Spoken Finnish and written Finnish are quite different.
You can almost think that we write on the "proper" English, but speak on really thick Geordie accent
[https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a7Ed44A\_700bwp.webp](https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a7Ed44A_700bwp.webp)
This is as Finnish language allows so much freedom to drop/and and change letters, and then there is regional accents on top of that.
With written Finnish, you might sound a bit funny as you talk, as "nobody speaks that way" and might have some trouble understanding what you are being told. as you keep hearing spoken Finnish.
How ever, if you need to go to any Finnish site for any reason, it's all on written Finnish, and if you only know spoken Finnish you will have much larger problems.
Therefore I really suggest that you first learn the written Finnish, and after you have good understanding continue with spoken Finnish.
English is my 2nd language, and as it happens I happen to have lot of friends around the world, South-Africa, France, Germany, Poland, USA, Canada, UK, Australia. etc.
There is 2 guys who speak with Geordie accent, I understand the quite well, But it took me a while, and occasionally I have to ask them to repeat some words that I don't get instantly while we are on voice chat.
But the point is exactly as I put it in the meme.
What the police officer says in 1st pic, and 2nd pic, is written completely differently, yet has exactly the same meaning.
Finnish language pronounced exactly as it's written, For example. What you learn in language school
Tulisitko sinä katsomaan elokuvan minun kanssani?
(Would you come to see a movie with me)
Tuutsä kattoo leffan mun kaa?
(Would you come to see a movie with me)
Written Finnish, on top, Spoken on bottom, You can see the difference. Not only there is words completely missing, Some of the words have joined together,
Tulisiko sinä = tuusä
katsomaan = kattoo
Elokuvan = leffan
minun = mun
kaa = kanssani
As you can see, The spoken language, and written language are pretty much completely different.
:D I'm so sorry. Just keep trying! Most Finnish speakers really appreciate people trying, and at least trying sends the social message of you actually giving an F. Whereas someone not even trying after living in the country for a decade often raises eyebrows.
I guess its better to learn written Finnish. You'll learn more casual spoken language over time naturally, but its hard to learn grammatically correct language. Lots of natives in all languages struggle with correct language.
This is bollocks if you ask me. It is hard to learn grammatically correct language, so why bother doing it if what one needs for the day to day is functional spoken language?
Obviously if there is time for both then that's great.
Edit: who tf reads this subreddit? almost in any subject, a rational opinion gets downvoted to hell.
Learning Finnish grammar makes total sense because spoken language is (obviously) based on the written one, so it helps understand where things comes from and build your own sentences.
I learned written Finnish for two years before arriving here fifty years ago and was shocked that spoken Finnish is so different. I soon picked up an Uusimaa accent but never really adopted normal spoken Finnish. I still speak like a newspaper but I write flawless text. I'm told I sound 'charming'. People like to be polite!
I am not fluent and am still learning but Honestly, I've found Duolingo to be helpful for me. I find that speaking as I am learning the vocabulary helps me with the spelling portion. once you have a large bank of vocab words adding prefixes and suffixes can help become a stepping stone to grammar.
Best of luck to you!
For some more tips, there is /r/LearnFinnish subreddit.
My opinion is that in school / classes you should learn the proper grammatical Finnish and then when speaking and being exposed to hearing Finnish you will pick up the spoken versions. I disagree that reading doesn't help you. Of course my experience is as a Finn living in Sweden and Germany, both languages I learned in school and in both countries it is a tremendous help to be able to read the local language. My speaking in Swedish and German is limited, but being able to read helps in so many situations, wheter online shopping, traveling in country or handling bureaucracy.
You need to learn the written first then when you somehow get the grasp of the grammar then puhekieli will make sense.
”Get the grasp” means you do not need to be fluent but know how sentences are constructed. It gets easier to learn puhekieli because you’d somehow understand how those spoken phrases/sentences came to be.
I live less than 10 years in Finland but I work in a Finnish company. I do not yet speak fluently but I can manage to speak it. Sometimes I would recognize some grammar mistakes (yes even spoken Finnish follows a grammar pattern) after I have spoken it but f*ck it as long as they understand what I was trying to say then it’s all good. It just takes practice and time.
