6 months
1 year
2 years
over 2 years
impossible to learn
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?I pretty strongly disagree. I read the rest that you said but I think even the smartest people have problems with it. It's really hard to give a sort of 'length' or 'measurement' on how long it will take to learn Finnish. But if you want to read a book in Finnish, you're looking at very well over 1 year... I think the OP of this thread was asking how long it takes to learn the language well enough to do everything. Finnish goes far further than just being able to have a conversation... what about all of the technical words? Try reading a book on politics after just 5 years of learning Finnish, good luck if you can get past a single page and understand anything.Originally Posted by AA_Finn
Finnish has many advantages and one of the disadvantages is it's encrypted so heavily in it's own context and so many things that other languages share have no meaning in Finnish and vice versa. Obviously it depends on how determined you are and your level of teaching and such. You have to take everything into account, but an average I would say 3 years will get you a pretty hard grounding of knowledge where you wont just simply 'forget' something if you move countries for a few years. Anything under that and I don't think you have had strong enough synapses to be able to remember anything.
So sure, in a year you could learn how to have a good conversation. Which trust me, is only the first tiny milestone. For me completing Finnish is when I can easily speak a mix of English and Finnish in a sentence, so I still have some years to go. I can only understand half of twilight in Finnish and I've been learning outside of Finland for 8 years. Obviously everyone isn't in the same circumstance as I am but it doesn't matter really in the end Finnish takes years and is one of the hardest languages to learn ever. If you don't have a good grip of English, almost a native grip of it then it's even 500 times harder to learn.
Stove burns on my hands... show them to my friends, make you participate..
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?you're learning finnish AWAY from finland and telling people that its very hard to learn?
If you live/stay in finland,talk/hear finnish everyday and you will be able to learn finnish in 1-2 years.
If you wanna learn a language,you have to talk to native speakers of that language,and go to the country of that language.
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?I would disagree with this comment. I had quite a few people in my class who could barely say 'How are you' in english, yet they speak way better then me after studying for the same amount of time. So I think really, it just comes down to how much effort you put into learning it.
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?Have you been to Finland? No. That's right you haven't.
Have I been to Finland? Yes. I've stayed there for just over 11 months.
- Finnish is the third hardest language in the world (and is the hardest that uses the extended Latin/Ugic alphabet) , [Although some people say Polish or Hungarian tie in at first with Finnish].
- Is only half similar to ONE other language in the world. (Estonian)
- Is only DISTANTLY related to one other language in the world. (Hungarian)
- Finnish takes years to learn, has no prepositions, uses agglutinative context.
- It modifies and inflects the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence.
- Is part of the Ugric languages.
- Doesn't really share ANY morphology at all with any other language.
- Spoken by less than 1% of all, when compared to other world languages.
- Finnish has a ton of dialects and differences that vary from town to town for gods sake.
- Finnish is also Ostrobothnic as well.. which goes to show how difficult it is to grasp.
Lets just agree that you can't learn Finnish in a year, yes? If you ever want to have a conversation with me in Finnish I would be more than happy to antaa ihan kunnolla sulle elämäs opetuksen...
@EmilyK
Well I certainly think it would be harder because if your grasp of the Latin alphabet and how the letters sort of correspond is well established then 'swapping over' and changing the sounds is simple (at least in my opinion) compared to having to learn your 'abc's sort for the first time ever
But actually now that I think about it, English had me confused with a few things in Finnish. The 'h and t' for example and I never got that with Dutch. So you're probably right in that if you don't have another Latin derived language known you probably don't have the external interference of it!
Last edited by Zeptinune; 6 Days Ago at 04:36 PM.
Stove burns on my hands... show them to my friends, make you participate..
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?yes,i've been to Finland.Stop with your prejudices already.
If the language is so hard,how come i can pronounce every finnish word without any problems?
Finnish is hard for native english speakers,its easier to learn if ur language has similarities with finnish.
Grammar is very similar
Pronounciation is EXACT same except j,y and ü
should i say more?
Lets just agree that learning a language entirely depends on your language skills,how much u work on that language and how long u spend memorising rules etc and etc.
There are people who cant learn a language in years,but also there are people who can learn a language in a year,or in 2 years.It entirely depends on you,not the language.
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?Every Finnish word without problems. Right-o. I've met plenty of Turkish people some who have lived in Finland their entire lives and can't speak even half that of a native.. you mean to tell me you can speak like a native and I'm supposed to believe that... ok.. Those people spoke like the Indians on the telephone that I am always asking to stop harassing me.
Upload a video of you reciting a few chapters of Kalevala for me and I'll believe that you can 'pronounce every Finnish word without any problems' lol. Plenty of Finns can't even articulate themselves well in their own language..
Whatever it is you're smoking I want some of it lmfao!
Stove burns on my hands... show them to my friends, make you participate..
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?you just foolishly believe that everyone is like you and everyone thinks that finnish is very hard to learn just because it was hard for YOU.
not everyone is same.
I also met turkish people who lived in germany for over 60 years and cant speak any word of german,your point is?
and sorry,i dont share what i *smoke*
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?Hey I didn't say you had to share I'll buy some.
Finnish wasn't hard for me, neither is emigrating there.. just expensive and very time consuming. There is a difference between that which is 'hard' and that which needs 'respect and patience'.
Still I want to hear you recite some of the Kalevala
I don't mind if you don't agree with me, you can believe and say what you like. Just back yourself up before you go saying stuff
Anyway it doesn't matter. This is an interesting topic, and I'd love to see the responses from some more people who think they can speak Finnish.
Funny, isn't it interesting that all of the people these days who are 'learning' Finnish say they can speak it and all of the people who are natives of Finland say it's hard?
It's easy to think that you can 'say everything without problems' when you aren't a native.
Stove burns on my hands... show them to my friends, make you participate..
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?Let's me chip in now... I find this whole learning Finnish in certain time rather vague because one will learn Finnish lesser in one year than in two years and so on. If the OP is about fluent Finnish, then I would say it takes over 4 years in average and I am hoping to get that level next year or ... not. But anyway, after 3 years of constant pounding, I must admit I have done quite well.
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Re: How long does it take to learn Finnish?The length of time it takes to learn Finnish depends on the level of ability you consider to be enough to have "learnt" it.
Of course, it depends on the intensity of your studying, your age, and your natural ability to pick up languages. But for an average person with non-intensive courses, I would say it takes a couple of years to get to a functional level of the language, ten years to speak it with a good level of fluency, and a lifetime to know it fully.
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