#1 Finnisch einfacher zu lernen als Schwedisch
Verfasst: 7. Sep 2006 15:05
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finnis ... 5221428204Finnish is not really such a difficult language
Experts say myth of overwhelming difficulty of Finnish lacks scientific basis
By Irma Stenbäck
It is time to break the myth that Finnish is a difficult language. Apologies to the Finnish nation, but your mother-tongue is not that tricky - not even for the Chinese.
British Professor David Kirby said in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat on August 29th [http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Britis ... 5221427726 ] that Finnish is fairly easy to learn, and that the rules of grammar are quite clear. Kirby, who has a good command of Finnish, feels that learning Swedish is much more difficult than Finnish. (nicht für Deutsche, oder?)
Historian Kirby believes that the Finns' notion of the difficulty of their language stems from the desire of the Finns, as a small nation, to emphasise how their language differs from others. (Geltungszwang? ;) )
Heikki Paunonen, Professor of Finnish, and a winner of the Tieto Finlandia Prize for non-fiction for his dictionary on Helsinki slang, offers a different reason for the perception of Finnish as an extraordinarily difficult language. His explanation is a cultural one.
"The myth of Finnish as a difficult language is linked with the birth of a Finnish-language intelligentsia in the late 19th century. According to the ideas of J.V. Snellman, many Swedish, German, and even Russian-speaking families switched over to Finnish as the language to be spoken in the home."
Paunonen says that changing the home language also meant that many who spoke a different language had to learn Finnish with the help of grammar books and dictionaries.
Finnish author Arvid Järnefelt has described in one of his books the difficulties that his mother Elisabeth had in studying Finnish. Paunonen says that the myth of the difficulty of the Finnish language stems from this period, in around the 1920s.
The strength of the myth is reflected in Paunonen's view in his own memories from going to school in the 1950s, when he could imagine nothing more boring than lessons in Finnish sentence analysis :rolleyes: .
"If you compare Finnish with other languages around the world, linguists will dismiss the myth out of hand. For instance, Chinese, with all of its characters, is genuinely difficult for a foreigner, as are the structures of pronunciation in Portuguese."
Sanni Heinzmann, who teaches Finnish for foreigners at the University of Helsinki, also wants to dispense with the notion of the great difficulty of Finnish.
She suspects that ordinary Finns on the street do not want to believe the facts of their own mother-tongue.
"Here at the university we do not nurture the myth of the awesome difficulty of Finnish. The Finnish language is not especially hard for foreigners - not even for Chinese. The myth might stem from the fact that studying Finnish might seem to be painstaking for foreigners at first, because it is part of a different language group", Heinzmann says.
Finnish, which is part of the Finno-Ugric family of languages, differs considerably from the Indo-European languages - the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages.
As a language teacher, Heinzmann describes a beginners' Finnish class as a pyramid. Once a foreigner learns the structures of the language and the foundations of its grammar, the rest is much easier. This differs from English, which is a pyramid standing on its tip, in which the basic skills are easy to master, after which studying the language to a higher level becomes considerably more difficult.
"Finnish is a logical and systematic language. Finnish has no articles, no irregular verbs, and no grammatical gender, as Swedish and German do."
Heinzmann feels that the Finnish vocabulary differs from those of Indo-European languages in a positive way.
When a student learns the basic word kirja [book], it is easy to derive words such as kirjasto [library] or kirjain [letter, character] from it.
Elementary Finnish classes at the University of Helsinki have students from different parts of the world - including China, India, Africa, and South America. Heinzmann argues that the student's first language does not matter, as she uses the direct method and gives all of her instruction in Finnish - from the very beginning.
"The differing structure of Finnish always sparks amusement among foreigners. After the initial awkwardness, the students sigh with delight about how wonderfully systematic a language Finnish is."