Mick oppii suomea - Mick learns Finnish

[mick33]

First random thought is that when I look at what is available online for teaching Hungarian as a second and compare that with what is available for Finnish learners it seems that both languages are initially presented like this: Silly foreigners! Why are you trying to learn our languages? They're so bloody difficult, perhaps even unique . Also see here.

But after getting past these jokes, I realize that the real secret is that Hungarian and Finnish are actually quite logical, and many speakers of both languages want to show that to anyone interested in their languages and cultures, although I think Hungarian appears to be a little bit more logical (but maybe this is just my honeymoon phase with the language).

I have run into some surprises with Hungarian pronunciation. There are 14 vowels in the Hungarian alphabet and different regional dialects (or maybe they're accents?) pronounce á and a so similarly that I can't tell them apart but I thought I understood that the two vowels are distinct sounds. Even worse, sometimes I can't hear the e, é, and í as separate sounds even though I know they obviously are separate sounds . I know I need to listen to even more spoken and sung Hungarian anyway, so I will do that and hope these issues sort themselves out soon.

I have also become suddenly interested in the Rubik's cube, since it was designed by Rubik Ernő. In Hungarian it's called Rubik kocka (unless Google has misled me again ) and I have been watching videos in Hungarian explaining how to solve it even if I understand almost nothing being said.
Of course, now I have to get a Rubik's Cube so I can practice with it!

Szép álmokat!
Mick

[Henkkles]

English has vowel length as well, although it coincides with tense and lax vowels. Take the words "ship" and "sheep" for example. They have essentially the same vowel phoneme, but one is short and the other one long. If you were explaining their pronunciations to a Hungarian person, you could spell them "sip" and "síp" respectively.

English doesn't have what in Hungarian is the <é>, but at one point it did. It actually merged with the <í>-like vowel in English. All English words with <ee> (leek, meek, sheep...) were once pronounced with that sound. It is little more than an elongated <e>, as in "leg" or "bed".

[jeff_lindqvist]

I don't think I've got the T shape in many years - the last layer is generally in a better position than that. Nowadays I position and orient all corners, then move the rest into place by one single algorithm and it's inversion. It's slower, but more exciting.

[mick33]

English has vowel length as well, although it coincides with tense and lax vowels. Take the words "ship" and "sheep" for example. They have essentially the same vowel phoneme, but one is short and the other one long. If you were explaining their pronunciations to a Hungarian person, you could spell them "sip" and "síp" respectively.

English doesn't have what in Hungarian is the <é>, but at one point it did. It actually merged with the <í>-like vowel in English. All English words with <ee> (leek, meek, sheep...) were once pronounced with that sound. It is little more than an elongated <e>, as in "leg" or "bed".

Thanks Henkkles, this is pretty helpful info. I hadn't even thought about the influence English would have on me when listening to, and trying to pronounce, Hungarian .

[mick33]

I don't think I've got the T shape in many years - the last layer is generally in a better position than that. Nowadays I position and orient all corners, then move the rest into place by one single algorithm and it's inversion. It's slower, but more exciting.

Wow! That sounds more advanced than I'm ready for now, but I'll definitely try it out.

[jeff_lindqvist]

One of the standard methods is CFOP (Cross, First 2 layers, Orientation of last layer, Permutation of last layer), but I thought it was fun to start with eight corners in place (by using the move for orienting* and positioning** the corners of the last layer), and then I position the remaining pieces with the Sune move (and a mirrored version). Probably a lot more moves, but good planning can position two pieces at the same time.

* Sune: R U R' U R U2 R' ; it's mirror: L' U' L U' L' U2' L
** Fixing the headlights - once or twice: R' F R' B2 R F' R' B2 R2

[mick33]

Sziasztok! The winter holidays were good for me personally, except that I didn't do much language learning from Christmas to New Year's Day. Well, now that the winter holidays have ended, it's time to focus on language learning again, so here I am!

Hungarian
I mentioned in my Random thoughts about Hungarian post (just scroll up) that I had some issues with Hungarian pronunciation and whether or not I was hearing some sounds correctly. I also wrote that one solution was to listen to more Hungarian, and I am, but I don't think that's all I need to do. Since I specifically wrote about trouble hearing certain vowels properly I figured I needed to look at the letters as they would be transcribed in the International PHonetic Alphabet. In one of my HTLAL logs I wrote that I taught myself IPA a few years ago, but I must not have learned it well because I forgot almost everything . Oh well, I found a site that has an IPA chart with sounds, so I can now learn what I'm supposed to be hearing . This experience is already teaching me not to trust written descriptions of how to pronounce a language and makes me wonder how bad my pronunciation and listening ability now is in other languages. Another thing I discovered is that Hungarian Rubik's Cube videos often have the word "kirakása" in their titles, but I can't guess the meaning from context yet and neither can I find an online dictionary that gives me a definition that makes sense.

