OK, I don’t know much Finnish, but I wonder if it’s that big a difference between spoken vs. written Finnish and any other language…
Is it a question of pronunciation or different (I mean REALLY different) grammar/vocabulary?
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d prefer a correctly written text in English rather than gimme/wanna/lemme/wanna/dunno/lotta/lotsa/kinda/gonna/gotta/wheredja/whadja/howdja/ya/whatcha/ain’t. Provided I know that these contractions exist, that’s all I need to know.
I see your point, Jeff. Though I’d argue that those are examples of poor (at least written) English.
My question is as per my earlier post. Would you rather see the below (as a transcript) or the example further below (correct English)?
“It’ll be tricky if he’s said what she’d wanted him to say”
“It will be tricky if he has said what she had wanted him to say”.
Also, if the audio says: “You coming?”, should the transcript say “Are you coming?”
In French, should the transcript say “Je sais pas” or “Je ne sais pas”?
I know nothing about Finnish, but based on the English examples above, I’d definitely say that the transcript should say exactly what the audio says.
For me, the transcript clarifies the audio and confirms that I’m hearing “correctly”. If the transcript is different from what I hear, I think that my ears aren’t trained well enough yet to catch the sounds of the target language, and I am not happy!
For me, the difference between - I’d and I would, I’ll and I will - is one of emphasis.
Here’s the thing: there is a way that written Finnish can be read aloud and a way standard Finnish is spoken. You just transcribe the version you are using.
Look at Tibetan for another good example. The written language is basically spelled like Classical Tibetan, but the modern language has changed and isn’t spelled the same way. In this case, you would not transcribe the sounds. Tibetan is simply written that way. It’s got some parallels in French, if you think about it. You wouldn’t write “Je sai pa”. 
I would imagine that there aren’t large collections of spoken Finnish which have been written down. If I were to take a Finnish Harry Potter book, what form would the audio it be in, Peter? I’d imagine that the text would be in standard form.
The narrations would certainly be in standard Finnish, but I would assume that the dialogues would be a mixture of spoken language and standard language, depending on who’s talking to who and about what.
Yeah, in the Dutch books, when Hagrid is speaking, it’s a sort of highly colloquial version of Dutch with various ‘errors’ of agreement in verbs and such. But, it’s written in that form. When everyone else is speaking, it’s standard Dutch.
There is no separate written standard for colloquial language, so a colloquial category doesn’t really solve the issue. A purely phonetic transcription isn’t acceptable written language, but at the same time it is still very much possible to write a colloquial lesson that is in accordance with standard spelling. How are such lessons categorized if the colloquial category is created for phonetic transcriptions?
I also don’t see any need to discard “onko se” (“is it?”) for “onks se” or “onkse”, or to replace “tämä” with a phonetic transcription just because the m is dropped in colloquial speech. Tthere are some words and expressions where the changes might be more drastic, but would anyone transcribe “know what I mean” as “na’ameen” in a lesson intended for English learners just because the speaker on the recording says “na’ameen”?
Unless there are non-standard phonetic transcriptions in other LingQ libraries, I don’t see why Finnish should be the exception. You can always provide a phonetic transcription in the notes if you want. I know I’ve struggled to hear some transcribed words in spoken French (not necessarily on LingQ), but at the same time I know they’ve been used, just not enunciated clearly. A quickly pronounced “ce que me plait” sounds quite different from the way it sounds if you pronounce each word separately, but no one would transcribe it as a consonant cluster.
If there is a colloquial category, it could be for lessons that retain colloquial pronouns and grammar while still adhering to standard spelling. Learners studying colloquial lessons would then also see the differences between correctly spelled words and colloquial pronunciation. “Mie” and “mä” are not really misspellings of “minä”, they are dialectal/colloquial words that mean the same. On the other hand, dropping letters/sounds in colloquial speech does not make words in general inherently different. “Ne huus kauheesti” would be transcribed as “ne huusi kauheasti” but not necessarily “ne huusivat kauheasti” or “he huusivat kauheasti”. You don’t have to make grammatical changes if the lesson is in the colloquial category, but I do think standard spelling should be respected. “Ooks sä” should be transcribed as “oletko sä”. If you repeat “oletko” quickly out loud, it turns into “ootko” within three seconds; if you do the same with “oletko sä”, it turns into “ootko sä”, which repeated quickly turns into “ootsä” or “ooksä”, but the underlying verb is still going to be “oletko”.
Peter’s English and French examples are not similar to the changes that would take place in Finnish. The “je ne sais pas”/“je sais pas” difference is the equivalent of something like “mä en tiedä mitään”/“mä tiedä mitään” in Finnish. It’s not grammatically correct, but it’s just an omitted word. A better example would be to transcribe French with liaisons included and change the spelling of French accordingly, i.e. s not written if silent, sometimes turned into z, word-final consonants becoming part of the following word, not writing elided vowels, etc. The English examples don’t deviate from standard spelling. “It’ll” and “he’s” are standard contractions even if purists would avoid the latter like the plague, but how about “woulda” or even “wuda” instead of “would’ve”? “Would you get it for me” could sound something like “wud chu geddit for me”, but does that transcription amount to an advanced colloquial English lesson on LingQ? I think standard spelling should be accorded the same respect in all languages.
