Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian
| Message 1 of 8 01 June 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged |
What are the good materials on Finnish language?
How much can it take for me to learn it up to being understood?
I've read on the web on its grammar, and it doesn't seem difficult. Just 14 suffixes instead of prepositions, that doesn't seem a big deal. What's the hard part about Finnish?
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Tyr Senior Member Sweden Joined 5782 days ago 316 posts - 384 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish
| Message 2 of 8 01 June 2010 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
Sentances as single words.
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chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5310 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French
| Message 3 of 8 01 June 2010 at 5:23pm | IP Logged |
Hard parts:
The different cases for total and partial(?) objects (partitive and accusative - which looks like nominative or
genetive).
In the beginning distinguishing long and short sounds --> different meanings. (Not really a part of the grammar,
maybe.)
Right now I can't think of anything else.
Edit. Sorry, but I'm not familiar with different materials, so I can't recommend anything.
Edited by chirel on 01 June 2010 at 6:04pm
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chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5310 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French
| Message 4 of 8 01 June 2010 at 6:16pm | IP Logged |
Me again.
I taught Finnish on a course a couple of years ago. In six months most students reached B2 and after one year
some were able to talk really well and use complicated structures.
They attended the course five days a week and 3-4 hours a day. The method was suggestopedic, if that makes
a difference. If you work on Finnish every day I'd say you should be able to do almost as well. If you can get a
native tutor to help with speaking, then you could do just as well.
I see that you speak Russian. For many Russian speakers the idea of a verb "to be" is difficult, but since you
already know several languages, I don't think that would be a problem for you. There are many words that have
similar or related meanings in Finnish and Russian, so that could also help you.
The different tempus and modus in Finnish might be difficult.
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GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French
| Message 5 of 8 01 June 2010 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
The hardest part for me is vocabulary, and also how certain verbs govern different cases, etc. There's lots of great resources out there that explain Finnish grammar.
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Guido Super Polyglot Senior Member ArgentinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6528 days ago 286 posts - 582 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Danish Studies: Russian, Indonesian, Romanian, Polish, Icelandic
| Message 6 of 8 01 June 2010 at 10:33pm | IP Logged |
Apart from Assimil, which is always an excelent option, here are some other methods (I'll just post the images, you have to search for
the ISBNs):
1. Hyvin Menee 1
2. Hyvin Menee 2
3. Harjoitus tekee mestarin 1, 2, 3 and 4
4. Linguaphone Finnish
5. Supisuomea Video Lessons
6. Suomea Paremmin
7. FSI Conversational Finnish
8. Teach Yourself Finnish
9. Ymmärrä suomea
My recomendation:
1. Start with Linguaphone Finnish together with Supisuomea
2. Continue with the two Hyvin Menee, the 4 Harjoitus tekee mestarin and Ymmärrä suomea
3. The others (Suomea Paremmin, FSI and TY) would be just to reinforce
A short description of some of the books:
- Supisuomea: it's a DVD course in fact. 12 Lesson. Subtitles in like 8 languages (including Russian and Finnish). Excelent. A must
- Hyvin Menee 1 and 2: Books with dialoges, exercises, audio. Excelent. A must
- Harjoitus tekee mestarin: Exercises books. Excelent. I'd say they are a must since Finnish grammar isn't the easiest.
- Linguaphone Finnish: since Assimil Finnish is only available in French and German, you have no better option than this book (with
audio). You need a language course that teaches you the language through another (English>Finnish) and the Hyvin Menee and Harjoitus are 100% in
Finnish.
- FSI Finnish: The same as Linguaphone, but FSI can get boring.
- Teach Yourself Finnish: These are good, but for a language like Finnish it's not enought. I'd buy it anyway.
- Suomea Paremmin: Texts and dialogues with audio (very long texts in fact). 100% Finnish.
- Ymmärrä suomea: Texts and dialogues. It seems to be very good.
Hope it helps!
and have a nice day!
Guido.-
Edited by Guido on 02 June 2010 at 2:26am
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chirel Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5310 days ago 125 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French
| Message 7 of 8 02 June 2010 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
Thank you for an interesting list and review of different materials. I hope there's something useful for Siberiano
too.
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AIRBORNE_DELTA Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Dutch
| Message 8 of 8 10 November 2013 at 12:42am | IP Logged |
There now is a pimsleur Finnish course, you can try it for free on their website. It does not have many units, but I have tried it and it is a perfect introduction for a total noob such as myself.
http://www.pimsleur.com/learn-finnish
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