Finnish and the Scandinavian Languages
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- čas přidán 20. 08. 2024
- A quick explanation of why Finnish isn't considered a Scandinavian language, and some of the major noticeable differences.
Dr. Jackson Crawford is Instructor of Nordic Studies and Nordic Program Coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder (formerly UC Berkeley and UCLA). He is a historical linguist and an experienced teacher of Old Norse, Modern Icelandic, and Norwegian. Visit www.JacksonWCrawford.com
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Little piece of trivia: Finnish gives us the longest palindromic word known to exist: saippuakivikauppias, which means 'soap stone merchant'. In this compound word we actually have three separate words, two of which are loan words. Saippua (soap) comes from the German Seife, for the same thing, and kauppias (merchant), which also comes from a Germanic language, probably German kaufman. I have long been waiting for that phone call from a radio quiz show that will ask me "For $10,000. what is the longest palindromic word?" I am ready with the answer.
Both saippua and kauppias are much, much older loans than that! The Proto-Germanic word for soap was *saipǭ, which much closer to the Finnish form than the German one.
SOAP
Proto-Germanic: *saipǭ
Old Norse: sápa
Swedish: såpa (soft potassium soap (tvål is the modern Swedish word for body or hand wash))
Finnish: saippua
TO BUY
Proto-Germanic: *kaupōną
Old Norse: kaupa
Swedish: köpa
Finnish: kauppa
'Saippua' probably got into the language as a loan already from PGmc *saipǭ, and 'kauppa' is, likely, an Old Norse loan.
German probably has little to do with it, other than having cognate words descended from Proto-Germanic.
There is no doubt in my mind saippua and kauppias come from a Germanic origin. One source that I read said saippua was one of a handful of words of German origin that entered into Finnish some 400 years ago. Since Sweden and Finland were once one country it is more than likely they were loan words from an older form of Swedish. I think the more contemporary word for såpa is tvål. I have found etymology not to be an exact science, meaning there is a lot of speculation as to when and from where a word originates. I read more than one source that said pumpernickel was a type of bread that Napoleon proclaimed was only fit for his horse: "pan pour Nichole". A more reliable source said it actually comes from the German pumpern (to flatulate) and nickel (devil). The point Dr. Crawford was making was that Finnish has little if any connection to Indo-European languages. I'm more inclined to think it has a better connection with Japanese, since it too has no future tense for verbs and it has a question indicator similar to Finnish: puhutteko suomea? Do you speak Finnish? .... Anata wa nihongo o hanasemasu ka? Do you speak Japanese? Both Finnish -ko and Japanese -ka are question indicators that follow the verb. I've never heard anyone make a connection between Finnish and Japanese, but it certainly food for thought .... and speculation.
James Hendin Finnish and Japanese similarities are thought to be just chance and not evidence of being related.
And I am willing to accept that. The Chinese word for mother is ma, much like English and other Germanic/Romance languages, but it is thought to be just a coincidence. Ma is probably the easiest sound any infant can make, regardless of the culture, so from that it may have become, on its own, a word with meaning for the Chinese. Then again, it's all speculation. Linguists are still trying to figure out why the Zuni language of New Mexico, which is a language isolate and has no connection with any other Native American language, shares so many features with Japanese. Similarities in vocabulary being one of them. It's speculated that a boat full of Japanese landed a couple of thousand years ago on the California coast and stayed. They discovered the Zunis also share a similar molar structure with the Japanese. Then again, it's all speculation.
There are also Ingrian, Votic, Ludic, Veps and Karelian, which are closer to Finnish than Estonian. Karelian is so close to Finnish that some reckon it to be a dialect of Finnish.
By the way, Finnish has prepositions and postpositions and such forms as "talotta" (without a house) are rarely used. A Finn would rather say "ilman taloa".
In Estonian we still use the abessive :) So "taluta" (without a farm), but we can also say "ilma taluta". The case stays the same though.
What do you mean by "Karelian" though? There's a continuum between Finnish, Karelian and Veps. Languages like Ludic and Livvi are similar to Karelian (and you could call them dialects of Karelian) but they're very far from Finnish. Claiming that Karelian is a dialect of the Western Finnish standard language is not accurate.
In truth, there are the following languages:
Western Finnish (the Finnish standard is based on this)
the Eastern Finnish dialects (which are close to Karelian)
Karelian proper (the Karelian standard is based on this)
Livvi-Karelian (with it's own written standard)
Izhorian (also a Karelian dialect, spoken in Ingria. The izhorians are much older and unrelated to the Lutheran Finns in Ingria, who only immigrated in the 16th-17th century). There was actually a lot of conflict between the Izhorians (who also call themselves "karjalaizet") and the Finns, because the Izhorians were orthodox. There are also the Votes, who are more related to the Estonians and even older. The izhorians are theorised to have immigrated to Ingria in the 10th century.
