tiia's log (FIN, SPA, SWE, EUS)

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tiia
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Languages: German (N), English (?), Finnish (C1), Spanish (B2??), Swedish (B2)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=2374
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Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:13 pm

Taas puoltoista kuukautta ja en oo kirjoittanu mitään tänne... Koeaika töissä on loppunu (jees), mutta kuitenkin aattelen, että mun pitäis vielä tehdä kaiken vähän tehokkaammin.
Joskus voin osallistua lounaskeskusteluun, muttei vielä kovin usein. :? Olin joskus vähän ärsyttäny sosiaalisen tilanteen takia ja oon kaivannut joskus aika selvästi hyviä ystäviä. Kuitenkin tuntuu kuin se tällä hetkellä parantuu.
Ehkä myös enemmän valoa helpottaa asiaa. Kevätkin on nyt tulossa, aion kokeilla tänä viikonloppuna vielä miten hyvin keli on nyt pyöräilemistä varten. (Mulla ei oo nastarenkaita, aion hankkia semmoset vasta ensi syksyllä/talvella.)

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No translation for the stuff above this time.

Time is going very fast. I'll need to find a new flat in order to get more sleep. (My trial period in the job is over btw.) Too much real life stuff in the last few weeks (e.g. I got my beloved instrument brought to me from Germany). I mean it's nice, but it absolutely hinders me to write here and do proper language learning. Feels like I'm not that much at home nowadays. I'm certain without the Swedish course, I wouldn't do anything for Swedish at all.

Another "surprise" message for you here: I decided a while ago to not continue the Super Challenge. I'm not able to log down all the stuff I'm reading or watching. I'm watching quite regularly the Finnish news now as they help me with the lunch conversations. Plus, it's good to stay somewhat informed about the stuff going on in the country where I acutally live now! Sometimes I read documents in Finnish that are related to work, but indeed no prose. So a page about your health insurance, anyone? Or all the details about your work contract? What about some guide lines or manuals at work? I could count that all as it's in Finnish and some documents are kind of lengthy, but the process of logging all that... It feels like the Super Challenge (or the process of logging) works better for a language that is not the main language of communication where you live. Or I would have to exclude a significant amount of reading (and watching News).

It was planned to start a Spanish-German tandem thing today, but we just moved the first one-on-one meeting to next week. But at least I spoke Spanish this month. Twice!

I'm still having regular meetings with my Finnish-German tandem partner, something I'm very happy about.


Oh and may end up having too many plants if I continue like this... I was certain that some of them would die anyway, but so far not a single one has died yet. If this somehow sounds weird, just ask, I just didn't want to go into too much detail here.
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tiia
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x 1975

Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Thu Apr 04, 2019 4:31 pm

Any news? Languagewise not that much. I had a Spanish-German meeting. And that means I'm now learning also how to teach German. :shock: I decided to take Themen Aktuell as base. The selection was rather limited as there were not that many German books available without Finnish as base language. (You can get it here in the library, so no costs as library cards are for free.) We will see how this will work out. I'll definitely learn something about German.

And otherwise... I'll move next month to a new flat, which means I can finally get all my belongings here and offer my friends accommodation, if they'd like to visit. It's good to see that things are going the way I want them to. (Btw. more reading in Finnish: a rental contract.)
Looking for a flat ist also one of the things where I now notice really differences between Finland and Germany. Because some things are just different.

Btw. If anyone from the Capital region is reading this and wants to sell furniture, except a desk and chairs: I'll accept offers. :)
(I need especially a bed and/or a sleeping sofa.)
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tiia
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x 1975

Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Sun May 12, 2019 6:51 pm

Some updates: no German teaching obviously. Well, it happens. I wouldn't really have had the time for this right now anyway.
But I was once at a language cafe and spoke Spanish for quite some time (hours?) with another non-native person. It went surprisingly well.

The last weeks had been extremly stressful, since some stuff didn't go as expected and then there were also some deadlines at work and Vappu (1. May), which was nice but somehow did contradict the "getting stuff done"-part. But finally I could move to the new flat this weekend (though I wanted to move a week earlier). I just need more furniture now, but we'll take care of this. And honestly I don't know, what I would do without (the help of) my LEP.
(And yes we're using both languages even in such situations.)

