Language Learning Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, polyglots, and anyone interested in the techniques of second-language acquisition. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
If I want to add Finnish sentences to Tatoeba (a database of sentences in different languages and translations among them), then should I stick to kirjakieli, fairly conservative puhekieli, or also write the kind of puhekieli that I would personally use?
For example:
Kirjakieli is what is in books and other written language, as well as formal speech (news, etc). It's less common in everyday interpersonal speech. It's also what is normally taught as a second language. Puhekieli is the normal speaking language that you typically hear from people, TV, and from your own mouth (if you're native). This is very similar in concept to Arabic diglossia, except less extreme differences between the formal and informal.
Therefore, I would default to kirjakieli if choosing one, but ideally write sentences in both. If your goal is to become fluent in Finnish, then you'll need to know both anyway. Putting both types of sentences on Tatoeba would be the best and an excellent contribution to the community.