Ludic (which is basically a transitional dialect between Karelian and Veps. No idea if they have a standard language)
Veps (on which the Veps standard is based on)
Yelsä Vidaravskaja, I wouldn't like to get into political matters but indeed, as far as I know, northern Karelians considered themselves Finns not so long ago. Also, I've come across on a map of the time of Tsarist Russia on the Internet where only western Finns are marked as Finns, and eastern Finns are marked as Karelians. I think that may mean that they mostly thought that even if they are somewhat different, they are very closely related anyway.
bfguy12345, if you're getting that deep into it, you could've added Kven as well.
Ingrian/Ižorian and Votic are fascinating languages. I have to self-learning books on them but they are in Russian and my Russian is basic at best. But I do like to look through them from time to time.
Thanks for the video! As a native Finn and student of the linguistic history of the Uralic and also of the Indo-European languages, I can confirm the points. Also, Finnish has some loan-words from Sanskrit (or possibly PIE?) such as "vasara" (Eng. hammer, Sanskrit "vajra"), and "kala" (Eng. fish). Additionally, a number of proto-Baltic loans such as "lammas" (Eng. lamb/sheep) from *lammaz. Loans from Old (East) Norse include "miekka" (Eng. sword, ON mjekR), "keula" (Eng. keel, ON kefla), "arka" (Eng. timid/coward, ON argR), and so on and so forth. The reputation of Finnish being a "linguistic freezer" for ancient loan-words seems deserved.
Finnish: vasara
Proto-Finnic: *vasara
Proto-Indo-Iranian: *wáĵras
Proto-Indo-European: *weǵ-
Finnish: kala
Proto-Finnic: *kala
Proto-Uralic: *kala
Finnish: lammas
Proto-Finnic: *lambas
Proto-Germanic: *lambaz (Old Norse: lamb; Swedish: lamm)
Finnish: miekka
Proto-Finnic: *meekka
Proto-Germanic: *mēkijaz (Old Norse: mækir)
Finnish: keula
Proto-Germanic: *keulaz
Proto-Indo-European: *gewlos
Finnish: arka
Proto-Finnic: *arka
Proto-Germanic: *argaz (Old Norse: argr; Swedish: arg)
Proto-Indo-European: *h₃orǵʰ-
Finnish: keihäs
Proto-Finnic: *kaihas
Proto-Germanic: *gaizaz (Old Norse: geirr)
Proto-Indo-European: *ǵʰoysós
Finnish: ahjo
Proto-Finnic: *ahjo
Proto-Germanic: *asjǭ
Finnish: juhla AND joulu
Proto-Germanic: *jehwlą (Old Norse: jól; Swedish: jul)
Finnish: ilta
Proto-Finnic: *ilta
Proto-Germanic: *kwildiz (Old Norse: kveld; Swedish: kväll)
Finnish: luoti
Proto-Germanic: *laudą (Swedish: lod)
Proto-Celtic: *loudom
Proto-Indo-European: *plowd-
Finnish: napata
Swedish: nappa
Old Norse: *hnappa
Proto-Germanic: *hnappōną
Pre-Germanic: *knobʰnéh₂-
Proto-Indo-European: *knebʰ-
Finnish: otsa
Proto-Finnic *occa
Proto-Finno-Permic: *ońća
Proto-Germanic: *anþiją (Old Norse: enni; Swedish: änne (archaic))
Proto-Indo-European: *h₂entíos
Finnish: kakku
Swedish: kaka
Old Norse: kaka
Proto-Germanic *kakǭ
Proto-Indo-European: *gag-
Indeedy...and for the Hel of it, let's add from the top of my head "keihäs" (Eng. spear), geisaz/geirr/or whatnot.
@@robinviden9148
The Proto-Uralic *kala has been compared to Proto-Indo-European *(s)kʷálos.
Which reminds me:
Finnish: valas
Proto-Finnic: *walas
Proto-germanic: *hwalaz
Proto-Indo-European: *(s)kʷálos
@@tommytowner792 Just what exactly do you feel "is" a fallacy, now?
I understand what your channel is primarily for, but you could perhaps make a video or two at some point of Finland from the "Viking Age" if you have the time: despite all the differences between Finnish and Norse (Scandinavians), Finland's people were in contact with the Norse world for obvious reasons, and some events pertaining Finland are mentioned in Norse sagas and runestones. I think a lot of people would be interested in such videos.
Agreed - I'd be interesting for sure.
I didn't say that "Finland as we know it today with its borders" existed at the time - I was refering to Finland's people, who very much existed at the time - and who had contacts with the Norse. There are more things relating to Finland in sagas and runestones than the one's you mentioned.
There were clear trade links with Sweden at the time, as shown by archaeology in both sides.
Estonians were too in contact with Norse world
Oh yeah, I'd love to know more about this. That's both of my heritages interacting, so I'm honestly very interested.
