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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5282 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 1 of 7 07 August 2010 at 9:02am | IP Logged |
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This thread is meant for learners of the Finnish language. It primarily contains online resources that I have used myself, but I'm certainly open to new resources that I might have missed. I'll check in on this thread periodically and add any new resources into this main message. I've categorized these links as best I can, and reviewed each link fairly extensively. Hopefully this is helpful to fellow learners of Finnish. I know there are other collections of Finnish resources on this site, but I don't believe they contain all the links presented here, and I'm just trying to bring them all into one place. Remember to take all spaces out of the links. I'll probably come back and add hyperlinks if I have time. Anyway, here are the resources:
Full Courses: This category includes websites that offer full courses in Finnish. In other words, sites that include grammatical information, example texts, exercises, and audio, in a format that is meant for pure beginners to gain an understanding of the Finnish language. Some sites are included that don't quite fit this definition exactly, or might be meant for more advanced learners. This is where most learners should start their Finnish journey. Tavataan Taas http://donnerwetter.kielikeskus.helsinki.fi/finnishforforeig ners/parts-index.htm This is by far the most useful and essential online Finnish resource in my opinion. Created through the University of Helsinki, this course contains everything beginners need to begin speaking Finnish properly. The main draw of this site is that it includes high quality audio for everything, including extensive pronunciation information. This feature requires Quicktime, but it is fully integrated into the pages and works very smoothely. The grammatical information included is very detailed, and also includes complete corresponding audio. Exercises are built in throughout the program, ranging from pronunciation exercises to distinguish certain sounds, to more advanced conjugation exercises. The other major feature of this site is that everything is parallel; all Finnish texts, explanations, and exercises come with full translations in either English, French, German, or Bulgarian. This, in combination with the audio, makes this one of the most comprehensive and detailed Finnish websites available. Later on, the program eventually shifts completely to short texts, again including audio and translations. The entire content of the website is also available for download, so this resource can be used even if the server goes down. All in all, this course will take learners from the very beginning of Finnish learning, all the way up to a fair intermediate level, providing audio and translation all along the way. This course is a must for all learners, especially at the beginning when learning pronunciation, but will continue to be useful throughout the Finnish language journey. Supisuomea http://www.yle.fi/opinportti/supisuomea/ This is an excellent resource created by the YLE broadcasting network, mostly for immigrants to Finland. The core of the Supisuomea online material is 12 half-hour video episodes, each tackling various topics, and adding in more and more grammar each time. The focus is often on daily situations, and most of these situations are repeated with different people who use the language slightly differently. The quality is excellent, and it is perfect for beginners, because speech is clear and precise, but often coming close to the regular pace of the language. However, each episode is hosted by a different immigrant to Finland who has become fluent in Finnish, so their pronunciation is sometimes I little difficult to understand, even after studying for years. Something that makes this a little easier is that there is a full transcript of each episode included on the site, which is a good source of text in and of itself. If used in conjunction with the videos, the transcripts will help quite a bit in terms of figuring out what they are saying. Also included are various exercises accompanying each episode, both reading comprehension and listening comprehension, explanations of grammar functions, and a very large accompanying dictionary into 6 different languages. The subject matter covered is enough to get users to a basic conversational level with practice, and all in all this is an extremely good resource, but it is entirely in Finnish, so it might be a little difficult to get into at first. Highly recommended though at any level, and should be one of the first sites new learners look at. Ymmärrä suomea http://www2.edu.fi/ymmarrasuomea/ This is a somewhat smaller course compared to some of the others available, but what it offers is very high quality. First off, it includes some very good texts about various parts of Finnish life, and include some very good exercises based upon reading comprehension. The exercises also include audio of the texts, spoken at a relatively quick pace. In other words, it's not slowed down for the purpose of getting used to the language. That can be seen as a good or a bad thing. For beginners, this will probably be quite overwhelming, but the corresponding text is right there to help with the parsing of words. For more intermediate learners, this will be relatively useful for improving listening comprehension. The exercises themselves are fairly basic, essentially just multiple choice, but they're worth checking out anyway. To supplement this program is a fairly good set of grammatical lessons, not going into extreme detail, but covering all the important aspects for beginners. Bear in mind that this whole site is in Finnish, but it's fairly intuitively laid out, and won't pose a problem for most learners. Also included is a fairly good dictionary with a lot of good words, and most word stems are included as well. The final, most interesting feature of this site is essentially a verb conjugator. It certainly doesn't include every verb in the language, but it definitely includes all of the most important ones. Conjugation is complete; every form is included. That makes it a fairly useful tool for getting used to conjugation of verbs. All in all this is a very good website, but beginners should probably start with the first two sites and move into this program once they're used to most of the basic constructs. However, this is still a good course in and of itself, and will be very useful to most intermediate learners. Uuno Portal http://www.uuno.tamk.fi/ This is another very