From the very beginning

I started working on Finnish grammar from the very beginning but now I really try to memorize all the rules and do all the exercises. As I mentioned earlier, my previous grammar book was meant for familiarizing myself with the structure of the language, not actually studying it. I didn't expect it would take four months though.

As my source of grammar I chose Suomen mestari. I read a lot about these textbook series and some say Suomen mestari is the best on market for beginners. Right now I'm working through the first book. Even though I know all the vocab already and most of the rules, I still find it useful because of the practice I get doing the exercises. 

As a side source of the language I use Samalla kartalla series. I don't do the exercises, but the books contain many different texts and dialogues that are practical for gaining vocabulary. The first book is pretty basic stuff, but the solid base is crucial.

I also changed the way I memorize new words. Here's how I write them down now in my notebook:

If it's a noun or an adjective:

an example in context (or examples)                                         translation

four forms - nominative, genitive, partitive, plural partitive

If it's a verb:

an example in context (or examples)                                         translation

six forms - a dictionary form, first person present, first person past, participle, taan-form, ttiin-form

As I learned from my experience, it is very important to know the forms which a word could take, otherwise it's sometimes impossible to recognize it. I picked these form, because knowing them you could easily form all remaining forms.

Here's how my notebook looks like:

jos haluat esimerkiksi piirtää kuvan, sinun käytettävä piirto tai maalausohelm           to draw

(piirtää, piirrän, piirsin, piirtänyt, piirretään, piirrettiin)

hyvin lyhyt kysymys, valmista lyhyt esitys!                                                  short

(lyhyt, lyhyen, lyhyttä, lyhyitä)

It gets comlicated

As I mentioned in my earlier posts, when I start to learn a new language, I like to familiarize myself with the grammar of the language in question, to skim through it quickly so that I could keep track of where I am in the journey of learning this language. Well, I finished my first grammar book today. I spent on it almost 4 months - a bit longer than I originally planned (a couple of weeks or a month). It's worth mentioning that I skipped the exercises and concentrated on examples and new vocabulary only. In the last chapters of the book I also skipped everything but explanations, because the texts became too advanced and words too complicated.

What can I say? The advanced Finnish is really hard BUT manageable. Just a month or two ago I thought I would never understand the usage of translative (-ksi), because it was impossible to bend my mind in such a curvature to comprehend that concept. When I listen to podcasts now, sometimes I think that Finns were very clever to come up with such a concept that allows to convey so much of info in just a tiny -ksi. And everything makes perfect sense. And everything just sucks in naturally. I believe it will be the same with the advanced Finnish.

A milestone?

Well, it's been three months since I started learning Finnish, so it's time to take a look on where I am right now. Given the fact that Finnish is a kind of language that has almost no resemblance to English or French (the languages that I have put some time and effort in learning), I sincerely think that I'm doing okay.

Listening skills. I can understand simple conversations only. I can distinguish when the word/sentence/phrase started and when it's over, I can recognize the grammar I know. It's not a lot, but it is something, providing that Finnish doesn't have cognates or lone words from English. My problem is my vocabulary. It is too limited for now. When I listen to new podcasts or Finnish radio, I often have this feeling like "hey, I know this word! Let me just remember it!". But by the time I give up remembering it and reach for my dictionary, or by the time I actually remember the word, I get completely lost in the constant flow of words. On the other hand, I do have some most common Finnish words and verbs etched in my brain already so I can recognize them instantly when I hear them. It's a matter of practice. My brain still fights. It wants to return to its comfort zone and listen to science/history/psychology related podcasts on our way to work and it wants them in English. But one day it will figure out that there's no hiding from Finnish, so it will accept the language.😊

Speaking skills. Haven't practiced at all.

Reading skills. Very similar to my listening skills, although a bit better. When you read, you have time to look at the sentence or phrase again, figure out the grammar and break the long words into small pieces that makes them easier to understand. But again, vocabulary is something I have to work really dedicatedly.

Writing skills. Well, I do have some practice with natives using some language exchange apps and I'm quite content that most of the time I can express myself, ask questions and understand the answers. Autocorrect helps a lot😃

Summary: Three months ago I didn't know any Finnish at all. Taking into account the fact that the language has no cognates or lone words from English, I am pretty satisfied with my results. Gotta take extra care of building my vocabulary though.

