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Determined to learn Finnish

  Tags: Finnish
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
16 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
graceland
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Newbie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4989 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: English*, Mandarin
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 1 of 16
17 July 2011 at 9:27am | IP Logged 
Hello my name is Grace and I am studying Finnish on my own time. I started this log to keep myself
motivated and from procrastinating, which I have been doing lately. I love the Finnish language and I am
determined to learn as much as I can from self studying and hopefully with other people's help. I've been
kind of flailing around and studying on and off, but I want to be more serious in my studies.

I currently have 2 books which I study from: Beginner's Finnish & Finnish: An Essential Grammar.

Anyway, suggestions for self study and resources would be appreciated! I will also try to log when I can to
keep me motivated and to mark my progress :)

Edited by graceland on 17 July 2011 at 9:28am

1 person has voted this message useful



Animalia
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United States
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39 posts - 44 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 2 of 16
17 July 2011 at 12:47pm | IP Logged 
Best of wishes. I would reccomend looking into a program such as micheal thomas/Pimsleur/Assimil To help out with your learning.
1 person has voted this message useful



strummer
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38 posts - 53 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English
Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 3 of 16
17 July 2011 at 1:19pm | IP Logged 
I alzo strongly reccomend u courses like assimil cause i can see that u Are in the most important and most
difficult time of language learning, u Are searching a road to' follow, and courses like assimil give u this
road



Edited by strummer on 17 July 2011 at 1:20pm

1 person has voted this message useful



t123
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Senior Member
South Africa
https://github.com/t
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139 posts - 226 votes 
Speaks: English*, Afrikaans

 
 Message 4 of 16
17 July 2011 at 3:09pm | IP Logged 
I suggest you ignore the above advice, since there is no Michel Thomas Finnish or Pimsleur Finnish. And unless you know French or German there is no Assimil
either. Instead I recommend you take a look at the Finnish Profile here:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=18955&PN=1

where Chung has listed books for Finnish learners. One of the courses listed is FSI, which is available for download for free from:
http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Finnish
3 persons have voted this message useful



eme
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Newbie
Finland
Joined 5354 days ago

3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: Finnish*, English, German
Studies: Swedish, French

 
 Message 5 of 16
17 July 2011 at 4:02pm | IP Logged 
Good luck with Finnish! If you have any questions about grammar, vocabulary etc. feel free to ask. :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
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Senior Member
Joined 7147 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 6 of 16
17 July 2011 at 8:42pm | IP Logged 
graceland wrote:
Hello my name is Grace and I am studying Finnish on my own time. I started this log to keep myself
motivated and from procrastinating, which I have been doing lately. I love the Finnish language and I am
determined to learn as much as I can from self studying and hopefully with other people's help. I've been
kind of flailing around and studying on and off, but I want to be more serious in my studies.

I currently have 2 books which I study from: Beginner's Finnish & Finnish: An Essential Grammar.

Anyway, suggestions for self study and resources would be appreciated! I will also try to log when I can to
keep me motivated and to mark my progress :)


t123 has given the link to the Finnish profile so feel free to look under "BOOKS" and "LINKS" to get a sense of what's available to you.

May I also suggest that you get at least one medium English-Finnish/Finnish-English dictionary if you don't want to break the bank by getting volumes 1 and 2 of the large English-Finnish/Finnish-English dictionary (N.B. vol. 2 is currently very hard to find and according to a conversation that I had with the staff at Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, vol. 2 (i.e. the Finnish-English part) is not due to be restocked there before November).

Among the medium-sized dictionaries, I'd recommend Suomi-englanti-suomi sanakirja published by WSOY (ISBN-13 978-9510319031) OR Suomi-englanti-suomi sanakirja published by Gummerus (ISBN-13 978-9512067220). There's little to choose between the two and both are on sale online at a discount from Suomalainen Kirjakauppa for just under 16 Euros.

Don't bother with Aino Wuolle's dictionary published by Hippocrene or Sini Sovijärvi's dictionary published by NTC even though these are usually available through Amazon. They just don't cut the mustard.

