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.

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 ❤️

Kiva nähdä että joku ulkomaalanen on oppinu puhuun suomee näin hyvin

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

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

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) ♡

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.

edelleenkin hämmentää miten hyvin oot itekses oppinu suomee...

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.

I'm Finnish but I live in Spain and I only talk in Finnish with my grandma and my mom. But mostly we talk a mix between Spanish and Finnish because they've been living here pretty much since the early 90's, so their Spanish is pretty good. So my Finnish skills are quite rusty I would say. And now I suddenly came across this video and I want to thank you because it's so freaking helpful, so thank you very very much.

I think puhekieli is preferred because it "flows" better. I know Finnish swedes who speak Swedish, but still use some Finnish words in their speech because of this.

I would recommend learning the puhekieli with high priority, because that is what we finns use everywhere on a daily basis. Even in work and other important occasions the spoken unofficial finnish is very common. Of course it is good to learn the official version too to better understand the language in general, but no need to stress on that one.

Wow, your Finnish is amazing. P.s. I would say "seitkyt" instead of "seiskyt" :) it's just one of those regional/personal differences that confuses people haha. But yeah, sometimes I feel sympathy-overwhelmed for the foreigners learning Finnish. Just keep going! You don't need to know all the dialects, just choose one common enough and you are good to go.

One thing that might confuse people with "Ei olla puhuttu" example: In the formal version there is a subject for the verb. "Emme ole" refers to "we" (have not). Technically in formal version there should be additional subject in front "Me emme ole puhuneet". However, the "emme ole" already defines that the subject is "we" so it's not very bad to drop out the "me". When you change it to unformal Finnish, one might wonder where the subject is. Infact, there is no subject at all. The phrase becomes a passive phrase where the one who is doing something or experiencing something is not defined. So when you come home late at night and your wife is angry and she asks why you are so late, instead of answering "We drank" (Me joimme), you can answer "there was drinking" (siellä juotiin) without admitting drinking yourself. Very handy.

"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.

In formal finnish "ei oltu tyytyväisii" becomes "Kiitos, oli oikein hyvää" and you never visit that restaurant again

Hienoa suomea :) Tosiaan kannattaa huomata, että Suomessa murteita löytyy ja ne muuttavat puhekieltä aika paljonkin. Oulusta Turkuun muuttaneena olen huomannut, että ei kaikkia käyttämäniäni sanoja ymmärretä, koska tietyt sanat esintyy vain tietyillä alueilla. Hyvänä esimerkkinä "ajaa pahki" = "ajaa jotain päin" = "to hit something while driving"

I am working with languages, have studied several and tried to study some others. I cannot even imagine how much work you have done to reach this level, where you can make advanced comments on spoken Finnish. Respect!

I started sweating from the mere thought of learning a language with two so different versions before remembering that I'm a Finn so I already know them (maybe). :D I've never realised how greatly written and spoken finnish differ from each other so this video was definitely an eye opener for me. Now I won't complain about the formality levels of japanese and korean, they are easy compared to finnish! Thank you for the interesting and educational video. Loved your accent and pronunciation! :)

As far as I know, "myö" is a regional variant of "me" which means "us"

I WAS IN HELSINKI YESTERDAY . I am Peruvian and I love Finland

I'm so glad that I found your channel!

Also we like to turn things into passive like "ei oltu puhuttu". Hokkarit probably comes from english word hockey. Fillari comes from finn.swedish word fillare. Since swedish was once our official government language we carry lots of words from there aswell from russian like "tsaikka" for tea, or "rotu" for race, "muokata" for to modify. Finns don't usually even know that many of our everyday Finnish words are from russia.

Good job. As a native I didn't notice any mistakes apart from the one you yourself mentioned. Keep up the awesome work! :)

I got goosebumps. You are great. Greetings from Forssa Finland. I am originally from Lapland but you explanations are so clear and nicely done that i wanna learn more languages.

Ihan mahtava video! Erinomaisia huomioita ja ihanasti pilke silmäkulmassa tehty. Well done!

