One of the most pointless phrases to learn in another language

[Markus Hanke]

12 hours ago, Janus said:

It would be hard to pull off "talking like native" as a tourist in Finland, largely because the common spoken language differs somewhat from the written/formal that you'd be taught in a language course.

Finnish is on my personal list of languages I’d like to learn (to some degree) before this old brain begins to fail me

I’m fairly fluent in Norwegian, and can at least understand and read most Swedish too, plus some Danish. Problem here is the large number of local dialects, some of which are very different from the standard form of these languages, particularly in Norway. Is it the same in Finland?

Just out of interest.

[Genady]

5 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Finnish is on my personal list of languages I’d like to learn (to some degree) before this old brain begins to fail me

I’m fairly fluent in Norwegian, and can at least understand and read most Swedish too, plus some Danish.

Are the last three languages North Germanic while Finnish is not?

Edited October 28 by Genady

[Janus]

4 hours ago, Genady said:

Are the last three languages North Germanic while Finnish is not?

Yes, In addition, Finnish isn't even an Indo-European language, but is Uralic instead.

 

9 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Finnish is on my personal list of languages I’d like to learn (to some degree) before this old brain begins to fail me

I’m fairly fluent in Norwegian, and can at least understand and read most Swedish too, plus some Danish. Problem here is the large number of local dialects, some of which are very different from the standard form of these languages, particularly in Norway. Is it the same in Finland?

Just out of interest.

  Here is a map for the spoken "I" in different regions of Finland. https://forum.unilang.org/viewtopic.php?t=60834

In the birthplaces of my grandparents, they are Mää/Minä (right on the border between the two), mä, and miä.  Now that's today, and I don't know how this differs from when they were born.( though since they didn't seem to have any trouble communicating with each other, it must not have been an issue.)  'Minä' is the formal/written form.

However, they aren't used all that often.  Verbs are conjugated according to the pronoun they are used with, so for example " I am going" = minä menen, while you are going is sinä menet. Because of this, the pronoun is often left out, and just menen or menet alone are used.

A couple of peculiar things about Finnish are:

No articles(the/a/an)  

Limited use of prepositions, but uses "cases" instead. (metsä= forest, metsässä = in the forest)

Cases are applied to more than just the noun. ( for example;  old forest = vanha metsä, while in the old forest = vanhassa metsässä

[Sensei]

On 10/25/2024 at 2:08 AM, Janus said:

For while now, I've been slowly trying to learn Finnish, since it was the natural tongue of all my grandparents.  However this isn't going to be strictly about that but abut learning languages in general.

They often start by teaching you a few simple phrases, that may come in useful, (hello, my name is... etc.)

One of those phrases is often along the lines of "Do you speak English(or whatever language you normally speak)?

For example, in Finnish, this would be "Puhetko* englanitia?"

After some thought, I realized that there is no real reason you need to know how to say this.

If you were in Finland and wanted to ask someone if they spoke English, you could just ask in English. If they do, they will understand you, and answer in English, and if they don't, they'll say something like "Ei"( no), or "en ymmärrä"( I don't understand), or give you some other indication that they don't.  Either way, you've got your answer.

Now, I can see where it would appear more polite to ask in Finnish( or in whatever the language is where you are), but in a purely logical sense. it is not strictly necessary.

And of course, the one thing you definitely shouldn't do if you get the second response is to ask the question again, but LOUDER.... AND....SLOWER.

  *or "puhutteko" if you being formal or addressing more than one person.

I think the forum should have an option that counts down before a message is posted for eternity on the forum, so the user will rethink what they just said. Your post makes no sense to me. In the post you showed that you learned quite a lot from the lesson: “how to ask if someone speaks a language”, ‘how to pronounce English in a foreign language’, etc. ..

It is not about what you learn, but that you learn. Some learn "shit" and the other vulgar English words before they learned that England and U.S. even exist..

ps. This thread would make more sense to me if it were written by a non-English speaker who said that the first English words he/she learned, without even knowing they were English, were rude.. Imagine which ones, I will give myself to quote them here.. This is the reality of 7.5 billion people.