interesting website meant for beginners learning Finnish. It was created as a part of the Tampere University of Applied Sciences, and is comprised of two complementary parts. The second part was created a few years after the first, and introduces more complex grammatical structures. The feature of each part is a set of comics meant to introduce learners to the Finnish language. Many of these comics are largely cultural, covering various aspects of Finnish life. Each part is divided into 10 lessons, each containing one comic. Included with each comic is extended cultural information, grammatical explanations, and a list of new vocabulary. A useful feature of the comics is that when you roll over each speech bubble, it changes to the English translation of what is being said. The grammatical information is fairly thorough, if somewhat simplified. However, the amount of grammatical topics covered is actually quite vast, and there are plenty of examples for each grammatical concept. The cultural information is fairly interesting, but entirely in English. The comics themselves are the only parts of the course actually in Finnish, so for learners looking to immerse themselves in Finnish, this could be a bit of a drawback. Another issue with this program is that it's done entirely in flash, in order to make features such as the rollover possible. What this means is that none of the text is selectable to copy and paste. Also, none of the text boxes are scrollable either; you need to click on up and down arrows to navigate the larger grammar and vocab pages. Still, that's just a minor inconvenience, and all in all, this is a unique, fun way to learn the basics of Finnish. This will definitely be useful to complete beginners, and will remain useful even for more intermediate to advanced learners. FSI - Conversational Finnish http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Finnish This is one of the most extensive Finnish courses freely available online, created by the FSI language institute in 1987. This makes this course comparatively newer than some of the other courses on the website. Included are a 700+ page textbook, a 500+ page workbook, and an extensive amount of tapes with audio content of all dialogs and exercises. The focus of this course is command of the spoken language, so the majority of the texts are dialog based. They are all written in standard Finnish, but there are notations in a seperate column indicating any differences that would occur in the colloquial spoken language. Also, all dialogs are translated into English. The entire textbook is typecast, so everything is of uniform size and shape. Each unit includes a list of new words, and exercises based on the texts. The workbook is meant to supplement the textbook with additional exercises, many of them based on the accompanying tapes. All tapes are available on the site, and require quicktime to be played in the browser, but can easily be downloaded by right-clicking "Save Link As." Also included on the site is a hyperlink to a graded reader of over 700 pages. It is essentially the text-based equivalent of the dialog-based course, with lists of words and exercises included along the way. The texts get more and more difficult along the way, but start fairly easily. Most low intermediate learners should be able to get by with the graded reader quite nicely. Apparently it originally came with tapes as well, but only the text is available as of right now. Overall, it is very possible for learners to get to a solid conversational level of Finnish only using this program. It starts very easily, perfectly for beginners, but can certainly take learners to a fairly competent level. It is also meant to cover 6 months, so it is definitely quite extensive in nature. The graded reader will be a good supplement for this course as well, to be introduced after a fair amount of experience. The bottom line is that this course could end up being the only resource a learner ever uses, and will certainly be very useful for learners of all levels. Still, this could easily be used to supplement a curriculum already in place. This is definitely an amazing resource that all learners should at least take the time to download and store on their system. Oneness City, Finland http://www.oneness.vu.lt/fi/ This is a very interesting site that is a part of a larger portal for teaching lesser known languages. It's very interactive, and is meant for absolute beginners. The amount of content is fairly decent. There are many dialogs and a fair number of other texts, complemented with some good exercises. However, the skills taught are fairly basic, and the grammar never goes beyond a beginner level at any point. The amount of vocabulary taught is quite minimal as well. The goal is definitely to make beginning learners functional in some basic everyday situations, but it doesn't go that much deeper than the very basics. Still, the setup is quite good. All dialogs come with relatively high quality audio, and again, there are a fair amount of exercises to go with the material. Some of the exercises evidently don't work in certain browsers though, such as ones where you have to drag an image to the answer. The layout also takes some getting used to. For example, there are no hyperlinks to exercises, they are simply indicated in certain parts of the course, such as the grammar or vocab section. The user has to go to the exercises section manually and then navigate to the particular exercise themselves. These layout issues are easy to get used to and easy to get past though for most learners. Overall, this is certainly a good site for beginners to check out. The amount and style of content is enough to get most learners to a state of relative functionality with Finnish, and would definitely be useful for most beginners as a supplement for their normal routine. Suomea ole hyvä http://www03.edu.fi/oppimateriaalit/suomeaolehyva/ This is a course run through the University of Oulu originally, divided into 3 parts. Each part contains explanation of grammatical constructs, then exercises based on the grammar. The learning curve is quite steep, and everything is in Finnish. However, it deals with some fairly advanced concepts such as the usage of related words, and fairly extensive exercises along the way. Each grammar section also contains fairly good sets of example sentences for each construct, and each chapter comes with a PDF of all vocabulary into a number of languages, but it appears that certain chapters include vocab into different languages than the others. Also, the layouts can be somewhat confusing at times, and as far as I've seen there is nothing in the way of actual texts; it's essentially just grammar and