Talk:Colloquial Finnish

The article is bad

This article is, indeed, bad. However, I'm only going to comment on the following

Onkse myyny sen talonsa? (poss. suffix present) "Has he sold his house?" This is definitely not the correct translation! Onkse myyny sen talonsa? means "Has he sold that house of his". "Onkse myyny talonsa" would be " Has he sold his house?"

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The article is horrible

Frankly, this article is horrible. There are many sections with dubious or downright misleading information. Some examples:

• It is very strange to compare Finnish sandhi (affecting final sounds) to Welsh initial mutations. What is the point of this? The phenomena are not at all similar.
• The term "paragoge" (for cases like anteeks < anteeksi) is misleading - this is just a clear-cut case of syncopation.
• "If one is forced to count fast then even shorter forms [of the numerals] are used". -- These can be used otherwise as well, they are certainly not conditioned by being forced to count fast.
• In connection with the usage of passive forms for 3pl: "...yet this is very spoken language, and should not be used in written text." -- Everything in this article is "very spoken language" - that's the topic of the article. What's the point of mentioning this here?
• "The first infinitive is mennä "to go", where consonant gradation changes -nn- into -n-, the final -ä is removed and -e- is added" -- This is just bogus. The consonant -n- does not gradate in Finnish. In mennä the stem is men- and -nä is a variant of the infinitive suffix.
• "In everyday speech, the -ko/kö suffix has the -s clitic added, becoming -kos/kös, which in turn reduces to -ks" -- This is confusing historical development with synchronic description. In spoken Finnish, the -ks is and interrogative clitic in itself.
• "Spoken language has a different grammar for the possessive suffix. For direct addresses, save for one form it is not used, so that the pronoun cannot be omitted. Even in the second-person singular, the pronoun is virtually never omitted." -- This is just wrong. E.g., in certain contexts it is necessary to use a 3rd person possessive suffix. Contrast the following pairs:

Onkse myyny sen talon? (poss. suffix omitted) "Has he sold the house?" Onkse myyny sen talonsa? (poss. suffix present) "Has he sold his house?"

People as it

- note that there is no pejorative sense in talking about people as 'it', unlike in English. [Actually there is. People just usually don't mind because using "hän" sounds overly fancy and fine to many. Finns have deep hate toward nobility perhaps from the times of Swedish oppression.]:

This is a ridiculous claim. Also Swedish language is famous for its informality. And there were nobles in Sweden-Finland of Finnish origin in the Middle Ages, so that refutes your theory, too. Informality isn't hate towards fineness. It is a different habit, a different culture. Do you order a drink by saying "Could it be possible to have..."? No. But it would be very parochial to describe people of such culture as snobs. Discussion about whether the Swedes oppressed the Finns belongs to the History of Finland .

You're right in saying that it's a ridiculous claim. As any Finn knows, using "it" for people is used in everyday speech by almost all people (in more formal, e.g. business, talk it's of course omitted), but as a general rule (if indeed there is any), the younger someone is, the less likely it is that they will use "hän". "Se/ne" has been in use at least in the old Helsinki slang ("stadin slangi") for decades, and at least according to my knowledge has then spread to the rest of Finland from there (and possibly from other local/regional slangs and dialects as well). However, it is true, and an important point, that people, even young people, in southwestern Finland (e.g. Turku) use "hän" much more commonly in colloquial Finnish.

The initial claim was completely ridiculous. But it may be worth pointing out that there is an even deeper misunderstanding behind the whole issue. It is simply wrong to claim that in colloqual Finnish uses "it" for persons. The correct description would be to say that colloquial Finnish does not make a distinction between personal and demonstrative pronouns in the 3rd person. So in spoken Finnish se does not mean "it" - it means "he", "she", and "it". This is a very different thing. It is just absurd to claim that when a Finn utters a sentence like se ostaa leipää, he's really saying "it buys bread" and not "(s)he buys bread". The sentence means "(s)he buys bread", and that's all.

On the topic "se" vs. "hän"

On the topic of "se" vs. "hän", also note that the meaning of "se" is broader than English "it"; sometimes the word can also be translated as "that" (as in the pronouns tämä, tuo, se; nämä, nuo, ne). Consider the following:

Ei se mitään tienny (lit. 'It didn't know anything') < Ei se tyyppi mitään tienny ('That guy didn't know anything') < Ei se mies mitään tiennyt ('That man didn't know anything')

The third sentence is proper Finnish, and the choice of pronoun is not impolite at all (using "hän" instead would be blatantly wrong here). The first sentence can be seen as a contraction of this, which may in part explain why calling people "se" sounds natural. Also the sentences "Se oli Anna" and "Hän oli Anna" are both correct in formal language and neither is more polite than the other, though there is a slight difference in the meaning (That was Anna vs. She was Anna).

An example of the use described in the comment immediately above:

There is a knock on the door. The wife goes to answer, and later the man asks: "Who was at the door?" -"It was Anna," replies the wife. = Se oli Anna. (past tense) Here using hän would be as unacceptable as in the reply "She was Anna."

