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Comment by wisty | Hacker News Reader

Also, Finns speak a Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language, which is said to be really easy to learn. It's phonetic, and technical words tend to be built out of simple Finnish words, not a weird mash of Latin, Greek, and other words. This makes it easy to do sciences, as you don't have to teach as much wacky vocabulary. (Note, I don't speak Finish, this is just what I've read).

I've also heard that Lithuanians (who also speak a Finno-Urgric language) do relatively well in school, while Swedish Finns (who are richer than Finnish Finns) who go to Swedish-language schools do worse.

Of course, in Education, there's never just one factor.

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Lithuanian is not a Finno-Ugric language, but a Baltic one. Perhaps you are thinking of Estonian?

Personally I think using the metric system is more important for learning science than the instruction language. When you get down to it, the "simple Finnish words" are just as alien to everyday life as the Latino-Greek words. A word like "jännite" does not confer any more insight than "voltage". In advanced topics Finnish also uses loan words for things like electrons, momentum, grammatical cases and so on.

I beg to differ. Jännite has the same word base as "jännitys", which translates to tension or suspension. And that is a natural concept that is related to voltage and thus helps internalize the concept.

I don't know anyone who's said that Finnish is an easy language to learn. In fact, I think it's generally considered one of the hardest languages in the world (along with Hungarian, which has similar grammar). You are right, though, that the phonetics are easy and highly consistent.

Also, in practice, most technical terms are borrowed from English, instead of inventing native, Finnish words for them.

The language isn't easy to learn, but easy to write and read once you've learned to talk with it. This is the distinction usually made regarding the language differences. Also most of the professional vocabulary is lent from other languages. I prefer to speak English when talking about programming or tech in general. Then again this starts to take affect, at the earliest, in high school.

Most say it's hard to learn. Putting that aside, I know Finnish contains many borrowed words. Take church, which in Finnish is "kirkko", Swedish is kyrka, and in Scottish English, kirk. This form almost certainly comes from the Norse "kirkja".

For a more technical term, consider "democracy", which is "demokratia". The Greek roots are obvious.

This form almost certainly comes from the Norse "kirkja".

It actually comes all the way from a Greek word that means "the Lord's," short for a term for churches that means "the assembly of the Lord" or "the house of the Lord."

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=church

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Church#Etymology

(Basis of knowledge: student of Biblical Greek, native speaker of English, sporadic student of various Germanic and Ugro-Altaic languages.)

Certainly. But here I mean that the flow probably came through the Norse. The Scotts definitely got their term from the Norse. Since "Christianity gained a foothold in Finland during the 11th century. It was strengthened with growing Swedish influence in the 12th century and the Finnish "crusade" of Birger Jarl in the 13th century." [Wikipedia] and since the Swedes were often trading and plundering along the Finnish coast, then I strongly suspect that the current Finnish word came from the Swedish one, which comes from the same Germanic root as in English.

The only etymology I could find is: kirkko [from Germanic. Compare Estonian kirik, Karelian kirikkö, Lapland girku, Swedish kyrka] : church

A quick scan of http://www.freeweb.hu/etymological/finnish.htm shows many words of Germanic origin. I like how "kihlat" (dowry) compares to the Swedish "gisslan" (hostage).

The only part of education where the language matters is when it comes to spelling, and the key factor there is the distance between the spoken language and the written language. In Finnish, these are close, i.e. words are spelled "as they sound", the rules are simple and consistent and there are few special cases, and as a result Finnish children have a much easier time learning how to spell compared to Danish or English children.

The Finnish language is one theory. There's lots of derivative words and it's really easy to know the meaning of a new word. Look from here: http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/

There's one example of the derivation:

'kirja' - 'book'

'kirjailija' - 'writer'

'kirjailla' - 'to embroider'

'kirjailu' - 'embroidery'

'kirjaimellinen' - 'literal'

'kirjaimellisesti' - 'literally'

'kirjaimisto' - 'alphabet'

'kirjain' - 'letter' (of the alphabet)

'kirjallinen' - 'written; literary'

'kirjallisuus' - 'literature'

'kirjaltaja' - 'typographer'

'kirjanen' - 'booklet'

'kirjasin' - 'font' (in typography)

'kirjasto' - 'library'

'kirjata' - 'to write down, to make a note of'

'kirje' - 'letter' (document)

'kirjeellinen' - 'by letter' (adj.)

'kirjelmä' - 'letter, note, message'

'kirjelmöidä' - 'to complain (by means of writing)'

'kirjoitella' - 'to write' (now and then)

'kirjoittaa' - 'to write'

'kirjoittaja' - 'writer' (person who performs a writing work)

'kirjoittaminen' - 'writing' (action)

'kirjoittautua' - 'to get enrolled, to log in'

'kirjoittelu' - 'writing' (now and then)

'kirjoitus' - 'writing' (result)

'kirjoituttaa' - 'to have ... written' (factitive of 'kirjoittaa')

'kirjuri' - 'scribe'

You don't consider language important in conveying ideas, thinking, etc?

What are you talking about?

> The only part of education where the language matters is when it comes to spelling

What about differences between languages in their ability to convey ideas.

We're talking about elementary school education here, I find it extremely difficult to believe that some languages are "better" than others at conveying the ideas at this level of education.

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