exercises. That said, the exercises are some of the most extensive I've seen, and since the constructs are also very advanced at the higher levels, this would be useful to look at just for that reason. Also, the explanations are extremely detailed, and it would be useful for more advanced learners to see how everything is explained in Finnish. This makes this program a good resource certainly, but probably something to check out further along the line. Keskellä Suomea http://kielikompassi.jyu.fi/omatila/keskella_suomea/ This site is a part of Finnish studies at the University of Jyväskylä, and is meant for learners with a fair amount of experience with Finnish already. It's not necessarily a course in itself, but it's meant to supplement studies already in place. The bulk of the content on the site is basically sets of audio with listening comprehension questions, or variations on that theme. The audio quality isn't all that great, but generally discernable, and most audio clips come with transcripts. There are also some video clips, but they require the ability to play .rpm files. No grammar is introduced, so this is definitely for intermediate learners at the very least. Overall this website has a good collection of exercises, and would be very good to supplement learning strategies for intermediate learners. 24 Tuntia Opiskelijaelämää http://kielikompassi.jyu.fi/suomi2/24_tuntia_opiskelijaelama a/aloitussivu.html This site is another part of the Finnish language course at the University of Jyväskylä. This is another instance where it isn't exactly a course, but it includes some good exercises and some fairly good texts. The text is a single day in the life of a normal student, accompanied with audio and some comprehension questions. Technically this is meant to be audio based, but the audio is of extremely poor quality so the accompanying scripts will be of much more use to learners. The text is fairly extensive, and the vocabulary is rich and fully colloquial. This is another good supplemental course for prospective students of Finnish. Spoken Finnish Textbook www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICSe rvlet?accno=ED089552 This is a direct hyperlink to a full 500 page textbook meant to take a learner to a functioning level of spoken Finnish. However, it was published in 1947, so it is definitely extremely dated. There are fairly good grammatical explanations, and a good source of texts and dialogs, but the fact that it is so dated makes this course somewhat less useful than others. It's potentially useful to have around for reference. Grammar Sites: This includes websites that are primarily focused on grammatical information. These sites include extensive grammars, thorough explanations, and example sentences in most cases. These will be very useful to all learners, and these sites should be visited and revisited whenever a new concept is being learned. It is always best to find as many explanations as possible for a single concept in order to ensure proper understanding. Grammar books to supplement these sites are also a good idea. Uusi kielemme http://www.uusikielemme.fi/index.html This site has some of the best grammar explanations I've ever seen. They are extensive, include many examples, and cover pretty much every grammatical function of the language. Also, the whole thing is in English, so it is easier to figure out some of the more complicated forms just because of good explanations in English. In all honesty, this is the best Finnish grammar site out there, and is useful for beginners up to advanced learners. That's not all though. There is an extensive vocabulary section that likely includes thousands of words in various contexts and sorted for difficulty. For those of you who like word lists, this is one of the best resources you'll ever find. For those of you who prefer to find your vocabulary in context, this is still a great reference to find more specific words. As a bonus, everything is cross-references with related topics of grammar and vocabulary, and the topics are extremely diverse ranging from basic to advanced as well. There is even a search function at the index page. Overall, this is one of the best reference sites out there, and will be useful to learners of all levels. Finnish Tutorial: Basic Phrases, Pronunciation, and Grammar http://www.ielanguages.com/finnish.html This single page includes a very complete grammatical explanation of nearly all elements of the language. It begins with pronunciation information, continues on to some basic phrases, and then the rest of the page is comprised entirely of grammatical information. Everything is explained, from the different types of nominals and verbs, to infinitives, to sentence types. There are fair amounts of examples as well, but usually only one or two per grammatical concept. However, the explanations are very thorough, and very precise. Everything is introduced in a fairly logical manner as well, making the single page layout a little easier to work with. There are very few constructs that are not properly explained. Some specific usages are not completely explained, but otherwise this is a very thorough description of Finnish grammar. Everything is clear and easy to understand, and that makes this one of the best Finnish grammar resources available. The Finnish Language - JKorpela http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/Finnish.html This site is basically a personal website with information about Finnish. It includes some very good grammatical resources, including some very good linguistic explanations. The notes included are very good, and very informative, but are probably going to be more helpful for those who already have some knowledge of Finnish. Among the most useful articles is a page on Finnish cases, with very good explanations of the usage of each one. It also includes a list of other resources, however some are a little outdated. I've included the most useful of those links on this page. Also included is a page of linguistic information in Finnish, which will be useful to advanced learners. I admit most of it goes completely over my head, so I'm just going to provide that link below, and all I'll say is that it's very advanced and I'll enjoy tackling it when I'm much more advance than I currently am. Anyway, here's the link: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/suomi/indeksi.html This is certainly a very useful page, and I would definitely recommend giving it a look. Wikipedia - Finnish Grammar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_grammar This is the English wikipedia page about Finnish grammar. Nearly every aspect of Finnish grammar is covered with a fair degree of extensiveness, and