Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French and a pinch of Mandarin)

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cathrynm
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby cathrynm » Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:29 am

I do like your ideas of doing conjugation practice. Just make a list and conjugate them on paper, then check later. I think fear of weird grammar errors makes me awkward and hesitant to try writing Finnish online, and I'm not just picking this up by instinct either.
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Thu Mar 07, 2019 1:36 am

cathrynm wrote:I do like your ideas of doing conjugation practice. Just make a list and conjugate them on paper, then check later. I think fear of weird grammar errors makes me awkward and hesitant to try writing Finnish online, and I'm not just picking this up by instinct either.


You should totally try it out! Personally it's one of my favorite exercises because, once I get the hang of whatever rule I'm practicing, I can zone out.

I think my fear of making grammar mistakes is what drives me to just buckle down and conjugate. I want to write something in Finnish and post it up, but the fact that I'm not comfortable with a lot of things (i.e. the Imperfect, declining the Partitive Plural, etc.) means I have to do partake in some not-very-creative practices.

Bones wrote:
Phantom Kat wrote:
Edellisenä iltana kaikki Onnisen lapset olivat saaneet Ollia lukuun ottamatta valvoa niin myöhään kuin huvitti.
I'm not sure what "kuin huvitti" means in this context. The closest I can come up with "as they felt like/as they wanted". If that's the case, I'm not sure what the rule on the construction is from the verb "huvittaa".
Your translation is correct. Huvitti is the third person singular Imperfect form of Huvittaa. I think it's in the third person because it's part of something called a kokijalause, but don't take my word for it. (kokea = to experience, kokija = someone who experiences, lause = sentence) These sentences don't have a clear subject and the verb is always in the third person singular. The person "experiencing" is the object of the sentence.

Examples: Minua väsyttää = I'm tired. Heitä onnisti = They got lucky.


Wow, that's interesting! I'll see if I can something about it in my grammar book and read about it.

Bones wrote:
Phantom Kat wrote:
Pienten lasten tapaan, Olli nukahti joka ilta samaan aikaan.

I don't know what "pienten lasten tapaan" means in this sentence. Google Translate says it means "Like little children". Is this part of a fixed expression?
Tapa = manner, habit, custom. Pienten lasten tapaan = in the manner of small children / like little children do.

I think it's just a simile made up by the author.


Oooh, I can see that now. That definitely clears things up.

Phantom Kat wrote:
Siirrä kulhoa tännepäin, otan sitä vielä vähän.

Why is "kulho" in the Partitive? The French translation tells me it's singular: "le plat".

I'd say, here it's in the partitive because the bowl is to be moved by an unspecified amount.

By contrast: Siirrä kulho tähän! = Move the bowl here! (to a specific point)[/quote]

That makes sense. I'll put that in my notes.

Bones wrote:Me too. It gives me an excuse to write longer texts without feeling like I've wasted my time in case the final product otherwise turns out to be an artistic failure.


Amen to that. I could blabber on about an internet dialogue my characters are having and chalk it up as character development to be used later on.

Thanks again for the corrections! They are super helpful!
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Serpent » Thu Mar 07, 2019 2:22 am

Typos: lukuun ottamatta, liikkua, nukahtaa.
Erik Gunnemark recommended writing double letters as capital ones (lukUUn) to remember them. you may want to use a different form to lessen the number of them, like LIIkun (ok this still looks super awkward but that's easier when writing by hand. L is only capital for clarity)

also, 'he' is implied in niin myöhään kuin (heitä) huvitti.
Bones wrote:I'd say, here it's in the partitive because the bowl is to be moved by an unspecified amount.

By contrast: Siirrä kulho tähän! = Move the bowl here! (to a specific point)
Ohhh interesting. Never thought of this explicitly.
Phantom Kat wrote:Reminds me of the Spanish distinction of "pata"
pata also exists in Finnish :D but the longest word shared by Finnish and Spanish is probably asunto.
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Phantom Kat
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Wed Mar 13, 2019 4:57 am

Serpent wrote:Typos: lukuun ottamatta, liikkua, nukahtaa.
Erik Gunnemark recommended writing double letters as capital ones (lukUUn) to remember them. you may want to use a different form to lessen the number of them, like LIIkun (ok this still looks super awkward but that's easier when writing by hand. L is only capital for clarity)

also, 'he' is implied in niin myöhään kuin (heitä) huvitti.
Bones wrote:I'd say, here it's in the partitive because the bowl is to be moved by an unspecified amount.

