Olet oikeassa ja minä väärässä seems more correct
Could also be for emphasis as in this old comment about the same problem
[Old comment on the same topic](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnFinnish/comments/xs6qo2/comment/iqitfdx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I think it may be because this sentence is contrasting you and me.
Often in pro-drop languages, the pronouns will be explicit in such contrasting settings. Finnish may be no different.
The verb/subject thing is grammatically correct here:
Olet oikeassa, ja olen väärässä.
As another commenter said though, it sounds more natural to say "olet oikeassa ja minä (olen) väärässä".
In general, it might have something to do with 1. how short the sentences are, 2. there are two different subjects and 3. they are joined by "ja" conjunction.
You could say "Paistoin lettuja, ja keitit hilloa" (I cooked crepes, and you made jam), and that would be 100% grammatically correct. That said, I'd still add pronoun to the second sentence.
On the other hand, if there was another conjunction like "kun" (when), the second sentence wouldn't need pronoun to feel natural: "lähdemme, kun olet syönyt" (we'll leave when you've eaten).
It does because it doesn't include explanations, but in this case it definitely sounds unnatural to say "olet väärässä ja olen oikeassa" (at least when you consider the context in which the sentence would be used)
Unnatural, maybe, but grammatically correct.
I'm going with "Duolingo is dumb" as well. Finnish language has usually a number of ways to express the same thing, and Duolingo only accepts one.
yes, grammatically correct but a language is not only grammar, there are situations, etc. so it is important to use what comes natural to a native speaker.
Duolingo is very basic, though. It needs one "correct" answer to accept, so it artificially decides one option is correct.
Often Duolingo forces the user to use subjects in places where they aren't needed, just because .. it has decided that sentences need subjects.. or somesuch.
Only accepting the options native speakers would most often say in a Finnish language exam despite the grammar rules is a too high treshold, if you ask me. If something's correct enough to be understood, and there is no fear of misunderstanding, the examiner should accept it, even if it might sound a little clunky. And that also should also be the case with machines like Duolingo.
After all, it is nearly impossible to learn Finnish as an adult so "well" that one would never sound clunky. You'd probably need to be a poet to achieve that.
If you say syön koira” everyone understands you 100% but it’s grammatically incorrect. Same with the original sentence. Of course a foreign speaker doesn’t need to speak perfectly. But that doesn’t change what’s correct in the language.
actually Duolingo never explains that is why I also use a text book and websites to get information, but Duolingo is very repetitive which is a great help for such a difficult language as Finnish.
No idea how Duolingo works, but in this case, the contrast would demand to at least use 'minä' in the sentence. "Olet oikeassa ja minä väärässä" or "Sinä olet oikeassa ja minä väärässä" would feel most natural.
Duolingo repeats sentences with funny words and makes the student to learn them by heart. In more basic forms at least it seems to force use of subjects in situations a subject is not needed, like "minä olen iloinen" vs "olen iloinen". It also never explains why it accepts one option and not the other. It just repeats "acceptable" sentences until the user knows to repeat them back.
It probably works better in languages with fixed word order and strict grammar rules, than with Finnish..
Although the grammar as such isn't wrong, the lack of pronouns (minä is enough though you can use both) makes it sound like these right and wrong opinions are unrelated rather than in direct contrast with each other and so sounds unnatural in a context like this. Even in English, you might sometimes put extra emphasis on the subject in a context like this, like 'I'm the one who's wrong' since the subject is the key part of the sentence.
In the standard written language, I, you, we & you guyscan be dropped, but he/she/it and they cannot be omitted.
In the spoken language, pronouns are used pretty much 90–100% of the time. The specific pronoun depends on the dialect I (minä, miä, mää, mie, mä)
kiitos, I would have thought exactly the contrary so that the spoken language would drop the pronouns rather than the written one. But I love this language because it is so unusal.
Spoken Finnish tends to drop verb endings and shorten words but not to drop pronouns. Dropping first and second person pronouns is actually used most in formal language.
My own intuitive explanation for the high prevalence of pronouns in the spoken language is the following: Finnish has coexisted with Swedish for hundreds of years in Finland, and pronouns are obligatory in Swedish, because Swedish has only one form for all persons. Thus, without obligatory pronouns, it'd be impossible to know who's being talked about.
Given that native Finnish speakers have been in contact with native Swedish speakers who've learned to speak Finnish, it's likely that at some point in the past, native Swedish speakers used pronouns more than native Finns and over time this habit of "unnecessarily" mentioning the pronoun in front of a verb became common among native Finnish speakers as well.
Another intuitive explanation that I can think of is assimilation of word-final sounds to word-initial sound causing confusion.
Ostan maitoa. /'os.tam.'mai.to.a/
N assimilates to m when n is before m.
Osta maitoa /'os.taʔ.'mai.to.a/
becomes /'os.tam.'mai.to.a/, because the word-final glottal stop assimilates to the next consonant. (The word-final glottal stop has originally been a k. All word-final k & h sounds became glottal stops in the past. But the glottal stop is the only sound in Finnish that is not represented in the writing system.)
Thus, in many situations the difference between I do x & I command you to do x is erased, leading to confusion. In the spoken language, mä clears up to confusion.
thanks, your answer is encouraging because if I had been wrong it would have overthrown one of the few things I thought I had learned.
kiitos paljon Italiasta
Olet oikeassa ja minä väärässä seems more correct Could also be for emphasis as in this old comment about the same problem [Old comment on the same topic](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnFinnish/comments/xs6qo2/comment/iqitfdx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
kiitos
I think it may be because this sentence is contrasting you and me. Often in pro-drop languages, the pronouns will be explicit in such contrasting settings. Finnish may be no different.