there are examples at every step along the way. Some expansion is required in some areas, but this is definitely another good grammar resource for learners. Wikipedia - Spoken Finnish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoken_Finnish This is wikipedia's page on spoken Finnish, and this will be useful to more advanced learners wishing to pick up some aspects of the spoken language. It is based largely on the accent of Greater Helsinki, and has extensive explanations for all major changes that take place. Some of the details deal with finer linguistic changes, but the majority are fairly obvious changes that are easy to implement. This is a very good resource for more advanced learners that are wishing to speak more colloquially. A Very Short Finnish Grammar http://www.lysator.liu.se/language/Languages/Finnish/Grammar .html As the name of this site suggests, this site contains a very short description of the grammar of Finnish. This was created by a learner of Finnish, so it may not be 100% accurate, but it was created with learners in mind from the perspective of a fellow learner, which could definitely be of some benefit. The descriptions, although short, are very simple and informative, balancing the most relevant information and the most difficult concepts that give learners the most trouble. The bottom line is that this site doesn't have the most information out there, but it has some fairly unique explanations for different concepts that can make the grasping of said concepts much easier for learners, so it's worth checking out. Finnish Grammar Bits http://www.uta.fi/~km56049/finnish/ This site includes simple explanations of Finnish grammar meant for beginners. It is definitely incomplete, but the sections included are very well laid out, as well as thorough. There are some fairly good examples in certain sections, but other sections are included in the main list but don't even have links. Obviously these sections were never completed, and they leave a fairly big hole in some cases. Also, in many cases, lists of specific words are used in favour of pointing out certain rules. In other words, a lot of it is done by rote, as opposed to understanding. However, there are many example sentences for each grammatical function, making up for the tendency to favour rote learning. It also gives good examples for specific words. Still, this site isn't searchable, so there's no good way to find an example for a specific word, other than to try and find it in certain grammatical categories. Also, in some cases, a basic linguistic knowledge is assumed, and there are a few times where an explanation is overly simplified to a point where it's actually downright wrong. Either way, this site still has some fair merits, but it relies too heavily on rote learning for me to recommend it. Other sites should be used before this one, but the wealth of specific examples could be useful for more advanced learners. News Sites: This section primarily contains sites that deal with news. Some are actually targeted towards learners of Finnish, so those will be the most useful. There is also a link to plenty of other Finnish online news resources at the bottom. Selkouutiset http://www.yle.fi/selkouutiset/index.php?selkouutiset This is a section of YLE news that translates roughly to "Simplified News," and it's essentially news for people who speak Finnish as a second language. The main page of this section contains shortened and simplified versions of the daily news, including audio accompaniment. The speech is enunciated slowly and carefully, and is essentially perfect for learners of Finnish. There are also reading and listening comprehension exercises from each daily newscast. It also contains weekly news with similar questions. Each section is limited to 5 minutes in length, so it's perfect for quick and easy study. There are also archives of old newscasts, both daily and weekly. It's also available as a podcast, so it's perfect for study on the go. If there is one news site that every Finnish language learner should make use of, this is it. Papunet http://papunet.net/selko/ This site is very similar to Selkouutiset, in that it is entirely written in simplified language for learners of Finnish. The entire contents of the site is accompanied by fairly good quality audio, and the text is highlighted during playback to show what is being spoken currently. They seem to speak slightly closer to normal pace than YLE Selkouutiset, but it is still slowed down enough for learners to be able to clearly hear each word properly. Included on the site is a news section, updated fairly regularly, and with a variety of different news items covered. Thereis also a complete set of archives for older news items. Also included is a selection of short stories, and some non-fiction pieces. In that sense this is not only a very good news site for learners, but a source of some fairly good texts as well. This is a very good site for all learners. YLE Uutiset http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/ This is YLE's primary news channel, and it includes plenty of news articles, many with video accompaniment. This is an invaluable resource for intermediate to advanced learners, as it is one of the most well-organized Finnish news sites available, the language is clear and concise, and the video quality is very good. Certainly one of the best news sites available, along with Helsingin Sanomat. The whole YLE website is also an excellent resource, but this is one of their most important sections. It's a little more advanced that Selkouutiset, but it will be useful to more intermediate learners wanting to delve into more complex language. Helsingin Sanomat http://www.hs.fi/ Helsingin Sanomat is the largest newspaper in Finland, and this website includes an extensive amount of the articles they publish. There are many sections to the site, including a main news section, culture, entertainment, sports, a discussion board, blogs, a special section for Finnish news, cars, food, travel, business, TV, and others. Essentially, this is a source of texts in a massive variety of subjects, and the majority of it is completely free, and updated regularly. This is a great resource for all learners. Ilta-Sanomat http://www.iltasanomat.fi/ Literally translating to "evening news," this is another good Finnish newspaper with extensive online resources. It also includes a variety of different sections and is updated regularly. Another great resource. Ilta-Lehti http://www.iltalehti.fi/etusivu/ Another major evening newspaper. Again, includes a variety of different sections. Some might consider this more of a tabloid than anything else, but it's still a good source of texts. Finnish