I was going to suggest "Kaikki jotka vaeltavat eivät ole eksyksissä".
With help from Google, who found me a T-shirt.
With help from Google, who found me a T-shirt.
Any Finnish speakers ?
- Thread starter jimbo75
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In the U.K. They tell children "if Germany had won the war, we'd all be speaking german".
This, is of course complete nonsense.
I like to remind people that "the allies won the war, and forced the rest of the world to learn English!"
How silly.
This is somewhat common misconception in Finland. So called A1 syllabus is mandatory beginning of the 3rd grade (1st grade after 2020), but it can be any foreign language (Swedish is not counted foreign) the school offers. However, vast majority choose English as their first foreign language. A2 syllabus is an optional language beginning most often between 3rd and 6th grade, and is most often German, French or Russian.
If you speak three languages, you are trilingual; if you speak two languages, you are bilingual; if you speak one language, you are English!
Are Finnish and Estonian mutually understandable?
Like Swedish/Danish/Norwegian?
For my uneducated ears they both sound very similar.
Like Swedish/Danish/Norwegian?
For my uneducated ears they both sound very similar.
Janne, you can't compare the problems Finish people have to learn English with the easy way how germanic nativ speakers pic up the other germanic languages.
I can easily read a Norwegian newspaper and never took one lesson in Norwegian!
And I never looked in a Scandinavic dictionary.
All germanic languages are more or less only strong dialects of the Danish or lower saxon language.
I only get headaches in Sweden, because you pronounce lots of French words you use in a very creative way, so I can't identity them.
I can easily read a Norwegian newspaper and never took one lesson in Norwegian!
And I never looked in a Scandinavic dictionary.
All germanic languages are more or less only strong dialects of the Danish or lower saxon language.
I only get headaches in Sweden, because you pronounce lots of French words you use in a very creative way, so I can't identity them.
Janne, all Finish people came from Estonia.
I had a friend who grew up in Reval /Tallin, being part of the German population who lived there for 800 years.
He told me, he would understand Finish people better, than they understood him, but it wasn't really a problem to communicate.
I had a friend who grew up in Reval /Tallin, being part of the German population who lived there for 800 years.
He told me, he would understand Finish people better, than they understood him, but it wasn't really a problem to communicate.
Interesting!
I thought you would. So maybe like Swedish and Icelandic.. Same family, but quite different.
We love the TV series Sorjonen, btw. But season 2 ended so series 3 needs to be made.
Virtanen is a good actor, I hope Hollywood does not steal him. Remember him from Talvisota.
The third best war movie ever made!
Yes, I would say it´s like that.
There are some words that have the same meaning in finnish and estonian and then there are words that are similar in both languages but the meaning is totally different.
Liha/kala = same meaning in both languages: meat/fish.
Hallitus = in finnish it means goverment and in estonian it means mold.
And so on...
Seems the Estonians 'got it' !
In Latin, Halitosis means bad breath. I guess same origin?
- May be, but government is for example a new word.
Thing /Think is the old one, for example in Germanic languages, or the titel King, König, Kong, Herzog or what ever.
We didn't say parliament and President.
That simply is Latin!
What's about all the archaic stuff?
Axe, sword, shield, cow, house, wife, man, snow, tree, hill, field, bear, wood, fish, stone and so on?
All what existed in the year 800 I mean.
That is in all Germanic languages totally identic.
The dialectal differences between London and Berlin are as strong as between Rotterdam and Vienna or Hamburg and Stockholm. Here and there a bit different, but for me, coming from Berlin, what is more or less in the middle, no problem to understand.
Usually the words for archaic stuff are quiet similar in sound and meaning.
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In the north of England, what was long ago the Danelaw, we have many words that are akin to today's Scandinavian words.
Last week, I was watching German films of old crafts, and could understand most of it; even words I had never heard before, because the sound was like English wordw and because the images and the context helped.
Yes, it's the same!
We just don't use so many French words like you.
What the farmers speak in the pubs in the villages around Hamburg is really more or less English.
Of course, it's lower saxon or really anglo-saxon!
We just don't use so many French words like you.
What the farmers speak in the pubs in the villages around Hamburg is really more or less English.
Of course, it's lower saxon or really anglo-saxon!
We should go back to a more Germanic form of English. It would save having to pronounce things differently to how they are spelt, and we wouldn't have to bother using 'th' all the blooming time (we could re-introduce ð)...
I'm sure it would help people with dyslexia somewhat?
Good idea. Should start with taking back the old, nice names. Of towns. Of families. Like Saxe-Coburg und Gotha..
Erbswurst, when is Babylon Berlin Series 2 starting?
Und Deutchland 86, das international release?
Goddamn, man, what is wrong with you ? We NEED to watch those! Best series for a LOOONG time!
( Peaky Blinders is excellent too. Does German Fernsehen show that? It is about a Irish immigrant family in Post WW1 Britain. )
Erbswurst, when is Babylon Berlin Series 2 starting?
Und Deutchland 86, das international release?
Goddamn, man, what is wrong with you ? We NEED to watch those! Best series for a LOOONG time!
( Peaky Blinders is excellent too. Does German Fernsehen show that? It is about a Irish immigrant family in Post WW1 Britain. )
Yes, we had it somehow.
But I am traveling to much to see it.
Friesisch sounds in my ears more or less like English. The pronunciation is more to Oxford English than to Hochdeutsch.
And they use a few words, which aren't in use in the rest of Germany any more but in Britain.
They don't say "zieh" for "pull" they say "trek" for example. (But "pull" they have too, if they are rowing, but I'm not often enough over there to know that all exactly, Anglians are mixed with them, lower Saxons as well. Of course I never know, who is who.)
German "auf", English "up", Friesisch "op"
German "Pulle", English "bottle", Friesisch "buddel"
Sounds really English or Dutch somehow.
But of course, when I enter a shop for example, where people speak those dialects, they change to Hochdeutsch. So I usually hear only a few words in the northern German dialects.
But I am traveling to much to see it.
Friesisch sounds in my ears more or less like English. The pronunciation is more to Oxford English than to Hochdeutsch.
And they use a few words, which aren't in use in the rest of Germany any more but in Britain.
They don't say "zieh" for "pull" they say "trek" for example. (But "pull" they have too, if they are rowing, but I'm not often enough over there to know that all exactly, Anglians are mixed with them, lower Saxons as well. Of course I never know, who is who.)
German "auf", English "up", Friesisch "op"
German "Pulle", English "bottle", Friesisch "buddel"
Sounds really English or Dutch somehow.
But of course, when I enter a shop for example, where people speak those dialects, they change to Hochdeutsch. So I usually hear only a few words in the northern German dialects.
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