Thanks, that was interesting. I live in Hungary, and the word for crow is varjú, that is pretty close. The word lúd, possibly related to lintu, means goose, and three is három. Same features like agglutination and lack of grammatical gender, also vowel harmony, but vocab is in general really different.
The connection would be from thousands of years ago, from a hunter-gatherer/primitive animal husbandry era, more or less, so it's understandable similar words are few and far between.
When studying Finnish I noticed a few words which had been in the language for a long time, (before Sweden took over Finland) but seemed to be Indo European in origin. "Meri" reminded me of the French word "Mer," and the numbers "sata" and "tuhat" after scrambling some letters in the way typical for distantly related languages can resemble the words "cent" and "thousand." It makes me wonder if an early uralic and an early indo european group once meet.
It's likely that they interacted for a long time in terms of trade. These words have a relevance to trade so they may have been adopted to simplify interactions.
Proto-Indo-European: *móri (sea, standing water)
Proto-Germanic: *mari (sea, ocean, lake, body of water)
Old Norse: marr (sea)
Swedish: mar (shallow bay, sea (archaic))
Finnish: meri (sea)
Proto-Indo-European: *ḱm̥tóm (hundred)
Proto-Indo-Iranian: *ĉatám (hundred)
Proto-Uralic: *śata (hundred)
Finnish: sata (hundred)
Proto-Indo-European: *tuHsont- (thousand)
Proto-Germanic: *þūsundī (thousand)
Old Norse: þúsund (thousand)
Swedish: tusen (thousand)
Finnish: tuhat (thousand)
'Meri' could possibly come from Proto-Germanic *mari or from Balto-Slavic *marja-.
'Tuhat' might come from Proto-Balto-Slavic *tūˀsantis, but it's not impossible to imagine a Proto-Germanic loan.
A lot of words were borrowed from ancient Baltic languages, and Slavic. Meri and vene (boat) are known to be loans, as are most words to do with seafaring and agriculture. Such a basic word as leipä (bread) is clearly Russian. Number of unique Uralic words is quite small. Some of the oldest are veri (blood) and käsi (hand).
Hoonter of hoonters "Meri", "sata" and "tuhat" are indeed loanwords from one form of Indo-European or the other.
One thing I found interesting when I lived in Finland is that most of the days of the week are obviously borrowed from the Germanic languages, such as maanantai, tiistai, keskiviikko (see German Mittwoch) and torstai, whereas the months of the year appear to be entirely Finnish. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that in pre-Christian times it was of no importance what the day was, but that the months had a lot to do with the right time to plant and harvest crops. Do you think my theory is right?
As a Finn it would be interesting to hear about any mentions of the peoples living in in Finland along with Vikings and also of any sagas that tell about them
Onni Koivula
I think it's hard to really point out Finns since the Sami people were also called finns back then. I know there are mentions of "finns" in some historical documents, even the roman historian Tacitus mentions finns in the year 98 along with the Swedes, but it's hard to know if he meant the sami or the actual Finns in Finland or maybe even just a nomadic people in Scandinavia; The word 'finn' itself originally means 'nomad' so it wasn't bound to any nationality or specific people either.
VikingsRBloodyAwsome The Kveens could also be the subject of a video. I know that some sagas mention them. They are a Finnish speaking minority in Norway
I have yet to find any concrete information about how the finns lived pre-sweden so it could be cool to hear about that too if there are any records
Eno on historian professori yliopistossa ja kertoi että suomalaiset ihan totaalisesti tappoivat lähes kaikki viikingit kun ekan kerran rantautuivat, muutamat jättivät eloon kertomaan että jumalauta tänne ei kannata tulla tappelee. Sen jälkeen ihan kiltisti tulivat tekee kauppaa ja käyttivät suomalaisia parhaina palkkasotilaina sodissaan ja valloituksissaan.
[Get] out of my house -> Ut ur mitt hus
[Made] out of my house -> utav mitt hus.
{Swedish}
Uten et hus (Bokmål)
Utan eit hus (Nynorsk)
I was just going to make that same correction.
Swedish language has adopted some words from Finnish, like "poika" (boy) which is "pojke" in Swedish language.
@@sturlamolden No, "pojken" is one of the few words in the Swedish language that have roots in Finnish. There are some other (old) words like känga (kenkä) and pjäxa (pieksu). The literel source: Lars-Erik Edund: Lånord i svenskan. Or just google: lånord i svenskan från finska.
I love Sami and Finnish languages. Tolkien was a huge fan of Finnish mythology.
Hungarian baffled me when I was traveling through there. Usually I can figure out the gist of basic written words in the various European countries, but Hungarian was totally unpredictable.
Finland mentioned! To the square!