There are a few decent online courses legally available already for download or use online (e.g. Supisuomea, Tavataan taas!), so there's no need to spend any cash if you want some stuff to get past the beginner's stage in Finnish.

However if you want to spend some cash to learn Finnish independently, then that can be arranged too :-)

For a DIY course, I'd recommend that you look at "Finnish for Foreigners" by Maija-Hellikki Aaltio. There are two volumes and each volume contains a textbook, workbook and several CDs. Vol. 1 also contains a book of drills for speaking with answers recorded on CDs. I've been using Finnish for Foreigners Vol. 1 and been getting solid grounding in Finnish grammar but feel that I need to go beyond the course to improve my conversational abilities in Finnish since doing oral drills or listening to the dialogues in isolation only takes me so far. However my reading and writing abilities are better as the workbook has lots of exercises.

The whole set normally costs $320 but Cafe Lango/Audio Forum is having a promotion of selling its material at a discount of 46% until August 1, 2011. So you'd spend $172.80 instead of $320 before shipping. See this post if you want more information on the discount. Finnish for Foreigners as sold by Cafe Lango/Audio Forum can be seen here

For another opinion, there's a Belgian woman who learned Finnish and makes the following suggestions for books to use at her website for learning Finnish (in itself an excellent resource).

http://www.uusikielemme.fi/rec.html wrote:
It all depends on what your current level of knowledge of the Finnish language is.
Try to be honest!

1. Levels

1.1. Absolute beginner

You are an abosulte beginner when you've never touched a book to learn Finnish with.

1.2. Beginner

You aren't able to form sentences yet, but you have some idea of what partitive and genitive are, even if you can't use them very well yet. You can conjugate verbs in the present tense.

1.3. Intermediate

You belong to this level if you are able to have a very basic conversation in Finnish. You know about partitive and genitive, and can conjugate verbs in the present and the past tense. You know what the imperative is like.

1.4. Advanced

You are advanced when you can communicate your wants and needs in Finnish. You can understand the reading exercises on this website without having to look in a dictionary all the time.


Recommendations

1.1. Absolute beginner

Main book: From start to Finnish
Second book: kieli käyttöön: Suomen kielen alkeisoppikirja

1.2. Beginner

Main book: Kuulostaa hyvältä
Second book: kieli käyttöön: Suomen kielen alkeisoppikirja
Grammar book: Suomen kielen alkeisoppikirja
To read: Aamu

1.3. Intermediate

Main book: Elämän suolaa: Suomen kielen alkeita 2
Grammar book: A Grammar Book of Finnish
To read: Suomi-tyttö puhuu I, or II

1.4. Advanced

Main book: Suomen kielen tikapuut
Grammar book: Suomen kielen jatko-oppikirja
To read: Lue ja opi suomeksi 1 and 2
To read: Minä ja suomi 1, 2, 3, 4


Lykkyä tykö!
Chung

Edited by Chung on 17 July 2011 at 8:48pm

4 persons have voted this message useful



graceland
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Newbie
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4989 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: English*, Mandarin
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 7 of 16
18 July 2011 at 4:51am | IP Logged 
Wow, thank you everyone! I didn't realize I would get as many responses on this topic so soon. I really appreciate it^^

Thank you for the list of books and resources Chung and I will check out the links :)

I am pleasantly surprised people are so eager to help here and it just makes me feel more motivated. Thanks again!
1 person has voted this message useful



cathrynm
Senior Member
United States
junglevision.co
Joined 6116 days ago

910 posts - 1232 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Finnish

 
 Message 8 of 16
18 July 2011 at 5:36am | IP Logged 
You might try out irc-galleria.net.   It's kind of dating oriented, but it is all totally Finnish.   There are blogs and chat rooms.   I put in my profile that I'm studying Finnish.

I think this is the largest Finnish social networking site? Is there anything else out there?

http://irc-galleria.net/index.php


1 person has voted this message useful



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