Listening skills

I'd like to say a few words about listening activities. It's hard to underestimate the importance of listening skills while learning a language. Being able to understand written Finnish is one thing, but being able to understand a spoken speech is a whole new experience.

Offtopic: I believe that fluency in a foreign language is not something abstract. You can always tell when you're fluent in a target language by asking yourself two simple questions:
1) Can you convey all the depth of your thoughts in a target language both in writing or speaking?
2) Can you understand all the depth of someone's thoughts presented to you either in writing or speaking?
And that's it. If your answers are "yes", then you could say you're fluent. And most of the times it doesn't matter if you convey your thoughts in a simplified language (as long as you convey everything you wanted to say or meant, it's fine, you're still fluent). However, being able to understands someone's deep thoughts is, at times, a problem, because you have to have a large bulk of passive vocabulary and recognize the foreign accents or dialects in real time often without thinking... Thankfully, there's a way to train this "instant recognition".

In order to be able to understand spoken Finnish on the go, you have to listen to finnish in large and superlarge quantities. You have to listen to Finnish while commuting to work or walking your dog. Jogging at the park in the evening. Cooking food. No matter what you are doing, if you feel like you could squeeze some listening into your activities, you should do it. It is crucial. Training listening skills takes time, and the more time you put into your listening the better!

Ok, what to listen to?

I don't think it is vise to begin with authentic audio matherials. It's too easy to get lost. However, the voice should be recorded by native speakers. The tetbook I use in my studies has a CD. I found on the trackers the PDF version of this book with all audio files in mp3. My progress with the text book is slow, so at first I listened to the same audio matherials over and over again for weeks. Sometimes I felt like I already knew what I listened to by heart (and this is a good thing). But after two weeks I felt like it was time to spice it up a little and add some new matherials. I stopped my choice on Pimsleur's Finnish level One and it sucked a lot. It didn't feel like it at first, but I'm not using this course anymore. The course has very limited vocabulary along with a very formal language. Finns just don't talk like this. Plus, there's no explanations of grammar in this course as well. It says: "The word for lunch is lounasta". Okay, thinks I, lounasta. Pretty easy to remember and I'm gonna use this common word a lot. But turned out lounasta is in partitive, and in order to add differend case endings, you have to know the stem of the word. But Pimsleur told me the lunch was lounasta and he didnt mention it was actually a partitive form of the word lounas, so it stuck in my mind as lounasta... And there are too many such casualties in the course. So, I found it useless after a couple of weeks of using it.

I found on the internet the complete collection of podcasts by Finnish Pod 101 (turned out the site was free and I could have downloaded everything from one spot). There are many different podcasts for many different levels. In the audio, they introduce you some short dialogue, then explain everything about grammar and vocabulary in English. I found it interesting and useful and for now it's always in my playlist, although I try to indulge in these podcasts only half of my listening time, because, well, there's not to much actual Finnish in them. They talk mostly in English, explaining you vocabulary and stuff, while in order to get used to Finnish speech, you have to listen to Finnish a lot. Right now I listen to their Lover Beginner podcasts, but I started from the Absolute Beginner and, I'm not gonna lie, it was challenging nevertheless.

Actually, this is what I'm listening to for the time being: audio files from my textbook and the FinnishPod101. I have to admit, when you listen to the same thing over and over again, it starts to get to you. When I have free time at work (I have an office job), I like to read another absolutely great Finnish textbook Suomen Mestari. It's fun and interesting, and it's entirely in Finnish. It's not too complicated for me already because I've already learnt the grammar it covers, so I use this book as a supplementary material. There's audio files in addition to the textbook and they are absolutely amazing too. Interesting dialogues, for or five different actors including children. Great. I downloaded the files from the trackers, and , when my usual listening materials start to bore me, I listen to this Suomen Mestari audio for fun. Highly recommend both the book ad the audio. You could find the book by typing Suomen Mestari PDF on google.

Also, there's a good site with authentic audio, News in easy Finnish. It's an awesome resourse, I guess, but I don't really use it for now, because I'm not there yet.