Language maintenance
I know that I re-titled my log "Finnish & Hungarian" and wrote here that my other languages would have to wait, and they have been. I had believed that I would be fine with this, but last Thursday (or maybe it was Wednesday) I asked myself "How am I supposed to become the world's greatest polyglot (yeah right , keep dreaming Mick! ) if I only learn to speak those two languages?" Hmmm.... I guess the answer is I won't come close to that brilliantly thought out and clear goal if I can't also have conversations in Spanish, Afrikaans, Polish etc (see languages under my avatar). so I began watching random videos in Afrikaans, Spanish and Polish and practicing pronouncing words and phrases as well. The results of this language maintenance day were pretty mixed. My level of comprehension in Afrikaans isn't quite as low as I had expected, but I have forgotten many basic things I used to know and my pronunciation is poor (truthfully it never was great, too much influence from my idiolect of US English and my Spanish pronunciation). In Spanish I can follow what people say sometimes, but I often got quite confused by the use of the past tenses and my pronunciation has declined to the point that I can no longer consistently pronounce rolled r's and I aspirate the letter "t" way too often, these issues are obviously the influence of English and mean that I need more exposure to spoken Spanish and more pronunciation and speaking practice (especially for the rolled r sound, which I can still pronounce in Afrikaans and Finnish ). As for Polish, I need to learn more words and keep working on pronunciation and listening comprehension but I never got far with Polish so this is not a surprise at all.

Next time I'll need to revisit Swedish and Italian and write something about Finnish.

Jó éjszakát, szép álmokat! (Good night and sweet dreams)
Mick

[mick33]

Buongiorno! Yes, you read that right. I did indeed revisit Swedish and Italian after my last post. My listening and reading comprehension in both languages is quite low, but I'm not surprised by this at all. A few years of neglect will do that. My Swedish pronunciation wasn't good a few years ago and nothing has changed, I still sound worse than the Swedish chef from the Muppet Show , however, my Italian pronunciation was actually OK though I speak way too slowly to sound natural (or maybe I'm just happy it's not as quite as poor as my Swedish and Polish pronunciation.)

As part of this brief language revisiting project, I decided to read my old logs from HTLAL and discovered something I had forgotten about ; in 2010 and 2011 I actually typed a few messages in Swedish, Italian and Finnish ! I even had a few replies from other people in Swedish and Finnish. I also had typed in Spanish and Afrikaans but I had a little more knowledge and experience with these last two. I doubt that my writing was anything great, and I am sure the posts had many mistakes (some of which I tried to correct myself) but I did actually type a little bit in these languages. Other members have mentioned being embarrassed by some of what they wrote at HTLAL but mostly I found that I don't feel that way myself. Well....there was my attempt to write Dutch that contained so many mistakes that I decided to continue with Afrikaans and wait until I attained an advanced level before learning Dutch. So why am I reading my logs from 7 and 8 years ago? Because I needed the motivation. I have had the flu (or a cold) for about two weeks and I think I'm finally feeling a bit better these last few days, but I'm still really tired.

Hyvää yötä
Mick

[mick33]

Moi! I have been learning Finnish since my last entry in this log, and pretty much only Finnish. More specifically, I've been listening to things like Keskelle keksintöä, Radio Suomi Pop, Radio Suomi Rock. Keskelle keksintöä is about NBA basketball, and the two radio stations play only Finnish language songs. I've also been trying to read Finnish. I use the word trying because I understand very little written Finnish without looking up grammar points, such as verb tenses. This seems weird to me . I had thought I needed to learn more words, because I usually think that my weakness is vocabulary. This is actually progress . I'm finding that I more often I use the dictionary for checking verb conjugations or specific case endings, so when I see "valmistuin" I remember that I do know the infinitive "valmistua" (to be completed or to graduate) even if I don't always know the verb tense (by the way valmistuin is in the past tense which for some strange reason is called imperfect for Finnish).

heippa
Mick

[mick33]

Terve! I have been on a roll with Finnish, though I don't feel like I'm making much progress right now. Well, maybe that's because one way that I measure progress is when a new language interferes with my ability to use English when I need to, such as when I said things in Spanish to people who I knew didn't speak Spanish a few years ago or accidentally wrote notes for a chemistry class in Afrikaans and didn't realize this until some other students asked to look at my notes because they had missed a few lectures . Finnish hasn't interfered with my English yet, but I am hearing a lot of Finnish songs in my head and my dreams sometimes have random people who speak what I believe is supposed to be Finnish, although it mostly sounds like gibberish. Hmm...perhaps the fact that I think the gibberish is Finnish is a good sign .

I've done enough worrying about whether I'm making progress, so I should mention that I've been looking for sentences and phrases with the Finnish words "älä" (I think it means "don't"), myös (also, or too) and the suffixes -kin and -kaan/kään in the context of sentences like "Minäkin tulen" which would be "I'm coming too" in English (I think these suffixes can mean other things as well, but this is enough for now).

I haven't really been spending much time on Spanish or Polish, I've just been watching a few YouTube videos and the BBC series Merlin. Why? It's on Netflix, it has Spanish subtitles, and dubbing in Spanish and Polish. Unfortunately for me, the Polish dubbing isn't done very well and I hear most of the English dialogue , so I watch it with the Spanish dubbing.

Hyvää yötä
Mick