Kiitos hyvästä videosta! Erinomaiset esimerkit 😊 Hämmennystä herättää usein myös partitiivin päätteen lyheneminen tai muuttuminen puhekielessä, esim. videota -> videoo, takkia -> takkii.

I'm genuinely glad to see you! & please get well soon! Best wishes

Amazing job! Kiitos! Tilattu. 😊👍🏻🇫🇮

Your videos are so good. Thanx!

I had a school-friend who mostly spoke in kirjakieli. It took me a while to figure out that he used to have a stutter which he coped with by speaking formally.

To be honest you have almost no kind of accent and you sound very fluent in Finnish, keep up the good work!

I felt happy when I saw your Nuuskamuikkunen mug! I became interested in Finnish after deciding I wanted to read the Moomin books even though they were originally in Swedish... Really cool vid!

First time watching your video and I subscribed right away!

Hyvä video! Kiitos! Esimerkit ovat selvästi Turun seudun puhekieltä!

Housut on monikko! :D Siksi uimahousut->uikkarit, pikkuhousut->pikkarit (myös esim korkokengät->korkkarit, tenniskengät->tennarit). "Uikkari" on uima-asu(/-puku), ja siksi yleensä vain naiset käyttää tuota sanaa. Vitsi puhekieli on kyllä varmasti tosi vaikeeta opetella, kun yksikin kirjain voi muuttaa koko sanan tarkoitusta niin paljon. Ja sitten on vielä se, että kaikki ei puhu niin paljon puhekieltä kuin muut, eli pitäisi osata kuunnella ja käyttää sekä kirjakieltä että puhekieltä molempia.. These videos are very interesting because as a native finn these things do not pop up to mind just like that, because this language with its tweaks has been there my whole life - thank you! :)

This is fun to listen to as a Finn from Oulu who speaks with Northern style like mie and sie because here we don’t hear Southern Finnish too much. We also speak wider Finnish by adding some letters inside the words. As an example: 45 we say nelekytäviis or 93 yheksäkytäkolome or ysikolome

Hyvin tehty👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾. Keep up the good work and please give us more of kirja- ja puhekieli. I believe it is an endless topic that can be broken into parts.

One of the reasons why there are so big differences, is that kirjakieli was mostly based on the Western dialects, with some Eastern flavour added. But people centuries ago wouldn't know that the Eastern dialects would start to become more popular later on; replacing 1st person plural form with a passive construction comes from Eastern dialects for example. 'Tällainen' and 'tämmöinen' are synonymous though and can both occur in a single idiolect.

"Tällainen" also breaks vowel harmony in a sense, but it is actually just short of "tämänlainen". I guess this is why some people say "tälläne".

Excellent video again!

This is such a marvellous video

You are such a brillian linguist! I for a Finn 30 years USA expatriat find your analysis so delightful and true. I haven't realized how different the actual spoken Finnish is to the "kirjakieli". I'll force feed your videos to my grandkids. We are bringing the teenagers first time to visit Finlad next summer. Finnish is not that hard. Right? LOL

Dude, this is golden!!! My wife is from sweden and I linked this for her and she was keen seeing more :D Possible to make even a small "how to Finn" series :D u r awsome ! Keep up the great vids man

My yaw dropped through the floor after seeing your videos. Mad respect!

Amazing! =) Sinähän puhut erittäin hyvin suomea Säähä puhut tosi hvvi suamee =) I really have to share to my colleagues

Modern spoken Finnish is way different than what it was two generations ago. I live in a Swedish speaking area of Finland and don't often speak Finnish. I learnt spoken Finnish from my Finnish speaking grand parents. They spoke old dialects that differed quite a lot from modern spoken Finnish. I have sometimes trouble with modern spoken Finnish and probably tend to speak "kirjakieli" when I struggle with the modern way of speaking. This is also because all Swedish speakers learn Finnish "kirjakieli" at school and at least when I studied Finnish, we didn't study "puhekieli" at all. I've even heard comments from other Swedish speakers that Finnish is easy in a way, because it's pronounced exactly as it is written. In a sense that is true (spelling is phonetic), but spoken language is in reality very different. Many don't like French and English for how much the written language and spoken language differs. Let's see in a few generations with Finnish, I see a trend. The best would be for a language to update formal written language to follow the spoken language, to not get into the situation with a completely different written language. Finnish still has the chance, due to how easy it is to adapt the spelling. Anyone can write down spoken Finnish and read it perfectly well. No need for a phonetic alphabet (IPA) yet.

