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Evita’s TAC 2008 - Finnish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6886 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 51 11 May 2008 at 9:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Tervetuloa ! - Very welcome from me too Evita. I get the impression that you already have a very good base in language learning to build on, and you seem as ready as can be, and better prepared than most, to take the plunge and dive in at the deep end of the pool with Finnish. If you have the motivation, and can manage to keep the enjoyment up, then all it takes from here on is a lot of elbow-grease.
Just look at that excellent English, and it's only her third "foreign" language ! You will find Serpent very helpful, with her link collections and other advice, and please ask in the forum about anything you need help with. And you are welcome to write in the Finnish thread as soon as it feels right for you. BTW I'll second Leopejos nomination of Serpent for that reward, whatever it was. Just let me know where to sign my name ;o). Edited by Hencke on 11 May 2008 at 9:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 51 11 May 2008 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It is 20:25 on Sunday now so what have I done since yesterday? I did finish lesson one but that was easy because I'd already done it more than once. I put approx. 45 words on Anki and 30 more words from lesson two which I studied today (didn't finish it yet). The hardest Finnish word so far - pöytä (a desk). I'd much rather say "pouta", that's easier to pronounce for a Latvian. Oh well.
Thank you for the nice words, Hencke :) English is definitely my best foreign language at the moment although I started it last at the age of 15. It's because I use it daily at work and on the internet. My Russian comprehension skills are very good because I've grown up hearing the language a lot. I can learn Finnish from a Russian book quite well but I wouldn't be able to read the classics without a dictionary because my vocabulary isn't large enough. And German, well, I knew it very well when I finished school and I studied in Germany for half a year but now 5 years later I'm afraid my German is quite rusty. I know I should do something about that but I can't bring myself to (no motivation). The hardest thing in German for me is to remember which noun is which gender, I'm sure I've already forgotten half of them.
I thought about it and I decided to do it only one way, from Latvian into Finnish. I figured that if I did it both ways I would have twice more flash cards to look at (and to create) and it could become just too much for me. I hope this blog helps me to keep my focus on Finnish and gives me extra motivation not to abandon it, I really want to learn it. I'll try to write it so that it's fun to read, too. I think I may post some of my exercises on the Finnish thread to let you check if I've done them correctly. Ah, it's 21:00 already. Don't worry, I'm not such a slow writer, I just multitask a lot. That's also the reason I can't specify a clear amount of time I've spent on Finnish. My goal for next week is to finish lessons 2 and 3, create a lot more flash cards and review them as necessary each day. My Finnish colleagues are visiting us on Wednesday, that would have been a great opportunity to practice my Finnish if I hadn't abandoned it last year. As it stands now, I'll probably only be able to say 'Hi' and 'Bye' to them. Oh wait, I don't know how 'Bye' is, I should look that up. I know "näkemiin" (good bye) but there should be something less formal. I'm sure I'll find it in my dictionary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6101 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 11 of 51 11 May 2008 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Pöytä is a table as well. "Pouta" instead means a weather without rain. :-)
Just to note that once you have specified to create two cards for each fact, it is Anki who automatically creates the double cards. In addition, you can continue with only one direction (Latvian -> Finnish), and when you change your mind, just say to Anki: "create double cards for all facts" (I don't remember the exact instructions, but even I managed to do that).
Whatever your "hi" is ("hei"?), it is good as a "bye" as well. :-) Edited by Leopejo on 11 May 2008 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 12 of 51 12 May 2008 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's Monday evening and I've finished lesson 2. It's more than I expected to do today but hey, that's great :) Of course, the only reason I managed to do that was that I was already familiar with the lesson.
Leopejo, thanks for your insight. I feel much better knowing that the word "pouta" exists, too. And about the cards, yes, I knew that Anki can create them both at the same time, I suppose my mind wandered for a moment when I wrote that. But I'll try to manage with only one-way cards. Perhaps later when the words get more difficult I'll use both way cards. My favourite Finnish word so far - valitettavasti (unfortunately). It rolls so nicely from my tongue. Too bad the meaning isn't that nice. The second lesson didn't have much from a grammar point of view, it was basically "I am, I am not, you are, you are not, he/she is, he/she is not". You'd think that would be easy enough to learn for someone who already knows 4 languages but it was not. It was quite a surprise to learn that in Finnish the negative particle differs depending on the person, but my biggest hurdle was grasping that sinä means you (informal), not you (formal). I'm not sure why it was (and still is) so, perhaps it's because I'm used to 'you' being one-syllable words in all languages and my subconscious thinks that if there's more syllables then it must be a polite address. My next lesson will be about plural. That's where the real fun begins I guess... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 51 13 May 2008 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's Tuesday evening and I made some progress today. I learned "we are, you are, they are" in the morning and repeated it in my head while on my way to work. It seemed to work rather well so I'll try to free 3 minutes for Finnish every morning.