And now for one more thing: Does anyone have nice suggestions for active online forums in Finnish that may be interesting for me? I need some motivation to write longer texts. I mean I write short messages like all the time, but the need of writing some structured text never occures. Or when it may be so (=at work) I'm not capable of writing such a thing in a reasonable amount of time (so those tasks are done by someone else). It's not that I would not even have someone offering me to correct something like an essay or so. There would be even online courses in Finland for that, but they are pretty much working at home in your own rhythm. So basically I don't see any difference to asking a friend to correct a text.
But you know, I really like real life courses and the fact that they somehow force me to do something at a certain time. To discuss a topic before or after writing about it. Having input from more people and having some kind of reason to write what I want to express. But since really advanced courses in real life do not seem to exist (especially since I work and therefore I can only attend anything in the afternoon/evenings or on weekends) maybe an online forum might be an alternative. But I don't know any interesting and active forum in Finnish...

(PS. "Normal" social media formats like Facebook would not be sufficient, because you usually don't write something comparable to an essay there.)
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tiia
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Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Sat Jun 08, 2019 7:44 am

Nearly a month and a trip to Germany later and still not much to say.

I just had the thought, that it might be nice to add some music in Spanish to my normal listening. However, I didn't really know any metal band singing in Spanish. I searched around wikipedia and found already a handful of bands I could go through, but I think there should be more than wikipedia can tell me. Maybe someone here has a recommendation*?
I have to say for now it's a bit irritating to listen to the combination of Spanish + metal since ehm.. I'm not yet used to it.
*I seem to like especially folk, power, symphonic or melodic death metal and medieval folk rock. But definitely not all bands fall into those categories. Just that you get an idea, what I may be looking for.

Every now and then I realise what kind of words people get to learn when talking to me... Words such as "Ohrwurm", a word that can be literally translated into English (earworm) and Finnish (korvamato), and still describes a melody that sticks to your head. Anyway the term seems to be far more common in German than in Finnish or English.

Oh and one of the next things to do that I have not yet done in Finnish: Going to a doctor/nurse for a health check. I'll have fun with that since there will be all kinds of different checks. (I'm having a questionaire at home to fill in in advance.) BUT I don't think doing this in English would make it per se easier, since I probably don't know as many of the words in English either. (English with all its synonyms may even make it harder to guess unknown words.) So I'd say that's not really an option.
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Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby StringerBell » Sat Jun 08, 2019 12:50 pm

Which metal bands do you really like in German (or any other language)? Good ones are hard to find. Do you like Slipknot? I have been listening to them a lot in recent years. I never used to like metal, but they converted me!
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tiia
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Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Tue Jun 11, 2019 7:58 pm

Morgana wrote:
tiia wrote:Words such as "Ohrwurm", a word that can be literally translated into English (earworm) and Finnish (korvamato), and still describes a melody that sticks to your head. Anyway the term seems to be far more common in German than in Finnish or English.
I use this word! But you are right, it doesn’t seem to be too commonly used/known in English: the few times I’ve used it, most of the people in the conversation with me haven’t really known what it meant. It’s too bad, because it’s rather an apt description imo of the phenomenon.

Good luck with your medical appointments!

Thanks, next week I'll have the appointments.

The earworm thing: It's just the opposite in German: I would be surprised if someone doesn't know the word. :D

StringerBell wrote:Which metal bands do you really like in German (or any other language)? Good ones are hard to find. Do you like Slipknot? I have been listening to them a lot in recent years. I never used to like metal, but they converted me!

Well, metal bands that come into my mind that acutally sing in German... I didn't like songs in German for a long time, now I'm ok with it, but still rather picky... Most bands I listen to sing in English. I might even like more or as many bands singing in Finnish as in German. Slipknot I know from the name, but they're not really my thing. I'm more into what could be put into the "melodic" category.

Youtube algorithms start now working as well: they suggest me now some more metal bands in Spanish. Interesting to see is, that all (?) the comments are written in Spanish, while in other cases I feel there's always some English comment as well. This could become really interesting.
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tiia
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Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Sat Aug 24, 2019 9:45 am

Time is going by, summer is nearly over. That means life is coming back to the cities and language classes are ahead.
Right, I'm doing again an evening class for Swedish and I'm considering even one for Finnish at the end of the year. And Spanish? Well, I went a few times to the language cafe and spoke Spanish (and sometimes even Swedish!). I guess I really should do some grammar tasks in Spanish, but except for this speaking practise every now and then the language is somehow on hold. :? Maybe there's too much other stuff right now, but you know, it has never been my primary language....