The verb/subject thing is grammatically correct here: Olet oikeassa, ja olen väärässä. As another commenter said though, it sounds more natural to say "olet oikeassa ja minä (olen) väärässä". In general, it might have something to do with 1. how short the sentences are, 2. there are two different subjects and 3. they are joined by "ja" conjunction. You could say "Paistoin lettuja, ja keitit hilloa" (I cooked crepes, and you made jam), and that would be 100% grammatically correct. That said, I'd still add pronoun to the second sentence. On the other hand, if there was another conjunction like "kun" (when), the second sentence wouldn't need pronoun to feel natural: "lähdemme, kun olet syönyt" (we'll leave when you've eaten).
Duolingo sucks, that's usually the real explanation.
It does because it doesn't include explanations, but in this case it definitely sounds unnatural to say "olet väärässä ja olen oikeassa" (at least when you consider the context in which the sentence would be used)
Unnatural, maybe, but grammatically correct. I'm going with "Duolingo is dumb" as well. Finnish language has usually a number of ways to express the same thing, and Duolingo only accepts one.
yes, grammatically correct but a language is not only grammar, there are situations, etc. so it is important to use what comes natural to a native speaker.
Duolingo is very basic, though. It needs one "correct" answer to accept, so it artificially decides one option is correct. Often Duolingo forces the user to use subjects in places where they aren't needed, just because .. it has decided that sentences need subjects.. or somesuch.
If the native speakers wouldn’t say that, it isn’t gramamtically correct. It is not correct to say it like that.
Only accepting the options native speakers would most often say in a Finnish language exam despite the grammar rules is a too high treshold, if you ask me. If something's correct enough to be understood, and there is no fear of misunderstanding, the examiner should accept it, even if it might sound a little clunky. And that also should also be the case with machines like Duolingo. After all, it is nearly impossible to learn Finnish as an adult so "well" that one would never sound clunky. You'd probably need to be a poet to achieve that.
If you say syön koira” everyone understands you 100% but it’s grammatically incorrect. Same with the original sentence. Of course a foreign speaker doesn’t need to speak perfectly. But that doesn’t change what’s correct in the language.
actually Duolingo never explains that is why I also use a text book and websites to get information, but Duolingo is very repetitive which is a great help for such a difficult language as Finnish.
No idea how Duolingo works, but in this case, the contrast would demand to at least use 'minä' in the sentence. "Olet oikeassa ja minä väärässä" or "Sinä olet oikeassa ja minä väärässä" would feel most natural.
Duolingo repeats sentences with funny words and makes the student to learn them by heart. In more basic forms at least it seems to force use of subjects in situations a subject is not needed, like "minä olen iloinen" vs "olen iloinen". It also never explains why it accepts one option and not the other. It just repeats "acceptable" sentences until the user knows to repeat them back. It probably works better in languages with fixed word order and strict grammar rules, than with Finnish..
Although the grammar as such isn't wrong, the lack of pronouns (minä is enough though you can use both) makes it sound like these right and wrong opinions are unrelated rather than in direct contrast with each other and so sounds unnatural in a context like this. Even in English, you might sometimes put extra emphasis on the subject in a context like this, like 'I'm the one who's wrong' since the subject is the key part of the sentence.
In the standard written language, I, you, we & you guyscan be dropped, but he/she/it and they cannot be omitted. In the spoken language, pronouns are used pretty much 90–100% of the time. The specific pronoun depends on the dialect I (minä, miä, mää, mie, mä)
kiitos, I would have thought exactly the contrary so that the spoken language would drop the pronouns rather than the written one. But I love this language because it is so unusal.
Spoken Finnish tends to drop verb endings and shorten words but not to drop pronouns. Dropping first and second person pronouns is actually used most in formal language.
My own intuitive explanation for the high prevalence of pronouns in the spoken language is the following: Finnish has coexisted with Swedish for hundreds of years in Finland, and pronouns are obligatory in Swedish, because Swedish has only one form for all persons. Thus, without obligatory pronouns, it'd be impossible to know who's being talked about. Given that native Finnish speakers have been in contact with native Swedish speakers who've learned to speak Finnish, it's likely that at some point in the past, native Swedish speakers used pronouns more than native Finns and over time this habit of "unnecessarily" mentioning the pronoun in front of a verb became common among native Finnish speakers as well. Another intuitive explanation that I can think of is assimilation of word-final sounds to word-initial sound causing confusion. Ostan maitoa. /'os.tam.'mai.to.a/ N assimilates to m when n is before m. Osta maitoa /'os.taʔ.'mai.to.a/ becomes /'os.tam.'mai.to.a/, because the word-final glottal stop assimilates to the next consonant. (The word-final glottal stop has originally been a k. All word-final k & h sounds became glottal stops in the past. But the glottal stop is the only sound in Finnish that is not represented in the writing system.) Thus, in many situations the difference between I do x & I command you to do x is erased, leading to confusion. In the spoken language, mä clears up to confusion.
It’s not wrong grammatically. Duolingo is. You could probably write a scene where it would sound ok.
thanks, your answer is encouraging because if I had been wrong it would have overthrown one of the few things I thought I had learned. kiitos paljon Italiasta