In the evening I reviewed some flash cards and then studied lesson 3 for almost an hour. Some dialogs in this book are just hilarious. For example, a Russian student introduces herself to a Finnish professor and he then proceeds to ask her if she is hardworking (ahkera) or lazy and if she can dance and sing. By the way, the word laiska (lazy) means something similar in Latvian so it will be easy to remember. Plural in Finnish is hard indeed but that was expected. I think I understood everything about the consonant change but I'll definitely have to review it tomorrow. The hardest thing probably will be to remember when i -> e. Word of the day - kuitenkin (however). It sounds funny, especially the ui, and it reminds me of the Latvian word kutināt (to tickle). Hardest word of the day - täynnä (full). It just seems very hard to pronounce. Perhaps if I heard a Finn say it I would change my mind. Is there perhaps a dictionary or a website where I could hear spoken Finnish words? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6589 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 14 of 51 13 May 2008 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Unfortunately I don't know a dictionary like that (only a site that synthesizes speech), but for the word täynnä you can listen to the song "Turpa täynnä" by the band Kylähullut :D I don't know what the title means though... turpa means muzzle :DDD I can send the song to you ;)
And by the way, täynnä is used only in expressions like to be full or full of something, otherwise the word täysi is used (täynnä was probably the essive form of it originally). I had a look at that dialogue and noticed a thing that was very likely not corrected in the third edition: sentences like Tytöt ovat laiskat are in most contexts wrong, you have to use the adjective in a different form which you'll learn later on. So I'd recommend avoiding exercises in which you have to translate such sentences, unless you're a supporter of xtremelingo's theory :-) Note that there's nothing wrong with sentences like Laiskat tytöt tanssivat paljon, here laiskat is a modifier of tytöt, not the nominal predicate... ..........sorry if it doesn't make sense :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 15 of 51 15 May 2008 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's 2 days since my last post. I've been working on lesson 3, learning how to make plural, the simple present endings of regular verbs and some vocabulary about the seasons, singing birds and melting ice. The way I do it is mostly reading, rereading and memorizing, writing the occasional word into Anki. But yesterday I decided I need to do a real exercise to make the new things stick better in my memory so I translated a lot of simple sentences into Finnish. You can read them here. I made two mistakes I could have avoided but that's okay, nobody's perfect :)
I checked Anki and it says that the total number of cards I've created is 107. That doesn't seem much to me, I've seen other posters saying they review a hundred cards each day. Perhaps I'll add some more words from lesson 3 later but overall I consider lesson 3 finished. I did it ahead of schedule which probably indicates that I need to plan better :) Anyway, lesson 4 deals with Genetiivi. Can't wait. I'll probably start on it already tonight. Oh and by the way, the only sentence I said in Finnish to my Finnish colleagues who had come here was Tänään on kaunis päivä. They were quite impressed. Serpent, I'll try to avoid such exercises, thanks for the remark. I understand the difference between the two cases, don't worry :) And I may ask you for the song a bit later when it will be more useful to me. Edited by Evita on 15 May 2008 at 4:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6544 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 51 21 May 2008 at 1:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's been almost a week since my last blog entry. Why so long? Because I had been learning so intensively all week long that when the weekend came I thought I should take a break. And I couldn't get back into the right mindset when the break was supposed to end (on Sunday). So I've been procrastinating, doing 10-15 minutes of Finnish a day, mostly reviewing Anki cards but also memorizing the grammar of lesson 4. I discovered that there's not only Genitive there but also possessive pronouns and some postpositions and I haven't been looking forward to doing the exercises, it seems like a lot of difficult stuff at once. Especially the need to add '-ni', '-si' to nouns threw me quite a bit. I realized I started to learn vocabulary from the example dialogs together with the possessive suffixes and now I need to relearn it without the suffixes.
I'll be very happy when I finish lesson 4 because it's the hardest thing I've had to do yet and it will mean that I can force myself to do it and not abandon Finnish again. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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