A beautiful girl goes past two men. One asks: "Who is that girl?" The other replies: "She is Anna." = Hän on Anna. (present tense) The form Se on Anna could be used as well with exactly the same meaning, only being more informal and more natural to the situation.

--Pxos (talk) 16:23 – 20:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Mistake in an example

There seems to be a mistake in the example of words being pronounced together, Viitsisitsäottaattompois japistääŋoveŋkii?: While there may be a short (glottal?) stop between pistää and oven, it would never be pronounced as the sound ŋ. (I'm not sure how to properly mark it so I'll rather not edit the page.) The second ŋ (before kii) is still correct, of course.

Could someone write about the dialects?

- It would also be great if someone would have the time to write more about the different dialects and maybe about the different slangs as well. I've lived abroad, and don't even live (and have never lived in) an area with a dialect of it's own, so I don't feel qualified to do it.

The title does not make sense

This page title doesn't make sense. Moving to "Spoken Finnish" Nohat 20:46, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Spoken language or dialect?

I think that most things described here are features of the dialect that is spoken in Helsinki area (my native dialect as well...) but it is not necessarily the same thing as the spoken Finnish. The official "spoken Finnish" - in my opinion - is still much closer the written language. For example, if someone from savo dialect area visits Helsinki, he uses as "lingua franca" spoken language something that is much closer the written language than the language what is described here. Differences in dialects of Finnish are much bigger than in most languages and I doubt that not all Finnish speaking people would understand the "spoken" dialect described here at all. --User:62.236.155.200 (28 Oct 2004)

Well, it does say "This article deals with features of the spoken Finnish language, specifically how it is spoken in Greater Helsinki capital region." I'd like to see some sources for your claim that differences in dialects of Finnish are much bigger than in most languages. It's very hard for me to imagine that two Finns wouldn't understand each other at all if they spoke different dialects. --ZeroOne 16:29, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The Finnish dialects are nowadays mostly mutually intelligible. They have evolved towards the yleiskieli. There are some words that cause misunderstanings, but people are usually aware of them. They know, if they are not using a word in the same sense as the word has in the yleiskieli, or if the word is dialectal. -Hapsiainen 19:43, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I think people usually adjust their speech slightly towards the yleiskieli when dealing with people that are from other dialect regions. --ZeroOne 20:41, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

-nkaa, -nkää

User Vuo wrote that "On the other hand, spoken Finnish has its own comitative -nkaa, which is an abbreviation of -n kanssa." AFAIK such comitative exists only in some dialects in Kymenlaakso. Exaples: mennä veneenkaa (go by boat), iskänkää (with father). The users of that comitative form were ridiculed by the speakers of neighbour dialects. They, of course, didn't use such comitative. I haven't heard that people elsewhere in Finland would use nkaa/nkää comitative. Even if there were some, I don't think that the usage is generally widespread, or prevalent in Helsinki. -Hapsiainen 13:20, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

Alaksä väitteleen munkaa?

This raises an interesting point. Greater Helsinki "slang" speakers usually assume that in all other places, only regional dialects are spoken. This is not true. Ei omita!

I speak the slang of Vaasa. Most of people in Vaasa and the suburbs are so-called "junantuomat", "those people brought by train", including my parents. These don't have a proper regional dialect: old Swedish-, and Pohjanmaa-containing dialects are not learnt and thus not used. The dialectal/slang words can be counted with two hands' fingers (e.g. pulttu (puntti), kela (polkupyörä), ketä replaces kuka completely). Spoken Finnish is a language created when a dialect is replaced. It is virtually the same as the Greater Helsinki dialect, but you should prepare for few minor differences such as this comitative. Under no criterion can Vaasa slang be considered a complete dialect; it is "plain spoken Finnish", nothing more.

Actually, it could be a comitative clitic, because I've never heard a single instance of it obeying the vowel harmony by becoming "-nkää". However, the -ga suffix is considered a comitative *case* in Estonian, so it can be considered a case in spoken Finnish, too, even if it is clearly a clitic. Of course the problem is that it has all these forms: senkanssa, senkans, senkaa. -Vuo 15:50, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I was spoking about nkaa/nkää, not a simple nkaa. Nkaa was described as a case in the earlier version of article, so I immediately thought about nkaa/nkää because it has vowel harmony, and thus sounds like a real case unlike nkaa. Nkaa sounds like a clitic, so you improved the article but changing its description.

Nkaa is definitely more common than nkaa/nkää. I have never heard any nkaa/nkääs, I read about it in Kymen Sanomat, so I suppose it is or was used in Southern Kymenlaakso. Unfortunately I don't remember if it is still in use e.g. in some villages. But -nkaa is used at least in Kotka. I moved to Helsinki a few years ago, but it is hard to analyse the local spoken language when you hear it so often.

Quite an old one to comment, but I just had to. The -nkaa is very alive in entire North Kymenlaakso, actually the only form used, and slowly spreading to other areas. Now if we could get the -nen -> -in change to spread :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.230.158.243 (talk) 01:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC).