How to listen to?

I train my listening skills like this: I take short audio matherials which last 15 min max amd listen to them on repeat for two days (while commuting to work). After two days I take another 15mins audio and repeat the activity. Sometimes, in a few days or weeks, I return to matherial that was fun or interesting or to the matherial that was challanging and that requires more listenings. Very effective.

I believe I've covered everything I wanted to say for now. If someone has any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section!

Two very useful links

Two extremely useful resources that I use all the time:

1) Whenever you can't figure out the infinitive of a verb.

Find the Verb

2) Whenever you have the infinitive but don't know how to conjugate it.

Verb conjugator

In the meantime...

In the meantime studying Finnish grammar has become my daily routine. More than that, Finnish has become the background of my daily life. I study the language both at home and at work. I've changed the interfaces of all my gadgets to Finnish. I listen to podcasts in Finnish on my way to work. And I study grammar, of course.

I use the book Opi puhumaan suomea or Learn to speak Finnish. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything of the sort in English.

What do I like about this book? Almost everything. There is a short dialogue or a text in the beginning of each lesson. The student is expected to notice the new grammatical structure and figure out its meaning. After that you read an explanation which is followed by examples. The book is created the way that every new theme overlaps the preceding one so you are constantly reminded of what you have already learned. I like this approach.

What do I not like about the book? There's no keys to exercises. For me, it's very important to correct myself after doing the exercises so that I know my errors. Knowing your errors is crucial because this way you know what to work on... So I decided to skip the exercises and for now use this book as a source of grammar and vocabulary only.

I also found a very good book for the beginners. Lessons on Finnish Grammar in English by Heikura Vuokko. The book is written from the first person's point of view and the author tries to guide you through the labyrinth of the Finnish grammar.

Very useful! It's on the net so if you google hard enough you can find this book in digital formats. I'd highly recommend it to be your very first Finnish grammar book.

What to do first?

There are many different methods of learning a language. Here and there we see adds offering new effortless ways of acquisition Spanish/French/Finnish/whatever. Some of them suggest to put the grammar books away, others convince us that we don't even have to do anything because their "methods" will teach us the language while we are sleeping. The market is full of this stuff but I can't stress it enough: your ability in a foreign language depends on two factors: time and effort. I've heard and read many sories about people who learnt a foreign language naturally while living in a country where the target language is spoken. It might be a good option of learning Finnish but I can't move to Finland for now. Some say that we must learn languages as kids, surround ourselves with the language and take it in. But it will takes years and I think this method is not productive. On top of that, our brain learns differently when we are adults. So I deliberatly chose the only approach that works: a grammar based approach.

The first thing I did was that I found a short grammar book for an absolute begginer covering the very basic Finnish grammar. It is essential to familiarize yourself with the amout of work you are expexted to put in learning Finnish from the get go. Thank to that book I found out that there are several types of verbs in Finnish, I learned the basics of noun cases. It is worth noticing that I quickly went through the book (it took me three or four days) without trying to memorize any grammar rules or words. But I must say that some of the language has stucked in my brain already and this was the initial goal. All grammar books generaly explain grammar in similar ways, so when I start a real comprehensive textbook, I will know what is ahead of me and when to expext the answers to the questions that will inevitably pop up in my mind. I used a grammar book for begginners written by a Russian author so it is no use of posting the title on here. At first it doesn't really matter what book to use as long as it is short (mine was 50 pages) and covers the basics.

One cannot rely on just one sourse of grammar so it is important to have several of them. Since I already ordered a comprehensive textbook I am planning to use to teach myself Finnish, I needed something more. Having read tons of reviews and comments on different internet resourses I chose Finnish: an essentian grammar by Fred Karlsson as my supplementary book. This is no textbook but rather a refference book and I use it accordingly. I'm content with the book for now.

Another thing that is essential to do first, apart from familiarizing yourself with basic grammar, is starting to listen to the language. I dont't believe in explanations in books of how to pronounce this sound or another. I have to hear it. Plus, listening is a huge part of my studying in general. I found some matherials to listen to but I'll make a separate post dedicated to these matherials once I've formed my opinion of them.