Learning Finnish, and... (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

Learning Finnish, and...
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6968 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes

20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

Message 9 of 11

28 June 2013 at 1:32am | IP Logged

Shounenbat wrote:

I'm a newbie here, though a long-time lurker, and I registered so
that I could ask this question: Is it worth it to learn French just to have access to
the entire Assimil course.

Of all the languages I want to learn, or at least have working knowledge in, French was
never one of them. I enjoy Asian and Scandinavian languages the most, so a lot of
European languages just haven't been on my list of priority.

However, Assimil seems to be very well-loved on here, and looking through their
selection, they have a lot of books for the languages I want to learn. The catch is
that they are available only in French. Are the Assimil books really worth it?

Right now I'm dabbling in Finnish (I really need to get my other languages in my
profile, too), and as far as I know, there's no Pimsleur for Finnish, and the Assimil
books are only for French speakers.

I usually start off with a textbook, then spend a lot of time reading, listening, and
writing on Lang-8 to build up my knowledge. I use Anki with Subs2SRS a lot, however, I
was thinking of trying these programs as a way to get going faster before I go into
pseudo-immersion mode. Going through textbooks is almost a waste of time (I used the
Genki books for my basic Japanese and just used the Internet to look up grammar points
I didn't understand as I read/listened to native material), since a lot of it is for
exercises meant to be done in a classroom.

I think there's a Colloquial book for Finnish, but I wasn't that impressed with
Colloquial Norwegian, so I was hoping for something different.

Any advice?

The Assimil courses are only worth it if their approach is suitable to how you learn
best. There is indeed a lot of positive commentary about Assimil, but I am one of those
few souls who don't think as highly of it after my experience with Assimil "L'hongrois
sans peine".

Since you don't seem too thrilled about spending that much time with a textbook, maybe
working through "From Start to Finnish" by Leila White could be a way to start since
it's not too demanding (40 short chapters with a dialogue or two and a few sets of
exercises in each accompanied by CDs and answer key) and should give a decent base for
you to get really going using L-R (starting with simple texts) and producing
progressively more complex text on Lang-8. Teach Yourself Finnish is OK but might be
overwhelming since it throws a lot of grammar with relatively little in the way of
exercises to get you to practice. Colloquial Finnish indeed is disappointing for the
total beginner since it focuses on teaching colloquial Finnish instead of the standard
from the beginning and it may pass on bad habits to you in how to rationalize Finnish
grammar. By this I refer to the author's decision to use non-standard or idiosyncratic
means in the grammar notes (e.g. he describes consonant gradation as consonant
compression which is rather misleading since some of the suffixes induce "consonant
extension" contrary to his analogy of suffixes working like lids on boxes) and notation
(e.g. you'll see an odd jumble of #, Qs and symbols more suitable for mathematics
textbooks on the stems of words). The course's CDs also have an annoyingly high amount
of English with the well-intentioned professor reading aloud and verbatim the
instructions and descriptions that are already printed in the book (about as annoying
as sitting through a Powerpoint slide-show with the presenter reading the text that's
printed on the slides for everyone to read).

My approach relies more on textbooks (especially at the start) before moving onto
native stuff and so I doubt that I can offer more suggestions that would be amenable to
you.
2 persons have voted this message useful

langluv
Newbie
United States
twitter.com/ladyling
Joined 5696 days ago
24 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Modern Hebrew, French

Message 10 of 11

28 June 2013 at 2:14am | IP Logged

You can try the Hippocrene Beginner's Finnish. It has bilingual dialogues (English/Finnish) and the dialogue's audio are all in Finnish. It also has the grammar points, vocabulary lists, exercises, etc for each lesson. Costs about $22.00. The author of the course wrote that the course teaches 800 words. Not much, I guess, but that's pretty good for a solid beginner's course.

Edited by langluv on 28 June 2013 at 2:20am
1 person has voted this message useful

Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4821 days ago
3277 posts - 6779 votes

Speaks: Czech*, French^C2, English^C1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

Message 11 of 11

28 June 2013 at 2:36am | IP Logged

I don't agree that you need to like the whole Assimil approach to make use of it. I think good quality beginner dialogues with audio are a good part of whatever learning plan one can choose. Especially when learning a language which doesn't belong to the great five or six as it is harder to find good stuff to learn from.

But if you consider buying Assimil, than I'd recommend getting it for a language you surely want to learn, not for one you wish to play with for a few weeks before abandoning for another shiny new one. It would be a rather expensive toy. :-)

1 person has voted this message useful

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