The etymological source that I read said they came from the German. To show how at least one of the words couldn't have come from the Swedish you have to look at the contemporary Swedish word for soap, which is 'tvål', which comes from the Old Swedish 'thval', which comes from the Old Norse' þváll', which comes from the Proto-Germanic 'þwahlą', which means 'bathing'. The contemporary Swedish word for 'to buy' is 'köpa', which comes from Old Norse 'kaupa' (Latin: caupō! or 'tradesman') One can see a connection here with the German word 'kaufen' (to buy). It just seemed to involve some sort of vowel shift in this case, and the letter f changes to a p.
Finland's connection to Germany probably stems from the Hanseatic League established in the 14th Century, which was a commercial network of towns for trading and buying that was set up throughout the Baltic. Though no such towns were set up in Finland it would have been along the way. Helsinki itself (originally Helsingfors) wasn't founded until the 1500's. I find it interesting that the Finnish word for city is 'kaupunki'. I'd have to do research, but would think it has a connection to Old Norse 'kaupa', since cities and towns were a place where one could buy and trade.
It's extremely interesting to me that the old Norse word for bird is fugl.
There's a 12th century English song called 'Miri it is' and they used the word fugl, but it's spelt fugheles.
Riothamus Rex
German Vogel.
English: fowl.
Your in depth videos are very much appreciated, Jackson!
Just ordered one of your books. Can't wait to finally read the poetic edda.
Thank you, it was very interesting to hear the words "ruhtinas" and "kuningas" stem from.:) I knew they were borrowed from germanic languages (which goes to reason considering Finnish history), but not the original words.
It was also the first time I hear about the possible connection between Uralic and Indo-European languages. Makes me think what I recently read in an article about Finnish ancestry. It said a lot of our DNA comes from the nomadic tribes that arrived in Europe in the prehistoric times. The main difference between Finnish and other European people (according to that article) is that about 5% of our DNA is Siberian. They're currently working on that DNA project to learn more.
Though languages and DNA can't be linked (so they say). I'm just thinking of possible historical connections. Like how much of the Finnish vocabulary on building and houses come from the proto Baltic languages, so it's likely the direction from where the houses came from. That's at least what I read a few years ago. Knowledge changes so fast with new research.
Whether Uralic and IE languages are actually related is far from certain. Personally I remain skeptical. But there are some very tantalizing similarities. Both families have first person pronouns starting with 'm', and second person pronouns starting with 't', both families mark the accusative case with 'm', both families have 'kw' for interrogative pronouns and verb conjugations seem to be more similar than you'd assume.
There's also a bunch of words that are shared between the families but most of them are probably borrowings from PIE to Uralic.
If this seems rather incidental that's because it is. If the families are ultimately related (and that's a big if) then the common ancestor is thousands of years older than PIE or Proto-Uralic each of which is probably 4000-7000 years old already so the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Uralic language would have been spoken maybe 10000-20000BC.
Well to be honest, we don't really know, what languages people spoke much over 6000 years ago. That seems to be some kind of limit, beoynd which relations between languages will become untraceable.
If language split is older than that, the differences start to became too big, and similarities too vaque. Yet it is not likely that people only started to speak 6000 years ago.
Yet I don't think either that family connection between IE and FU languages could ever be really be proven, as there most likely is not enough evidence left. It is intetesting theory and one of the strongest candidates for relations between language families. Still I don't think the case is strong enough to say they were related, though I don't think there is enough evidence to say they were not related either. It just can't be proven one way or another. Is it possible? Maybe. Can it be proven? No.
Indo-European technically used to have distinct suffixes for the ideas "in" (locative case) and "out of" and "without" (ablative case). But even the most confident reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European declension paradigms have the ablative case already syncretized with either of the oblique grammatical cases (i. e. genitive-ablative singular of non o-stem nominals vs. dative-ablative plural of all).
really interesting and informative - thank you Dr Crawford
Hyvä Jaakko Karvonen! Teet aivan *erinomaisia* videoita!!
Suomenkielikin ansaitsee hieman huomiota muinaisista mahdeista puhuttaessa. :-D Meidän esi-isämme ja esiäitimme olivat kyllä vähintään yhtä Häijyjä Äijiä ja Naisia kuin ne itä- ja länsinaapureiden viikingit, eli Rusit ja Ruotsalaiset.
Noh, Suomalaiset onkin alunperin samasta esigermaanisesta populaatiosta kuin Skandinaavitkin. Suomalaiset vain ajautuivat erilleen baltian meren taakse ennen kuin Germaaniset kansat kehittyivät nykymuotoihinsa
@@user-su6wy3bj4v nyt puhut paskaa
Thanks for the nice context. Gives better appreciation of Old Norse.
THIS is the kind of video I love.
Kiitos!
