
How many tenses are there in Finnish?įinnish has four tenses for verbs: the present (nonpast), the past, the perfect, and the past-perfect. Type I verbs cover many words ending in two vowels and are divided into subclasses. As mentioned above, Finnish verbs can be divided into six types based on how the infinitive form of the word (for example, “to speak”) ends. How many types of verbs there are in Finnish? I’d say most Finns remember only some of them. You cannot learn a language if you’re afraid of making mistakes.ĭo Finns remember the grammatical weird names of all the nominal cases? Little by little she gets some of endings and stems correct and continues to learn. The correct plural form is jalat as we just learnt. My daughter is now two and she is saying “jalkat” all the time. Yet they are confidently talking Finnish and being understood. On the other hand, there are hardly any exceptions.Īnd you know what? When Finnish kids are learning Finnish, they don’t know the endings and stems of the words either. I agree that there are a lot of rules and a lot ot learn. My students tell me that learning the cases and stems is hard. When you want to form the word “feet”, the word for “foot” jalka becomes “jalat” instead of jalkat.

It requires changing vowels (or what is called consonant gradation).įor example, when you want to form the word “flower’s”, the word for “flower” kukka becomes “kukan” in the possessive instead of “kukkan”. The word itself may change to make it easier to pronounce. Let’s focus now on nouns because they are the most important when building your language skills in Finnish.įor example, “in the house” translates to talossa, where talo is the basic form of the word “house”, and the suffix -ssa is used in place of “in”. Instead of many prepositions like at, from, in, with and as, Finnish has noun cases which are formed by adding a suffix at the end of the word.Īll nominals use the same logic when it comes to cases. This article will walk you through the basics of Finnish grammar and answers some of the questions that often come up at the beginning of this journey. For example, Finnish has no future tense, Finns use the present tense.įortunately, even grammar follows a set of rules. It’s the grammar where things can get a bit complicated, but most things are very streamlined. That’s why Finns always forget articles in other languages. The Finnish alphabet contains only a couple of new letters and words are pronounced as they are written. While Finnish isn’t related to the Latin or Germanic language groups, it has many things going for it.
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If you want a smaller step in the right direction, you can also boost your confidence with my FREE Spark Your Finnish class.

To jump straight into course learning, check out my Conversational Finnish for Beginners Course.


My goal is to help you look at the Finnish language as lovingly as I look at my delicious blueberry pie. Wow! That’s far less than the recommended 10 000 hours of deliberate practice to become a master in any field. When it comes to standard Finnish, it might be helpful to know the FSI estimates learning fluent Finnish takes around 1100 hours.
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If you focus on learning spoken Finnish, it’s faster to master than standard Finnish because spoken Finnish is shorter and more relaxed (more about how to learn it later in this article). I get a lot of questions about how long it takes to learn Finnish. I know, Finnish has a reputation as a difficult language to learn.įor example, the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute lists Finnish among the group of languages considered the most difficult for English speakers.
