puhutteko suomea?

drrnwbb

anyone out there speaks finnish? olen asunut helsingissä noin yhden vuoden ja olen opiskellut suomea kahdeksan kuukautta.. anyone else speak the lingo?

dw

Lukin Black

Puhun vähän - minulla on (ovat?) ystäviä Oulussa ja Espoossa. So what are you doing Helsingissä, if you don't mind me asking? I've always wanted to go out there for an extended stay sometimg.

Oletko irlannista?

drrnwbb

kyllä, limerickistä/dublinistä... i moved here about a year ago for work/gf reasons, finding it very hard to find work without finnish, so ive been studying it daily since february. its driving me nuts.. but thankfully helsinki is so beautiful that it (sorta) makes up for it. if you do come, come during the summer. finnish summers are a joy to behold.

dw

Lukin Black

Onnea yrityksella! I've a friend who was thrown in at the deep end quuuuuite a while ago, but is living there now for donkey's years and well fluent.

It took me ages to learn to say 'mitä kuuluu' properly. And then for some reason the next one was ympäristöystävällinen. I think it was just the challenge! The funny thing though was I found it easier to say :eek: I think it was the long vowels. I'm not too bad with the double consonants because they have them in Italian.

naitkris

yes, summers in Finland & Sweden are quite hot - Norway isn't too bad either but does get the any odd rain that does come by during the summer.

welcome anyways drrnwbb & Lukin Black to the Skandinaviska forum, perhaps we could include Finska here as well and call it: Nordiska språk / "Finnish for Nordic languages"

let me know if you want this - i'd be happy to pass the message on to the Administators of boards.ie to fix up!

ecksor

I actually read this forum (might get around to learning swedish properly one of these days ...)

I don't quite follow though, change the name or the description or ... ?

Lukin Black

I guess it's because Finnish isn't actually one of the 'Skandinaviska' languages, rather a Finno-Ugric one (along with Estonian, Sami (Lapp) and Hungarian).
I was actually gonna say that earlier, but I guessed drrnwbb probably knew anyhow - the Finns have to learn Swedish in school as it has official language status there - it's spoken in Ahvenanmaa (Åland?), and some of the SW as far as I remember.

Is it true what I heard that legally, the only country with Swedish as an official language until relatively recently, was Finland?

Anyhow, I imagine "Skandinaviska (Danish / Norwegian / Swedish) / Suomen Kieli (Finnish)" is a *bit* much Puhutko suomea? (Do you speak Suomi?) Plus then if there are people speaking Finnish, you'd kinda need to know what they're saying so you know they're not saying anything bad..

:eek: I'll supply translations anymore!

drrnwbb

might just want to make it "nordic languages", might aswell get the extensive icelandic and faroese readership involved too.

dw

Lukin Black

Originally posted by drrnwbb
might just want to make it "nordic languages", might aswell get the extensive icelandic and faroese readership involved too.

Sounds good, if the mods/admins are up for it.

Found an interesting link regarding the Nordic countries, the soc.culture.nordic FAQ. Might be a good start for a possible resource list?

Also here's a link to the Ethnologue Germanic language family tree. Shows the relationship between the various Nordic languages (except Finnish, as I was saying, it's part of the Finno-Ugric family), and between them and English, German etc. Quite interesting, if you're into 'that sort of thing'.

naitkris

Originally posted by Lukin Black
I guess it's because Finnish isn't actually one of the 'Skandinaviska' languages, rather a Finno-Ugric one (along with Estonian, Sami (Lapp) and Hungarian).
I was actually gonna say that earlier, but I guessed drrnwbb probably knew anyhow - the Finns have to learn Swedish in school as it has official language status there - it's spoken in Ahvenanmaa (Åland?), and some of the SW as far as I remember.

Is it true what I heard that legally, the only country with Swedish as an official language until relatively recently, was Finland?

no, dont think so. Sweden has always had Swedish as its official language however there I think there was a move (last I heard) to recognise the Finnish language in Sweden as official thanks to the many Swedish-Finns in Sweden and also Sweden's close relationship with Finland. I may be wrong on this, I dont know.