Miä en o omimassa mitään. It all makes me wonder where the dialect ends and spoken language starts, and how they interact. They are not separate entities. -Hapsiainen 18:37, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

I have always understood it as not as a suffix, but as a shortened postposition. In other words, "go with father" is not mennä iskänkää or mennä iskänkaa but mennä iskän kaa, where kaa is just a shortened form of the grammatically correct postposition kanssa, that is all. JIP | Talk 20:05, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Not a stub any more?

This article looks rather long and comprehensive. Shouldn't the stub tag be removed? 193.167.132.66 08:13, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Questions

I recently bought the 2003 movie of the tv series RAID on DVD and in the first scenes there were several instances where the english translation indicated there was a question but the sentence carried neither a typical question word (mikä, kuka etc) or the -ko/-kö question suffix or any of its variations.

The examples I have are

"menet sä sen naisen luo?" ="Are you going to that woman's place?", and "tulet sä takaisin?" ="Are you coming back?"

where one might have expected to have heard

"menetkö sä (or sinä) sen naisen luo?", and "tuletko sä (or sinä) takaisin?"

It seems to indicate to me that it is quite possible in spoken Finnish to reverse the order of pronoun and verb to make a question, rather as in French or English. In no text books have I found this described, not even in Daniel Abondolo's book which covers the colloquial language.

I'd be grateful for someone who has more knowledge of the spoken language than me to think about this and if appropriate update the article on questions in the spoken language.

This is not a grammatical change, but a sound change: mene+t+kö sä → menetkö sä → menetsä, -or- mene+t+kö+s sä → menetkös sä → menekkös sä → meneksä. The loss of meaning of the vowel of the clitic (ö) leads to its elision. In the example you give, a cluster such as -tks- is against the phonotactics, so the result is the elision of the -k-, giving -ts-. Another choice is the addition of a clitic -s (which is different from 'sä'), which in turn fuses with the following 'sä', giving meneksä.

Loss of random morphemes is a special feature of Western (such as Helsinki) language. This is a good example. --Vuo 12:10, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Spoken imperfect drops the "i" marker. Is this true?

I have been told that there is a form of the imperfect in finnish where the imperfect i is dropped. Can someone with greater knowledge please determine if there are "rules" about this form amd how one can distinguish this spoken imperfect form from the present indicative? Can you give some examples?

If it is true, is it worthy of an update to the main article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.222.235.37 (talk • contribs) 22:51, 8 Sep, 2005 (UTC)

putosi -> putos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hapsiainen (talk • contribs) 03:59, 9 Sep, 2005 (UTC)

That ("putosi", "it dropped") is a good example, yes. However, I feel that the "i" cannot always be dropped. Take, for example, käveli ("he walked"). "Kävel"? --ZeroOne 23:47, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

This is a nonspecific sound change, where word-final -si becomes -s, unless it's a part of a noun stem; for example, the second-person possessive suffix kirjas "your book", or a verb root ending -si as in putos "it dropped". Not, however, kasi "number eight", or vesi "water". (Some dialects permit ves via an unrelated etymology, where the palatalization of 's' before 'i' becomes phonemic as 'i' elides, then the palatalization is lost). Loss of word-final 'i' does not happen in generic spoken Finnish with other consonants than 's', but it is found in some dialects, particularly Savo with moottor. --Vuo 14:54, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

The article isn't factually accurate

I've found several errors in it, I'm going to corrct them and examine the article even more.

I've read that Helsinki slang isn't a special dialect, it is part of Souther Tavastian (Häme) dialects. Of course Helsinki slang has many original words, but a dialect is defined by the structure, grammar, not by some unique words. The article was written by Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, so I take it very seriously. This is more a problem in this talk page, though.

"Helsinki: Despite this text describing primarily the Helsinki area speech, there are some features that are not found elsewhere. Partitive plurals ending -ja/-jä in generic Finnish become -i, and likewise the partitive plural -ia/-iä simplifies to -ii: märkiä takkeja -> märkii takkei "wet jackets"." How come this is found in Kotka, too? And in Nurmijärvi, according to the article of Research Institute for the Languages of Finland.

"The first infinitive, e.g. juosta "to run", is replaced by the third-person form juoksee "runs" by some speakers. For example, standard "Voisitko sinä juosta hakemaan sen" becomes "Voisitsä juoksee hakeen senh "Could you run to get it". " This is Southern Tavastian thing, it doesn't occur only in Helsinki. For source, see again the article.

And I'm finally wondering what is the source for the concept of generic Finnish. Helsinki is still Southern Tavastian and Kotka Southeastern Tavastian despite that plenty of people have moved there from other parts of Finland. The Tavastian structure may not be as visible as before, but it is still there. The situation in Vaasa can't differ from Kotka and Helsinki. -Hapsiainen