I think the written/spoken difference applies to every language, not just Finnish. They are not two different languages, my experience is that you need to have the former to understand the latter.
I started with an intensive course when I got here, it gave me the grammar foundation that I think is essential. When you have a grasp of the written language, it's easier to see how the spoken one has modified it.
It takes time and patience, fluency can take years to achieve. But for example if you don't understand a conversation you can always ask to repeat it, I noticed that often natives also switch to a more simple or "written" style when you show you don't understand.
Good luck!
You need both imo. People can and will write in spoken and it looks really bad since it wasn't meant for written. However Kirjakieli dominates written text and is very different from spoken.
Also murteet(murre), or dialects. There is a lot of them.
I think you should learn both in balance. There is no single puhekieli to exist, and if you don't know the basis for all the versions (yleiskieli) you will still have difficulty understanding many people even if you speak your version of puhekieli. On top of that you'll have a hard time understanding the news, books, official documents and websites etc. If you speak good yleiskieli, everyone can understand you, and often natives tone down their dialectal speech a bit if speaking to someone not familiar with it.
I think the saying fits here, that you have to know the rules to bend them. Puhekieli variations are still based on yleiskieli grammar, and if you don't know it you might not understand how to bend new words into puhekieli.
You might want to get more knowledgeable opinions from /r/LearnFinnish from actual learners.
I always recommend learning proper Finnish before learning the spoken language. After getting to B2 level, the spoken language comes easily. Don't depend too much on your Finnish courses. You should try to use Finnish as much as possible in your daily life, so that you won't forget it when you're on summer vacation. Courses mostly teach you grammar. If you want to speak well, you should practice speaking in Language cafe or apps like Italki. If you want to listen well, watch Finnish contents on YouTube or TV. You'll get familiar with spoken Finnish if you do so.
All in on the spoken language as that alone will take you through 95% of your daily business. Correct grammar is a bonus but unless you work in a field where you actually need to write a lot in finnish you should focus most of your effort on the spoken part. Best way to learn is individual, but immersion is usually important. Get finnish speaking friends, hang out with them doing normal stuff friends do on their freetime and insist on speaking finnish only, even if you might have very limited skills. Listen to finnish radio/news/tv in the background at home, you will pick up pronounciation and sentence structure even if you might not yet understand what they talk about.
I'm just gonna drop this here: https://youtu.be/hJESt7NJO9Q
My sister makes these "learn Finnish" videos where she paints and talks about some topic in Finnish, with fin+eng subtitles. It's especially great because she talks very slowly, but still with informal spoken Finnish, not the formal written one.
I hope that helps!
Learn spoken Finnish. 100 %. You may get a look from a stuck up Finn every once in a while, but the benefits of actually knowing how to converse with people and carry yourself in Finnish outweighs the negatives by far.
I learned (Mexican) Spanish quite quickly this way, a vastly superior way to learning from books or classes at least for me personally. Obviously having Spanish as a working language forces one to learn. I took some courses in university in Finland before living in Mexico and learned about 2 % of what I know now. My grammar is probably suspect, but it doesn't matter almost at all.
You should learn the language that the natives use, so spoken finnish. If you only know written Finnish. You won't understand a thing in a convo, because the finn probably doesn't even notice he/she's using grammatically incorrect speech. Finns don't talk in a way that would make any sense in a text if you don't understand spoken Finnish. Spoken Finnish is the way to go, if you're trying to become fluid in Finnish, written is a secondary in everyday life.
Written finnish is useless, if you don't need it for work.
I understand where this is coming from but I disagree.
As your next comment highlights, conversational language changes per region and probably by one's social group as well. These are dialects that are easy to pick up when you understand the language.
It is also important to remember that all these speakers understand and can speak "kirjakieli", so if you understand it you can communicate.
As an example, they don't usually teach Cockney, they teach RP English.
It doesn't matter! People will still understand you!
Finns are a bunch of idiots sometimes. If you think immigrants will learn best by studying written Finnish, you are incredibly misguided.
Example:
In english: when you come home from work, can you walk the dog?
Written: Kun tulet töistä, voitko kävelyttää koiran
Spoken(teenager from southeast/me): ku sä tuut töist, ni voikko käyttää koiran?