Hey I used talo + suffixes as well when I held some lectures about Klingon, to make comparisons between levels of agglutinations in various languages. Qapla'!
as a finn, he probably knows more about finnish than I do. His pronounciation and common language understanding however is not very good. Marked by the english background "th" or breathy vowel sounds, it sounds nearly like gibberish. There are no breathy vowels, vowel-consonant combos or "th" sounds in finnish. When he says "talostani" he says "thalos-tani". The rhythm is a bit off too. Sounds more like ancient greek than finnish haha.
But in his more recent video about finnish his pronounciation is much more clearer. He obviously put in the effort to learn during those years, and I commend Dr. Crawford for that. Of course it doesnt help that spoken and written finnish are quite different indeed. For example, nobody would actually say "talostani", but rather "mun talost(a)", from "minun talostani", meaning "from my house". Nothing really to do specifically with "out of my house", though right now I cant actually think of any other context from where it would be used except "get out of my house". "Ulos/poistu mun talosta" = "get out of my house"
Also nobody would say "talotta". It would be said "ilman taloa" or rather "ilman kotia" = without a home. "Hänellä ei ole kotia" or "hän on ilman kotia" (or even more commonly "hän on koditon") = he is without a house/home or he is homeless. Many of these twistings of the base words in finnish are grammatically correct, but basically never used in spoken finnish, or even written finnish such as in news articles and such. Words like "taloton" or "talotta" you'll only find in finnish novels written from 1950's or so. This applies to most grammar rules in finnish. Never used in spoken language. You've heard how finnish language has like 7000 different ways of twisting a word like "talo". From "talostamme" to "talostani" to "taloihimme" to "taloimmille" etc but theyre never actually used. To any finn they just sound ancient. Like if you actually wrote "taloihimme", a finn would think it was the start of a poem. In reality you use a prefix word to describe the meaning of the main word youre referring to. Like instead of saying "taloihimme" you'd say "meidän/meiän taloihin" = to our houses.
Its odd how he is able to leave this "th" vocalizations at the door when he is pronouncing old norse, icelandic and such but theyre present in his finnish pronounciation. Even if you said "talotta" in perfect pronounciation, it might be quite difficult for a native finn to understand what you mean because it would be such a rare expression.
Also funny how he pronounces "varis" in 4:41 like he is speaking latin. "vaa-ris". It actually sounds like latin instead of finnish. He is speaking way too slowly, the "a" is too prolonged, and the inflection is on the wrong syllables. He says "vaa-ris" instead of "vari-ss". This sounds like nitpicking, and it is, but its actually teaching me about my own language and its fascinating. Not gonna even go to the other words like "lintu" which he says as "lee-two".
5:17 HE LITERALLY DOES IT in two sentences. "Khu-nin-ghasss" and then a few words later he pronounces it "kuningaz" (or in finnish, kuningas). I dont understand whats going on. He knows how to stop using the breathy sounds but then doesnt, when actually focusing on pronounciating the actual words. Fascinating
I think it's interesting how kuningas was borrowed as if it were already in degraded form, so where you would have a word like kaupunki (city) become plural by changing nk to ng (kaupungit), kuningas already looks degraded, so you have to reverse that to get plural like changing [kuninka-] to kuningkaat.
Swedish borrowed the Finnish word for the word boy. Poika in Finnish and Pojke in Swedish. So borrowings have gone the other way too.
How inspiring.
Really enjoyed Your videos! Thank You 😊
Once I learned how to speak swedish, the other languages followed.. Have not tried learning estonian or russian, probably should.. (I'm a finn)
It looks like Russian got its word for "raven" from the Uralic languages. That word is "vorona." Also intriguingly, the artist Linda (Линда), who has a song called Vorona (Ворона), is using a name that is similar to the Uralic word for "bird" as her artist name, the examples given here being lintu and lind. She is originally form Kazakhstan, however, so I don't know whether she has any personal connection to any of those languages/ethnic heritages. Here is the song (with official video): czcams.com/video/54CkirSI-ms/video.html
They used to speak uralic in wide areas of modern northern Russia. What I've understood that dialects from that area are rich with Uralic loans and there are a lot of Uraluc place names as well. Languages they came from are gone and live in these loan words and names.
On the other hand, Ukrainian for raven -- kruk -- looks like a Germanic loanword.
The only Finnish word I know is perkele.
Finnish: perkele
Proto-Baltic: *Perkūnas
Proto-Indo-European: *Perkwunos
Robin Vidén Ahh a thunder god. Where does Ukko fit in?
It could be that Ukko and Perkele once were thought of (at least by some at some point) as one and the same. It's not unusual that deities are called by more than one name. Ukko (old man), Perkele, Tuuri, Rauni and Ilmarinen may well have been one and the same, with the cult being heavily influenced by the surrounding Baltic and Germanic cultures.
Just like Thor had his hammer Mjǫllnir, Ukko had his hammer or axe by which he struck lightning.
Robin Vidén I'd like to learn more about the Germanic vs native Uralic elements of the mythology. Fascinating stuff.