It appears there is no underlying problem with the fact that this feature is actually found in Helsinki, it's just that it's presented with a too limited geographic scope. No, the situation in Vaasa is a bit different, because the native Vaasa area language is Swedish. Vaasa area Finnish speakers have immigrated from many areas of Finland, with no common dialect; the same goes for Espoo, Vantaa, and to some extent Helsinki. It's not as if there weren't people speaking the Pohjanmaa dialect in Vaasa, but it's not "thick" Pohjanmaa nor very common. My speech, as an "second-generation immigrant", is virtually identical to Espoo speech, and has no features from the Pohjanmaa dialect. The Pohjanmaa dialect isn't spoken so much in Vaasa that you'd learn it if you lived there. I've worked in rural Pohjanmaa, so I know there's an enormous difference. --Vuo 15:04, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Is there any research on the total absence of the Souther Ostrobothnian features? Vaasa was originally a Swedish-speaking region, but Helsinki was such, too. But almost outside the Helsinki borders started the area of the Southern Tavastian dialect. Similarly, the area of Southern Ostrobothnian dialects started almost outside the borders of Vaasa. [1] And people around the Finland have moved to Helsinki, too. Kotka had an influx of Savonian workers and later Karelian evacuated people. But guess what, the structure of the original dialect is still there. A common belief is not research. It is also commonly, and incorrectly believed that the dialect of Helsinki is Stadi slang, not Southern Tavastian. I think that the word generic Finnish should be removed from the article, and there shouldn't be any estimate of the type of the Vaasa dialect, unless someone finds a reliable source. -Hapsiainen

You're grasping straws. All the features listed in the main article are a part of Vaasa speech; I know, I wrote or approved most of it! On the other hand, the salient Pohjanmaa features (epenthesis "kuluma", rolled D "veren", opening diphthong codas "nuari", total loss of inessive -sa "maas", extraneous 'h' "otethan", closing diphthong onsets "korkia", diphthong reduction "kaloolla", labialization of 'e' "menöö", first-person plural -ma instead of generic Finnish passive constructions) are NOT found. There are a handful of obvious lexical borrowings (ketä, mihnä), but the number of them is very small, less than ten. When I was in the basic school, there was a linguist who actually researched this Vaasa speech, and I've read his report, so maybe this is resolved by finding this report. And fine, you can go and write an article about Southern Tavastian dialects, but don't go saying that the generic Finnish doesn't exist and is just a Southern Tavastian dialect. (But, we're dealing with dialectal boundaries so fine that even different blocks in London differ more in their dialects.) --Vuo 13:15, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

You misunderstand me, I wouldn't remove the examples of Finnish spoken in Vaasa. And I'm not saying that generic Finnsh means Southern Tavastian dialect. I am questioning whether such generic Finnish exists. Generic sounds something very uniform. -Hapsiainen

And it is, because everyone learns the same standard language (yleiskieli) in school. It is rare to find people who don't talk generic Finnish in TV; people don't speak perfect standard language on entertainment shows, but they do speak general Finnish. General American exists, too. --Vuo 23:15, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I am talking about colloquial language, not anything standard. Now I try to find out what you are talking about. "General American is a national accent of American English based on speech patterns common in the Midwest of the United States and those used by many American network television broadcasters." So you replace American with Finnish and Midwest by Tavastian dialects. The Finnish television stations are located in the area of Tavastian dialects, Helsinki and Tampere. It has been noted that you can hear it from the broadcasts. "Its speakers are perceived as "accentless" by most Americans." This is difficult to say for me, becuase I have always lived in the area of Tavastian dialects.

So now you have a Tavastian-influenced generic Finnish. And you have the fact that it has influenced on the spoken Finnish in the whole country. But how similar the spoken Finnish arond the Finland should be that it were generic Finnish? You think that it is similar enough in several other cities, like Vaasa. I ask, if any reasearcher has described it as a such. And what other cities have a similar spoken language? (I exclude the Greater Helsinki region, because it has been more of a model.) How they have been described? You set high boundaries for calling a dialect different from generic Tavastian-influenced Finnish. How the researchers set them? If you don't have any authors to support your claim, it is POV. The article could have a description of the Tavastian influence in the media and through the media, but the final interpretations should be left for the reader. Also, when people move from different parts of Finlad to several cities, is the result, the spoken language always the same in all those cities? -Hapsiainen

There is a standard colloquial. A similar phenomenon is seen in Britain, namely Received Pronunciation. The standard written language cannot be used directly as a spoken language, but with some modifications, which this article describes, it is used. When people try to "reduce their dialect", they tend towards standard spoken language. In rural areas or Stadi, people tend to think that there's kirjakieli and then there's the dialect, but the standard dialect - a spoken language based on kirjakieli - does exist, and it's used in cities where people have moved in. Standard spoken language resembles some Western dialects for the reason that it is based on them. I think it's really silly the question the existence of the most widely spoken variety of Finnish. Yleispuhekieli is referenced to here [2] [3] [4] [5]. Just try googling "yleispuhekieli", most often it is described as the language displacing dialects. With respect to the article, the only dispute is about placing some dialect-specific features in the correct area. --Vuo 19:28, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your research. I didn't know what "generic Finnish" is in Finnish, so I had difficulties in doing it. Your links provide good material to the article. The offer a more detailed picture on the subject. The beginning of the article is still odd: "This applies also to other cities, --- where the regional dialect has been supplanted by "generic Finnish". People can master several dialects: regional, generic, possibly local. So generic Finnish can co-exist with regional dialects. -Hapsiainen

