Lesson 8 - Languages and nationality

In the following section, you will learn how to say names of different languages and nationalities in Kven.

Case suffixes throughout the lesson will be marked in red to help you become more acquainted with them.

The suffix "-lainen" is attached to the name of a place to form demonym. It can be any place, but here we will focus on different nations.

Note that nationalities are NOT capitalized.

-lainen / -läinen

The only exception is "a Kven person".

kvääni

a kven

Just like all nationalities or demonyms, languages are not capitalized. Pay attention to the following words:

We use the genitive case (-n) + kieli to give more context our avoid confusion. Consider the following examples:

Asun Franskassa ja puhun franskaa. (I live in France and speak French.)

In the example, the speaker doesn't need to clarify what language they speak. Consider another two examples, where specificity is required:

Tiesitkö ette Hokkaidossa puhuthaan Ainun kieltä? (Did you know that the Ainu language is spoken in Hokkaido?)

Kväänin kieli oon elläävä kieli. (The Kven language is a living language.)

Let's learn some phrases, shall we?

Puhun engelskaa äitinkielenä.

I speak English as my mother tongue.

Puhun kans ruottii.

I also speak Swedish.

Praattaan kväänii.

I speak Kven.

Ossaan vähän ruijaa.

I know some Norwegian.

En ymmärä kiinaa.

I don't understand Chinese.

Notice how an additional vowel is added after each language; it is the partitive case. The partitive case is used when we want to express something partial, like a language or something abstract. We will learn more about the partitive in the future.

In addition, you can also replace each language with the genitive case followed by "kieltä", as in "kiinan kieltä". The endings "-ta" or "-tä" are also indicators of the partitive case, so pay attention to them.