When I was growing up, I often heard things like, "You know, English is one of the hardest languages for a non-native speaker to learn!" from well-meaning teachers. I think they meant to inspire pride in us while simultaneously excusing themselves for not bothering to teach us any other languages. After all, English is hard enough without cluttering our minds further.
Well, even a cursory knowledge of English grammar will tell you otherwise, and studying Finnish makes English's relative simplicity even more apparent. You may have already seen this 2009 article from The Economist, but it makes a good case for why English is easy to learn in relation to a whole host of other languages. It doesn't explicitly name Finnish, but it does mention Estonian and the Finno-Ugric family.
Difficult or otherwise, it's actually really cool to study Finnish as an English speaker. I'm sure it's probably equally cool to learn it as another sort of speaker, too. But, you know, it might have been nice to be a native Finnish speaker learning English instead.
Well, even a cursory knowledge of English grammar will tell you otherwise, and studying Finnish makes English's relative simplicity even more apparent. You may have already seen this 2009 article from The Economist, but it makes a good case for why English is easy to learn in relation to a whole host of other languages. It doesn't explicitly name Finnish, but it does mention Estonian and the Finno-Ugric family.
Difficult or otherwise, it's actually really cool to study Finnish as an English speaker. I'm sure it's probably equally cool to learn it as another sort of speaker, too. But, you know, it might have been nice to be a native Finnish speaker learning English instead.
He he he...I know what you mean...English grammar in comparison isn't as complicated as Finnish grammar...but I'm glad you're enjoying yourself studying Finnish. :-)))
ReplyDeleteFor me, learning English was already a struggle (it's hard to pronounce English words 'coz Indo pronunciation is more similar to Finnish - thus it's easier for me to pronounce/read/write Finnish words compared to English words). But Finnish grammar is a whole different case to learn he he...
Luckily English is a Germanic language, so for me as a German it was pretty easy to pick up. After 1,5 years of learning English back in school I was able to express myself way better than I can do now in Finnish, being in Suomi for the same amount of time.
ReplyDeleteI also "learned" French in school and I took a shot at Russian, phew! I can hardly remember any of it. And Finnish...well, you know, it´s a damn tough nut!
Thanks for the link to that article, it was an interesting read.
@Amel How long have you been studying Finnish? It's great that you had an easier time with pronunciation. I think everyone in my class seems to struggle with it somewhat (although that's probably the least of our difficulties...). I'm one of two native English speakers, and then we've got people from Russia, Thailand, China, and one from Hungary. I guess Finnish is sufficiently different from our native languages (even Hungarian!) so as to give us some trouble with pronunciation.
ReplyDelete@JottEff Thanks for comparing your English experience with your Finnish experience. It makes perfect sense that, as a German speaker, you'd have a much easer time with English.
When I took German in high school, I found it quite similar to English. I really liked the language and always wished I could have learned it properly. (I'll have to blog about my German teacher someday. He makes for quite a story.)
Then, when I was at university and starting to learn a little about linguistics, as well as Old and Middle English, I developed an even stronger interest in it. So once 5 - 7 years have passed I think I'll start up trying to learn it! ;)