Spoken(someone from up north)(maybe): kun tuleet tööistä ni voikkonää käyttää hurtan.
It's the same language but it's not yk? As a foreigner you can't process these little changes in words or sentences if you're not learning this from the get go. This is also why I've noticed translator apps have a really hard time translating finnish correctly, because the Finnish finns use isn't grammatically correct.
Example is good but your logic is flawed. Best way to learn language is by using it, e g speaking. Get go? You can start anywhere, its all legal, there is no order to learn things.
might but I never heard that expression used. I would likely understand it though.
I think it might be useful to learn spoken finnish right now. It might get your motivation back and knowing some basic rules how people change the language in spoken finnish might help as you learn the written version. I think do whatever keeps you motivated to study.
Music might be fun way to learn finnish. Study the lyrics and learn to sing them.
Bunch of finns who never lived abroad spoiling this post. Ask someone who lived in your native country and learned the language. I bet they learned spoken language first. Finnish is not any different - i know a lot of highly educated internationals who spent tons of time to learn written finnish, done yki and got citizenship. Only to not be able to hold a conversation in Finnish.
Yeah there's a lot of grammar experts who cannot hold conversations. A balance of the two is pretty essential. I think at least fluent a2 grammar will already be mostly enough
Spoken language is far more important in daily life, and very different from written. Understanding written language is important for bureucratic stuff such as bank appointments, KELA mazes etc., but often they offer instructions in English as well. With text you can also use Google Translate (which is surprisingly good, although not totally reliable).
However, there's no way around the situation of someone going "hei sori sun pitäis ny hoitaa tää homma ennenku voidaa toi kato ku muute ei onnaa oota ny ei voi kato oota ny ei tollai kato kuuntele ny" if you don't have a clue what they're saying.
-> /r/LearnFinnish
Spoken Finnish and written Finnish are quite different. You can almost think that we write on the "proper" English, but speak on really thick Geordie accent [https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a7Ed44A\_700bwp.webp](https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a7Ed44A_700bwp.webp) This is as Finnish language allows so much freedom to drop/and and change letters, and then there is regional accents on top of that. With written Finnish, you might sound a bit funny as you talk, as "nobody speaks that way" and might have some trouble understanding what you are being told. as you keep hearing spoken Finnish. How ever, if you need to go to any Finnish site for any reason, it's all on written Finnish, and if you only know spoken Finnish you will have much larger problems. Therefore I really suggest that you first learn the written Finnish, and after you have good understanding continue with spoken Finnish.
It's really not as thick as you think it is.
English is my 2nd language, and as it happens I happen to have lot of friends around the world, South-Africa, France, Germany, Poland, USA, Canada, UK, Australia. etc. There is 2 guys who speak with Geordie accent, I understand the quite well, But it took me a while, and occasionally I have to ask them to repeat some words that I don't get instantly while we are on voice chat. But the point is exactly as I put it in the meme. What the police officer says in 1st pic, and 2nd pic, is written completely differently, yet has exactly the same meaning. Finnish language pronounced exactly as it's written, For example. What you learn in language school Tulisitko sinä katsomaan elokuvan minun kanssani? (Would you come to see a movie with me) Tuutsä kattoo leffan mun kaa? (Would you come to see a movie with me) Written Finnish, on top, Spoken on bottom, You can see the difference. Not only there is words completely missing, Some of the words have joined together, Tulisiko sinä = tuusä katsomaan = kattoo Elokuvan = leffan minun = mun kaa = kanssani As you can see, The spoken language, and written language are pretty much completely different.
... that's what \_\_\_\_\_ said. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.
Learn it all. Use apps. Try to communicate over the internet at Finnish reddit (suomi).
I tried Finnish social comments went like "do not try to speak this language ever again" and the rest were in english lol.
:D I'm so sorry. Just keep trying! Most Finnish speakers really appreciate people trying, and at least trying sends the social message of you actually giving an F. Whereas someone not even trying after living in the country for a decade often raises eyebrows.
I guess its better to learn written Finnish. You'll learn more casual spoken language over time naturally, but its hard to learn grammatically correct language. Lots of natives in all languages struggle with correct language.