By contrast: Siirrä kulho tähän! = Move the bowl here! (to a specific point)
Ohhh interesting. Never thought of this explicitly.
Phantom Kat wrote:Reminds me of the Spanish distinction of "pata"
pata also exists in Finnish :D but the longest word shared by Finnish and Spanish is probably asunto.


Those pesky typos! But I'll definitely try the capitalizing trick during my writing and see how that works. Pronouncing the words and being aware of the double consanants and vowels definitely helps, but there's always room for improvement. As my band director used to say (and plaster on our t-shirts), "Good is the enemy of great!"

Haha, I never thought about how "asunto" exists in both languages. "El asunto es que no encuentro asunto." :P
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Wed Mar 13, 2019 6:01 am

Update!

I have been lounging around, enjoying that sweet, sweet Spring Break. Man, do I love sleeping in. This past week of school has been stressful (still unsure what I want to do for next year), so rather than study after school I was in the mad rush of grading and scanning tests.

Assimil

Got up to Lesson 60 and Lesson 7 of the second wave. Ehh, other than reviewing past lessons and plugging in vocabulary into Anki I didn't do much with Assimil. I just couldn't sit down and break apart each lesson after running around like a headless chicken.

Grammar

This, this is where all my free time for Finnish went into. I pretty much got any available piece of paper around my classroom (one of them has some very neat notes on 2D and 3D shapes ;) ) and conjugated whatever verb that came to mind into Present, Imperfect, Perfect, Plusquamperfect, and their negative forms. I made some notes on when consonant gradation applies and verbs that follow the same patterns, like haluta and seurata or potkaista and juosta. Bit by bit things seem to be clicking into place. The more verbs I practice, the more verbs I have to make connections with. The Negative Imperfect, Perfect, and Plusquamperfect are the easiest ones, while the Imperfect feels like taking a very educated guess in the dark.

Next up, I want to tackle:
+ one or two of the Passive tenses. That will add some spice to my writing.
+ I also want to start practicing declining nouns and adjectives. The Partitive Plural is my kryptonite. I can't avoid it forever!
+ some of the Third Infinitive. I've already practiced some of it as it came up in Assimil.

Writing

You know what's wonderful for writing? Rory's Story Cubes. I have the original nine (orange box) and the "Action" cubes (blue box). Now that I have a bigger vocabulary the cubes are a lot more useful. I can take the picture on the die literally or figuratively, thus creating a biggest list of words to use. Before I ended up using the same words again and again, but with the cubes I'm forced to be more creative. Also, it helps me look up any common words I don't already know.

What I do with them is roll for around five verbs and five nouns, set my Forest app for 45 minutes, and just write whatever sentences come to mind. Usually, by the last fifteen minutes I end up writing sentences using other words just because I'm already on a roll. I'm hoping to upgrade to short stories (like, really, really short) with more practice.

Since Monday I have written 135 sentences. Main subject? My outcast of a superhero running away from the police and talking with the girl he likes. Classy. :lol:

I want to create a folder in my Google Drive that compiles all the writing I've done in my notebook. I love going back and seeing how much I've improved. (One thing I noticed when I reread what very little I wrote back in November is how much I missed the Accusative case.)

Anki

I'm at 571 Finnish words and phrases. Most of it is from Finnish from Foreigners and Assimil.

Music

You know, I don't listen to as much music as I should. I usually just put on some of my favorite Let's Plays in the background when I study. I'm trying to pay closer attention to the Finnish music on my playlist and pick out words I know. It's pretty exciting to understand more and more of a song you have listened for so long. Some words I have recently learned that came up have been:

+ selittää
+ hengittää
+ nukahtaa
+ kaivaa

I'm sure the teacher in the neighboring class is sick of hearing, "Oh wait, I know that word!" in the wee hours of the afternoon.

Kummitus Perhe Kammoset

So I got to the second page of the first chapter... I'm taking this nice and slow. Luckily, with my grammar practice, it has become easier to identify the different verb tenses and make educated guesses on the infinitive form of words.

Question Time!

Kun ne oli saatu pyydystettyä takaisin säilytysarkkuun, yö oli jo pitkällä.

