Õppimas eesti keelt

I decided to start studying Estonian a couple of weeks ago but the study books haven't been very good. The first book I borrowed was E nagu eesti which seemed alright but it was designed for study groups where a teacher would teach the grammar and tell about translations and culture so it didn't have any instructions or explanations in Finnish or English.

Today I borrowed a book called Saagem tuttavaks - viron kielen alkeiskirja (Saagem tuttavaks is Estonian and would be something like "Let's get to know each other" in English and viron kielen alkeiskirja is Finnish and means "Estonian study book for beginners"). Perfect, I thought and was surprised to see that everything was explained in less than 190 pages. Texts, vocabulary, grammar and exercises... However, the grammatical explanations were like these: "You just form the genitive by adding some letter to the end of the nominative form. Shouldn't be hard for a Finnish speaker since 50% of all the Estonian words are similar to Finnish words....".

  And that was it. That's how you form the genitive form! And the past tense was taught in the second lesson! Page 19! Can you believe that? I can't!

So I'm going to return this book to the local library tomorrow and borrow a proper study book so that I'll learn some Estonian.

Aeno-neejom kuolema

"Läksin rannalle pesohon,

menin merta kylpemähän;

sinne mä, kana, katosin,

lintu, kuolin liian surman:

elköhönp' on siskoseni

sinä ilmoisna ikänä

peskö tästä silmiänsä

kotilahen laiturilta!

Mikäli meren vesiä,

sikäli minun veriä;

mikäli meren kaloja,

sikäli minun lihoja;

mikä rannalla risuja,

se on kurjan kylkiluita;

mikä rannan heinäsiä,

se hivusta hierottua.

Se oli surma nuoren neien, 

loppu kaunihin kanasen."

This is an old Finnish folk poem "Aeno-neejom kuolema" or "Aino-neidon kuolema" in standard Finnish. My grandmother used to sing it every time she went fishing or swimming. The poem is about a young maiden Aino who is supposed to become the wife of a great wizard Väinämöinen against her will. She didn't want to get married so she decided to drown herself. It's a very dramatic poem and its teaching is that no-one should be forced to get married.

It's extremely hard to translate into English and I apologize because I will never manage to translate a folk story like this properly.

"I left towards the beach to wash myself

I went towards the sea to bathe

There I, little chicken, vanished

A little bird, I went through a pointless death

May my sister never,

not once in her life,

wash her eyes/look off this dock!

What is the water of the sea

That shall be my blood

What are the fish of the sea

They shall be my flesh

What are the twigs on the shore

They shall be the ribs of this miserable person

What are the hays of the shore

They are rubbed from my hair

That was the death of a young maiden

The end of a beautiful little chicken"

Asenteita / Attitudes

Olen niin kyllästynyt ihmisten olettamuksiin ja asenteisiin vähemmistökieliä puhuvia ihmisiä kohtaan. Mitä väliä sillä on mitä kieltä joku puhuu äidinkielenään? Tässä omia kokemuksiani vähemmistökiel(i)en puhujana matkustellessani ympäri Suomea:

I'm so fed up with people's assumptions and attitudes towards people who speak minority languages. What does it matter what language someone speaks as his/her native language? Here's some of my own experiences as a speaker of minority language(s) traveling around Finland:

~*~

Paras ystäväni puhuu ruotsia äidinkielenään sillä hän tulee suomenruotsalaisesta suvusta. Puhumme usein ruotsiksi ihan muuten vain, sillä hän on sanonut, että hän tuntee olonsa luontevammaksi puhuessaan ruotsia. Helsingissä ihmiset ovat sen verran tottuneempia kuulemaan ruotsinkielisiä keskusteluja, ettei se heitä paljoa hetkauta. Täällä Heinolassa meitä kuitenkin katsotaan jokseenkin halveksien, ja joskus voi jossain kauempana kuulla mutistuja keskusteluja, joissa joku sanoo "snobit", tai jotain muuta todella fiksua.

My best friend speaks Swedish as her native language because she's from a Swedish-speaking Finnish family. We often speak Swedish for no reason because she has told me that she feels more natural when she's speaking Swedish. People are more used to hearing Swedish conversations in Helsinki so they don't care much. Here in Heinola some people look at us with despising looks and sometimes you can even hear some barely hearable conversations where someone says "snobs" or something else really smart. 