From the last link, 1900-luvulla yleispuhekieli oli jo selvästi olemassa omana kielimuotonaan. Mitä vahvemmaksi kehittyi ihmisten käsitys siitä, että on olemassa alueväritteisistä puhetyyleistä poikkeava yleispuhekieli, sitä voimakkaammin murteet ja niiden piirteet alkoivat stigmatisoitua. Aila Mielikäisen (2001: 5) mukaan ”1960–70-luvulla ei ollut muotia paljastaa kielenkäytöllään kotiseutuaan tai maalaisuuttaan.” Toisaalta noina vuosina lähtivät entistä useammat maaseudun nuoret suuriin kaupunkeihin opiskelemaan, ja monet myös jäivät asumaan kaupunkeihin. Murteiden välttelyllä oli varsin käytännöllisiä seurauksia: Tunnen useita ihmisiä, jotka ovat 60- ja 70-luvuilla opiskellessaan suurissa kaupungeissa pyrkineet pääsemään eroon omasta paikallisväritteisestä puhetyylistään. Useimmat ovat onnistuneet tässä varsin menestyksekkäästi, ja tästä johtuen heidän yleispuhekielinen tyylinsä on säilynyt vielä silloinkin, kun he ovat muuttaneet opiskelun jälkeen takaisin entiselle kotiseudulleen.

That wasn't the answer to my question. I was thinking about how many cities there are in Finland where 75 % percent or more inhabitants use generic Finnish and never a regional or a local dialect. Then you could say that generic Finnish has 'supplanted other, more regional dialects in those cities. "This applies to other cities" is so indefinite number of cities, a weasel sentence. When I first concentrated on reading it, I got an idea of massive disappearance of regional dialects in the majority of the Finnish cities. (The influx from countryside to cities started in 1960s and still continues.) Maybe that was the paragraph that first annoyed me in the article. It needs tweaking, if there isn't any reliable estimate. -Hapsiainen 06:36, September 13, 2005 (UTC)

IPA of a velar nasal vs. glottal stop

I'm not fully familiar with IPA symbols, but shouldn't the first ŋ in japistääŋoveŋkii be a glottal stop (ʔʔ or ʔ) instead? Now it would sound like "ja pistääng oven kii". Mysid (talk) 09:39, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

MENE to MENNÄ etc..

It is true that there is no regular N to NN consonant gradation in Finnish but I am inclined to think that this is a form of consonant gradation as the original author (I am guessing) probably implied.

Think about it... the regular forms are mene- or meni- and the one thing that characterises all first inifitive forms is that the end in -a or -ä. As -eä and -ea are only seen in adjectives (I think) the implication is that the -e just got dropped when adding the infinitive -a or -ä marker. But because the letters N L R AND S to be rather 'sticky' and cause all sorts of adjacent consonant effects I think that it was rather natural for Finnish to adopt a long pronounciation of these letters when followed by -a or -ä. Hence the verb forms -lla/llä from -le stems, -nnä from -ne personal stems, -rra from -re stems, and even -sta/-stä forms in the infinitives from personal stem forms ending -se. Finnish has a strong tendency towards long final consonants when the final syllable is open.

Modern consonant gradation is a different phenomenon. This is assimilation, which is very common in Finnish, standard or not. It does function in a way similar to modern synchronic consonant gradation, and is diachronically consonant gradation. The infinitive suffix is -ta, but it assimilates: *men+ta → mennä. --Vuo 17:56, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Ruoka

"Ruoan" and "ruuan" are both legit and standard genitive cases of "ruoka"; the latter one is NOT exclusive to "spoken Finnish". --nlitement ^[talk] 23:46, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

ML

[ML], lue viitteet ennen kuin teet lisää muokkauksia. Johdannon teksti on Mielikäisen tieteellisen tutkimuksen mukainen eikä mikään mutu-mielipide. Vaikka Jyväskylässä puhutaan perinteisesti savolaismurteen alatyyppiä, on Jyväskylä tutkimuksen mukaan eniten "yleiskielistyineiden" kaupunkien joukossa. --Vuo 16:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Olen omaan kokemukseen nojaten eri mieltä siitä, että jyväskyläläiset käytännössäkään puhuisivat samoja hämäläismurteita kuin noissa muissa kaupungeissa, vaan Jyväskylän enemmistö tuntuu yhä puhuvan sitä "käet taskuun"-murretta. Mutta se ei ehkä ole olennaista. Kummallisin juttu on Jyväskylän ja Suur-Helsingin yms. sitä ympäröivien hämäläismurteiden kaupunkien niputtaminen jonkin omituisen "Central Finnish"-käsitteen alle. Edes jotenkin käsitettä vastaa todellinen vastine voisi olla savolaismurteisiin kuuluvat keskisuomalaismurteet, mutta niitä ei todellakaan puhuta noista kaupungeista muualla kuin Jyväskylässä. Mielikäisen lähteessä puhuttiin näemmä kyselytutkimuksesta; suomalaisten mielikuvissa yleiskieltä puhutaan sekä E-Suomessa ja Keski-Suomessa. Moisella ei ole tässä mitään relevanssia. --ML 17:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Yleiskieli pohjautuu pitkälle keskisuomalaisiin murteisiin (Central Finnish dialects), erityisesti Keuruun murteeseen, koska näissä on nähty itä-, ja länsimurteiden sulautuneen niin, että siitä kehitetystä yleiskielestä on saatu alueellisesti neutraali. Mielikäisen yksi argumentti on juuri se, että "valmis" yleiskieli on vaikuttanut myös toiseen suuntaan. Ei siis ole enää olemassa mitään tarkkaa rajaa aluemurteen ja virkakielen välillä, vaan on syntynyt juurikin keskisuomalaisista ja hämäläisistä murteista vaikutteita ottanut yleispuhekieli. Artikkeli kuvaa yleispuhekieltä, eikä siis sen helsinkiläistä tai jyväskyläläistä aluevarianttia. Paitsi että puhutaan yleispuhekieltä, puhujat yhdistävät myös omaan murteeseensa yleispuhekieltä, jolloin saadaan aluepuhekieli. Kyselytutkimus — joka ei perustu ainoastaan yhteen mielipiteeseen kuten itse kunkin oma havainto — osoittaa, että juuri Keski-Suomessa, erityisesti listatuissa kaupungeissa, havaitaan eniten yleispuhekielen käyttöä. --Vuo 18:52, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

