How Hard is it to Learn Finnish?

I know 3 international languages and 3 programming languages, but learning Finnish is proving to be the most challenging. In this article, I will explain why.

According to classification by the US State Department, the Finnish language falls into the 3 level of difficulty out of 4. Only Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese are considered more difficult.

The Main Difficulty of the Language

The main difficulty of the Finnish language lies in its endings and cases. You may have heard that it's challenging, but you can't imagine how much. As a programmer, I feel like I have to go through so many if-else scenarios before I can pronounce each word.

Let's Say a Phrase in Finnish

Let's take a simple phrase: Today, I plan to buy green apples. (It's not a special phrase, I just wanted to buy green apples 5 minutes ago)

• - Today = Tänään
• - I = minä

Tänään minä …

To plan = aikoa First stop. The verb: aikoa.

To understand its ending, you need to remember what type it is, because each type changes according to its own rules. How many types are there? There are 5 main ones. Each type changes according to its own rules, types have their exceptions, and each type has its own bases.

Illustration: 2 first verb types

Tänään minä aion …

Two verbs in a row. Does the previous verb aikoa require any control? We remember in our head all the verbs that require a special case after them... it seems aikoa does not belong to them. Then we're lucky, we leave ostaa in the infinitive. Otherwise, we would have to decline it, and again apply k-p-t, and remember that the combination st - is an exception and does not change at all.

Tänään minä aion ostaa ...

But in what case should we put it? Oh, right, all adjectives go in the same case as the noun. We have "green apples". Let's think, there are 8 main cases and they all form differently. First of all, we remember whether the verb ostaa requires a case. No, it doesn't. Good. Since I'm not talking about any specific apples, but "in general", some green apples, then I need to use the partitive case.

But wait! We have a plural, which means I also need to make the base of the plural. How many types do we have from which different bases are formed? 8. We list all 8 rules in our head. The rule we need sounds like this: "To make the base of the plural, first form the base of the singular, if there are 2 vowels at the end, then we remove the second vowel, put the last one in its place and add the letter i. Example "väsynyt, base sing. Väsynee-, base pl. Väsynei-" Is that all? No, not all. We remember that if the word in the nominative ends with -ea, eo, then they are not considered 2 vowels... why? Let's leave this question for a separate book. So what should we do? Form the plural from the last letter. We have it "ä", it needs to be replaced with "i". We get the base -vihrei. Is that all? No, we still need to add the ending of the partitive. By the way, we're lucky, there are only 3 of them. We need ta. We get vihreitä. Is that all? No, we forgot to check k-p-t. But it seems to be not here. Good. Great, we said "I want to buy green".

"Tänään minä aion ostaa vihreitä …"

Apple = omena. We've already decided that it's a partitive of the plural, so we just remember how it's formed: For words ending in a, we change a to i, BUT if it's a long noun ending in "la" / "na" / "ra", then "a" changes to "oi". Omenoi-. Is there a k-p-t? It seems not. Then all that's left is to add the ending of the partitive -ta.

"Tänään minä aion ostaa vihreitä omenoita"

Congratulations! We said a simple and banal phrase in Finnish. It took me 2 years of studying the language to say it correctly. Yes, exactly 2 years, because in the Finnish textbook for foreigners Suomen Mestari, the plural is only covered at the end of the second part.

Oh, yes! We haven't tried to say something in the past tense yet and haven't tried to say "Go somewhere", because the case "Mihin"- Where, is formed according to its own laws in each type of word and in each time.

Conclusion: Is Finnish a difficult language - very. It is difficult with its cases, which change the word beyond recognition. You can learn a word, but not recognize it in the text (for example, the exam koe, at the exam = kokeessa, at the entrance exam valintakokeessa).

Pleasant Features of the Finnish Language

It doesn't have a future tense. And for everyday communication, you will need only three tenses.

Everything is read as it is written. There are no hidden rules, some features, as in our example "aion", but in general, I rarely encountered difficulties in reading.

Learning Finnish: A Comprehensive Guide

Learning a new language is always a challenge, but learning Finnish can seem particularly daunting. However, with the right learning method and resources, you can make the process more manageable and enjoyable.