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What are some cool bits of language did you learn?
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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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I’m an absolute beginner, but Finnish is interesting for two reasons.
First, noun cases. it is like conjugation of verbs in the Romance languages, but applied to nouns too. So there are no prepositions, you just modify the word endings instead. E.g.
houseistaloandin the houseistalossa.Second, vowel harmony. There are three vowel groups separated by mouth placement. Back vowels are a/o/u, middle vowels are i/e, front vowels are ä/ö/y. I’m not clear on the complete rules but simple words must have harmony, meaning the front and back vowels can’t be mixed together, and middle vowels are neutral and can go either way. From the earlier example, the vowels in
taloare in the back of the mouth, but forsisäänkäynti(entrance) they are all front/middle. I’ve heard Japanese is similar.i dont think japanese is similar, but vowel harmony is widespread in uralic and turkic languages.
That's kinda like how in Spanish vowels can be either weak or strong, with a/e/o being strong and i/u being weak. When a word contains consecutive strong vowels, they're pronounced as separate syllables, such as
lealpronouncedLEH-al. This is known as "hiato" which there might be word for in English of which I'm unaware. But consecutive weak vowels, or a combination of a weak vowel and a strong vowel, are pronounced as a single syllable. For example,violínis pronouncedveeuh-LEEN. That combination is known as "diptongo." There's an exception though, if a word's stress is on a weak vowel it becomes a strong vowel, like inríowhich becomesREE-uh.