Summary Details
| Query: |
ESL/Typical Errors Made by Finns/Part 2
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| Author: | John Hammink | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Applied Linguistics
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| Summary: |
Continued from Part 1 (Linguist 13.2133)
[Modal Auxiliaries/Politeness Strategies] Finnish lacks a direct correlate to the English word ''please.'' Also, in Finnish, one can follow a request with *kiitos*, which is a multifunctional politeness marker that also means ''thank you.'' That means that if a Finn translates directly into English from Finnish, there can be some confusion as to whether to use ''please'' or ''thank you'' in English. In English, we have to use a modal to ask a request, which we can put in the conditional tense to soften it: ''Would you please give me the salt?'' In Finnish, a conditional may be used, but the structure of Finnish is so that there is no modal (i.e., ''will'' or ''would'' required): ''Antaisitko suolaa?'' Give (2nd person, conditional) the salt Which translates as ''Would you give me the salt?'' In Finnish it can be entirely appropriate to make a request consisting of an imperative or a statement (e.g., Otan kahvia, literally 'I take coffee.') Even quite good Finnish writers seem to have trouble with English conditional constructions due to a different use pattern of the Finnish conditional (-isi) form (and, I suspect, this is not one of the patterns stressed in Finnish school English). [Eg. ''If I would have 100 euros, I would lend you 50'' for ''If I had 100 euros, I would lend you 50''.] Incidentally, while many Finns went so far as to inform me that Finnish is a ''rude language'' without all those ''small words,'' I found that Finns used other strategies that corresponded with the use of ''please'' and modals in English. For example, a higher imposition request, made of someone a Finn didn't know very well, tended to contain a verb in the conditional tense, or using the Finnish suffixal morpheme -han to show ''politeness.'' The -han suffix is very mysterious for nonnative speakers, since its function is hard to pinpoint in, for example, English. It can function as an emphasizer, a mitigator, or a bunch of other stuff (there are actually entire papers written on this one morpheme and its functions). In one contributor's data, this suffix showed up with high-imposition requests, iike asking to borrow someone's cell phone: Olisikohan mahdollista etta'' ma'' voisin lainata sun ka''nnyka''si? Is+conditional+question marker+''-han'' possible that I can+conditional borrow(infinitive) your cell phone+possessive marker 'Is there any way it would it be possible to borrow your phone?' [Tense/aspect]] There tends to be an over-use (from the English point of view) of compound past forms at the expense of the simple past because the compound form occurs more frequently in Finnish. [Eg. ''This book has been published in 2002'' for ''This book was published in 2002''.] [Idioms] To have / a bath, a shower.. To have lunch / dinner / tea... To have a look / a try / a walk ... To have trouble To have a baby / a fight / a talk are all expressed differently in Finnish: ''to shower'', ''to eat dinner'', ''to drink tea'', ''to look'', ''to get a baby'', ''to fight''... ''He was born'' is a sentence a Finn can't say at all, if s/he doesn't know by heart how it is formed in English. In Finnish it would simply be: ''he *borned*'' [Adverbs] Adverb placement ''seems often'' to be influenced by Finnish. (I'm told by teachers of Swedish here in Finland that this is also a problem for them.) ''Also'' is likely to occur before noun phrases much more frequently than it would for American or British writers. [Voice] Because the construction called ''passive'' in Finnish works differently than the one called ''passive'' in English, there are occasionally unacceptable passives such as ''The door was wanted to be opened''. [Gender] Regarding the 3.p.sg. personal pronoun he/she finns tend to refer to both sexes as ''he'', since they have only ''h?n'' for ''he'' and ''she'', or to simply mix the two [Contractions] As for style, Finnish schools seem to be concentrating on a spoken or fairly informal colloquial. This leads to the use of contractions (eg. I'll, we've) in styles where (one hopes!) native speakers would use the full forms. [Pronunciation] The Finnish speaker is always saying 'ch' as in ''chart'' -- even in words such as ''character'' I'm indebted to the following people whose comments comprise this summary: Liz Peterson [elpeters@indiana.edu] Ingvar Froiland [Ingvar.Froiland@F-Secure.com] Gordon Brown [gordonbr@microsoft.com] Hanna Outakoski [hanna.outakoski@samiska.umu.se] Johannes Heinecke [johannes.heinecke@rd.francetelecom.com] James Haines [jlhaines@sun3.oulu.fi] Jason Rudd [rudd.j@ghc.org] Katja Hirvasaho [katja.hirvasaho@rusin.fi] Marianne Krause [marianne.krause@meigainnovations.com] Raija Solatie [raija.solatie@kolumbus.fi] Ronald Sheen [Ronald_Sheen@uqtr.uquebec.ca] Werner Abraham [werner.abraham@direkt.at] I will also post a discussion of some of the more interesting points that people have written in since this summary was posted. Subject-Language: Finnish; Code: FIN |
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| LL Issue: | 13.2172 | |
| Date Posted: | 25-Aug-2002 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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