After all this fussing about it, I hope no other language overtakes Finnish in the polls, otherwise it would’ve been for nothing!
I’m happy to go along with albumen’s suggestions because he’s a native speaker, he writes well and he knows LingQ. Just to clarify, so let’s say someone wants to transcribe a conversation between two speakers. If the speaker says “Ooks sä…” you would transcribe it as “Oletko sä…” (but not "Oletko sinä)? And you would transcribe “jonkunlainen” as “jonkinlainen”, etc.? So in other words, keep all the words as they are supposed to be written (with the exception of mä, sä etc.)?
Edited:
Yes, please keep all the words as they are supposed to be written, with the exception of accepted deviations.
I agree with albumen and Jeff.
Jeff, are you hinting that you might study Finnish on LingQ?
Not really. I have a few other language projects coming up in the near future (but Finnish is definitely on my hit list).
@ albumen : Hej ! I think is really nice give your best adivce for anyone interested by learning Finnish.
@ Peter : For a begining you should take first lessons " Le finnois sans peine " Assimil method as any problem like Colloquial.
Regards
Prince
@Peter
Yes to all. For the sake of coherence, I think you have to retain the colloquial pronouns inflected forms included or not at all.
The function of pronouns could also change in transcription as “minä” tends to be very emphatic. “Mä en löytänyt” (I didn’t find) and “en löytänyt” have no real difference, but “minä en löytänyt” often has an emphasis on “minä”. Possible ways to transcribe “mä en löytäny mun lompakkoo” (I didn’t find my wallet): mä en löytänyt mun lompakkoa, minä en löytänyt minun lompakkoa, (minä) en löytänyt (minun) lompakkoani. I’d go with the first (standard spelling, colloquial pronouns) in a colloquial lesson. The last (grammatically correct written standard, pronouns marked as optional) would introduce too much dissonance. The in-between version is somewhat stiff.
If the audio is heavily colloquial, you can’t really change the pronouns without undesired side effects; if it’s lightly colloquial, it’s possible to change them. The basic rule is to keep to standard spelling in general. The extra pronouns just spice it up. Like most things, this probably seems more complicated than it is.
@Prince: we cannot share copyrighted content, as you know. Unfortunately, Assimil has also rejected LingQ’s proposal to sell their content here.
I agree that the first one is probably best (standard spelling, colloquial pronouns). Also, any transcribed conversations of colloquial Finnish should be marked as Advanced (or Intermediate at the least), so chances are that, by this stage, learners would already be used to some of these discrepancies. It won’t be an issue.
Perhaps a “colloquial” accent category could then be used purely to distinguish lessons that are in grammatically correct written standard Finnish from those that are “colloquial” (as per above).
I would like to say something. As a native Finnish speaker I was rather surprised to read “Finnish is a particularly interesting language, in that the spoken and written language are very different.” It’s not more different than the spoken and written English or any other language. People speak dialects and slang, and that naturally differ, sometimes very much, from the “proper” language. I don’t wish to learn LOLcattish when I try to learn English, so I wouldn’t want to teach people “spoken language” when they are to learn Finnish.
When it comes to writing, in my mind the text should be in the same form as the recording. As Imyirtseshem pointed out, “in the Dutch books, when Hagrid is speaking, it’s a sort of highly colloquial version of Dutch with various ‘errors’ of agreement in verbs and such. But, it’s written in that form. When everyone else is speaking, it’s standard Dutch.” and that is the way I would prefer the “transcription” to be as well, so that people can understand that the spoken language really is slang, and not proper language. Finnish IS spoken as it is written, and if the text says “me menemme” when the audio goes “me mennään”, people will learn that “menemme” is pronounced “mennään”, and that’s not true.
Ketutar - What is being suggested isn’t to transcribe “me mennään” as “me menemme”, but to transcribe spoken words like “ooks” and “oon” as “oletko” and “olen”.
As was pointed out to me, perhaps quite wisely, you have to draw the line somewhere.
If someone says (in a recorded conversation), “en tiiä” or “en haluu”… or “haluuks sä” or “tuuks sä meidän kaa?”, how would you transcribe these?
What albumen suggested was to transcribe words like “mä, sun, mulle, mennään” as they are spoken, but to conform to standard spelling in all other cases (and such lessons could be marked as “colloquial”, so that any students know that such language is not “correct Finnish”).
The other issue with allowing the spelling to vary a lot is that learners won’t be able to find a lot of these words in dictionaries.
Finally, I’m not suggesting leaners should be ‘taught’ spoken language, but if we get to the stage where natural conversations or interviews are transcribed (especially if those speaking are in their 20s or 30s), they’re not going to speak proper Finnish the whole time. So the question arises, how do we best transcribe such conversations?
I didn’t find the lessons for absolutely beginners in the LingQ library. I would appreciate to have the lessons of this kind: sounds, numbers, days of the week etc
All in good time, Evgueny. I’ve got a lot of content here that I’m going to upload. But I’m quite new at uploading, so it’s taking a while for me to get the hang of it.
Do you want lessons where someone just reads out the numbers, the days of the weeks, the months etc.?