Soumen kieltä
Hyvää päivää (good day)!
After hearing it for decades spoken by my parents and their parents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, and Finnish friends, I am finally devoting time to learning Soumen kieltä, the Finnish language.
A birch bark letter from the early 13th century is the first known document in any Finnic language, spoken by those in the Baltic Sea region. The first known written example of Finnish itself was found in a German travel journal dating back to 1450.
Today, Finnish is one of two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish). Finnish is a Uralic language, as are Hungarian and Estonian. The most commonly used Finnish word in English is ‘sauna,’ which has also been loaned to many other languages.
Opi Suomea (learn Finnish)
In most Finnish words every letter is sounded out, and double consonants are common and pronounced sometimes short and sometimes long. In addition, the Finnish alphabet includes three strange, additional letters: Å, Ä, and Ö. And, to further complicate, there are differences between written and spoken Finnish.
All in all, the language is characterized more as different than challenging. I salute my classmates who are diving in as I am to this new world. To someone listening in, our conversations would certainly sound amusing and different.
Hei (hello). Voin hyvin tänään (I am fine today). Se on alku (it’s a start).
Näkemiin (goodbye)!
Images courtesy Language Clubhouse.