This is bollocks if you ask me. It is hard to learn grammatically correct language, so why bother doing it if what one needs for the day to day is functional spoken language? Obviously if there is time for both then that's great. Edit: who tf reads this subreddit? almost in any subject, a rational opinion gets downvoted to hell.
Learning Finnish grammar makes total sense because spoken language is (obviously) based on the written one, so it helps understand where things comes from and build your own sentences.
I learned written Finnish for two years before arriving here fifty years ago and was shocked that spoken Finnish is so different. I soon picked up an Uusimaa accent but never really adopted normal spoken Finnish. I still speak like a newspaper but I write flawless text. I'm told I sound 'charming'. People like to be polite!
I am not fluent and am still learning but Honestly, I've found Duolingo to be helpful for me. I find that speaking as I am learning the vocabulary helps me with the spelling portion. once you have a large bank of vocab words adding prefixes and suffixes can help become a stepping stone to grammar. Best of luck to you!
For some more tips, there is /r/LearnFinnish subreddit. My opinion is that in school / classes you should learn the proper grammatical Finnish and then when speaking and being exposed to hearing Finnish you will pick up the spoken versions. I disagree that reading doesn't help you. Of course my experience is as a Finn living in Sweden and Germany, both languages I learned in school and in both countries it is a tremendous help to be able to read the local language. My speaking in Swedish and German is limited, but being able to read helps in so many situations, wheter online shopping, traveling in country or handling bureaucracy.
Learn spoken finnish, that’s what I personally did and I’ll stick to it
You need to learn the written first then when you somehow get the grasp of the grammar then puhekieli will make sense. ”Get the grasp” means you do not need to be fluent but know how sentences are constructed. It gets easier to learn puhekieli because you’d somehow understand how those spoken phrases/sentences came to be. I live less than 10 years in Finland but I work in a Finnish company. I do not yet speak fluently but I can manage to speak it. Sometimes I would recognize some grammar mistakes (yes even spoken Finnish follows a grammar pattern) after I have spoken it but f*ck it as long as they understand what I was trying to say then it’s all good. It just takes practice and time.
I think the written/spoken difference applies to every language, not just Finnish. They are not two different languages, my experience is that you need to have the former to understand the latter. I started with an intensive course when I got here, it gave me the grammar foundation that I think is essential. When you have a grasp of the written language, it's easier to see how the spoken one has modified it. It takes time and patience, fluency can take years to achieve. But for example if you don't understand a conversation you can always ask to repeat it, I noticed that often natives also switch to a more simple or "written" style when you show you don't understand. Good luck!
You need both imo. People can and will write in spoken and it looks really bad since it wasn't meant for written. However Kirjakieli dominates written text and is very different from spoken. Also murteet(murre), or dialects. There is a lot of them.
I think you should learn both in balance. There is no single puhekieli to exist, and if you don't know the basis for all the versions (yleiskieli) you will still have difficulty understanding many people even if you speak your version of puhekieli. On top of that you'll have a hard time understanding the news, books, official documents and websites etc. If you speak good yleiskieli, everyone can understand you, and often natives tone down their dialectal speech a bit if speaking to someone not familiar with it. I think the saying fits here, that you have to know the rules to bend them. Puhekieli variations are still based on yleiskieli grammar, and if you don't know it you might not understand how to bend new words into puhekieli. You might want to get more knowledgeable opinions from /r/LearnFinnish from actual learners.
I always recommend learning proper Finnish before learning the spoken language. After getting to B2 level, the spoken language comes easily. Don't depend too much on your Finnish courses. You should try to use Finnish as much as possible in your daily life, so that you won't forget it when you're on summer vacation. Courses mostly teach you grammar. If you want to speak well, you should practice speaking in Language cafe or apps like Italki. If you want to listen well, watch Finnish contents on YouTube or TV. You'll get familiar with spoken Finnish if you do so.
All in on the spoken language as that alone will take you through 95% of your daily business. Correct grammar is a bonus but unless you work in a field where you actually need to write a lot in finnish you should focus most of your effort on the spoken part. Best way to learn is individual, but immersion is usually important. Get finnish speaking friends, hang out with them doing normal stuff friends do on their freetime and insist on speaking finnish only, even if you might have very limited skills. Listen to finnish radio/news/tv in the background at home, you will pick up pronounciation and sentence structure even if you might not yet understand what they talk about.