Anyway, for Swedish I tried speaking as well and that's also quite nice, though my level is pretty low. The close relation to German helps a lot. But because I don't do enough on my own I'll continue with a course covering the last chapters of Rivstart A1+A2 in september. I know it's slow, but as you see, without classes I obviously don't progress at all and courses are so cheap here. This one will be only 32 € for 39h. Classes in Germany outside the university (where they were for free) cost about 3-4 times as much. Next year I should continue with B1-level classes, something I'm for some reason a bit excited about.
I organised myself a bit of Swedish audio/movies and hopefully will use it at some point. Living in Finland makes Swedish media much more accessible.

So I wrote I'm considering taking a Finnish class as well. Maybe that sounds weird, but acutally I'd really like to take a suitable group class to practice writing, have some grammar correction, plus vocabulary training in a certain way. There may be something available but the possibilities are limited and I don't know whether the courses would be really the way I want them to be.
I think I once or twice complained about it already, but it's incredibly difficult to find teaching for Finnish beyond B1. But in academics B1 is not sufficient for work (though it seems job applications are covered often already in A2 classes - imho way too early for academic professions / specialists). Even my current level, which should be around B2, is not completely sufficient for work (it's ok for a job interview). I mean, I can do pretty much everything somehow, but I'm now also confronted with the limitations of my current level, not only in work life:
- I do lack vocabulary in a way that I could express things in a more creative and maybe even humorous way on purpose.
- I cannot write reports at work. I can write *something*, and understand nearly everything there. But writing reports? No. Luckily I barely have to.
- In more complicated projects I cannot even really answer emails. (but that is also because the projects are indeed a bit more complicated and I couldn't answer those mails in any other language either.)
- I cannot go to meetings with external people alone, because I couldn't express ideas well enough, nor can I be sure that I understand everything. But that's again not only a language-related problem, but also due to the lack of experience.
- I don't understand everything in spoken language. I recently looked up a lot of unofficial/slangi names for different suburbs in and around Helsinki. There are such nice ones such as Hertsikka/Hertsu for Herttoniemi or Tiksi for Tikkurila. Outside of this region the only relevant so far was Manse for Tampere (because it's like the Manchester of Finland). People really use those names, so I need to understand them. However, the names are by far not the only issue here.

And yes, these things bother me. Some more than others.
I assume that the second point would already become better when improving the first one. Others will certainly improve with more work experience. But I don't really expect everything just to happen by itself.

I know there are online writing classes, but I'd really like having them in real life and profit from the choice of words by other people. Reading how other people would tackle the same topic in a different way. Knowing that other people will actually read what I write and it's not just "for the sake of writing practice". But on the other hand such writing classes for foreigners seem to focus on non-fictional texts only, and I feel that this is not enough for me (no word plays, humour etc.). (Btw. I have friends who offered me correcting texts, too. I would not really need a class for corrections only. but as you can read here, I obviously haven't used this opportunity yet.)
I'm not even sure whether I should maybe try some "creative writing" course who write in their native language... But I don't feel like it would be the right thing, since I might not be at that level yet (?). I really don't know how such classes actually work. And I don't plan writing anything longer... There might be also some toastmasters clubs, but I wouldn't do that in my native language either. Should I try role playing? (Something I never tried, since it seems to be a very time consuming hobby.) More board/card games in Finnish, that focus on the player's verbal skills? Any suitable only forum? Any other (weird) ideas?
Have you tried yourself any of these things in a foreign language (apart from English)?

So that's the rant for today.
For a more positive feel at the end of this post, now a picture I've taken a few weeks ago from this beautiful national park, I've mentioned already last year. This year I warned my visitor in advance and we could actually go swimming there (it was ~30°C outside. The water was not very deep, but there were three layers with different water temperatures, which felt pretty interesting).
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eido
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Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby eido » Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:59 pm

Roleplaying is fun, and it doesn't have to be time-consuming if you don't want it to be. You just have to find the right people and mode.

