi store). In Finnish, the "ja" ending (same pronunciation) means a person who does something (e.g. "opiskella" is "to study" while "opiskelija" is a "student"). One of the most similar grammatical structures between the two languages is the formation of a yes/no question. In Japanese, you add か/ka to the end of a sentence to a phrase into a question. In Finnish, you add "-ko" onto the end of the verb for exactly the same function! (Hayden,
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