Newspapers http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/finland.htm This is basically just a collection of websites of Finnish newspapers. The sheer amount of content to be found in these links is staggering, so this is a good place to start when looking for some variety with your news. However, some websites are more extensive than others, and the bigger newspapers will be more useful in general. Texts and Books: This section primarily contains sites with fair amounts of text resources. Also included are freely available online books, as well as some good resources for finding Finnish books. Project Gutenberg - Finnish http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/fi Project Gutenberg is a website dedicated to provided free ebooks in a variety of different languages. It includes an extensive section of Finnish literature. Included are great Finnish works such as Kalevala, Alexis Kivi's Seitsemän Veljestä, and Juhani Aho's Rautatie and Helsinkiin, as well as dozens of works of classic literature translated into Finnish. This site is perhaps the best resource for Finnish texts in terms of sheer volume, but the majority of these works are fairly dated and poetic, so many of these works will only be useful to high intermediate to advanced learners. Still, this is an amazing source of classical Finnish literature, and also includes a number of audiobooks from various sources. An important and valuable resource for experienced learners wishing to delve into Finnish literature. Finnish Kalevala http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kvfin/index.htm The Kalevala is the true national epic poem of Finland, and it is what all learners of Finnish should aspire to read. It has been so long since the initial publication of Kalevala that it has become public domain. As such, it is hosted in its entirety at Sacred-texts.com. This is the second edition of Kalevala, containing all 50 runes, or poems. Also on this site is an English edition of Kalevala, so it's possible to use both texts together. However, learners should remember that this is a very advanced piece of literature, and it is something that learners need to work up to in order to appreciate properly. The vocabulary is very advanced, and as it all comes from old Finnish poetry, the structures are relatively dated. However, Kalevala is essentially Finland's single classical piece of literature, so all learners of Finnish should read it eventually, and this site is as good a place to read it as any. Picking up a hard copy is another alternative, and as that could be relatively difficult and expensive for those outside of Finland, this site is probably the best place to access it. Seitsemän Veljestä http://www.pori.fi/kirjasto/e-kirja/7veljesta.htm This site contains the complete text of Alexis Kivi's novel "Seitsemän Veljestä." The book is widely considered to be a masterpiece of Finnish literature, and as it was published in 1870, it has since become public domain. The entire book is now completely available on this site, as well as a few other locations. The whole book is actually on this single page, but navigation is available by chapter. An interesting feature is that the dialogs are marked by character, much like a script. I'm not completely sure whether that is a feature of every edition of the book, or whether that's just a feature of this site. Still, it's a useful feature for following the story. This is an excellent source of one of the greatest pieces of Finnish literature, and I would highly recommend it for all learners at intermediate and advanced levels. Here is another source at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11940 Logos Library http://www.logoslibrary.eu/pls/wordtc/new_wordtheque.wcom_li terature.literaturea_page?lang=FI&letter=A&source=search&pag e=1 The Logos Library contains a variety of small texts in dozens of languages, including 101 Finnish texts, many with audio. The texts are generally fairly small, but there is very good variety and there are works from many different renowned authors. The audio is usually of fairly good quality, but it comes from a number of different sources. In some cases the included audio is at full conversational speed, so beginners might find that a bit tricky to navigate. Regardless, this is a decent source of texts from a variety of authors and dealing with a variety of topics, so this is an excellent resource for most learners. Raamattu uusi & vanha http://www.evl.fi/raamattu/ This site includes both translations of the Finnish bible, the older translation from 1933/1938, and the new translation from 1992. This is a great resource for all language learners including the non-religious, as the bible is a massive text that is available freely. The language is relatively dated, even in the updated translation, but it's a great source of vocabulary and reading in general. It's one of the best freely available texts regardless of religious faith. There are also free audiobooks available for both versions that I have linked to in the audio section, as well as some audiobooks available to buy from various sources. This is a great resource just because of its sheer size, and this site contains both Finnish versions. Unbound Bible http://unbound.biola.edu/ This is a continuation of the above site, specifically tailored towards the use of parallel texts. This is perfect for the L-R technique, as it creates parallel texts divided by verses. Again, this is useful regardless of religion, as it is a great source of parallel text. There are 3 Finnish versions available, the two mentioned above, and the earliest Finnish bible from 1776. That's more of a novelty than anything else, but still, very useful. Lue Urantia-Kirja http://www.urantia.org/fi/urantia-kirjasta/lue The Urantia book, or Urantia-Kirja, is a religious text dating from the early 1900s, dealing with a number of religious related topics. It is fairly extensive, and is available in its entirety in a number of languages at this location, including a Finnish version. I haven't read it myself, but based on its sheer size, that alone makes it a considerable resource. This is largely a philosophical text, and definitely deals with some major religious issues. This is definitely something worth looking at for more advanced learners, especially those who are interested in this type of work. Vilma http://virtuoosi.pkky.fi/vilma/ This site is essentially a collection of simplified texts for learners of Finnish, covering various topics about Finnish culture and everyday life. It is split into two parts; one is supposed to be more difficult than the other, but both parts are actually identical from what I've seen. However, that's not a major