Finland

Dresden

Celebrating Mediocrity
Veteran
My girlfriend and I would like to go to Finland, sometime in the near future. I, personally, have never left the States and have always been fond of Finland. We've talked about taking a class in learning to speak Finnish, as well. What should I know about, prior to making definitive plans to travel? What are some interesting touristy sites? I'm just beginning to research the trip, so any help would be welcomed.
 
Finnish is very peculiar in that it has more in common with Hungarian, than the other four major nordic languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic).

JRR Tolkien spoke fluent Finnish, and in fact based the first Elfish language on it. I forget which one that is, but you could easily look it up if you're interested.

Finnish rye bread is Very Good eats, especially those round soft ones, sold pre-sliced into halves. Nice matured hard cheese along with that = really yummy.

Turkish Pepper is made by a Finnish company these days.

Now I don't know what else to say about the place, lol!
 
JRR Tolkien spoke fluent Finnish, and in fact based the first Elfish language on it. I forget which one that is, but you could easily look it up if you're interested.
did he speak Finnish thanks for the info i never knew that
i only did know that he spoke Icelandic/old icelandic
he had a Icelandic housekeeper so he could practice his Icelandic
 
Start your planning by deciding whether you want to make your trip in midwinter or midsummer. I've always hated both the spring and autumn, although in recent years the weather has been mostly quite OK - the climate definitely seems to have shifted a bit, making those transition-seasons shorter. Getting a proper winter in southern parts of the country seems to be a bit of a gamble nowadays, so if you want to enjoy cold and dark with plenty of snow, the target should be in the north.
 
Anyway, here's some info you might find useful.

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1115.html

Heh. No offense to anybody, but people from US and Canada always somehow seem a bit fixated in safety and security issues. Some of the questions I've heard seem almost surreal, like whether if it is safe to walk in this town, and what kind of guns we take along when hiking. I understand that they are perfectly valid questions, they just feel so out of place against my cultural background.
 
Phonetically it's easy as we pretty much say how it is written, but otherwise it's pain, especially the syntax with it's 14 nouns. ;)

You are referring to the noun cases, I suppose - actually there 15 of them. Some seem to consider 30. But excluding those, many have said it's not that hard - I've met some exchange students that spoke very fluent Finnish after half a year. Then again I've met many who didn't learn a word...
 
Finnish is very peculiar in that it has more in common with Hungarian, than the other four major nordic languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic).
...

Turkish Pepper is made by a Finnish company these days.
A Finnish friend of ours used to say that Finnish had more in common with Turkish ... which is weird.

why not Denmark, at least it has its own species of native parrot
Pretty, but mine just keeps kipping on its back.


(Actually, I'm surprised you didn't mention the cheese).
 
Phonetically it's easy as we pretty much say how it is written, but otherwise it's pain, especially the syntax with it's 14 nouns. ;)
But you don't. P is a b-sound, K is a g-sound, T is a d-like sound and Y is weird. :D But I only know it peripherally. I have Finnish and Kven ancestry.
 
Heh. No offense to anybody, but people from US and Canada always somehow seem a bit fixated in safety and security issues. Some of the questions I've heard seem almost surreal, like whether if it is safe to walk in this town, and what kind of guns we take along when hiking. I understand that they are perfectly valid questions, they just feel so out of place against my cultural background.
All I did was google "finland us tourist" :)
 
But you don't. P is a b-sound, K is a g-sound, T is a d-like sound and Y is weird. :D But I only know it peripherally. I have Finnish and Kven ancestry.

Well that is exactly some sort of Sami (Kven is one of those, isn't it?) you are describing, not Finnish. Consonants in Finnish are pretty much as 'hard' (what's the proper term?) as they can get, there is no way you can mix p/k/t with b/g/d.

EDIT: Sorry, Kven isn't Sami, now that I educated myself about it... Maybe some scandic influences have rounded the consonants a little there. Or is it it just that what you associate with p/k/t natively is in fact ph/kh/th, and plain p/k/t sound foreign to you?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Phonetically, I can imagine Finnish being quite difficult to get right for anglicans. Generally, English is easier to speak 'correctly' for a Swede (with a few exceptions, such as 'th', which has no phonal equivalent in most of the nordic tongues, maybe all of them), than the other way around. Our long, open vowels (which Finnish has also) seem hard to grasp for those English types. :)
 
Back
Top