Anyhow, I think as we are a minority group us Nordic's in terms of our populations compared to German, French and so on speaking countries that a forum for us all would be a good thing. I will let the Admins know of this. I am Swedish myself and find Finnish to be a completley different language to the other Nordic languages & also hard to learn (being Swedish), but I suppose its never to late to start to learn some Finnish.

Good links btw Lukin Black - I might make a Nordic Languages Forum Introduction and include those links and some background information if I get the go-ahead with the name change.

Lukin Black

Great idea! If it does go ahead, and you want, I can put together some more Finnish links/info. I've some friends there, hence the interest

drrnwbb

Originally posted by naitkris
but I suppose its never to late to start to learn some Finnish.

if you want to maintain your sanity, DONT LEARN FINNISH! its crazy.

im off to write the history of ireland in finnish for my finnish course. its taking forever and im skipping huge chunks of history like "home rule" and stuff like that. the teacher will never know.

dw

Lukin Black

Ei olle! But I guess that's choice vs. obligation

Have you heard about that Finnish guy who's fluent (kinda) in Irish? His page is here, and features the ever useful Sanakirja Suomi-Iiri (Finnish-Irish dictionary), lots of information about Irish suomeksi ja på svenska, and the petition to have Irish as an official, working language in the E.U.

And I just found out a year ago or so that there's a Finnish-Irish society that's almost 50 years old.

The wonders of the intarweb..

naitkris

nice links Lukin Black - will add them to a FAQ or something in the future, well i guess i want to learn some Finnish even if it is hard as I know not all of Finland speaks Swedish fluently, only 350,000 have it as their native tongue (and they mostly live on Finlands west border with Sweden).

btw, can someone give me the Finnish for "Nordic languages"?

drrnwbb

Originally posted by naitkris
can someone give me the Finnish for "Nordic languages"?

"pohjoismaiset kielet"

dw

Lukin Black

Originally posted by naitkris
well i guess i want to learn some Finnish

And I must learn more på svenska than 'jag heter'

naitkris

Originally posted by drrnwbb
"pohjoismaiset kielet"

dw

thanks, can I write it as "Pohjoismaiset kielet" or even "Pohjoismaiset Kielet" - i.e. with capitals at the start?

Originally posted by Lukin Black
And I must learn more på svenska than 'jag heter'

hehe, yeah. is that all the Swedish you learnt in school? :-) I didnt learn too much of other stuff either...

well, here's a few more simple terms for you:
"hej" (prounounced "hay") meaning "hello"
"hej då" (pronounced "hay dough") meaning "goodbye
"god dag" (prounounced "good daw") meaning "good day/hello"
"jag kommer ifrån Finland" (prounounced "yag-comer ee-fron Finland") meaning "I come from Finland"

:-)

maybe you can start a "Finnish for Beginners" thread here with the first post with a few basic terms and how it is pronounced through English in it instead of streching out this thread

drrnwbb

Originally posted by naitkris
thanks, can I write it as "Pohjoismaiset kielet" or even "Pohjoismaiset Kielet" - i.e. with capitals at the start?

"Pohjoismaiset kielet" is the way to go.

dw

Lukin Black

Originally posted by naitkris
is that all the Swedish you learnt in school? :-)

Hehe, I don't think I even knew there was a Swedish language when I was in school. Well, ok I probably did, but it did take me a while to remember which was which, between Sweden & Switzerland I know someone from Göteburg (not really well) and she was the one who taught me it. Whenever I meet someone who is from a country that I'm not familiar with the language, I always get them to teach me a bit.

manzana

hei,

puhun ... or at least, puhuin .. olen asunut liian kauan pois suomesta joten en pysty esim. puhumaan sujuvasti puhelimessa, i've got to think what to say. :dunno:

asun kohta corkissa joten jos joku haluaa puhua suomeksi, lähetä private message täällä niin katsotaan.

jag har också studerat svenska för några är men .. can't remeber a lot. so i'd like to see if i can train my swedish

Unpossible

Ive been in finland for 2 weeks now, im working in varkaus and hope to study in kuopio in september. Am trying to learn finnish, thankfully everyone where I work speaks english (im working on a research project with a college) and the course im applying to is in english.

Im finding the signs difficult as they are all long multisylable words.