`
+ I'm pretty sure "pyydystettyä" is a verb along the lines of "trapped" and "caught", but I can't find the exact definition.
+ Is "säilytysarkkuun" some kind of conversation box, container, or cage? Like a terrarium?
+ I get the meaning that "yö oli jo pitkällä" means along the lines of, "The night was already long," but why is pitkä in the Adessive Case?
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby naqvisson » Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:10 pm

2. I really, really like the Assimil Finnish course. The dialogues are pretty funny, and I find most of the vocab useful. I do think there's a steep learning curve after Lesson 7 or so. There are times where in a new lesson I can pretty much understand everything except for two or three vocab words. Other times I'm totally lost until I read the translation and pull up Finnish Wikitionary. There are grammar points here and there they don't cover in their notes, so I consult the internet or my Finnish: An Essential Grammar book.

I can share with you the Google Doc I use to take notes on Assimil Finnish. I break each lesson down and make color-coded notes on vocab I'm having trouble and grammar points either not covered by the notes or that I need to remember.


Thank you very much for the offer..This is really encouraging and motivating. I was double minded about starting Finnish or not... and after a good brainstorming session, decided to go for it... i hv a really bad history with the language learning in general and Finnish in particular. I relied on courses,teachers to teach me and failed miserably again and again...and now believe in self learning....and it has been working for me...I was lucky to find Assimil Finnisch ohne muhe in a local library.....and have turned a few pages and miraculously Finnish didnt seem very difficult...(i had taken a couple of courses in it two years ago and performed miserably)....

This time I intend to give it 100 days to see where do I stand....It would be really nice of you if you can please share the google docs. I inbox you.
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Phantom Kat
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Wed Mar 20, 2019 2:38 am

naqvisson wrote:
Thank you very much for the offer..This is really encouraging and motivating. I was double minded about starting Finnish or not... and after a good brainstorming session, decided to go for it... i hv a really bad history with the language learning in general and Finnish in particular. I relied on courses,teachers to teach me and failed miserably again and again...and now believe in self learning....and it has been working for me...I was lucky to find Assimil Finnisch ohne muhe in a local library.....and have turned a few pages and miraculously Finnish didnt seem very difficult...(i had taken a couple of courses in it two years ago and performed miserably)....

This time I intend to give it 100 days to see where do I stand....It would be really nice of you if you can please share the google docs. I inbox you.


I took a semester of German back when I started college, and... suffice to say, it was a bad experience. I wasn't in a good head space during that point in my life. So I totally understand how it feels to be letdown by a course. I like to think, though, that even negative experiences have something of value. I learned how not study and that the fear of speaking can really hold you back. (One day, I'll pick up German again. When the time is right.)

I'm glad you found a copy to use! And glad that you decided to pick up Finnish. :) I PMed you the info, and I hope it ends up being useful.

Bones wrote:Pyydystää means to (attempt to) catch an animal or drive one into a trap. It can also be used metaphorically when talking about people. So, it's something along the lines of the verbs to catch, trap, entrap and snare in English.

Säilyttää = to store, keep or preserve. Arkku is a large lidded container, in other words a chest, trunk, footlocker or coffin. Säilytysarkku = a storage chest.

I don't know and can only speculate. The adessive has many uses and one them is in time expressions like viime viikolla = last week and kesällä = in the summer. The phrase in question could be a variation on that theme or is referring to an unspecific and implied point in time or space away from the starting point, in which case the adessive is used to indicate location.

Pitkä = Long, both in terms of time and space.
Olla pitkällä = to be far along.

Example: Projekti oli jo pitkällä, kun se lakkautettiin. = The project was already far along when it was discontinued.

Phantom Kat wrote:Let's Plays in the background
If you listen to them in your target languages, they can also be a powerful language learning tool. I can attribute much of my early progress in German to listening to German Let's Plays of games I've played in English.


Thank you so much for the clarification! I'll add that to my notes. As for your last point, do you happen to know any Let's Play channels in Finnish? I found a couple of one-off videos around Youtube, but no channels with a consistent lineup.
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Wed Mar 20, 2019 3:49 am

School started again. Going from sleeping in to waking up at 5:20am is like being slapped in the face. Also, what higher up in the district decided to have everything due the week after Spring Break? Ya'll are lucky I can still remember all of my students' names. :lol:

Update!

Forest App

Best app next to Anki so far. If it didn't log in how much time I spent on each activity and what that activity was then these updates would be a lot shorter. lol

I studied 13 hours this past Spring Break, which brings up my total for 2019 to around 39 hours (not counting all the times where I didn't use the app, like during small breaks at work or while waiting at the doctor's.) I'm so close to being able to buy another tree for my forest.

