What languages do you speak?

[LoaderSaints]

Why Finnish is hard? I lack knowledge.

See this thread for more info on the difficulty of the Finnish language:
http://www.promods.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4220
I guess it sums it up pretty well.

[ZelvaCZ]

Why Finnish is hard? I lack knowledge.

Well, to start.. maybe 15 grammatical cases, big difference between "official" and spoken Finnish, very hard declension (at least compared to other European languages), very little vocabulary similar to other major languages.
I think the Finnish people from this forum can tell you more

[mbman212]

http://wikitravel.org/en/Finnish_phrasebook

There's pretty long list of phrases and how those are pronounced.

IMO the biggest reason why Finnish is so hard for people not from Finland is that we use å (that's Swedish O). ä ( a with two dots) and ö (o with two dots), especially ä and ö is in heavy use in the sentences we are saying. Also, what Zelva said, our spoken Finnish is much harder than "official" because it contains shortened words, double vowels and those kinds of things.

I bet if I translate what I said into Finnish, there won't be much people who can say everything correctly (excluding us, Finns).

And, I have to admit, even though I'm Finn, sometimes I have trouble with grammar or simple words.

[LoaderSaints]

IMO the biggest reason why Finnish is so hard for people not from Finland is that we use å (that's Swedish O).

The letter Å (lowercase: å) is not used in Finnish. Yes, it is part of our alphabet but it is not used in the Finnish language at all. The reason for this is that Finland is a bilingual country and the letter Å is used in Swedish.

[MandelSoft]

http://wikitravel.org/en/Finnish_phrasebook
IMO the biggest reason why Finnish is so hard for people not from Finland is that we use å (that's Swedish O). ä ( a with two dots) and ö (o with two dots), especially ä and ö is in heavy use in the sentences we are saying. Also, what Zelva said, our spoken Finnish is much harder than "official" because it contains shortened words, double vowels and those kinds of things.

Whåt îs sö, hård äböüt thät? I know a lot of languages that use accents. Here's a list of languages I know that use certain types of accents

Umlaut/diaeresis: German, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Albanian, Dutch*
Dot: Lithuanian, Latvian, Hungarian
Ring: Swedish
Hook: French, Romanian, Albanian
Eth, Thorn: Icelandic
Accent acute: Dutch**, French, Swedish(!)***, Spanish, Icelandic, Portuguese
Double acute: Hungarian
Accent grave: French, Portuguese
Accent circumflex: French, Romanian
Breve: Romanian
Tilde: Spanish, Portuguese
Caron/háček: Czech, Slovakian, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Lithuanian
Macron: Latvian, Lithuanian

So there are a lot of different accent marks all across Europe. I can only type half of them with my keyboard settings, but this covers all Roman and Germanic languages


* Unlike the other languages metioned, in Dutch, a diaeresis doesn't change the sound of a vowel, but enforces the phonological diaeresis phenomenon. From Wikipedia:

"The diaeresis represents the phenomenon also known as diaeresis or hiatus in which a vowel letter is not pronounced as part of a digraph or diphthong. The umlaut, in contrast, indicates a sound shift"

** Dutch only uses these for emphasis and ambiguity between certain words, like "vóórkomen" (to occur) and "voorkómen" (to prevent).
*** Mostly used at loan words

[tkk7406]

Modern Greek also has the acute accent, but ancient Greek has that, a circumflex accent (which looks different from the one used in French and Romanian), a "rough breathing" and "smooth breathing" accent (terms according to Wikipedia) and a subscript which looks like an "i".

I am not sure of the terms and names I used, I don't really know them in English...

[Nissantruck]

I have heard this phrase many times when older people in Finland say that the Finnish language is the world's only language where the written text and the spoken language are completely the same,i mean the words are the same when i speak Finnish or write in Finnish.

[ETS2-User]

Accent grave is also used in italian. So is the accent acute, but quite rarely. Spanish also has a ü

[ZelvaCZ]

Šóměbóďý wáš ťálkíňg ábóůť áččéňťš? Čžěčh háš á lóť óf ťhém
We have ě, š, č, ř, ž, ý, á, í, é, ď, ť, ň, ó, ú and ů
But it is right that our language is one of the hardest European languages. however, I don't think it is mainly because of the accents, except the Ř which is hard for foreigners to learn.

I have heard this phrase many times when older people in Finland say that the Finnish language is the world's only language where the written text and the spoken language are completely the same,i mean the words are the same when i speak Finnish or write in Finnish.

The same in Czech. And, except for Finnish S (which is something between Czech S and Š) and Czech letters which are not a part of the Finnish alphabet (and vice versa), Czech and Finnish have the same pronunciation.


And @MandelSoft, afaik Latvian is using the háček (caron) too.

[Dannu]

What finnish wikipedia tells, it is very easy to learn czech language.
Finnish S is like ÄS.