You must have heard the word "sauna" before, I imagine. "Perkele" and "sauna" are enough if you ever travel to Finland, as most Finns understand English anyway. However, sauna is like a religion to Finns, so it's better to roughly know what it means.
Your pronunciation of varis was perfect.
Fantastic information
Varys the Crow... for all you GOT conspiracy theorists out there...
Its intersting that Finnish and Swedhish does not have more words similar then they have. Finland and Sweden was basically the same country for a very long time, and in some areas in Finland there are quite a few who use Swedish as an everyday language to this day.
There are actually quite significant differences between the Swedish spoken in Sweden and in Finland.
Well there are actually a couple of thousands swedish loanwords into finnish. Some are easy to spot, others not because first they were loans from the middle ages and since then the swedish word has gone out of use and been replaced but the finnish has stuck. Secondly some letter combinatios and sounds are not used in finnish but in swedish for example words beginning with sp or st where the finns have replaced the beginning with a k or p as a hard consonant.
I’m a swede and don’t understand finnish at all but I have heard it from time to time all my life as we have finnish radio and tv programs and I come from an area with many finnish working immigrants (1960-70s) and I have always found it a fashinating and beautiful language.
Swedish speaking people in Finland also takes words from Finnish that Swedes have difficulties to understand like ämbare in Finnish Swedish and ämpäri in Finnish, hink in Swedish meaning a bucket, kiva, trevlig, nice; tarra, klistermärke, sticker; vessa, toalett, toilet. There are also some common words from Russian like kinuski which in Swedish is kolasås. Last but not least voi perkele meaning wtf is also acceptable in Swedish living in Finland.
Sinä tiedät mistä puhut, Du vet vad du talar om, Well done ..........
As a Finn I really enjoy your accent, or the lack of there of, in your Swedish. I believe there's none in your Norwegian(s) either, but I'm not in the know of Norwegian.
Is there any chanles you know of that talk about the old Finnish traditions and myths?
Good job enough
When the Wright brothers took to the air for the first time it was reported to be in a "flying machine" and that is how the word lentokone came into the Finnish language. The weird thing is that it would sound strange today to refer to a regular commercial jet as a flying machine. But the word stuck in the Finnish language so Finns do fly in flying machines still to this day. www.paperlessarchives.com/wbscrapbooks.html
The Finnish language is a germanic-influenced Uralic language, but the Finns as a people originate from the same pre-germanic Nordic populace as the Scandinavians and other Germanic people do, Finns mostly differ due to having been more isolated, as well as due to having about 5% of genetic relation to some Siberian peoples. The General consensus is that the Finnish language arrived to Finland from the east, but the Finnish people arrived there from the southwest. It's unknown why this happened the way it did, and it'll probably remain a mystery.
On paper the Finnish language seems very foreign to Germanic language speakers, but in practice people actually speak and construct sentences in a more Germanic style.
For example in standard Finnish "My car" would be "Autoni". But, the way Finnish people would actually say it would be "Minun Auto", which is the same as "my car"
Finns do not descend from Europeans. Also it's much rarer to hear minun auto (which is basically the way a small child would speak) than autoni.
www.natureworldnews.com/articles/27207/20160822/finns-genetically-unique-genes-vary-significantly-europeans.htm
The article you linked above refers to a study that was originally published in the scientific journal, Nature. If you read that study carefully, it actually says that Finns are European.
The study mentions people with Finnish ancestry in the section where the authors talk about their dataset and how they grouped all the individuals in the dataset according to their geographic ancestry:
"We further separated Europeans into individuals of Finnish and non-Finnish ancestry given the enrichment of this bottlenecked population; the term European hereafter refers to non-Finnish European individuals."
The authors never say that Finns do not descend from Europeans. On the contrary, they say that Finns are European, but they divide Europeans into two groups with Finnish and non-Finnish ancestry.
Finns have only been influenced, but in their Cultural, linguistic and partly genetic origin they are Uralic.
Love your work Jackson. Off topic, but in your opinion, which scandinavian language would you consider the easiest for a native English speaker to learn? Also, is Icelandic the most difficult? (I love the sound of it so much but I've heard that it's very difficult, with words having MANY variations)
I would say Swedish, with Norwegian close behind, and Danish much further behind after that because of its complicated phonetics.
I would say norwegian because it dates back to old west Norse which had closer contact with the Anglo Saxons, meaning that the vocabulary would be more similar. Also, the phonetics in Norwegian is closer to English as Swedish has weird sounds like “sj” (closest to English’s h but not quite) voiceless postalveolar-velar fricative. Going forward is one’s going to learn other Scandinavian languages, it is widely agreed upon that Norwegian stand in the middle between Dan and Swe
Might I suggest learning Danish from an Icelander or a Faroe Islander? It's still Danish, but it's easier to pronounce with their accents. Danish grammar is easier than either Swedish or Norwegian, but Danes sound like they have hot potatoes in their mouths.
