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Chung at work / Chung pri práci | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 1 of 541 10 April 2010 at 7:28am | IP Logged | ||
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This will be a space that I will use as a store for interesting and uninteresting stuff that turns up as I study whichever languages will be holding my fancy.
At the moment I'm focused on Finnish with occasional forays into Polish or Slovak. I still hold places for other languages and may post something related to those dormant or "inactive" languages too. English will likely by used here most often but other languages may also get a shot. I can't guarantee that profane language will be excluded but I will try my best. I think that keeping my jottings here would be better here since they'd more likely find an understanding audience than on some arm of blogspot.com or something or other. Chatter, comments, criticism or mild ribbing from the peanut gallery will be received with enthusiasm or indifference depending on my mood ;-) Edited by Chung on 10 December 2012 at 1:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 541 17 April 2010 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been using "Finnish for Foreigners I" as my primary tool to teach myself Finnish and on the whole I'm pleased with what I'm getting from the course. I started using the course 6 months ago and I'm currently on Unit 31 out of 40.
However I feel as if I'm starting to hit a wall with the unit's main grammatical focus: the negative imperfect tense. I've been struggling mightily with the corresponding oral drills and really feel the need to do some hardcore drilling on the subject in order to assimilate the patterns. For this purpose I'll be using "Harjoitus tekee mestarin 1" which is a drill-book for beginners. I'll be hitting the imperfect hard over the next few days to see if I can get everything sorted out, and so be better prepared to do those oral exercises. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 541 26 April 2010 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I've finally moved on from that damned 31st unit in Finnish for Foreigners I. I didn't get anything close to perfection with those oral drills in the negative imperfect but I did a lot better and I feel good enough (just barely) to move onto Unit 32 which formally introduces the comparative. I hope that I won't be stuck on this unit for as long as I was on the previous one.
I also had a recent moment of discovery about something which had been puzzling me since the early stages of my learning of Finnish. A singular direct object in Finnish can take on the genitive singular ending of -n under certain conditions (i.e. usually when the direct object is a single countable object and/or is the recipient of a completed / discrete action from the transitive verb). e.g. - Näen taloN "I see A/THE house." / "I shall see A/THE house." - Näen MarkoN taloN "I see MARKO'S house." / "I shall see MARKO'S house." - MarkoN talo ei ole valkoista "MARKO's house is not white." - Näen MarkoN "I see MARKO" / "I shall see MARKO" This merging of the accusative and genitive reminds me vaguely of the rule in most Slavonic languages where a singular masculine animate direct object effectively follows the pattern of the masculine genitive singular rather than that of the masculine accusative singular. - Widzę dom. "I see A/THE HOUSE." - Widzę dom MarkA "I see the house OF MARKO." / "I see MARKO'S house." (Polish) - Dom MarkA nie jest biały "The house OF MARKO is not white" / "MARKO'S house is not white." (Polish) - Widzę MarkA "I see MARKO." (Polish) It turns out that the ancestor of Finnish had -m as the accusative singular ending and was thus distinct from the genitive singular ending of -n. However over time, people started to mix up the pronunciations of final -m and -n to the point where the genitive singular -n began doing double-duty by also acting as a marker for the accusative singular. It's gotten to the point where reference charts for declension in modern Finnish often don't even show a separate accusative entry for nouns or adjectives since the old accusative singular ending has merged with the genitive singular ending (personal pronouns however do have separate accusative forms but these end in -t not -m). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 541 08 May 2010 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's nice that you found that entry helpful.
I'm almost done the 32nd unit of "Finnish for Foreigners" and in the middle of changing the plans a bit. It's very likely that I'll be going to Finland next month and I really need to review stuff. For the review I'm using "From Start to Finnish" (finally got a copy) and have just done its first two chapters over the last hour. So far I wouldn't recommend "From Start to Finnish" as a course for total beginners learning on their own. Even though it comes with an answer key, "From Start to Finnish" has relatively few exercises and the accompanying audio contains only recordings of dialogues - no oral drills or exercises. The course is more suitable for the classroom than independent study. However, it's not too bad for people wanting to review since it gives a bit more exposure to colloquial Finnish than "Finnish for Foreigners" or "Teach Yourself Finnish". "From Start to Finnish" also reminds me that the formal Finnish that I have been learning with "Finnish for Foreigners" is fine but in most cases, Finnish is a lot less formal than it appears with the colloquial register / tendencies being quite widespread. In other words it seems that a foreigner could get away with using the non-formal register more than he/she would think In passing I came across a document on ERIC that may interest people learning Czech or Slovak. www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICSe rvlet?accno=ED055536 It's the DLI's old text used to introduce Slovak to students with at least some knowledge of Czech. I found the introductory sections of this textbook especially interesting since it juxtaposes various Czech traits or sounds with their Slovak counterparts. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5304 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 5 of 541 09 May 2010 at 12:05am | IP Logged | ||
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What version of Finnish for Foreigners are you using? There seem to be many different editions, and I'm probably going to get a copy soon.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 541 09 May 2010 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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The cover image of Part 1's materials is that of a lakeside at sunset (or at sunrise) while that of Part 2's materials is an aerial picture of a small town. What I got from Audio-Forum as the sets consist of different editions for the textbooks and workbooks.
Part 1: Textbook: 17th ed. (1987) Workbook: 12th ed. (1984) Book of oral drills: 3rd ed. (1973) 10 CDs (?) Part 2: Textbook: 3rd ed. (1987) Workbook: 4th ed. (1987) 3 CDs (?) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5125 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 541 09 May 2010 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Are you by any chance coming to Helsinki? If you need any recommendations, I can help. :) Edited by Kounotori on 09 May 2010 at 2:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 541 21 June 2010 at 5:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I've just finished "Start to Finnish" and will put my accumulated knowledge to the test by going to Finland. Odotan innolla matkaa, koska olen siellä Juhannukseksi.
I will probably pick up a least one substantial dictionary while there and with a little bit of luck maybe even some stuff for learning one of the Lappish languages. Kounotori, kyllä tulen Helsinkiin. Minun pitää tavata tuttavan siellä, joka tuli tänne viime vuonna. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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