"Yleiskieli pohjautuu pitkälle keskisuomalaisiin murteisiin (Central Finnish dialects), erityisesti Keuruun murteeseen, koska näissä on nähty itä-, ja länsimurteiden sulautuneen niin, että siitä kehitetystä yleiskielestä on saatu alueellisesti neutraali. " Lähde? Mutupohjalta tuntuu uskomattomalta, että yleiskieli "perustuisi" noin pienen alueen murteeseen. Käsitettä 'Central Finnish' ei pitäisi käyttää, mikäli kyseessä on ad hoc- eikä vakiinut käännös, jos silloinkaan. Keskisuomalaiset murteet ovat vain savolaismurteiden suppeahkolla alueella puhuttava alaryhmä, tuommoinen sana antaa ymmärtää kuin kyseessä olisi jokin laaja murrealue (tyyliin länsimurteet). Missään tapauksesssa hämäläismurteiden alueita ei pidä laittaa jonkun 'Central Finnish':in alle, koska se on täysin tuulesta temmattua. "Kyselytutkimus — joka ei perustu ainoastaan yhteen mielipiteeseen kuten itse kunkin oma havainto — osoittaa, että juuri Keski-Suomessa, erityisesti listatuissa kaupungeissa, havaitaan eniten yleispuhekielen käyttöä." Lainauksen mukaan käsitys periytyy jo maamme-kirjasta ja siihen on vaikuttanut ajatus Jkl:stä erityisen suomenkielisenä paikkana (seminaarit, koulut, lehdistö) ja Keuruun seudun murre, josta puuttuu idempänä käytettyjä savolaispiirteitä. Kyse on siis lähinnä kivettyneestä kansanuskomuksesta.--ML 04:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Important regional variations

Frankly, the Important regional variations section seems to be quite off-place here. Most of it is about features of certain Finnish dialects. However, this article is supposed to deal with standard Spoken Finnish, which essentialy is non-dialectal. Most of the contents of this section would belong to an article like Finnish dialects. --BishkekRocks 18:07, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, there is no standard, non-dialectal spoken Finnish. –mysid☎ 20:44, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, one could claim the colloquial language spoken in Helsinki area (which of course is dialectal, as for itself) is gaining ground as some kind "standard spoken variety". If it were like you said it, where would be the difference between "spoken Finnish" (puhekieli) and "dialects" (murteet)? For me features like mie or palavelu quite clearly seem to pertain to the realm of Finnish dialects. --BishkekRocks 22:24, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Considered dialectless?

Considered dialectless by who? The people who speak it? 130.230.4.13 08:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Rather than compare this variant of Finnish to General American or RP (lol) I'd rather call this "Estuary Finnish" (though the Vantaa has no estuary!). But that would be neologism. ;-) Calling this a standard spoken variant of Finnish is just Helsinki chauvinism. 130.230.4.13 08:14, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Myös

I once corrected a fellow non-native speaker for once pronouncing this word as MJÖS as though the Y were the same as Y in English. However, I have later heard that many Finns in the area where I live also tend to pronounce this word as MJÖS. Is this common?

I have some similar while not identical effects occasionally in my own speech - /hjuva/ for "hyvä", or /tjɛrve/ for "terve", for two examples. I suspect there might be the beginnings of a sound change or two here, but it's too erly to say for sure. At any rate, "myös" is a clause-level unstressed function word where a stress shift like that wouldn't be too out of place; but generally, the opening difthongs remain falling in all dialects AFAIK.