Norwegian and Swedish are about the same. Danish has much more difficult pronunciation than the other two though. Those are all some of the easiest languages there are for native English speakers.
Icelandic is definitely much more difficult. You can look at Dr. Crawford's Old Norse grammar videos on this channel and get a feel for why, keeping in mind that almost all of it applies equally to modern Icelandic. The short of it is that Icelandic has 4 wildly irregular cases with 14 declension patterns and dozens of exceptions, 3 genders, conjugates verbs for person, number, tense, mood, etc. According to Crawford in another video it's probably comparable to Ancient Greek in difficulty, being more difficult than Latin but easier than Sanskrit. Icelandic also has some pronunciation eccentricities that can be problematic for English speakers, notably the voiceless nasals and liquids.
Faroese is similar to Icelandic with even more quirky pronunciation but with slightly simpler grammar - having lost the subjunctive, all but reduced the genitive to a fossil and simplified much of the morphology. In some sense it can be considered the middle ground between the mainland languages which have lost almost all the morphology of Old Norse and Icelandic which famously has preserved it barely changed at all.
Norwegian and/or Swedish for sure! (As many others here have already suggested). I started picking up the basics of Norwegian within minutes of studying. Haven't committed to fully learning it, but the basics are permanently engrained in my brain, that I can understand snippets of it without even forcing myself to try. But practice one language at a time because you may confuse the two if trying to learn both in the beginning lol. (I'm just seeing your comment over a year later lol; maybe you've already begun studying a language).
Very enjoyable and interesting. In modern Norwegian we don't pronounce the 'g' in 'fugl', so it would sound like 'ful'. Although in some dialects it would be pronounced 'foggel', or 'fuggel'. It's nitpicking though :)
I believe that is generally an eastern dialect thing? And besides, what makes the dialects that say it like that _not_ modern Norwegian.
You can say: fugl, ful, fuggel, fauggel, fauel, etc.
Oslo and upper-class Bergen isn’t all of Norway, and the way of speech there is definitely too danish-influenced to be correctly called modern norwegian.
Fulmar?
wouldn't the cognate word in English for "fågel" be fowl as in waterfowl rather than bird? just a thought doctor
ulos talostani, Ulos=out=ut. Good video!
Well done! 🌞 N
A small correction for the swedish counting words for "one, two, three", should be "ETT, två, tre".
I think that differs in different dialects? I don't think it's weird to count "en, två, tre" in Swedish.
Yeah that's it. :) Thanks.
Well...no. There are some grammatical reasons like: "one/a stone" is "en sten", or "one/a house" is "ett hus". The word for the number "one" is "ett". I don't believe that is dialectical. The most common form when counting in swedish is "ett, två, tre", and the use of "en" in some dialects is an exception.
'Ett, två, tre' or 'en, två, tre' - doesn't really matter - but it's 'ett + ett = två'.
Off the top of your head, do you happen to know good resources for finnish language? Anything. Learning, looking thing up, reading, certain sites, etc.
Memrise has some vocabulary decks for Finnish.
Thank you
Spending some time at Salolampi Villiage at an Adult Intensive Immersion week. It's part of Concordia Language Village/Concordia University. The language Villages are located in Bemidji MN
Others are more based on finnish language, becous its finno(finnish) ugric tree. And scandinavians have some finnish words like poika.. basic finnish words are from stone age and that kuningaz thing can be other way. And if you want to see how finns dressed over 2000 years ago search youtube "ancient finnish costumes" you have to know that germanic people want to have all history to them self.
Perkele!
What are the relationships between the Uralic and other European peoples? Are there traces in their DNA that show where they migrated from?
Well we know that the Hungarians came from central Asia, but Finnish origins are still debated. Likely from the east though.
That's a huge question, and genetic groups are not necessarily equivalent with linguistic groups. Linguistically, the origin of the Uralic languages lies in or around the Ural mountains (yes, really!), while the Indo-European origin was probably north of the Caucasus. Not that far apart on a world map, but 5000 years ago travel was a lot slower, so it's rather far apart.
I don't know a lot about haplogroups, the closest thing we have to mapping migrations genetically, but the Finns, Sami and Estonians are clearly distinct from their European neighbours such as the Scandinavians, Russians and Baltic peoples. Most of Europe is relatively closely related, which is probably due to Indo-European migrations, since the maps largely match.
The Hungarians don't seem as distinct, which probably indicates more intermixing between the Uralic people who brought the ancestor of modern Hungarian to the area and the local inhabitants.
Ultimately, all modern humans are rather closely related, as a species we have relatively little genetic variance. That means that there is definitely a common origin for the Uralic and Indo-European peoples, and genetically a fairly recent one.
