Swedes and Finns: What're your opinions on your countries?

[slashvanyoung]

Learning Swedish is most definitely easier than learning Finnish for a native English speaker because both languages are Germanic (a subdivision of Indo-European languages) while Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language (a subdivision of Uralic languages) and therefore TOTALLY different.

People from Estonia or Hungary should have it easier at learning Finnish, in theory.

Being that Swedish and Finnish aren't even related it makes even less sense making learning Swedish mandatory for Finnish people.

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Archibald Bartholomew's Bed, holy shit And yeah, Swedish seems WAY easier than Finnish, the latter scares the crap out of me

 

[colynomial]

Learning Swedish is most definitely easier than learning Finnish for a native English speaker because both languages are Germanic (a subdivision of Indo-European languages) while Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language (a subdivision of Uralic languages) and therefore TOTALLY different.

Yea that's what I was thinking too. As a Canadian we were forced to learn French in school (although most of the time was spent goofing off) but then a lot of people I knew would switch to German in highschool and say it was much easier because the words share a lot of the same roots. For instance, in English the word "good" translates to (correct me if I'm wrong) "gut" which at least sounds similar, while in French it's "bien" or "bon" which have basically no resemblence to the word "good".

 

[colynomial]

Id say that Swedish and English is kind of similar when it comes to how you build your sentences.
But apart from that they are very different.

And most Swedes i know have pretty heavy Swedish accents when they speak English.
Dei arr touking lejk dis ju nov(They are talking like this you know.).. i my self have a pretty bad accent at the moment, all because my f-ing teacher that forced me to learn "proper British accent", when i already had a flawless Texas accent; A family from Texas moved in next door to me, and their kid didnt speak a word in Swedish, so when we played together i had to learn English, as such, i got their accent.. but then that f*cking teacher had to ruin it, because apparently American English isnt nice enough, you have to speak like a tea-loving hobosexual.

Haha- well as a Canadian I find the Southern American accent kind of cute... on girls. Not sure if that helps you much though, haha.

I guess the only Swedes I've heard speak are either professional hockey players in the NHL or internationally touring musicians so maybe that's an unfair representation of the accent since most of these guys have a lot of exposure to English.

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Yea that's what I was thinking too. As a Canadian we were forced to learn French in school (although most of the time was spent goofing off) but then a lot of people I knew would switch to German in highschool and say it was much easier because the words share a lot of the same roots. For instance, in English the word "good" translates to (correct me if I'm wrong) "gut" which at least sounds similar, while in French it's "bien" or "bon" which have basically no resemblence to the word "good".

As someone who also studied French for awhile and then moved on to German, I will totally agree with this, though honestly the bigger reason I find German so much easier is the pronunciation; the way French is so nasal and you have to sorta gargle your "r's" drives me insane and makes my throat hurt arrrggghhhh

 

[JBroll]

'Texas accent' is about as specific as 'British accent'... do you mean 'country yokel' to 'Received Pronunciation', 'Austin hipster' to 'East End'...?

Jeff

 

[Petrocker]

I think someone's posted this on here before but it's a fun watch!

 

[slashvanyoung]

Yea that's what I was thinking too. As a Canadian we were forced to learn French in school (although most of the time was spent goofing off) but then a lot of people I knew would switch to German in highschool and say it was much easier because the words share a lot of the same roots. For instance, in English the word "good" translates to (correct me if I'm wrong) "gut" which at least sounds similar, while in French it's "bien" or "bon" which have basically no resemblence to the word "good".

As someone who also studied French for awhile and then moved on to German, I will totally agree with this, though honestly the bigger reason I find German so much easier is the pronunciation; the way French is so nasal and you have to sorta gargle your "r's" drives me insane and makes my throat hurt arrrggghhhh

This goes also in conjunction with the roots of the languages: English and German (o rly?) are Germanic, while French is an Italic language.

But French will still be easier as Finnish, as Germanic and Italic languages are related (both Indo-European).

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Hahahaha, that vid was great (I'm definitely gonna remember "It's not the fart that kills, it's the smell" )

 

[colynomial]

Hahahaha that video was hilarious. Marcus did you learn French/German at school or just on your own time? It's funny because they force-fed us French from kindergarten (German word, since we're on the topic) right through highschool here in Canada and the yet vast majority of non-Quebecors couldn't order a slice of pizza in Montreal to save their life (myself included). I guess it just goes to show that learning and doing are two completely different things.

I remember reading somewhere on teh interwebz that Norwegian and Swedish are mutally itelligible. Is this true? If I learned how to speak some Swedish could I speak to a Norwegian and have them roughly understand me?

 

[JBroll]

I had French as an option at my first high school, and recently started brushing up on reading on it (since I need to know several books written in it) with nothing apart from basic verb conjugation, a few nouns, a few prepositions, and guesswork. I could probably order pizza, but not much more...

Jeff

 

[colynomial]

Don't want to hijack the thread with Canadian BS but this is how were we "taught" the French language in English speaking Canada. Nothing like talking pineapples and dancing skeletons to engage the minds of ADD adolescents.

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Dude, I just watched that entire thing, it was strangely mesmerizing, especially "les ananas" And yeah, I took French all through middle school and Jr. high (but I barely remember any of it, though I can count at least ), and then German in high school, when I finally had a choice!

 

[Notuern]

'Texas accent' is about as specific as 'British accent'... do you mean 'country yokel' to 'Received Pronunciation', 'Austin hipster' to 'East End'...?

Jeff

I honestly dont know.. kind of hard to keep track of American accents when you dont live there.
But it definitely wasnt "country yokel", a quick youtube search make me suspect that it would be the "Austin hipster"(Come to think of it, i think they came from Austin.).

 

[John_C]

I'm pretty certain i'm gonna start learning Russian next year
I did really well learning french up until i was 16, can't remember much now but it comes back in a few days if i'm in France

 

[JBroll]

Be careful with that... it isn't too bad after a point, but the alphabet is completely buggered. Write it all down on a notecard and stick it to your mirror, and be used to it (transliterations and pronunciations) by the time you actually want to handle vocabulary and grammar lessons...

Jeff

 

[iekobrid]

Russian or Austin ?

 

[ze kink]

Definitely not as hard as finnish. It's the weirdest language ever, plus it sounds like japanese or something (what I've heard) not to mention finnish people never use proper finnish when they're talking, ever!

Finnish is indeed quite difficult, but IIRC Estonian is even more difficult to learn as a foreign language.

It's true that Finnish sounds like Japanese, both are phonemic languages. Well, almost, there's some exceptions like "tulepa tänne" (come here) which is pronounced as "tulePPa tänne". There's more in Japanese (and some depend on the dialect), but my knowledge of it is still kind of limited so I'll refrain from trying to explain and almost certainly failing

By the way, many people who learn Finnish say that the spoken language version of Finnish is actually easier. Though the "slangi" we use here is quite a lot different than any "correct" Finnish, as is the Rauma dialect.

 

[Notuern]

Definitely not as hard as finnish. It's the weirdest language ever, plus it sounds like japanese or something (what I've heard) not to mention finnish people never use proper finnish when they're talking, ever!

Actually, my dad got stuck at this Japanese tv-show, because he heard several words that where almost the same in Finnish and Japanese.
Cant remember any at the moment though.