drawback. The texts included are really quite good, and some of them are fairly long. Overall I wouldn't say that these texts are truly graded, but it's possible that some vocabulary introduced early on keeps being reused later. Still, this is a good repository of easy Finnish texts for the purposes of learning, and will be very useful to learners looking for some good materials to read. Books from Finland http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/ This is an English-language site dedicated to Finnish literature. It doesn't include any real direct texts, but it's a good resource for finding Finnish books. This will mainly become useful when internet resources are exhausted and it becomes necessary to find Finnish novels or short stories to supplement other strategies. This site can help to find books that are interesting in order to keep reading fun and enjoyable. OpenSubtitles - Finnish http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/search/sublanguageid-fin This site doesn't include texts in the strict sense, but it is a wealth of resources from movies and TV shows in all languages. Mostly it's a good source for texts in the style of spoken Finnish, and it's also good accompaniment for Finnish movies. Generally the subtitles for Finnish movies aren't completely accurate word for word, but they can help with figuring out what's going on at the very least. And as I said, there is a seemingly endless supply of Finnish subtitles on this site, so it's an extremely good resource for that reason alone. Dictionaries: This site contains various dictionaries with a number of different features. Wiktionary http://www.wiktionary.org/ Many of you might already know of this website, the dictionary equivalent of wikipedia. It is actually one of the best dictionary resources for Finnish available on the web. One of the best features is complete declension and conjugation information for most nouns and verbs. I'd say that at least 80% of all words include this feature, with only some fairly rare words that don't have this feature. There is also complete information about noun and verb types, as well as accurate information on various suffixes. Many words also have example sentences, but only for the most common words. This is the first online dictionary I check for any new Finnish word, and the declension and conjugation information is a valuable resource for all Finnish users. Sanakirja.org http://www.sanakirja.org/ This is one of the best Finnish online dictionaries for language learners that I've found. When looking up words from Finnish to English, possible definitions are given in English, but everything else is conducted in Finnish. Most words have a definition in Finnish, and quite a few have some basic declension and conjugation information. Many words contain example sentences, probably up to half of common words. Many words with direct synonyms also contain that information. However, this is not consistent for all words, and some words definitely contain more information that others. However, there are at least definitions for many words that do not have entries on other sites. The example sentences included are also of good quality, so when they are present, they can be quite helpful. All in all, this is a very useful tool, and one of the best Finnish dictionaries available on the internet. Ilmainen Sanakirja http://ilmainensanakirja.fi/ This is another good Finnish based dictionary with a lot of good features of its own. It's a part of the Iltalehti.fi network, and has definitions to and from many different languages. For example, you could go from Russian to Latvian if you wanted to, or any other combination of languages. It contains the best definitions from Finnish to English, but unfortunately, when going from English into Finnish, it simply gives the word. For the purposes of looking up Finnish words, it gives good English definitions, so it would be useful for figuring out what a particular Finnish word means. However, it only includes English examples, or examples in other languages. In that way, this is pretty much a tool for Finns to look up Finnish words in other languages, as opposed to finding Finnish definitions for certain words. This could be useful for obtaining alternate definitions of a particular word, but this isn't the most useful dictionary for language learning purposes. Example Sentences/Sentence Mining: This sites in this section include fair amounts of example sentences in a number of different languages including Finnish. This will be helpful to learners employing the sentence mining technique. Tatoeba http://tatoeba.org/eng/ This site was set up in order to collect example sentences and then get translations into as many languages as possible. There aren't as many resources for Finnish as for other languages, but there are many good sentences contributed by a number of different users. The difficulty ranges from simple two-word sentences to some fairly abstract and complex sentences. The search function is fairly good, but it has a fairly odd way of predicting different inflections, so finding a specific word can be a challenge, if there's even a sentence with that word at all. However, this is one of the first places I look for good quality example sentences of a variety of topics, and as it keeps growing, it should just keep getting better and better. MyMemory http://mymemory.translated.net/ This site is a translation repository of sorts, in that it takes from machine translated material and applies human corrections. That's the basic principal anyway. It also takes from a variety of freely available translations as well as materials from professional translators that have been contributed to the project. In some cases it takes from google translate, and a lot from wikipedia and wiktionary, so in that respect it functions as a fairly accurate dictionary at times. However, despite the vast possibilities of this website, it takes from a relatively small number of actual texts. In fact, the most common source of material is actually the European Union, presumably directly from session transcripts that have been translated. In some cases, that's perfectly adequate, as there are quite a few examples of everyday usages of certain words, but often there are many sentences that simply tend to ramble, and more often than not it has something to do with EU policy. That being said, it has example sentences for many words that wouldn't otherwise have good sentences available, so it's useful in a pinch if you really need to see how something is used in a different context. Unfortunately, the EU transcripts are really the only useful texts, as everything else is usually from the computer sciences or