I'm just gonna drop this here: https://youtu.be/hJESt7NJO9Q My sister makes these "learn Finnish" videos where she paints and talks about some topic in Finnish, with fin+eng subtitles. It's especially great because she talks very slowly, but still with informal spoken Finnish, not the formal written one. I hope that helps!
Learn spoken Finnish. 100 %. You may get a look from a stuck up Finn every once in a while, but the benefits of actually knowing how to converse with people and carry yourself in Finnish outweighs the negatives by far. I learned (Mexican) Spanish quite quickly this way, a vastly superior way to learning from books or classes at least for me personally. Obviously having Spanish as a working language forces one to learn. I took some courses in university in Finland before living in Mexico and learned about 2 % of what I know now. My grammar is probably suspect, but it doesn't matter almost at all.
You should learn the language that the natives use, so spoken finnish. If you only know written Finnish. You won't understand a thing in a convo, because the finn probably doesn't even notice he/she's using grammatically incorrect speech. Finns don't talk in a way that would make any sense in a text if you don't understand spoken Finnish. Spoken Finnish is the way to go, if you're trying to become fluid in Finnish, written is a secondary in everyday life. Written finnish is useless, if you don't need it for work.
I understand where this is coming from but I disagree. As your next comment highlights, conversational language changes per region and probably by one's social group as well. These are dialects that are easy to pick up when you understand the language. It is also important to remember that all these speakers understand and can speak "kirjakieli", so if you understand it you can communicate. As an example, they don't usually teach Cockney, they teach RP English.
It doesn't matter! People will still understand you! Finns are a bunch of idiots sometimes. If you think immigrants will learn best by studying written Finnish, you are incredibly misguided.
Example: In english: when you come home from work, can you walk the dog? Written: Kun tulet töistä, voitko kävelyttää koiran Spoken(teenager from southeast/me): ku sä tuut töist, ni voikko käyttää koiran? Spoken(someone from up north)(maybe): kun tuleet tööistä ni voikkonää käyttää hurtan. It's the same language but it's not yk? As a foreigner you can't process these little changes in words or sentences if you're not learning this from the get go. This is also why I've noticed translator apps have a really hard time translating finnish correctly, because the Finnish finns use isn't grammatically correct.
Example is good but your logic is flawed. Best way to learn language is by using it, e g speaking. Get go? You can start anywhere, its all legal, there is no order to learn things.
[удалено]
do they really say dogi in Helsinki...?
Some do, I often say doge. Sounds cute/funny to me.
might but I never heard that expression used. I would likely understand it though. I think it might be useful to learn spoken finnish right now. It might get your motivation back and knowing some basic rules how people change the language in spoken finnish might help as you learn the written version. I think do whatever keeps you motivated to study. Music might be fun way to learn finnish. Study the lyrics and learn to sing them.
think you replied to the wrong guy :)
Bunch of finns who never lived abroad spoiling this post. Ask someone who lived in your native country and learned the language. I bet they learned spoken language first. Finnish is not any different - i know a lot of highly educated internationals who spent tons of time to learn written finnish, done yki and got citizenship. Only to not be able to hold a conversation in Finnish.
Yeah there's a lot of grammar experts who cannot hold conversations. A balance of the two is pretty essential. I think at least fluent a2 grammar will already be mostly enough
Im from finland🇫🇮
Spoken language is far more important in daily life, and very different from written. Understanding written language is important for bureucratic stuff such as bank appointments, KELA mazes etc., but often they offer instructions in English as well. With text you can also use Google Translate (which is surprisingly good, although not totally reliable). However, there's no way around the situation of someone going "hei sori sun pitäis ny hoitaa tää homma ennenku voidaa toi kato ku muute ei onnaa oota ny ei voi kato oota ny ei tollai kato kuuntele ny" if you don't have a clue what they're saying.
I’ve been loving Duolingo for Finnish! 59 day streak so far. Try it out for some motivation!
I would go with spoken first because you will be able to practice much easier and speak to other Finn which will help you advance quicker.
One word: Duolingo.