I read an article some years ago, when I was trying to learn Finnish, and have recently discovered some notes I made at the time. They seem remarkably appropriate to the theme of this issue of Nurturing Potential.

It was suggested that Finnish was the obvious language to become internationally accepted, in the role that was intended for Esperanto. This seems an odd assertion, but some fairly cogent reasons were put forward.

1. It is a very logical language. The rules are absolute and apply in all situations. Except for exceptions.

2. It is very mellisonant. That is, it sounds good. This is attributed to the preponderance of vowels in its construction, being far more melodic than the ugly sounding consonants of some other tongues – of which more anon.

3. It is a concise language. One Finnish word may express the meaning of several English words. Why, for example, go to the lengths of saying "the result obtained from a measurement laboratory for tomatoes", when you need simply say "solutomaatimittaamotulos"? And just look at that wealth of sweet-sounding vowels. Or why waste time with saying "the committee that takes care of negotiations concerning the truce" when you can use a simple little word like "aseleponeuvottelutoimikunta"?'

4. Finnish has better and longer swear words than almost any other language.

5. It is difficult enough to learn to serve as an excellent confidence-booster should you ever succeed in learning it. If you can learn Finnish, you can learn anything.

6. You will also be able to enjoy the feeling of superiority, knowing that there are many Finns who still do not understand their language.

Let us examine the language a little closer.

Nouns and cases.

1. There are no articles in Finnish. Think how that simplifies things. Talo, for example, means both A house and The house.

2. On the other hand, there are 13 cases in Finnish which is much more precise than having to worry about whether you should be using the definite or the indefinite article.

3. The Finnish cases comprise Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Essive, Partitive, Translative, Inessive, Elative, Illative, Addessive, Allaltive. Comintative and Instructive. The great advantage is that these simply affect word endings. So instead of having to worry about whether you use "the" or "a" or "in" or "to" or "from" etc., you simply learn the nouns and then mumble the endings. Nobody will know whether you have spoken them correctly or not. Anyway most of the people you are speaking to will probably not understand the cases themselves.

Incidentally, when I was living in Finland in the late1960s and trying to make myself understood, I was given a piece of advice that I have never forgotten. "If you are speaking English to someone who doesn’t understand you, simply raise your voice. Finnish people are very polite. No one will complain. If they still do not understand, raise your voice again. In due course, someone will pass by, who will understand, and will translate for you."

I also remember trying to find a mnemonic to help me learn the numerals. This was a little difficult The numerals are as follows (and please note that the "y" in Finnish (and Scandinavian languages) is pronounced like "oo" in English):

yksi one
kaksi two
kolme three
neljä four
viisi five
kuusi six
seitsemän seven
kahdeksan eight
yhdeksän nine
kymmenen ten

Finally I recognised only three points of similarity. "Kolme" and "three" each have five letters. "Viisi" and "five" each have "v" and "i". "seitsemän" and "seven" both begin with an "s". This was not enough to implant the first ten numbers in Finnish in my brain. I did subsequently, however, manage to commit "Kaksi" to memory, when I found that saying "kaksi taksi" gave me much amusement. But how often does one have to hail two taxis simultaneously?

Reverting to the preponderance of vowels in the Finnish language, it has been suggested that some of the vowels might conveniently be exported to the Czech Republic whose language is notably short of vowels, but overburdened with consonants. For example the words zmrzl, ztvrdl, scvrnkl, and čtvrthrst have no vowels at all, although the consonants "l" and "r" serve as sonorants.

Indeed it has even been suggested that Finland might import some of these Czech consonants on a "barter" deal. But it is hard to see any Finn willing to use the word "zrmzlina" for ice-cream, while Czechs might be even more suspicious of a language that calls it "jäätelöä".

I hope I've succeeded in convincing you.

A somewhat more serious comment on the differences between Finnish and Czech may be found at Differences Between Languages by Sep Meyer.