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[tiia]

I had a similar feeling when I read Ronja Rövardotter (Ronja Ryövärintytär) during the last Super Challenge in Finnish. I wrote about it here, although I don't mention the book title in that specific post. I summarized the difficulty with:

Although it's still a children's book I do not recommend it for beginners of any language.

I indeed used the German translation a few times to look up words, because you cannot find some words anywhere else.

Mio min Mio (Mio poikani Mio) was one of the first books I read and it was a lot easier, although it took me forever, because I just wasn't ready to do real reading back then.

Btw. I had bought both books at the same day in the same store. But there were years between reading them.

[rdearman]

Setswana.

[tiia]

If you want to stay around Europe, but want something more different without genders, besides Finnish there would be Estonian or Hungarian. Or maybe one of the Sami languages?
What about going to the European/Asian border and take Turkish?

[Xenops]

[ Well, returning to the north... why not Finnish? Don't get excited. I haven't even started yet. I might not, for a little while. I'm going to get organized with what I've got going already and see what room is left.

Last month, as I was being tempted by Finnish, I lamented that the current forum has so few Finnish learners, and thus resources. I had to look on the old forum for ideas.

I do not know how I would fit it in, but I would really like to take a vowel harmony language to A2 or so: my linguistic curiosity is itching to better understand it. I researched Manchu, but there is just...Nothing. I have never seen a language with so few learning materials. I don't know if even iguanaman could learn it. The only commercial materials teach it like a dead language ("let's translate this passage!") It's an interesting contrast in attitudes between the UK reviving their Celtic languages and the Chinese not interested in preserving their history (Manchu used to be the prestigious, court language in China).

Turkish is the other vowel harmony language I have considered: I love the orthography, but I don't love how it sounds: Finnish orthography just looks really odd, but I like how it sounds. I love how Hungarian sounds, but I don't like the orthography. These might be superficial preferences, but if I have to look or listen to the language constantly, I should like it at the basic level, yes?

[Xenops]

As mentioned above, I found three resources for Finnish that involved between $0-1 to obtain: FinnishPod101, FSI Conversational Finnish, and book2. I'm feeling really lazy so I'm being really lazy about this language. For now it's in the "don't really care but I just wanna try it out anyway" universe of languages. There's just so much work involved in learning a language that I don't think I can seriously care about any more than what I'm already doing. I look around the forum and it seems there are a few people who keep regular daily or near-daily contact with their advanced languages, but it seems more common that people achieve upper intermediate or advanced status and then move on. Which is fine, but I can't imagine ever doing that. Maybe I just have too much emotional involvement along the way that to say "ok, done!" after a certain point seems impossible. I don't know, I am probably not communicating myself well (I hope I'm not offending anyone, it's certainly not my intention. The comment about emotional involvement isn't meant to be judgmental or positive/negative, though if I were forced I'd say less emotional involvement is probably preferable to how I do things )

I tried Finnish101, and it made me realize why I don't like the language101 courses. Proceed with caution. I'm liking the FSI a whole lot more. I haven't tried book2: thanks for the recommendation!

With Spanish and French, I realize that I wasn't enjoying the learning journey, and I had to give myself permission to put those aside for now: which is hard, because I have invested in them. Now I want to attempt languages where just learning them might be fun, even if I never reach a high level. So no, no offense taken here.

I'm finding being broke is an excellent reason to seek out free resources. This website looked plausible as well: http://www.oneness.vu.lt

[tiia]

Honestly, I find the amount of (free!) online resources for beginners of Finnish already pretty good, the problem is more often, that they might be hard to find, if you don't know how to find them. You should take a look at the Finnish language profile on the main site. There's a section called "Online courses or downloadable material".
There's also the list from infopankki on online learning material.


Otherwise, I actually use my advanced Finnish (nearly) daily. Ok, right now I'm in Finland, which makes it much easier, but even in Germany I had put quite some effort in making it part of my everyday life. It's wonderful I can now use Finnish sometimes at work, but not everyone there speaks Finnish, so...
Even English is a foreign language for me, but it doesn't really feel like it. I know it's definitely not perfect in terms of vocabulary, but it's suffcient for everything I need it for. Usually I even try to avoid it, because I use it anyway more often than I'd like to. (Only reading fiction is something I should do more in English.)
I think it might depend also on the amount of languages you learnt to an advanced level. Integrating one or two or three languages into your daily life might still work out quite well, but after a certain point there is just the time going to be a limiting factor, especially when you still learn new languages.

