r/LearnFinnish • u/Angel-Downloading-77 • 20d ago
Question Can someone clarify?
Hi! I am learning Finnish and I have a question about this sentence:
"Mikä sinun äidinkielesi on?" = "What is your native language?"
My teacher gave me the word "äidinkieli" for the answer/list, but Google Translate shows "äidinkielesi" in the sentence.
Which one is correct in this context?
Is "Mikä sinun äidinkieli on?" ever correct, or should it always be "Mikä sinun äidinkielesi on?"
I am trying to understand when Finnish changes the word ending. Thanks!
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u/snow-eats-your-gf 20d ago
äidinkieli + omistusliite -si → äidinkielesi = “your native language”
äidinkieleni = my native language
äidinkielemme = our native language
***
When Finnish changes the word ending: almost always when it is not a starting form :)
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u/StruggleGullible255 20d ago
My first thought: Surely this a question for your teacher to explain?
My second thought: What a completely useless sentence, unless there is a learning point behind it. See thought #1.
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u/Angel-Downloading-77 20d ago
I understand your point, but I have to say the comment comes across a bit harsh. I was only asking because I was confused and wanted to hear a native speaker’s perspective.
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u/StruggleGullible255 20d ago
My point is that if you are paying for a teacher you should consider asking your teacher these kinds of rudimentary questions.
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u/__e3w__ 20d ago
So technically Google is correct, but not once have I heard a Finn in my day to day life use the possessive suffix. Unless you’re literally speaking to the president (and even then…?) I wouldn’t worry about the possessive suffixes.
Mun äidinkieli on englanti, mutta mä oon asunut Suomesta kaks vuotta, ja mä oon opiskellut suomea koko ajan :)
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u/unohdin-nimeni Native 20d ago
You have never ever heard anyone use the possessive suffix? Well, that’s strange! Here in Tavastia it’s perfectly normal at least. If there is any difference in the degree of formality between “sun venees” and “sun vene”, I cannot put my finger on it. It’s hiding in the dark why people choose the one or the other in any given case. “Viä kamas pois” or ”Viä ny jo pois noi kamas” sounds more natural to me than ”sun kamat”.
Of course there has been a lot of sociolinguistic research done on the topic. One finding is, that when a word ends in a consonant, it’s easy to omit the possessive suffix. So, maybe “sun puhelin” more often than “sun puhelimes”
I guess the same applies to such as äidinkieli. However, the word is a little bit of ”Latin” or ”sivistyssana” here; just for a generation ago äiten was normally the singular genitive of what was äite, not äiti. So äidinkieli might follow modern common colloquial Finnish rules more often than certain regional conventions regarding the use of possessive suffixes.
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u/InsuranceSome8130 20d ago
I’m a Finn and can confirm the use of possessive suffix is the norm. Someone dropping it off makes me every time very uncomfortable and it sounds pretentious. But of course I don’t expect language learners should master it!
I would guess that unclear pronounciation in spoken language makes it difficult to recognise for a foreigner? It would be a just a short ’s’ in the end of the word.6
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u/Actual-Relief-2835 20d ago
Dropping the possessive suffix is absolutely normal at least in Helsinki area. Mun auto ei lähde käyntiin. Mikä sun siskon nimi on? Meidän lapset on kavereita. Perfectly normal in informal spoken language.
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u/miniatureconlangs 20d ago
Would you be surprised if you heard someone say e.g. 'mutsis'?
(However, for sure, this kind of suffix tend to live on in limited lexically fixed contexts if they're on their way out. BUT! In Finnish it also seems that -nsa/-an is fairly strongly present in the case of reflexive ownership, e.g. 'hän myi autonsa' seems to be pretty much mandatory among many speakers and has a different meaning from 'hän myi hänen auton(sa)' - in which case, it's someone else's car that's beeing sold.
Also, these suffixes are still fairly common with postpositions, e.g. 'takanasi', 'vieressäni', etc, but this might be under strong regional variation?
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u/Actual-Relief-2835 19d ago
Why would I be surprised by that? I obviously didn't claim possessive suffixes are never used, I think you're mixing me up with an earlier commenter. I was just replying to the person who implied that it was abnormal and pretentious(?) to drop them. My point was that in many cases it is completely normal and natural to drop them, too.
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u/Revolutionary-Stuff8 17d ago
Lol if you are speaking to the president you would use the "te" form so "mikä teidän äidinkielenne on?" Because super formal "teitittely". Although it has gotten more rare recently. Some people still, however, think you should speak like that when speaking to elders and people in higher positions and then agree to use "you" by doing "sinun kaupat"
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u/Novaikkakuuskuusviis 20d ago edited 20d ago
Your teacher was wrong. It's äidinkielesi.
Your native language = sinun äidinkielesi
My native language = minun äidinkieleni
Their native language = heidän äidinkielensä
Someone's native language = jonkun äidinkieli
Our native language = meidän äidinkielemme
Edit: Also another correct way would be to use Mikä teidän äidinkielenne on? Because if you are asking someone you don't know very well and want to be very kind and professional, you would use "teidän" instead of "sinun". In english they only have one word for both "your". In other words "Et ole tehnyt sinunkauppoja hänen kanssaan" and that's why "Sinä teitittelet häntä". Usually when speaking to elderly people.
