Finnish cuteness

[gusl]

Well, it turns out that Spoken Finnish is somewhat different from the written language.

English: Thank you!
Written Finnish: kiitos!
Spoken Finnish: kiitti!


The spoken numbers are mercifully shorter than in writing.

English: two twenty-five
Written Finnish: kaksi kaksikymmenta viisi
Spoken Finnish: kaks kakskyt viisi


On about 5 occasions now, I had to deal with people (mostly old people) in Finnish. I'm proud of myself for managing to convey:
* "I want a cell phone under 60Euro that is compatible with DNA". (keywords: puhelin, kuusikyt euroa)
* "I am looking for Patrik from office A342".
* "Does this bus go to Viikki?" (-mene Viikkiin? -jaa, mene!)
* "Does this bus go to Central Station?" (-mene Rautatientorille? -jaa, mene!)
* "Where is Central Station?" (-missä on Rautatientori?)
* "That bill is for me!" (-minulle!)


Like Dutch and German, knowing a few words can go a surprisingly long way. Some examples:

sana - say, word
kirja - book, writing
sanakirja - dictionary
allekirjoitus - signature

tiede - knowledge, science
kone - machine
tietokone - computer
puisto - park
tiedepuisto - science park
nörti - computer professional (pronounced "nerty")

terveys - health
asema - station
terveysasema - health station

palvelu - service

talo - house
talous - economy
(remember than ekonos is Greek for "house")

Comments

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

I read recently that Finnish school kids score very highly in language skills, in fact they top the OECD PISA test tables.

One of the reasons suggested for this was the inherent logic in the language, I don't know how true this is but the article was saying that when you see a written word in Finnish you have all the information required to pronounce it correctly, unlike in English which is chock full of special rules/words/pitfalls.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

That sounds like BS. People used to say the same about Sanskrit.

Finnish has indeed a very straightforward letter->sound mapping, but so do Spanish and Italian (and I think, Greek).

The trend I've observed is that people in bilingual regions, and people whose native language has few speakers tend to have the best language skills, which makes sense: they learn out of need.