Finnish for Foreigners

So I picked this lovely gem again, right on Chapter 27. I. spent. 3 hours. on it. I like to take my time by writing out the entire sentence, making notes when I correct my work, and re-reading my work aloud. This chapter dealt with the Imperfect, which was great because it's definitely the tense where I need the most practice. The textbook's way of separating the different verb groups was very helpful, and I'm going to refer to that whenever I practice.

Some things I found that I need to work on for the future:

1. Consonant gradation, such as the patterns I tend to forget (like v --> p) and which verb groups use which patterns. I'm very comfortable with verbs in Group 1 (verbs that end in two vowels). However, that means I have the habit of applying those gradation rules to other verbs. One mistake I did was omitting the K in pakata, when actually, the rule was K-->KK.

2. The verb käydä. I have a good idea how it's used and can recognize what cases to use with it, but have I actually practiced it in my writing? That's a no. Which is why that section of the Exercises was riddled with mistakes. So I'm going to read up on its usage and practice it in some sentences.

3. The reflexive pronoun joka. Here I have the opposite problem. I'm having issues deciphering exactly what it means once it's in a specific case. Practice is in order.

Lastly I still need to finish three things for this chapter. One is the Word Review, the second is a writing practice using the Imperfect (it says not to use the Negative Imperfect because they haven't covered that, but welp, I've practiced it too much to not use it), and the reading passage. Yikes is that reading passage going to take me a while. It's more of an informational piece than the narrative ones I'm used to.

Grammar

I practiced some writing using the Assimil vocabulary I hadn't added yet. Practiced a little bit of the passive.

Most notably, I practiced declining nouns into the Genitive Plural, the Partitive Singular, and the Partitive Plural. Just like when I first started conjugating verbs, it was more frustrating than fun. Checking the rules, only to go back and scratch out the wrong answer isn't the most uplifting thing, but I did see the patterns begin cropping up the more examples I used.

After that, I practiced the Partitive Plural by writing some sentences.

Assimil

I continued reviewing past chapters in 30 minute intervals. It's amazing how some things just click easier the third or fourth time you're reviewing than when you first began the lesson. For example, I noticed how much easier it was to pick up on the use of the Imperfect, Negative Imperfect, and the few examples of the Perfect without needing to stop and re-read it. Or how the expressions pitää seuraa and tehdä hallaa use the Allative (-lle) case.

Also, as I was reviewing I wrote down the vocabulary I haven't added to Anki yet. My plan is to practice writing with them before adding them in, so I'm more than just passively familiar with them.

I managed to review up to Lesson 58. I'll go over Lesson 59 and 60 sometime tomorrow before starting Lesson 61 for the first time.

Words found in the Wild

This section is also known as: "where I remember that word from a song so suddenly that I get whiplash".

+ Vaarallisia - heard it in the Darkwing Duck theme song. It came back to me when I declined "vaarallinen" and asked myself, "Where I have heard this word said menacingly?"

+ Lemmikki

+ Ruokapalkalla - finally looked up "ruokapalkka" because Assimil wasn't really clear on it, and yep; "salary enough to pay for food only" is definitely something we can relate to

Question Time!

Why does Finnish for Foreigners suck the life out of me in return for knowledge and pretty good exercises?

1. I first learned minulla on nälkä, but Assimil also uses minun on nälkä and that's the only place where I've seen it used. (Thought in 101 Dalmations I did hear just on nälkä). Can both of these be used interchangeably?
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Phantom Kat
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French)

Postby Phantom Kat » Wed Aug 05, 2020 5:21 am

It's been so long! I missed this log. A lot has happened since March '19. My new teaching job sucked so hard that quarantine after Spring Break was a blessing. (Is there a term for something worse than a helicopter parent? Because I had one.) My mom took in an abusive family member last August that is finally out of our home for good. I feel that I'm finally in a good place, mentally, to pick up my languages.

But one good thing? My mom, my sister, and I actually went to Helsinki last July! Our 12 days there were absolutely amazing. We went to so many museums, ate so much ice cream, and I'm pretty sure some of our blood and tears were left on the rocks of Suomenlinna. Even though I didn't get to finish Assimil: Le Finnois before I left I was still able to read a good chunk of stuff I came across. Also, it was pretty cool to listen to the Finnish audio in the tours and pick up the gist of it was saying.