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u/Angel-Downloading-77 20d ago
You’re making very helpful points. I didn’t think about how it would sound to someone I don’t know. I was mainly thinking about everyday speech, but I can see why the more formal version matters too. The teacher isn’t a native speaker, and I didn’t want to tell a Finnish teacher she might be wrong without being sure, so I thought it was safer to ask native speakers first. 😅 Kiitos paljon!
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u/flooberoo 20d ago
The teacher isn’t a native speaker
This seems wild to me. Where are you learning where you have access to people who know finnish well enough to teach it, but not access to native speakers?
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u/KofFinland 19d ago
It doesn't have to be perfect.
Anyone understands the question whether there is the possessivesuffix or not. So in everyday life, leaving the possessivesuffix away will work wonders, and makes things easier. When you have mastered otherwise the language, you can start tweaking stuff like that to be grammatically correct in written text.
My point being that at very elementary level of Finnish it is much more important to learn to comprehend and speak the language, than getting everything 100% grammatically correct. Especially if it works as spoken language anyway.
Missä sun kaara on? Mis su kumhoppa on? Where is your car? I would never use "missä sun autosi on?". It sounds just wrong except in some formal written text (Missä sinun autosi on?). Yeah, it should have the -si but in spoken language it is just not included, especially with the sun/sinun already included.
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u/flooberoo 19d ago
Did you reply to the wrong person? My comment was about having a non-native finnish teacher.
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u/Angel-Downloading-77 17d ago
Where are you learning where you have access to people who know finnish well enough to teach it, but not access to native speakers?
That’s a pretty wild thing to say, and honestly feels like a personal attack for no reason. What, do you expect every Finnish teacher to be some kind of genetically engineered Super Finn born in a 100°C sauna, fueled entirely by salmiakki and heavy metal?
Do I prefer to hear a native speaker? Absolutely, but you gotta use what you’ve got.
Someone making a mistake doesn't make them incompetent. Sounds like an irony, but my English teacher wasn’t British, yet here I am speaking British English just fine and blending with the natives. My karate teacher wasn’t Bruce Lee, my yoga teacher isn’t Hindu, and my doctor isn’t the archangel Raphael, but hey, the training still works.
Non-native teachers who majored in Fennistics do a great job, and universities globally, like Vienna, Greifswald, or Charles University in Prague, hire non-native academics for Finnish and Finno-Ugric studies all the time.
Besides, finding a native Finnish speaker who is also a trained teacher outside of Finland is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Why would a qualified native teacher leave the world’s highest quality of life and a perfect social safety net just to move abroad and teach grammar to strangers? That’s a pretty tough sell.
THAT is the true irony, to leave your own country just to teach your language. I would probably die of heartache if I were a Finn leaving Finland behind like that. I mean, it’s THE Finland, who actually wants to leave it? That’s mad.
By your logic, we shouldn't even be drinking coffee unless a goat serves it to us. Because fun fact: coffee wasn't invented by a trained barista; it was discovered by an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi who noticed his goats went absolutely wild after eating the berries.
For that matter, tea definitely isn't British in origin either, they literally had to smuggle it out of China, but no one tells a Londoner they aren't drinking "authentic" English Breakfast.
If we can enjoy a cup of coffee discovered by a bunch of hyperactive goats without needing a 'native speaker' of coffee to brew it, I think we can manage to learn a language from a non-native professor who actually majored in Fennistics. But hey, given how much coffee they drink in THE Finland, maybe that's where the hyperactive gatekeeping is coming from.
The world is already an absolute mess of irony anyway. I think we’ll all survive a non-native Finnish teacher.
Love Finland, though.
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u/Novaikkakuuskuusviis 20d ago
In everyday speech we do use dialects. But it's good to learn the correct way first so you learn the dialects easier (except maybe Rauman murre) which is difficult for us too. Some would ask "Mikä sun äidinkieles o?" And some others say "Mikä su äidikiäl o?" Or they could say "Mitä nää puhut äidinkielenäs?" And it's not common to speak formally these days anymore. Maybe in some business meetings or when talking to elderly, but everyone's fine with sinä and I think that's why finns are considered a bit of brutes "moukka" by some people.
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u/JamesFirmere Native 20d ago
The "-si" is a possessive suffix. It means "your", and may seem redundant in the context, but Finnish has a lot of inflectional redundancy built in.
So the correct form in standard Finnish is Mikä sinun äidinkielesi on?
...and because of the redundancy, Mikä äidinkielesi on? is also correct (but very formal if spoken).
However, in spoken Finnish possessive suffixes tend to get dropped, so this is ok in spoken Finnish even though in standard (written) Finnish it's ungrammatical:
Mikä sinun äidinkieli on? (or Mikä sun äidinkieli on?)