The question of whether the languages are related is addressed by Dr Crawford in the video, and there are hypotheses that all human languages are related, but it's very difficult to prove. Personally I think it's likely, as once the capacity for complex language was there, a language would naturally develop, and once the language is there, it's not likely to disappear. For languages to be unrelated, at least two groups would have had to develop language separately.
Later relations between Uralic and Indo-European groups is too wide a topic for a YT comment, but suffice to say there's been a lot of contact, which tends to happen when people live as close to each other as the Uralic and Indo-European groups do in Europe.
Thanks so I wonder if their language is related to Chinese/Mongolian at all?
Thanks I was thinking that maybe they came from a more isolated group of ancestors from further east maybe similar to Tibetans or Chinese that have slight variations.
Language relations are tricky, because even if two languages are related, the further they evolve separately, the less like each other they became. There is a point where the similarities are indistinguishable from the random similarities you expect in unrelated languages, or similarities that occur due to contact between unrelated languages. Lack of written records that document language evolution makes things more difficult, as is the case with most Uralic languages until recently.
The Uralic languages are almost certainly related to other groups in some way, but nothing's been substantiated (yet). A link to the Mongolic languages (as part of the proposed Altaic language family) has been suggested, but it's generally discredited nowadays. There are similarities, but they're now more commonly attributed to contact rather than actually being related. The same applies for the similarities between the Turkic and Mongolic languages, which were proposed as parts of this Altaic language family. The Turkic and Mongolic languages have long co-existed as major languages of the peoples of the steppes, which naturally leads to them influencing each other, particularly as steppe nomads with a strong horse culture are more mobile than most other groups.
Benis
How are Uralic verbs arranged? This is what the professor said, but I wish to know more.
Pokephosgene Well we dont atleast have anything like the strong verb/ weak verb distinction that Germanic languages have.
Do you mean like the word order in a sentence?
Can be interesting, but I meant more about things like tenses, existence of modal verbs, reflexive verbs...
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_verb_conjugation -
Dropping pronouns is normal in Slavic languages too. Finnish verb endings seem somewhat Indo-European to me, but the main past tense is not a compound one like in most IE languages- it just consists of one word. Although there are preterite/aorist tenses that are formed by just adding suffixes to a root- no participle.
Scandinavian? i never get this. Fennoscandian Peninsula is the geographical peninsula comprising the Scandinavian and Kola Peninsulas, mainland Finland, and Karelia. Romans named Finnish tribes as northern barbarians, before viking age. Room for scandinavian tribes were small as Finnish tribes ruled whole northern europe except southern scandianvian.
I'm sorry but I just love Finnish so much more than the Scandinavian languages, especially Danish, which I find just horrendous
Janco van der Westhuizen Are you Dutch?
Danish sounds like a dog choking on plastic
Rudde nee, Afrikaans. But you were close
Hey finnish firends out there! I just wanted to ask how much you understand swedish. And also swedish friends, how much you understand finnish? Thanks for your answers in advance.
Hello from Finland! I only understand Swedish words little bit, because i have a grandmother who is Finnish/swedish and talks sometimes in swedish on the phone with half-sisters who are living in Sweden.
@@yanzaloon4246 thanks! And if your grandmother would not speak swedish, then you wouldn't understand anything, right?
@@danielvalamilyen9975 yes ^_^
In Finland we all learn at least some Swedish at school. My mother's dialect loans a lot from Swedish, so I suppose even without the school would have understood some. Also we lived in a strongly bilingual area, but quite many Swedish speaking kids spoke Finnish well, so we didn't have to. I knew some of these kids, although we went to different schools. The younger one is, less one cares.
zero percent both
isn't it ut ur mitt hus, or ut fra mitt hus?
No, osaatko lukea tämän ? . Kan du läsa detta jag skriver ? ...........
Mämmi. Sauna. Fingols. Beware, europeans, we will come again.
Finnish does not have a translation to "non-binary". Let that sink in.
Your Estonian pronunciation is better than Finnish haha
All finnish people can speak estonian language... when they're drunk
Aleksi yep agre
And when they're really - really drunk, the language can turn to Norwegian!
Finland is the adopted sibling, but we still love them
Uralic languagess were spoken in Scandinavia before Germanic languages.
Maybe. History doesn't tell exactly where the language speakers were situated and when. We can only make educated quesses
Sami speakers were most likely here first, but when did Finnic tribes cross the Bay of Finland, we don't exactly know. I wish we would.
Educated quesses situate germanic people to the southern Scandinavia already during the bronze age. Some claim that Fennic people were then still in modern Estonia. But as I said, this is an educated quess, as we cannot travel to the past and oral labguages don't exactly leave concrete remains behind them.
Adopted? We arent a part of your goddamn family in the first place 🗿🗿
"Talostani" sounds like it could be a Western Asian language and nationality.
But even if Uralic and IE turned out to be related, it still wouldn't mean that Finnish and Scandinavian are related the way people often assume them to be.
First