You could also try writing fan fiction in Finnish ;) That would test your ability to be colloquial! Reading it for sure helps you bone up on slang expressions.
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tiia
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Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:19 pm

Autumn has arrived. It's raining a lot and the leaves start to change their color.
Some more (attempts of) speaking Spanish and Swedish at the language cafe. But this will now be reduced due to the Swedish language class on the same day.
So finally there's the next Swedish course. Feels like the biggest motivation is actually that the next course will be at B1-level. :D The current group is quite mixed. The amount of Finns has doubled compared to the previous course (where there was one). It seems like everyone has lived in Finland much longer than me. :D But definitely not all of them speak Finnish.
Although I do understand the motivation of some people is to learn Swedish in order to apply for the Finnish citizenship, I have quite mixed feelings about it, when the region they're living in is mainly Finnish speaking. (I hope I don't hurt anyone by saying that.)
How does it feel for Finns? Especially since many already have their special relationship with Swedish due to the mandatory classes in school.

I've been writing some useful non-emailish-sentences at work. And started to write an essay like text about "home" in Finnish. Just because some posts in (German) online forums made me think that it might be a good idea. In general it's a topic that has been following me around for years already, since I studied at the other side of the country and do not consider the place where I grew up as home anymore. It's my childhood home, yes, but not my current one. I mean I already lived ~1/3 of my life somewhere else. I feel like this is something many people don't really get. I wanted to give some examples here, but it seems to better, that I leave it for now.
Don't know whether I will finish this essay. Hopefully I will.

Well, I had a talk about communication at work, something that was necessary for quite a while. At least one thing changed and well yeah... Difficult topic since I don't want to go into details. At least I have now realised there was at least this one more thing that made the lunch conversations and other informal topics much harder for me and that was not the language... The very same thing would have caused struggles in basically any language. Honestly, I am not surprised anymore why I often struggled to actually get what they were talking about. Let's see how everything will develop now that this one issue is hopefully out of the way/improving.


-----------
@eido I somehow never had interest in fan fiction. But maybe it's a great idea for someone who likes fan fiction already in other languages.

The issue with slang expressions is that you cannot guess which words have another synonym in spoken Finnish. The part that you can guess, is ok, for example shortend words, but if 2/3 of the word are missing (such as in the Tikkurila -> Tiksi example) or when there are completely different words, this is basically impossible without enough input first. (Example: umbrella is sateenvarjo in written Finnish, but it becomes sontsa (from Russian) in spoken Finnish.) Anyway, I hope that the change mentioned in the paragraph above leads to more input like that.

-----
Last but not least something more positive:
A Work colleague recommended me Noin viikon uutiset (nowadays Noin viikon studio) some satire/comedy show also available on yle areena. They have now come back frome the summer break and I was able to watch a full episode. In this case subtitles seem really useful, though I usually don't need them. It seems this might have been something I have been actually looking for. (I hoped for equivalents of the German Heute show or extra 3, but had found nothing.)
It's not only positive as listening practice, but you also get some special cultural insight in a different way than just normal news.
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tiia
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x 1975

Re: tiia's log (Finnish, Spanish, Swedish)

Postby tiia » Sat Sep 21, 2019 9:07 am

I'm a bit lazy to search for the right thread for resources now, but I want to share this technical online dictionary / term bank with you.
It's freely available with a user interface in Finnish, Swedish and English. Here the English one, since it might be interesting also for people not knowing either Finnish nor Swedish. Unfortunately for those not knowing Finnish the classification field is only in Finnish.*
TEPA- Term bank
The term bank is multilingual with entries mainly in Finnish, English, German and Swedish. French seems also very common, but I have seen also sometimes translations in Danish and even Estonian and Russian popping up. It uses e.g. other (technical) dictionaries as a source, which also explains the varying languages. You can always see from which dictionary/resource the translation has been taken.
This could be very useful, if you actually aim to work in any of these languages. Though understanding a word is often possible without the exact translation, it's sometimes good to doublecheck a word if you want to (or have to) be more precise. Some translations might be a bit "old", if the dictionary used is already 30 years old. But I think you'll be able to use this tool pefectly once you're at the stage of needing it.

*An example why this is important: the German "Speiche" can be translated as a spoke of a wheel or a bone in your arm (radius). The classification now tells you whether this is a medical/health related word or not.



And when it's already about resources: For people learning Finnish and wondering about the local cases and which place names goes with which either the inner (-ssA) or outer (-llA) cases, you can check that here: Asustusnimihakemisto. This is available only in Finnish, but pretty easy to use without Finnish skills anyway. Just enter the place name in the search field and voilá. It also distinguishes between places with the same name, since each entry includes the location of the place.
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