God, I want to visit again. What an experience!

So any progress on Finnish?

Among the books I picked up in Helsinki, I brought back home Suomen Mestari 1-4. I have been speeding through Suomen Mestari 1 since last week. I've spent 18 hours on it, according to my Forest app. Since it's the first book the grammar is a review for me, so I've been concentrating on vocabulary acquisition. I write down and highlight in my notebook any vocab words I don't know so I can put them into Anki. Since the directions are also in Finnish, that's more vocab I can pick up to input into Anki.

Right now I'm going through Chapter 6. I need to go and review consonant gradation as it applies to the six local cases.

I reset my Anki "Finnish Vocabulary Deck" since I haven't touched that in over a year. I also made a new deck just for vocab from Suomen Mestari. Time for a major review! I have a notebook set aside just for writing sentences for every word I review on Anki.

And now I'm adding Mandarin!

I am crazy. I also accepted a teaching position in Beijing at an international school. If everything goes right with my work permit and Visa I should be leaving at the end of this month or beginning of September. I've done some work with New Practical Chinese Reader, but I'm just not jiving with this course, you know? Maybe I've just been so spoiled with Assimil's witty dialogues that these about meeting students and teachers lose my attention pretty quickly.

Another issue of mine is that I love writing, first and foremost. It's my favorite way to practice vocabulary and grammar. With Mandarin, however, the extra step of learning the character is slowing me down so much, so I feel my progress is very slow. I'll probably just focus on vocabulary and grammar right now and write in Pinyin to practice writing.

I'm also considering trying out Pimsleur for Mandarin to practice pronunciation. Time to stalk some Mandarin logs here and see what study habits I can try.
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Phantom Kat
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Re: Kat's Finnish Log (with a dash of French and a pinch of Mandarin)

Postby Phantom Kat » Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:49 pm

Fun Fact: After a year since our trip to Finland my mom remembers three Finish words: maito, kiitos, and pesula. She jokes that she can pretty much survive now. Somehow I believe her. :lol:

Finnish

Going through Chapter 7 of Suomen Mestari. Nothing too bad. Reviewing the six cases with the verb types. It's the partitive that still gets my goat with some of these verb types, but that's a sign that I need to buckle down and do some declining to start getting that intuitive feeling of whether something sounds right or not. Also, one of the things I like about Suome Mestari is that the audio is more dense, dialogue wise, than what the question is asking for you to answer. Plus it's at native speed, or close to it. After I finish Book 1 I'm going to go back and just review the audio and attempt to make some transcripts. I wonder if something like that already exists out in the internet.

I also got in contact with a Finn at Conversation Exchange that is learning Spanish, and hopefully we get to exchange some conversations and/or have some face to face conversations via Skype. I was also browsing the Finnish tutors and teachers at iTalki. I made it my goal to get in at one lesson before school starts back (the 31st) I'm sure I have enough vocab to carry at least a simple conversation about life and interests, but I'm a perfectionist, so that naturally makes me nervous to put myself up there. (Plus, I remember my sister correcting my Spanish when I was younger, and that's definitely something that's impacted myself speaking any language other than English.)

To prepare myself I did some conjugation practice in the Imperfect. I'm surprised at how much I remember just by "this sounds right", but then again, I did conjugate verbs on random scraps of paper as I was waiting to be picked up after my workday was done. Conjugation practice is my language equivalent of an adult coloring book. Great for distractions and stress relief!

Mandarin

I did the first two lessons of Mandarin Level 1 of Pimsleur. I haven't done an audio course since I dabbled with Rocket French, and it feels weird to just sit there with nothing to read or write. I don't know what to do with my hands for the half hour of the lesson! :P The lessons weren't something new in terms of vocab or grammar. I had already covered the "de" for adjectives and "bu" for standard negation, as well as tone changes for "bu".

But just focusing on speaking feels pretty good! Even being a visual learner, it's not hard to recall the short sentences and repeat them ad nauseam afterwards when I'm doing other things.

I reviewed the characters for the lesson vocab by writing them out in my notebook for Mandarin. The upside of investing nearly 16 hours of studying Mandarin back in April and May is that I'm starting to get a feel for stroke order. I don't want to get sucked into concentrating on writing, though, because I'll do very little of that when I get to Beijing. Recognizing the characters will be enough.
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