As a native Finnish speaker, I find Japanese to sound very elegant and appealing because of similarities in the sound of the language with Finnish. For example, both languages have lots of open syllables, few consonant clusters, long/short vowel and consonant distinctions, and a vaguely similar manner of speaking. The languages seem to have a suprising number of false friends (e.g. kana = chicken, hai = shark, naru = rope, suru = sadness).
I’m curious what Japanese speakers think about Finnish, whether positive or negative.
Here are some examples of the language: a [weather report](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRmb0wEO_5I) and a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf1QZVLHrhk).
7 comments
Not an answer to your question as I’m not a Japanese speaker by any imagination, but I am studying the language. I haven’t ever attempted to learn Finnish because the sentence structure and grammar terrifies me, but listening to it, it does capture my attention in a similar way that Japanese does.
As a japanese I think Finnish is a very cute sounding language
Finnish coworker in Japan said she would go around and see shops with incongruous names in Finnish like fox or soap or cereal. Presumably something fairly easy to pronounce, unfamiliar so unlikely to be used elsewhere, and sufficiently twee or dainty to appeal to a certain corner of the market.
Would evoke Moomins if anything, they love that shit over there.
I’m not Japanese, but I personally think that Finnish doesn’t sound much like Japanese. For as open as Finnish is, Japanese is more so. The Finnish I heard on the weather report (which should be standard) sounds more mumbly and jumbled with consonants than Japanese, while of course more similar to it than, for example Russian or especially Arabic. I can’t understand Korean at all, but I’d say that that sounds the most like Japanese out of the language that I have heard.
About false friends, if there are lots of open syllables and few consonant clusters, and if the vowels are similar (I don’t know if they are), then false friends are guaranteed, no? Because of a small number of combinations for short (two-syllable) words.
The weather report sounds typically an European language. The song sounds very Japanese.
To me European languages string syllables into one string. Japanese is more discrete at each syllable/mora. I’m learning Japanese but before the learning, when a Japanese speech was as clueless as any other languages that I didn’t know, I already noticed this discreteness.
Discreteness is also in Japanese songs. They sound more ba-ba-ba-ba, while European language ones flow the notes. I rarely listen to music, maybe a comparison of the same melody in covers in two languages helps in looking at this point.
The Japanese often leave out the subject of the sentence if it can be inferred or implied. Finnish doesn’t do that. So to a Japanese ear you might say the language sounds… finnished.
I am not sure most Japanese people have an opinion on the subject (I tried a Google search but didn’t find anything useful… among “people also ask” suggestions was “what language do Finnish people speak?”, which is probably illustrative). As a JSL speaker I have never heard Finnish before but listening to it now it doesn’t sound very subjectively similar to me especially given that it seems to have some vowels that don’t exist in Japanese.