Finnish: What does it sound like?

Stuart McNaughton ( an Englishman living in Tampere )says this about Finnish: "It´s a very harsh language, sometimes it hurts to listen to it".

The whole article is here :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2557589.stm

Hei! Minä olen Japanista Suomen 2005 muuttinut nainen, äidinkieli on japani. Puhun paljon enemmän hyvä englanti kun suomi mutta nyt kirjoitta suomella, koska tämä on suomilainen puhefoorumi. :---)


1. Japani, niin kuten aikaisinmin sanoi ^^
2. Suomi kuulu vähän sama kuin japani, mutta japanin kielissä on enemmän ks ja sh äänte kuin suomi. Suomi kielissä on tosi paljon r-kirjaimia, japanin kielissä ei ole r, eikä l, vaan äänte näiden keskeltä/välitä. Suomi kuulu sisukas, niin kuten suomi kieli on tämä hyvä sana sisu.
3. Suomi on vähän hidaampi kieli kuin japani, mutta ei paljon. Mutta minä olen muuttinut Tokion kaupunki, siellä ihmiset puhuva paljon nopeampi kuin pohjoisempi. Vähän niin suomi murre, savo, on enemmän hidas kuin Helsinkin murre.
4. Suomi kuulostaa oikeasti paljon japanin kieliltä. Suomella monet ei usko, mutta japani ja suomi ääntetä melkein sama tapa, ja siksi ne kuuluu tosi sama. Suomi ja japani kuuluu paljon enemmän sama kun japani ja englanti tai japani ja kiina.
5. Minä opiskelen, ja opiskelin, vuosista 2003 saakka. Silloin minun lukiolla tehtiin suomi kielin kurssi, ja minä heti rakastuin teidän kieli. Suomi on japanilaiselle helppo oppia, ja suomilainen helpolla oppi puhuman japani. Oikeasti meidän kirjoitus edes ei ole yhtän vaikea kuten moni luule. Sen perusasia on nopea oppiman, ja sen kanssa jopa selviytyy Japani kaupunkit ja kylät. Minulta suomi on täysin ihana kieli, ja minä tahton oppia puhuman sitä täydellinen. Kiitos teidän ystävällisyytestä suomalaiset n_____________n

-Yuki Asakawa, Turku

to me because of the strong R letter. It´s best to stay away from the drunken men who use the word "perkele".
It used to frighten the life out of me when I first came to Finland and heard that word being used so frequently.
To me finnish does not sound like any other language.

Olen itse suomalainen, mutta englantilainen poikaystavani sanoo, etta suomi kuulostaa haltijakielelta. Eikos se Tolkien kayttanyt suomea,tai sai suomenkielesta vaikutteita kun keksi uutta kielta.
Englanninkieliset ystavat sanovat myos, etta kun puhun nopeasti suomea, saatan kuulostaa vahan vihaiselta.
Poikaystavani opiskelee suomea, mutta etenee aika hitaasti, koska ei viela ole kaynyt yhtaan kurssia tms jossa muut voisivat hanta tukea oppimisessa (mina tietenkin yritan parhaani :) ).

E.g.:

Milla hillui illalla sillalla fillarilla.

or

Yrjö älä rääkkää tätä räkästä kääkkää!
Ehämmä mitää räkästä kääkkää rääkkääkkää!

or

Ehä mie mittää ku häähä hää!

or

Tuli metsästä Marjatta marjatta - koreilla koreilla koreilla halusi vain!

1)Olen vanäläinen,mut puhun suomeksi vähän
2)Ohh...it suond a bit hard for learning(befor you begin to learn yorself),many duble letters,especially vowels and 'k'.And it isn't too beautiful,like my friends say but not for me.I like it).Well,and there're some words in finnish that mean smth. bad on rissian
3)Jooooo.Se on oikein nepea.Erikoisesti jos kotisuomalainen puhuu
4)Viron
5)Actually rather easy.

1. Korean

2. Finnish pronunciation sounds quite clear. I guess it's because it has a lot of non-respiratory voiceless sounds (k,t,p) which sound different from English counterparts. Another reason is that it doesn't allow lots of consonants put together in a row without vowel. In other words, words are easily syllablified than other Euriopean langauges
Well, sometimes funny, sometimes sounds like a music when it is spoken with rhymes in a good tempo.

3. No, usually not that fast.

4. Sometimes it reminds me of Japanese. Maybe Japanese pronunciation is very stongly syllablified that it sounds very distinctive and articulated.

5. yes. difficult.
There are some grammatical, structual similiarity between Korean and Finnish. But it doesn't help the language learners at all, till one gets to some level. Another reason is that it doesn't share vocabulary with neighboring language. Although they have, the pronunciation is too much modified into Finnish ones that it's almost impossible to guess the original words.

2) flat and slow. My husband's definition of how it sounds: machine gun in slow motion
But note that the Finnish intonation isn't limited to the language. Even the Swedish speaking Finns (when speaking Swedish) sound flat and make their Swedish sound nearly like the same machine gun in slow mo as their Finnish speaking Finnish counterparts do.
I'd say also a bit harsh - for the sound of too many k, p, t and other harsh consonants
also the harsh is different from the other harsh sounding languages like hebrew, arabic or german, but the consonants still make it sound harsh.

3) slow, as speed of speaking. and slow as efficiency - way too long words

4) sounds a bit like Dutch when removing their 'g' and Sean Connery sounding 's'

5) yes (I have, husband hasn't). not easy. I hate trying to guess from a mile long word what is the root of it and what parts are added - like how are you supposed to know what the word you should look in the dictionary?

1) Heprea
2) Finnish to me sounds like a beautiful and unique language :)
3) A bit fast but sounds awesome.
4) It reminds me a bit of Hungarian by hearing the sounds...Since I never heard Estonian I can say that it might sound a bit like Estonian
5) I tried to study it a year ago, but gave up but now I return to learn it again. It was quite easy to learn from a site that explained the grammar very well :D

1) A Romance language.
2) Horrible. I know Finns will get offended, but I don't care. Too many consonants, too many y's and ä's, just one letter or double consonant completely changes the meaning of a word (and they all sound the same), words are long, and even when you think you've found the gist of it out comes an expression that doesn't make any sense. Finnish is very versatile in its phonology, in that it can sound either like a broken motor, someone burping (think of a half-awake Finnish man) or chipmunks (Finnish females conversing excitedly).
3) SLOW! Especially with those long words, the rate of information transmission seems to me very slow and requiring a lot of energy. For example in most languages "yes" is monosyllabic, in Finnish it's a bisyllabic "kyllä". Even the short alternative "joo" is long.
4) Hungarian, another horrible language.
5) Marginally. I didn't have much time to study it while I was stationed there, nor do I regret it since with only 5 million speakers and given the difficulty and my dislike of it I don't think it's worth the investment.

Sorry Finns, your language sucks! FYI I found this page by googling "Finnish is horrible" so I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

I'm English and I've been here 50 years. These days I use Finnnish daily and I don't even notice that somebody is speaking Finnish......unless they are drunk and having an argument - it is then that I realise where I am, and Finnish becomes the ugliest language I've ever heard. When I first came I thought the language sounded like a lot of chickens at feeding time! Since a large section of the dictionary begins with the letter 'K' and the rest seems to be built of words containing a 'K', I guess that is not surprising.
That said, there are many worse-sounding languages to my ears, but all beautiful to their native speakers.