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I travel quite a bit on business. One tactic I use to build relationships with customers and partners is to have them teach me how to count to ten in their lang
by 11thEarlOfMar 12y ago
I travel quite a bit on business. One tactic I use to build relationships with customers and partners is to have them teach me how to count to ten in their language, typically over a beer. By now I know Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Arabic, French, German, Cantonese, Finnish and a couple of others I've forgotten.
What popped out immediately when learning the Finnish numbers was how long the words are. All of the other languages count with one or two syllable words. When pronounced, the Finnish is, minimum, two syllables. Three, seven and ten are three syllables. Eight and nine are four:
yksi
kaksi
kolme
neljä
viisi
kuusi
seitsemän
kahdeksan
yhdeksän
kymmenen
Twenty-First is: kahdeskymmenesensimmäinen
I've always wondered what it was about the history of the language and culture that led to this. Finnish does quite a bit of concatenating words to create other words. It was originally the same for numbers. For example, the longest, eight: kahdeksan was originally, literally, 'with two ten'. You can see hints of this in that kaksi (two) contains 'ka' and 'dek' references a borrowed word 'deca', ten.
Ref. http://goo.gl/Zt2WBb http://goo.gl/Zt2WBb
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoHa! My son does a similar icebreaking thing with folks of different culture/language. He asks them how to say "Excuse me, your dog is on fire!" Has it in 5 or six languages now.
- RBerenguel 12y agoNow I can't help thinking of the "spruce is on fire" Finnish-is-hard picture. Do you know it?
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoNever heard of it. Reference?
- pekko 12y agohttp://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Finnish+Lesson+1_f22497_4905528.jpg http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Finnish+Lesson+1_f22497_490...
- freehunter 12y agoFinnish is a great language: The spruce is on fire. = Kuusi palaa. The spruce returns. = Kuusi palaa. The number six is on fire. = Kuusi palaa. The number six returns. = Kuusi palaa. Six of them are on fire. = Kuusi palaa. Six of them return. = Kuusi palaa. Your moon is on fire. = Kuusi palaa. Your moon returns. = Kuusi palaa. Six pieces. = Kuusi palaa
- RBerenguel 12y agoWhat the others pointed out, sorry for not linking directly. I was on iPad and searching on a separate tab, copying and all the hassle was slightly too cumbersome... And you may have already seen it :)
- bergie 12y agoAnteeksi, koirasi on tulessa (though in practice the polite forms are rarely used in Finnish. You'd probably go for hei, sun koiras palaa)
- kaitai 12y agoGrowing up in the US, I learned Finnish from books and maybe some official radio/TV, as well as family. My cousins in Finland made fun of me for speaking like a book: I'd always choose the first sentence you presented and they'd just gawk. "Who talks like that?" I knew lots of old words they'd never heard, though, since I was practiced at speaking with 70-year-olds who'd learned from their immigrant parents. A little linguistic time warp...
- codehero 12y agoA humble suggestion would be to ask them to start counting from zero, not one.
- clathrate 12y ago"kolme" is two syllables, not three. "kahdeksan" and "yhdeksän" are three syllables, not four.
- 11thEarlOfMar 12y agoThe gentleman teaching me pronounced the 'h'. As in 'ka-hə-dek-san' and 'u-hə-dek-san'.
- clathrate 12y agoPerhaps he was trying to emphasize that the 'h' must not be left silent. There's no vowel implied after the 'h', though.
- kaitai 12y agoDialect differences rear their heads. For a fun read on one major class of Finnish dialects, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savonian_dialects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savonian_dialects If I were good I'd be able to identify the region of Finland your teacher came from. Someone from Finland, help me out! Is that a Savolainen murre?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- seppalala 12y agoOf course, colloquially, Finns typically shorten them to yy kah kol nel vii kuu sei kasi ysi kymppi (or a similar variation) with multiples of ten shorted to -kyt. So twenty-one is 'kahkytyy', the same number of syllables as in English. Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquial_Finnish#Numerals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquial_Finnish#Numerals Learning Finnish involves learning two dialects, spoken and written, and the spoken dialect can vary considerably even between cities 200km apart. But it's an incredibly fun language to learn. Very logically constructed, few(er) exceptions to the rules, and if you can say it, you can spell it!
- akx 12y agoI'm Finnish and I have to say I've never heard anyone say "kahkytyy" and it ... looks weird, too. "Kakskytyks" is the form I'd use. (Also, "yy kaa koo nee vii kuu seit kasi ysi kymppi" for the first 10 numbers.) My dialect is from the Turku region, for what it's worth.
- kiiski 12y agoWhen counting something, I (in North Karelia) would say yy kaa koo nee vii kuu see kasi ysi kymppi yytoo kaatoo ... kaksyy kakskaa kakskoo... And when just saying a single number, I would say yksi kaksi kolme neljä viisi kuusi seittämän kaheksan yheksän kymmenen ykstoista kakstoista ... kakskytyks kakskytkaks kakskytkolme
- nawitus 12y agoNever heard "kahkytyy" either, "kakskytyks" is the form I'd use too (Häme represent).
- frooxie 12y ago> What popped out immediately when learning the Finnish numbers was how long the words are. Interestingly, the Estonian numbers are basically the Finnish ones with the last syllable chopped off: üks, kaks, kolm, neli, viis, kuus, seitse, kaheksa, üheksa, kümme.
- bergie 12y agoI think that Estonian, by the virtue of having been in contact with more different languages and cultures, is kind of a "time travel to the future of Finnish language". They seem to have dropped a lot of the unnecessarily complicated endings etc.
- brunnsbe 12y agoAs a Finn i find it most hilarious when it comes to counting the Olympics, e.g. "Kahdennetkymmenennettoiset talviolympialaiset" would be "twenty-second winter Olympics". Even our sport journalists have troubles getting those n:s and t:s correctly pronounced.