LINGUIST List 13.2172

Sun Aug 25 2002

Sum: ESL/Typical Errors Made by Finns/Part 2

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

  • Hammink, John, SUM: Typical "mistakes" made by Finns part 2 of 2

    Message 1: SUM: Typical "mistakes" made by Finns part 2 of 2

     Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 16:20:13 +0300
    From: Hammink, John <John.HamminkF-Secure.com>
    Subject: SUM: Typical "mistakes" made by Finns part 2 of 2


    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 [elpetersindiana.edu]

    Ingvar Froiland [Ingvar.FroilandF-Secure.com]

    Gordon Brown [gordonbrmicrosoft.com]

    Hanna Outakoski [hanna.outakoskisamiska.umu.se]

    Johannes Heinecke [johannes.heineckerd.francetelecom.com]

    James Haines [jlhainessun3.oulu.fi]

    Jason Rudd [rudd.jghc.org]

    Katja Hirvasaho [katja.hirvasahorusin.fi]

    Marianne Krause [marianne.krausemeigainnovations.com]

    Raija Solatie [raija.solatiekolumbus.fi]

    Ronald Sheen [Ronald_Sheenuqtr.uquebec.ca]

    Werner Abraham [werner.abrahamdirekt.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