 

.... (unless you think rude words are not pointless phrases while learning foreign language.. ) ....

 

[Genady]

4 hours ago, Janus said:

A couple of peculiar things about Finnish are:

No articles(the/a/an)  

Limited use of prepositions, but uses "cases" instead. (metsä= forest, metsässä = in the forest)

Cases are applied to more than just the noun. ( for example;  old forest = vanha metsä, while in the old forest = vanhassa metsässä

Just like Russian! (I know it's OT.)

[geordief]

35 minutes ago, Genady said:

Just like Russian! (I know it's OT.)

Janus was giving the occasional  Finish lesson (a semi blog) in the old thescienceforum.org website  that folded   this year.

...things move on.

 

 

[Sensei]

37 minutes ago, Genady said:

Just like Russian! (I know it's OT.)

..Ugrofinlanders were displaced by the Slavic.. Finland, Hungary are remnants of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages

...adaptation/integration is inevitable, such as a mix of men and women from two other parties, thus creating yet another language..

(I can understand some Americans, and some Americans even other Americans can't understand! )

 

(and the closer we get to the selection the less )

 

[Markus Hanke]

10 hours ago, Janus said:

Limited use of prepositions, but uses "cases" instead. (metsä= forest, metsässä = in the forest)

Cases are applied to more than just the noun. ( for example;  old forest = vanha metsä, while in the old forest = vanhassa metsässä

Same in German, so this is a familiar concept.

10 hours ago, Janus said:

No articles(the/a/an)

In Norwegian, there’s no definite articles either; instead, definiteness and number are marked via noun declination:

pike - young girl

piken - the girl

piker - girls

pikene - the girls

Sometimes these can be irregular also. It does have indefinite articles, though.

[Janus]

10 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Same in German, so this is a familiar concept.

In Norwegian, there’s no definite articles either; instead, definiteness and number are marked via noun declination:

pike - young girl

piken - the girl

piker - girls

pikene - the girls

Sometimes these can be irregular also. It does have indefinite articles, though.

Finnish:

tyttö - girl ( base/subject)

tyttöä/tyttön - girl(object)*

tyttöt girls(subject)

tyttöjä/tyttöt girls(object)*

 

 

* I am looking at the girl - katson tyttöä    I see the girl - Näen tyttön  (Tyttön is also the possessive for girl,  tyttön makki -A girl's dress)  In the same way. I am looking at the girls- katson tyttöjä and  I see the girls - Näen tyttöt 

[DeepBlueSouth]

"Poproszę trochę kokainy."

from a very old English-Polish book: "A Trip to the Dentist"

[sorry if I misread the thread, this is simply the most useless phrase I remember from any language learning of my own!]

Edited December 9 by DeepBlueSouth

[exchemist]

I remember having to learn "une longue serviette éponge" at school in the 1960s, for a vocabulary test, which my parents thought hilariously pointless.  

It was only decades later, staying at a pretty rough little wayside hotel in Normandy with my French wife, that I realised the significance of this phrase for Englishmen travelling in France. The bathroom in this place provided towels that were like dishcloths: thin, small things that got wet quickly and didn't really allow you to dry yourself. My wife told me this was what towels were like in France back in the 60s.     

[Janus]

On 12/8/2024 at 9:08 PM, DeepBlueSouth said:

"Poproszę trochę kokainy."

from a very old English-Polish book: "A Trip to the Dentist"

[sorry if I misread the thread, this is simply the most useless phrase I remember from any language learning of my own!]

Duolingo teaches the phrase: Norjalainen on viikini, ja suomelainen on velho. ( The Norwegian is a viking, and the Finn is a wizard.) Now while there is a storied event that this refers to, it is not a phrase that is likely to come up in normal conversation.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, Janus said:

Duolingo teaches the phrase: Norjalainen on viikini, ja suomelainen on velho. ( The Norwegian is a viking, and the Finn is a wizard.) Now while there is a storied event that this refers to, it is not a phrase that is likely to come up in normal conversation.

As a former D&D player, I do not really see the issue here.

[swansont]

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

As a former D&D player, I do not really see the issue here.

Especially if one always tells the truth and the other always lies