advanced medical translations. This might be useful for finding a computer term or a medical term, but it doesn't help very much for finding everyday usages of words. To compound the problem, often the searches only turn up sentence fragments, which are pretty much useless on their own without context. In addition, it searches for the exact spelling of the exact word, so you have to look up various different inflections each time. However, this is still a relatively useful resource for example sentences if you can't find anything elsewhere for a particular word, or if you just enjoy hearing about the EU. It should be the last place you check though, just as a general rule. Audio Resources: These sites contain some fairly good audio and multimedia resources. Librivox Finnish http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search_advanced.php?title=&au thor=&cat=&genre=&status=complete&type=&language=Finnish&dat e=&reader=&bc=&mc=&action=Search Librovox is a site that creates and hosts audiobooks for public domain texts in a variety of languages. There are currently 11 Finnish audiobooks on the site, and although that may not seem like a lot, the quality is excellent. First of all, some key Finnish works are present, including "Seitsemän Veljestä" by Aleksis Kivi, and "Helsinkiin" and "Rautatie" by Juhani Aho. Secondly, there are some other good works including collections of poetry, and some other books. Finally, the audiobooks are available in a variety of formats, and even downloadable through iTunes as podcasts. This makes this site a great source of Finnish language audio material. Finland Radio Stations http://www.listenlive.eu/finland.html This is a collection of Finnish streaming radio. Usefulness depends upon the number of stations you're able to connect to, but they will all be a constant source of new audio as long as you can connect to them. How to Learn Finnish with Podcasts http://www.ehow.com/how_5246566_learn-finnish-podcasts.html This is an interesting site. More of a how-to guide than anything else, it includes some ideas for how to use podcasts for language learning. It contains very few specific resources, and the one specific site it links to only has 4 episodes. I've included that site below with a description, but other than that, this site is mostly useful as a bit of a guide for using podcasts. Essentially the best source of Finnish podcasts is iTunes. They're easiest to find if you switch your national store to Finland, as some of the featured providers are Finnish broadcast networks. There are dozens from YLE alone. I highly recommend the Selkouutiset podcast. This site is useful for using those podcasts, but I'm only really including it because it got me onto that track. Wikis and Community Projects: This section contains freely editable wiki resources in Finnish. Wikipedia http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Etusivu This may seem like a fairly obvious choice, but the Finnish version of wikipedia is definitely the largest Finnish language wiki on the web. At the time of creation of this article, there are 245 462 articles on Finnish wikipedia, with more being added all the time. Essentially this is a massive repository of Finnish texts covering a nearly endless variety of topics. For beginners and lower intermediates, this could be a useful source of texts to study, starting with some of the simpler pages. For higher intermediate to advanced learners, this could probably be used instead of Wikipedia in their native language. Simply by looking things up in Finnish by default could increase exposure extremely, and if it becomes too mentally taxing, they could always switch back to their native language version for a while. Either way, this is an invaluable resource to all learners of Finnish, just because of the sheer amount of texts available here. Suomen kieli käyttöön http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Suomen_kieli_k%C3%A4ytt%C3%B6%C 3%B6n This is a wikibook currently in development, including some graded Finnish texts covering both written and spoken language. Some texts are better presented than others, and it is by no means complete. This is probably best left to later on in the learning process when you are just looking for texts for practice. Multilanguage Community Course http://www.learnlangs.com/coursewiki/index.php?title=Multila ng/Lessons This course is actually a community project of this forum that has been in development for some time. The texts are very short, but the explanations are quite good, and there is potential for this to become quite useful in the future. For now though, it's maybe a tool for absolute beginners, and not much else. Forum Posts: This section contains various posts already available on this forum that are relevent to Finnish learners. Finnish Profile (revised) http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=18955&PN=1&TPN=1 This is a revision of the original Finnish profile on the main site, created and written by Chung. This single post contains a wealth of information for prospective users of Finnish. Besides a very good introduction to the language including information on its usefulness, economic importance, and travel opportunities, but it also gives a very lengthy grammatical description, with fairly detailed information on most of the more difficult elements of Finnish. Also included is some fairly good pronunciation information, and a lengthy list of basic vocabulary. At the bottom of the post is a list of resources for learners, including books, dictionaries, and internet resources. The list of books and dictionaries is especially useful, even if it does lack some relatively useful language courses. There are also some fairly good links in this post, and a few with some basic descriptions of usefulness. This post is definitely something all prospective learners of Finnish should check out, because it lets learners get their feet wet in the language to be able to decide whether to actually pursue Finnish in the long run, and gives some very good resources as well. Finnish: Hard As Its Reputation? http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=13583&PN=1 A fairly good discussion about the reputation of Finnish as a difficult language. Could be worth checking out to see what fellow learners have to say. Learning Finnish: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=4707&PN=34 Another fairly good discussion about difficulty, including a useful post with some online links. It's from 2006, so fairly dated. Portals and Links: These sites contain various other links that will be useful to learners. Some of them are actual language resources, but most of these links are simply related to Finland and