I see that as parodying the Russian accent. ›mysid (☎∆) 20:17, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

If it is common, then one might wish that the spelling of this word (and others - I am sure there are many other examples) to be changed to reflect usage. If this did not happen, then in time, as more words become modified by usage, Finns will have the same spelling problems now befuddle both native English speakers as well as those for whom English is not their first language! If such a move was made, whose responsibility would it be? I see that the standard langaage allows many parallel spelling forms already (e.g. genitive plural -den and -tten words).--Tom 10:27, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

That would take several hundred years anyway. English spelling is accurate for the language as spoken in the 1400s or therearound... We do have an authority for suggestions on (but not dictation of!) what good Finnish grammar is, too — Kielitoimisto — they'd likely intervene before it could get that bad. --Tropylium 22:53, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I have never, ever, heard any native Finnish speaker from any part of Finland pronounce "y" as "j" other than when intentionally parodying foreign accents. JIP | Talk 20:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Translate

Could somebody translate this for me? It was put on my talk page, and after doing some searches on the first word, I was led to the Finnish language page. A person over there said it was an insult in spoken Finnish. And though I'm aware it's probably very nasty, I'd still like a translation.

"dorka ukko säkin oot Vittu säkin oot vaan yksi saatann tyhmä pelle ja luulet olevas jotain suurtaki"

(The bolded part was the title given on my talk page) --~|ET|~(^{Talk|Contribs}) 14:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

"one jerk you are Goddamn you're one fucking stupid asshole thinking you are something great" ›mysid (☎∆) 20:15, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Technically, pelle literally means "clown". Could be translate better as "dimwit", "freak" or "geek". "Asshole" would be translated as kusipää. --Vuo 15:08, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Might I add, as a Finn, not to mislead any readers, that the construction and wording are typically of a teenager or suchlike. It is more an eruption than a serious insult as such. Regards, Pxos (talk) 04:41, 26 February 2011 (UTC)-

Furthermore, as an apology on behalf of the original asshole of a countryman, I could provide the readers with another translation: "You're a bloody old geezer, you are just a fucking old clown who thinks too much of himself." I am trying to point out the fact that even out of context, the phrase cannot be translated as a serious insult. "dorka ukko" is best translated as "stupid old man", and "tyhmä pelle as "dimwit" rather than "a fucking stupid asshole". --Pxos (talk) 02:26, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Possessive suffix

The difference between "se otti lakkinsa ja lähti" and "se otti sen lakin ja lähti" is the same as the difference between standard Finnish "hän otti lakkinsa ja lähti" and "hän otti hänen lakkinsa ja lähti". It is not related to repetition of pronouns but rather to the actual meaning. In the first version, the subject of the sentence took his/her own cap. in the second version, he/she took the cap of another previously mentioned person. This is made evidently clear in basic Finnish grammar lessons. JIP | Talk 20:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Er...it is decidedly odd to correct a fellow Finn, but I have to say that the examples given above are quite misleading, even ungrammatical. I shall elaborate using she for hän (actually he or she) and hat for lakki (actually lakki means a cap):

1. se otti lakkinsa ja lähti = she took her own hat and left
2. se otti sen lakin ja lähti = she took the hat (some hat, her own or someone else's) and left
3. hän otti lakkinsa ja lähti = she took her own hat and left
4. *hän otti hänen lakkinsa ja lähti
   This construction is not used as it is unnatural and bordering on the ungrammatical. Theoretically it means that she took someone else's hat and left, as in the English sentence "She took his hat and left" but as there are two instances of hän, this form is not natural Finnish. In written (literary) Finnish, this would be constructed as Hän otti tämän lakin ja lähti, where hän refers to the person who leaves the house and tämä refers to the person who will be missing his hat. I hope that I have managed to confuse you even further! --Pxos (talk) 10:29, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I think you are correct. The construct hän... tämä is so rare in modern colloquial Finnish that I didn't remember it at the time. But in properly grammatical Finnish, that is of course indeed correct. JIP | Talk 20:12, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

And in spoken Finnish you could do very well without any reference to possession. If you say se otti lakin ja lähti this translates as she took [a/the/0] hat and left or literally "she took hat and left" without defining the hat at all. But this is rather a question of the lack of articles in Finnish, I merely brought it up here to point out that in spoken Finnish se (the second se) in sentences like se otti sen lakin resembles the definite article and can either define the hat itself or that the hat belongs to the subject of the sentence (the first se). Do you agree, JIP? --Pxos (talk) 00:03, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think something like this might be the case. Finnish still doesn't have definitely grammatised articles, but spoken Finnish has used yksi ("one", "some") and se ("that") for a similar purpose for decades now. As a native Finnish speaker, I understand that the actual meaning is different from actual articles, but the usage is the same. I remember the teacher in my Hungarian course (of which I remember very little, due to lack of usage) mentioning this phenomenon in Finnish, as the same thing has also happened in Hungarian, where it went as far as to have egy ("one") and a/az ("that") become grammatised articles. JIP | Talk 19:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Articles

Should it be mentioned that articles are developing from the number one and demonstrative pronouns in Spoken Finnish?

• Mul on huomenna yks tapaaminen. - I have a meeting tomorrow.
• Mun pitää varmaan peruu se tapaaminen. - I'll probably have to cancel the meeting.

Using the definite article is more frequent than the indefinite one.

--88.112.193.101 (talk) 17:33, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Quite likely worth a mention.

