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Possible to learn Finnish after 2 years? | ||
Tags: Finnish | Time to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Themessage Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4862 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian, Polish, Greek | Message 1 of 9 05 June 2012 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everybody?
I am just wondering, if, after several years of private study, you lived in Finland for about two years and worked hard at the language, you could attain native level fluency? It is something that I am considering, and would appreciate other people's opinions. Thanks a lot! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4853 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 2 of 9 05 June 2012 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been here two years and a half and I can understand a great deal of the language
passively (I would say B2-C1 reading comprehension, B2 listening comprehension). My active skills are a bit lacking, perhaps B1, but I wasted most of my first year here in really useless and basic language lessons that went too slow. I didn't know any Finnish when I got here and wasn't really focused on it in the beginning. If you know something already before coming and then you work hard at it, I think two years is enough to be kind of fluent. I think NATIVE like fluency might take much longer though, and since learning a language is a continuous process, I can't really come up with a time frame. However, if you are good already (like some kind of intermediate), then your goal seems quite realistic. How would you describe your abilities with the language? how long have you studied? Edited by caam_imt on 05 June 2012 at 5:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Themessage Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4862 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian, Polish, Greek | Message 3 of 9 05 June 2012 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Many thanks for your reply! I currently speak more or less 'zero' Finnish. I would like to become an interpreter for the EU and I need to find one more language to learn. I was thinking about Finnish because I would ahve already hopefully learned Estonian beforehand, and I know there are similarities between the two. It is very interesting what you say - it seems you have made fantastic progress in your Finnish studies already - well done. May I ask a few questions about the language itself? Is it as hard as is made out? Now that you are living in Finland, do you find that you are picking up the hard grammer etc quite easily? How do you practice? Do you use your Finnish a lot in a social and professional context? Many thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4853 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 4 of 9 05 June 2012 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think there is a great deal of media out there that portrays Finnish as a really
tough language, including the Finns themselves (some of them). This depends on your perspective. It is quite overwhelming in the beginning since a lot of the vocabulary is very different from indo-european languages. Swedish and Russian loanwords are very well disguised and probably unrecognizable to somebody who is not proficient in those. Some English loanwords are relatively new and therefore easily spotted, though they are mostly prevalent in niche areas (e.g. technology/engineering) and in slang. The written language is quite conservative in this respect. In terms of grammar, as it has been said here before, it is quite regular, but there is a lot of work to do to be able to string your first sentences correctly. Tricky grammar cases appear since the very beginning, such as the partitive case. However, don't buy the whole 16 cases stuff because many of them are prepositions like in, on, to, from, and others (like 3 of them) are used mostly in literary form and survive in the spoken language only through fixed expressions and sayings. If you are motivated enough, tackle the grammar early on and it won't be so hard later, just think of it as a new way of seeing things and try not to relate it to your other languages. I have a Finnish girlfriend, so I practice with her from time to time. I have also spent some time talking with her mother and siblings and watching TV. Once you're here it's not so hard to find some practice. At the university I took engineering courses lectured in Finnish and while it was a nightmare to understand both the content and the language, it has helped me a lot. I have no fail-proof method to recommend, but my best advice is: don't give up, it's quite hard, strange and weird in the beginning, but later tends to get more relaxed and just adds smoothly to what you know already. And don't forget the pronunciation! it's quite easy, but there are A LOT of foreigners who don't bother with it, and sound quite bad IMO. Good pronunciation is also key to have a Finn not answer to you in English. PS. By the way, I just noticed you plan to learn Estonian first. I have heard that Finnish grammar is slightly more regular, but I have no idea how confusing it would be to study one after the other, since there are some false friends and all that. My GF says it sounds like how a child would talk :) (in a cute way). Hope that helps. You can ask more stuff if you want. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 9 05 June 2012 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, it took me 1.5 years to reach basic fluency, 4-5 to reach advanced fluency. Without going to Finland for more than 2 weeks at a time. But I'm extremely passionate about the language and the country.
Yeah, afaiu Estonian makes more sense if you speak Finnish than vice versa. Why are you going to learn Estonian first? As for interference, see this thread. Frankly, Finnish is not a language to go for when you "need another language to learn"... Also, how serious are you about Hungarian? They're not mutually intelligible but they're related, and if you can deal with the Hungarian grammar you can deal with Finnish too :) I don't see how being in Finland could help btw (apart from having access to good materials for language learning). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5025 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 6 of 9 05 June 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is very possible to attain a high level of Finnish in 2 years. I lived in Finland twice, but neither of the times together totals more than 2 years in country (more like 15 months). I used English for my studies (1st time) and English for my job (2nd time), and I still managed to reach upper intermediate levels with the language by the time I left.
I did take courses from the university and later the adult learning center. I found music I liked and listened to it a lot. I also interacted with people socially by singing in choirs. So it's very doable, and it's also quite rewarding. At least people like Serpent and myself think so! :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Themessage Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4862 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian, Polish, Greek | Message 7 of 9 05 June 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Thank you so much for such detailed input! It is really helpful, and has certainly mae Finnish more appealing! If you don't mind, I have added you to my 'buddy list' - I think it would be really interesting and useful to have a contact in Finland currently! Do you have a job currently or are you still a student by the way? Either way it seems you get plenty of Finnish practice! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4853 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 8 of 9 05 June 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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No problem :)
Technically I'm still a student, though I'm just in the process of writing my master's thesis. If things turn out ok I'll be graduating in around three months. As you may expect, being not only foreigner but also non-EU might limit my job prospects, so I'm a bit nervous about what's to come. I'm planning to take the YKI test (yleinen kielitutkinto - general language certificate) in August, but I have not decided if I should go for the intermediate level or the advanced one (might be too hard for me). We'll see how it goes. Edited by caam_imt on 05 June 2012 at 8:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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