Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

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

Of 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

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!

I'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.

When 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

Never heard "kahkytyy" either, "kakskytyks" is the form I'd use too (Häme represent).

Ha! 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.

Now I can't help thinking of the "spruce is on fire" Finnish-is-hard picture. Do you know it?

Never heard of it. Reference?

http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Finnish+Lesson+1_f22497_490...

Finnish 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

What 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 :)

Anteeksi, koirasi on tulessa

(though in practice the polite forms are rarely used in Finnish. You'd probably go for hei, sun koiras palaa)

Growing 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...

> 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.

I 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.

A humble suggestion would be to ask them to start counting from zero, not one.

"kolme" is two syllables, not three.

"kahdeksan" and "yhdeksän" are three syllables, not four.

The gentleman teaching me pronounced the 'h'. As in 'ka-hə-dek-san' and 'u-hə-dek-san'.

Perhaps he was trying to emphasize that the 'h' must not be left silent. There's no vowel implied after the 'h', though.

Dialect differences rear their heads. For a fun read on one major class of Finnish dialects, check out 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?

Nope. Though "kahareksan" sounds like something you'd hear in Pohjanmaa.

Yeah it's the dialect of my hometown - that's def not standard Finnish :)

As 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.

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