BTW, as a curiosity, with some words these articles are even mandatory, including heppu, tyyppi and a few other colloquial synonyms for "person" (ˣTyyppi kävi täällä). This probably would need a citation to be included however… --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:09, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Here's something about articles in spoken Finnish: http://kaino.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1418 --88.112.193.96 (talk) 18:43, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

And as this is the English Wikipedia, the link might be provided in ancient Latin, for reference. "Here, in old Norse, is everything you need to know about the question." --Pxos (talk) 02:51, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean that a Wikipedia can't use references in languages other than the Wikipedia's own? I certainly have sometimes added non-English references to articles in the English Wikipedia, such as an article about money in the Helsingin Sanomat monthly supplement to the article Finnish markka. It's not like the monthly supplement, written by a Finnish company for a Finnish audience, is written in English. As a fellow native Finnish speaker, you can at least vouch for the reference's validity. JIP | Talk 18:12, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course the validity of the references as such do not depend on the language, but they are of little value to the general public. As this is the Internet, I cannot even vouch for that I am a Finn, let alone give any evidence that a certain artice in the Old Saxon Tribune really lays down the facts that 'it is so' or 'it isn't'. I wouldn't be happy to read an article on the English Wikipedia where a major claim is backed up solely by a reference to a study in a language that I couldn't possibly understand – even though the online translators have developed into a useful tool of deciphering obscure claims. In a way, the purpose of the Wikipedias in diverse languages is decidedly the fact that monolingual users can access the information in their own language. Although one as a serious editor aiming to better the knowledge of mankind cannot avoid using the best reference material available, it could still be good practise to use only such references as are comprehensible to most readers. --Pxos (talk) 22:57, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I understand your point, but I still think that a reference in a non-English language is better than no reference at all. JIP | Talk 19:59, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Colloquial forms of numerals

The article claimed that the colloquial forms of kolme '3' and neljä '4' are "kol" and "nel". This is absolutely incorrect, so I changed this. The shortened forms "kol" and "nel" can only occur when counting, they cannot occur as independent numerals in a sentence: e.g. Mulla on kolme autoa (not *kol autoa) 'I have three cars', or Ostin kolme (not *Ostin kol) 'I bought three'.130.231.117.40 (talk) 11:42, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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Mistake in "Ostrobothnian variant"

This first paragraph gives some context:

Finnish has two phonemic vowel lengths, short and long. These are written with single and double vowel letters respectively. Long vowels are about two times the length of short ones. Thus, the length of a short vowel can be characterised with the numeral 1 and the length of a long vowel with 2. However, in non-initial syllables the short vowel has different-length allophones based on the phonetic environment. If the preceding syllable is open, the short vowel is realised as "half-long", with the length of approximately 1.5 whereas if the preceding syllable is closed or has a long vowel it is "half-short" with the length of about 0.5.

So:

latu = length of 1

laatu = length of 2

latu = length of 1.5

laatu = length of 0.5

and

lastu= length of 0.5

The article claims that forms like "isoo" in the place of "iso" in Ostrobothnian variants of spoken Finnish would be the result of half-long vowels (1.5) lengthening to long ones (2). This is not the case. While some dialects, namely the Southwestern ones, do lengthen half-long vowels to be as long as long vowels this does not occur in Ostrobothnia.

These Ostrobothnian long vowels are actually a reflex of a historical diphthong ending in "-i". In most dialects the "-i" has simply disappeared but in the Ostrobothnian ones they have assimilated to the preceding vowel producing long vowels.

So older forms like "isoi" (meaning: big) and "keltainen" (yellow) have evolved to Ostrobothnian "isoo" and "keltaanen".

So the evolution of these forms looks like this:

isoi > isoo

keltainen > keltaanen

In most dialects these are "iso" and "keltane(n)" through an evolution like this:

isoi > iso

keltainen > keltane(n)

As explained earlier, the Southwestern dialects also have a form similair to "isoo" but this has evolved from an earlier short/half-long vowel. The article claims this would also be the origin of the Ostrobothnian "isoo"-like long vowels but -as demonstrated above- this is not the case.

The evolution of the Southwestern forms are:

isoi > iso > isóó

and has also effected short vowels without a historical i-diphthong like the noun "kala" (meaning: fish):

kala > kala > kaláá

The article claims this process would also be the origin of the Ostrobothnian "isoo"-like long vowels but -as demonstrated before- this is not the case. The Ostrobothnian dialects do not have "kaláá" or "kalaa", they have "kala".

Notice the accents on those lengthened Southwestern vowels. I added them because these vowels have a characteristic high or rising tone. Thus the last vowel in the Southwestern "isóó" will sound a bit funny to speakers of other dialects but the Ostrobothnian "isoo" has a falling tone and sounds like a normal Finnish long vowel.

I didn't just remove this mistake myself because I've never edited Wikipedia before and am not familiar with it. Adding new information with the help of a source sounds pretty simple but just deleting information, especially if done by a new account, might appear as sabotage.

I slightly edited this because some already deleted paragraphs were showing up. NööttiK (talk) 17:15, 7 April 2024 (UTC)