Finnish culture. University of Jyväskylä https://kielikeskus.jyu.fi/opetus/suomi-toisena-ja-vieraana- kielena/en/self-study-1 This portal is a part of the University of Jyväskylä's Finnish language course, and is meant as a collection of self-study resources for students in their Finnish language program. This includes quite a number of excellent resources, some of which I have linked to already in this post. Others are more difficult to link to, as they require registration. However, registration is free, so these extra resources are fairly easy to access as well. These additional resources alone are a good reason to check out this site, plus some of the other links included provide some very good resources on its own. University of California, Berkeley http://ies.berkeley.edu/fsp/finnishstudies/links.htm This fairly large portal contains a vast amount of resources for those interested in Finland and the Finnish language. This portal isn't as useful for language resources as it is for cultural resources; there are dozens of Finnish sites from a variety of different topics, and many of these could be quite helpful for those wishing to travel in Finland. Many of these sites could be quite useful for more advanced learners as well, as sources of more advanced language. Learn Finnish - TOKYOwiki http://wiki.uiah.fi/tokyo/index.php/Learn_Finnish This is a great collection of links, which includes many of the resources I've already looked at, and some other good ones that I haven't tried. The rest of the wiki would be worth looking at just because of the fact that it's all in Finnish. However, there are some very good links included, especially to a number of youtube videos, as well as quite a few tools that could be useful. For the most part, many of the links included are already included in this thread, but it's worth checking out either way for other ideas. Other Resources: This section contains all other resources, tools, and websites that don't really fit into any other category. Finnish Verb Conjugator http://www.verbix.com/languages/finnish.shtml This is a very useful tool that can conjugate any Finnish verb in its entirety. This is incredibly useful especially for beginners. Conjugations are accurate, and all forms are included. There isn't very much more to be said, other than that it is extremely useful and helpful. Xerox Finnish Language Tools http://legacy.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/d emos/finnish.en.html This is another incredibly useful tool that can analyze any Finnish word including conjugations, and then decudes the root word and all conjugations applied to it. This can be useful whenever there is an unrecognized word with an unfamiliar conjugation, so the root word cannot be found with accuracy. From what I understand this is a theoretical tool, in other words it relies on algorithms. However, it is extremely accurate, and if there is more than one theoretical possibility for a word, it lists them all. In that sense, this is an extremely useful tool that all users can make use of. Finnish Names This is a very interesting site, and its main purpose is to catalog and provide audio samples of Finnish names. It's hard to say how genuinely useful this would be, because they are just single names, but there are a fair amount of samples, and every little bit helps I guess, especially at the beginning. It also includes a lot of interesting information about Finnish names, which some fairly interesting links about genealogies. There are also quite a few links to books, music, and movies about Finnish and Finland. All in all, this site is worth checking out, but mostly as a diversion from the main area of study. Finnish Language Learning Games http://www.digitaldialects.com/Finnish.htm This site is basically a set of learning games and exercises for learners of Finnish. There are 13 games on this site, all of which drill different areas of Finnish. For example, there is a game that drills numbers by making users add two numbers together on a timer. There isn't really all that much that is learnt on this site besides a small amount of vocabulary, but the drills are of relatively good quality, and this could be quite a useful tool for learners in order to practice different skills in the language. Finnish Flash Cards http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/language/FinnishFlashCards.pdf This is a direcct hyperlink of a PDF that includes printable flashcards for 3000 Finnish words in 150 pages. This could be a relatively useful vocabulary tool. Edited by feanarosurion on 18 August 2010 at 8:54am 27 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 7 08 August 2010 at 5:27am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the props, feanarosurion.
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| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5374 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 3 of 7 11 August 2010 at 4:52am | IP Logged |
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Oh wow, I think I love you. This is going straight into a massive notepad file. Kiitos!
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| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5282 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 4 of 7 18 August 2010 at 8:55am | IP Logged |
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Just made a quick update. I added a few new resources, mostly text and audiobook related. Also I renamed the multimedia section to the audio section.
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| Ariail Newbie United States Joined 4245 days ago 23 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Finnish | Message 5 of 7 18 October 2013 at 8:51pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you very much for posting this. I do have one question, though: how large is
Tavataan Taas? It's extremely useful for a person beginning their journey, but it seems fairly short to me. Is there more content that I'm not noticing, or is it just the two parts on the the index (http://tinyurl.com/4jfak)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4863 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 7 of 7 01 November 2015 at 11:48am | IP Logged |
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Quite an impressive list to be honest. I can only come up with one resource you haven't listed as of yet:
YKItreenit It's only in Finnish and you have to be registered to be able to use it (it's free though). It's purpose is to practice for the language tests organized by the Finnish Board of Education. It includes exercises for the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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