Differences between spoken and written Finnish? Puhekieli vs kirjakieli explained through examples!

Hey there, once again thank you for the amazing support and participation! Here's a list of the observations and corrections pointed out so far: -> For the way verbs get shortened in questions, apart from the -ksä ending presented in the video, you also have -tsä and -tko/-tkö as variants, depending on regional differences as well as personal preferences. -> "Myö" is a puhekieli form for "me" (the English "we"), NOT for "minä" (I). -> I misspelled a word in the video: the right spelling for bycicle is "polkupyörä" (NOT polkkupyörä). Very sorry for the mistake there! -> "Pikkari" and "hokkari" are incomplete because they should be in their plural form: "pikkarit" and "hokkarit" - this is something I knew but somehow managed to write down wrong in the video... :( my bad!!!

It sounds weird foreigner speaking so good finnish xD

Most likely 95% of the people here are finnish people proud of our language.

Osaat kyllä suomea uskomattoman hyvin! 👍 Hattua 🎩 pitää nostaa!

might as well note that you don't need to say "halutko valkoviiniä vai punaviiniä?" and nobody does because you can say "haluatko valko- vai punaviiniä?" because tautology is to be avoided in Finnish that is repeating words unnecessarily.

Kiva nähdä että joku ulkomaalanen on oppinu puhuun suomee näin hyvin

I'm from Brazil and I've been in love with Finnish culture and language for years. Now I have finally decided to try and learn some Finnish and the biggest challenge is finding a decent teaching source. Everything I find is either too basic (simple vocabulary) or too complex (advanced grammar rules). I'm taking it as learning two languages, considering the puhekieli and kirjakieli thing. It hasn't been easy, but I won't give up. My love for Finland is way bigger than that ❤️

edelleenkin hämmentää miten hyvin oot itekses oppinu suomee...

There's also a thing I personally find very interesting: the use of 'se' (it) to refer to people in spoken Finnish. In kirjakieli you ALWAYS have to use 'hän' for people since, you know, they're people. 'Se' is reserved for animals or items and the like. And I believe, originally, Agricola didn't use hän - it was added later when kirjakieli was modified, because people thought it was based too much on Southern dialects. So they switched se for hän (along with a lot of other Eastern/Northern dialect influences). And to a Southern speaker, like myself, if you call people hän in normal conversation you are 100% bitching about something they did or said. XD

Sivuhuomiona lisäisin suomen kieltä opiskeleville, että vaikka näiden esimerkkien kannalta persoonapronominit ovat tarpeellisia, yleensä ottaen ne voi jättää pois kirjakielen lauseista. "Oletko siellä?" kuulostaa luontevammalta kuin "Oletko sinä siellä?", ellei eksplisiittisesti haluta kysyä, oletko juuri sinä siellä. Puhekielessä ne taas ovat tarpeellisia: "Ootsä siellä?" kuulostaa luontevammalta kuin "Oot siellä?", joka kuulostaa itse asiassa vähän hassulta.

Sun suomi on ihan uskomattoman hyvän kuulosta!! Jatka samaan malliin :D

How can you speak english and finnish both so fluently?!?!?! AMAZING!!!

I like how Finnish sounds, it's the language of mystery and legends, very poetic and melancholic. I know few words in Finnish, most of which I learned when I was in Helsinki for the Eurovision in 2007. I'm a native Serbian speaker, so ŽIVELA FINSKA (Long live Finland) ♡

Its funny how you as a foreigner are teaching Finnish to me a born Finn. I never realized what some of these differences were or how they came to be or how the word changes. It was just natural so i never stopped to think about it.

I'd like to add an example of regional speech from Helsinki. I didn't grow up here but have lived in the capital for close to 20 years now. I was once served in a street food place by a young local lady who concluded the transaction with a question: "Teetsä mitää kuitil?" It took me a second to decipher this because in Helsinkian speech all vowels tend to sound the same. So what I heard was something like this: "Töötsö mötöö köötöl?" As in: "Do you have any use for a receipt?" I found the interaction delightful. She wasn't being rude or standoffish. She was just speaking her own language.

Very nice analysis. You are a very unusual foreigner because you have gotten into that deep of our language that you know the difference of kirjakieli and puhekieli. And you pronounce Finnish words unbelievable well. I am impressed once again!

Incredible. I haven't ever heard foreigner speak finnish so well. Good job!

"he's a good guy" damn right

The funny thing with spoken Finnish is, that it changes depending on the area you live in. I'm originally from area close to Pori. In there people say "tuuksä" or "tuuksää", when in written language it would be "tuletko sinä". Now I have lived half of my life in Helsinki area, and in here we say "tuutsä". Same goes with everything, "haluutsä", "otatsä" etc. So basically instead of K we use the letter T when we say things shortly. We drop away different letter. There is this version of spoken Finnish that is in a way "common spoken language", and everyone understands it. Otherwise with some words it can be hard to understand some versions of spoken language, if you are not from that area. Details still change depending where you live in. Some words have different meaning in different areas. For example if you'd say "Saisinko yhden kappaleen kakkua", in Pori area you'd be asking for one piece of the whole cake, but in Helsinki area one whole cake. If you want just a piece of something, in Helsinki area you need to say "pala", you can't say "kappale". However, there's so many versions of spoken language, you can't learn them all, so don't worry. Finnish people don't learn them all either.

"Punaviini" doesn't become "punkkari" because punkkari is so much older word for punk rock fan (who dresses appropriately), than "valkkari" and "punkku" are. In other words, the word was already taken, and we had to go for a different suffix there. Valkkari was not taken, so there we could grab the fashionable ending for valkoviini.