Ahvenanmaalla tilanne on päinvastainen. Maarianhaminassa 87.7% ihmisistä puhuu ruotsia, kun taas suomea puhuu 5.8% ja muita kieliä 6.5%. On todennäköisempää kuulla englanninkielisiä keskusteluja kuin suomenkielisiä. En itse kuitenkaan kohdannut minkäänlaista suomenkielisten väheksyntää.

The situation is completely opposite in Åland. In Mariehamn 87.7% of people speak Swedish when only 5.8% speak Finnish. 6.5% speak some other languages. It's more likely to hear conversations in English than in Finnish. Personally I didn't face any kind of discrimination or attitudes towards Finnish-speaking people.

Suomen Lapin pohjoisimmassa kolkassa Utsjoella puolet ihmisistä puhuu pohjoissaamea ja puolet suomea. En kuitenkaan tiedä onko siellä minkäänlaista jännitettä erikielisten välillä.

About one half of people speak North Sami and the other half speak Finnish in the northernmost place of Finnish Lapland - Utsjoki. But I don't know if there's any kind of tension between those who speak different languages up there.

~*~

Omasta mielestäni tuomitseminen pelkän äidinkielen perusteella on todella surullista.

In my personal opinion I think that judging people only by native language is really sad.

Millaisiin kieliin kohdistuviin asenteisiin olet törmännyt?

What kind of language concerning attitudes have you met?

Gradation

I was having a conversation about the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie with a friend of mine when I noticed about the weird conjugation pattern of the Finnish word 'vuosi' (=year). 'Vuosi' has two or three weak grades and usually nouns only have one. I have used that word for a million times and still haven't ever thought about it. 

Many nouns in Uralic languages have a 'strong grade' and a 'weak grade'. This means that the noun root reacts to suffixes and different noun forms. There are a huge amount of nouns like these e.g. 'márfi' (the Sami word for 'sausage') becomes 'márffi-' in some cases.

vuosi (=year)

nominative VUOSI strong grade

genitive VUODEN (s --> d)

partitive VUOTTA (s --> t(t) - the other 't' might be a part of the partitive suffix so I put it between brackets)

essive VUOTENA (s --> t)

translative VUODEKSI (s --> d)

inessive VUODESSA

elative VUODESTA

illative VUOTEEN (s --> t)

adessive VUODELLA

ablative VUODELTA

allative VUODELLE

(exessive VUODENTA)

abessive VUODETTA

All the plural forms are in the strong grade except the nominative which is VUODET (s --> d). Including instructive and comitative which I didn't mention here because they don't have singular forms.

Why did I say two or three weak grades? Because the commonly used essive is VUONNA (s --> n)

Btw, also verbs have strong and weak grades.

Are there any grade mutations (gradations) in your language?

- Väinölä

PS, The Uralic Breeze has a new 'summery' look.

Welcome! Tervetuloa!

I'm Väinölä (Väinölä is a place name - lit. 'A place called/of Väinö'. Pronounced /væijnø/ Väinö is a name and the suffix -la/-lä indicates place). I'm just another regular random blogger. I love languages, mostly Uralic and Indo-European. I like to talk about languages and grammar. I speak Finnish as my native language. 

Näitä kieliä olen opiskellut - These languages I have studied:

English (4 years)

Japanese / 日本語 (4 years)

Swedish / svenska (3 years)

French / français (2 years)

German / Deutsch (2 years)

Russian / русский язык  (1 year)

Sami (norhtern) / (davvi)sámegiella (1 year)

Tiedän myös paljon näistä kielistä ja niiden kieliopeista ja rakenteista - I also know a lot about these languages and their grammar and structures:

Estonian / eesti keel

Inari Sami / anarâškielâ

Mari / марий йылме

Veps / vepsan kel

~*~

My main goal is to gain fluency in Sami and French. I would also like to learn more Estonian after I've gotten further with Sami. I understand about 60% when I read Estonian and understand about 10% when someone talks to me in Estonian but I can't speak it myself. 

Päätavoitteeni on sujuvuuden tavoittaminen saamessa sekä ranskassa . Haluaisin myös oppia lisää viroa, kun olen päässyt pidemmälle saamen opinnoissani. Ymmärrän noin 60% kirjoitetusta virosta ja ymmärrän noin 10% puhutusta virosta, mutten itse osaa sitä puhua.

I will be publishing some posts about languages and grammar and also about living here in southern Finland. (<-- Does that sentence make any sense to you??

Julkaisen kirjoituksia kielistä ja kieliopista sekä elämisestä täällä Etelä-Suomessa.