Ciao! Nice video. It is almost like a different language in some case!!!

These are great. I’ve been working on relearning the Finnish that I knew when I was a kid and these videos help a lot

Woww I'm really impressed like you sound like native Finnish speaker! In some words something is little bit off but like I wouldn't propably even notice if I hadn't pay attention. Great job!

mamma mia, that accent !! 😍😍🔥🔥 come fai !?!!? assurdo! che poi, non è solamente aver un vocabolario di tutto rispetto....... ma è proprio aver l'accento come un nativo che fa l'enorme differenza in termini di rapporti interpersonali! ( e l'hai visto nelle reactions di "My Finnish Story - Why and how I learnt Finnish (Italian polyglot speaking Finnish!" ad esempio ) spettacolo di video! 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Nykyään suomessa kirjakielellä on toinen synonyymi "yleiskieli" jota käytetään myös joskus, joten jos opiskelet suomea ja näet sanan "yleiskieli" älä hämmenny, se tarkoittaa samaa asiaa kuin kirjakieli. Nowdays in finland theres a synonyme for kirjakieli (formal language) called "yleiskieli", that is being used from time to time, so if you are studying finnish and you see the word "yleiskieli" dont get confused it means the same thing as kirjakieli

You are speaking Finnish amazingly well! Great job!

Siis todella mahtavaa 🤗 puhut tosi hyvin suomea 😊 kunnioitan 👍 ja sinulla on miellyttävä ääni, kiva kuunnella 😊

I've never thought that these "normal" (for us) shortened sentences are so different from the right form! Very interesting video even though I'm native Finnish speaker!

Yy - kaa - koo - nee - vii - kuu - sei - kasi - ysi - kymppi - yyto - kaato - kooto - neeto - viito - kuuto - seito - kasito - ysito - kakskyt - kaayy - kaakaa - kaakoo -kaanee...and so on. 😁 This example applies when counting.

Man this video couldn't come at better time! I'm having this language tandem course at uni where I teach finnish to my classmate and she teaches polish in exchange. Last time I tried to explain spoken finnish to her since she's already so good in finnish, but it was so hard since I've always used it. Instantly linked this to her cause you explained it far better than I did xD.

Olet ihana! Hauska video :)

That "ooksä" is in Helsinki area more like "ootsä". I like your examples "haluutsä valkkarii vai punkkuu" when in most language books examples are boring as "where is the railway station". Also like your pronounciation. Keep up the good work!

Now you need to listen "Täällä pohjan tähden alla" and weep silently while doing it. Only then you are 100% finnish.

You are wonderful! And your Finnish is perfect!

as a native finnish speaker i found this absolutely delightful! I'm very confused by my own language at times and as it is my native tongue i don't very often think about the "rules" and grammar behind it, because it comes so automatically for me. You are doing amazing work! keep it up!

you can also combinate words to create new ones, for example: Pärjäätsä? :)

Parane pian! Sun videoita on aina kiva kattoo 日本語について動画を将来に作ると思いますか

I lived in Turku like 10 years, I noticed that at the first sentence! Nice info-video, thanks! BTW I have a degree with long languages in what I was best at but only NOW I noticed how hard this finnish is!

I am a Finn in Tyrol, Austria. I may well understand your challenge. I have a bit of the same challenges with German in Tyrol :)

Simple tip to get the first person plural forms in puhekieli: The first person plural verb is ALWAYS in the passive voice instead of the proper kirjakieli version -> Me menemme - Me mennään or Me lähdemme - Me läh(d)etään. Hyvin puhut kyllä suomea, harva vuosia opiskellutkaan kykenee noin selkeästi suomea puhumaan !