[rdearman]

Did you check the study group for links? I'm sure we put a lot of links in there, (before I bailed out cause it was too hard).


https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =26&t=3287

And the links in the language profile Chung did for the static site?

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 487#p30163

[aaleks]

I look around the forum and it seems there are a few people who keep regular daily or near-daily contact with their advanced languages, but it seems more common that people achieve upper intermediate or advanced status and then move on. Which is fine, but I can't imagine ever doing that. Maybe I just have too much emotional involvement along the way that to say "ok, done!" after a certain point seems impossible.

I guess I'm one of the "few people" who has reached intermediate level but can't just move on . I think, in my case it's so because I get emotionally invested in a language I'm learning so I choose my languages accordingly (now it's only English and Italian, and who knows probably it would stay that way). That also means that I would never become a polyglot but I'm ok with that

[Elenia]

Caught up!

I really enjoy reading your journey. You're a much more conscientious learner than I am, and you have a knack of pointing out things I didn't realise I'd missed! (I'm thinking especially you noticing the use of 'till' with verbs, but that is not the only thing). The kroppsdel på någon structure that you mention isn't that frequent in everyday speech, at least not the everyday speech that I'm used to. But then again, body parts aren't usually mentioned in my conversations. None the less, I do think that it may be done for effect, to create a slightly more old-timey, other-worldly feel. This is pure conjecture, though!

I started reading The Three Body Problem last week. I had started it once before, but realised I don't know nearly enough about Chinese history to read it. I have the most basic of understandings, now, which makes it much easier. If you want a reading buddy, let me know! Likewise for Ronja Rövardotter. If you want another Lindgren to read through before, people always recommend Bröderna Lejonhjärta to me. Although, it's always recommended when I tell them I enjoyed Mio, min Mio, so if you didn't like the one, maybe give the other a miss. Basically, if you want a reading buddy at all, I'm available! I'm a terrible reading buddy, but that doesn't stop me from putting myself forward!

On motivations:
When I first started learning Swedish, I wanted what you wanted. In fact:

For Swedish, I'm focusing on developing passive skills, in particular my reading comprehension. It would be nice to be able to speak, but at this moment I'd rather understand.

I spoke Swedish very little in my first two/three years learning. Obviously, this goal changed, but it changed when I was ready for it too, and I wasn't hurt by not focusing on output during the early stages. It's fine to never want that, and if in the future what you want changes, then as aaleks says, you haven't ruined that chance for yourself. As you say, you're doing this for fun.

I have plenty more to say, but I've forgotten it all for now. It might come back, if it doesn't it likely wasn't important in the first place.

(Oh! On Finnish and Wonderlust: I have gotten a reputation here on the forum for being a terrible temptress. Despite this, I am actually pretty wonderlust-proof. In fact, I have trouble adding in new languages that I have wanted to learn for a long time! See: Dutch. Even German, which is a language I've wanted to learn for over a decade, only gets sporadic attention. Maybe this is why I don't mind getting my head turned by a new language? At the end of the day, I know what I want, and everything else has to make do with scraps from the master's table until I finally get it. That being said, Finnish is great, and I love it. I love it so much that one of 'our' wedding presents was a translation of Johnathon Strange and Mr Norrell. The more I realise I don't know about it, the more I want to learn it.)

[Ani]

Do I need to know about Chinese history to read this book? My knowledge is non-existent in that department. How would the reading buddy thing work? I think once I commit to it I'll definitely fail to read it, but I'm already not reading it, so things cannot get any worse (Btw I do also have Bröderna Lejonhjärta, but I think I'm saving it for a few books down the line... I have so many already! I've turned into an ebook hoarder!)

Pardon my butting in.. I did struggle with the Chinese history aspect (lack of knowledge on my part) but in the English & French at least there are some foot notes to help.

You two better get going before we all start reading the second book