Finnish has adopted (and continues to adopt) countless words from other languages. There is a whole book of words that are used instead of the Finnish counterpart and those words are called as sivistyssana. Also, many words end up in some shape or form added to the common puhekieli. (Ice) hockey skates were shortened to hokkarit and football (as the sport, not the actual ball) became futis. My guess is that ice hockey became lätkä because the puck is called lätkä. That way we could invent tossulätkä that could be played without skates throughout the year. ;)

I like how you explain very c Lear. Im learning finnish now. Im a beginner thanks i found you here it can help me. Smiling while watching you. Pretty much understand your explanation. Kiitos paljon

Indeed, your examples of spoken language belong to the southern variety. Going a bit further into the country you begin to see different vocabulary referring to the same semantic content. Your pronunciation is really good 👍

At Tampere: Offical: "Tulisitko kanssani katsomaan Tappara-Ilves jääkiekko-ottelua Hakametsän jäähallille." Spoken: "Tuuks matsiin" Okay, this is a bit artifical sentence.

I cannot say how good you are i wish i can learn finnish whit you if is possible cause im a student and at school we start to speack puhekieli and is really hard cause is sounds so different from their gramar.

Erittäin hyvä video!!

Mahtavaa! Grazie :)

At 5:18, there's a slight error in the text. "myö" is a dialect one for first-person plural. For first-person singular, there are 4 variants in dialects: mä / mää / mie / miä. No other regional variants (that I know of, at least).

I think the most impressive thing is that the mistakes you make while speaking finnish are mostly mistakes native speakers sometimes make too out of just inattention etc.

That's pretty good finnish 👌keep it up ❤️

Sun lausuminen on tosi luontevaa! Kivaa kuunneltavaa :)

Seems the Finnish are getting nuts hearing an Italian speaking their language :) Hattu pois...Stefano is a language professional...but Finnish is not impossible to learn...I live in Finland since 2006 and I speak fluently... stopped using English long time ago (unless someone other foreigners is around)...or then it as to be related to the fact that we are Italians :) or maybe our class at primary school was great...uhmmm... mielenkiintoista!...we should make a video in Finnish :)

Dunno if you know meänkieli (torniolaakson suomi), but olla-muodot in meänkieli are: Minä olen=molen, sinä olet=solet, se on=son, me olemme=molema, te olette=toletta, ne ovat=non.

This guy really impresses me.

Vau, olet niin hyvä tässä

Hello 👋 first of all I wish you get well soon! I want to know what is the best way to practice Finnish language alone ? Because I haven’t Finnish friends..(I think they are shy to communicate with foreign persons+ English) now I’m learning Finnish.but the problem is no practice..

The examples ''ooksä siel'' and ''tuuksä mukaa'' are both fine but in most situations, to me personally, it would feel more natural to not shorten them as much. For example, ''ootko sä siellä'' or ''tuutko mukaan'' are a good middle ground between kirjakieli and the shortest possible puhekieli with the main difference being combining ''sä'' with the already shortened verbs like ''ootko'' and ''tuutko''.

Four German cases already make me weep. No idea how you got so much patience for Finnish.

It feels so weird to watch this video... But at the same time it feels great... You're so talented.

Tässä ehkä menee hieman sekaisin puhekieli ja slangi, jotka mielestäni on eri asioita. Nelkytviis on puhekieltä, hokkarit on slangia. Slangejahan löytyy sitten vaikka stadin vanha slangi josta ei moni suomalainenkaan enää ota selvää :)

Finnish is easy for Italians to pronounce and vice versa. We are people who pronounce letters as they are written. The French, English and Americans always hide their real thoughts to cheat you. This is why they also have invented rules for pronunciation for their mother tongue.

Wow aika hyvin! 👌🏻

I actually wanna have a conversation with you in Finnish. This is great to watch, watching how you speak Finnish so fluently.