Easy Finnish Resources

[LundiHákarlsson]

Just like Persian, I am having trouble finding easier resources for Finnish, whether they be coursebooks, textbooks or whatever. I have Assimil's Le Finnois, Teach Yourself Finnish (older version with cassettes) and Beginner's Finnish. I find all of them to go quite fast for me.

Getting through the first few chapters are already challenging. Are there any other resources that go at a slower pace?

[Chung]

The problem with all of those books is that they could stand to have more exercises. I suspect that one reason you feel that they're moving too fast is that you're not retaining that much from the first few chapters. You can listen to the dialogues or do the few exercises over and over again but after a while you may feel as if you "understand" and move onto the next unit because you know the translation or answer. Looking at your linguistic background, I think that you need to practice with a bigger set of exercises so that you get comfortable with the introductory structures and new vocabulary. You obviously can't rely much on a Western Romance discount or a Germanic one to get through Finnish (or Farsi for that matter).

Unfortunately, "Beginner's Finnish" by Risko is probably the first book that I would have recommended since it moves the slowest of the beginners' books that are widely available outside Europe. If you want to spring for it, I'd then recommend starting with "Finnish for Foreigners 1" by M-H Aaltio (textbook & workbook) just to get familiar with standard Finnish (the colloquial register can come later). There's also a set of CDs for the course but it's very hard to find and then you'd very likely need to pay an arm and a leg. If you work through the textbook and workbook, you'll build a useful stock of basic vocabulary and get a good grounding in basic grammar. There's a ton of exercises and it's designed intelligently enough that successive chapters reuse a lot of the structures and vocabulary that you've seen in previous chapter(s) while grammar explanations are succinct and in the plainest terms possible.

Here's another idea: Before plunging into a textbook, why not get familiar with survival-level stuff from YLE, A Taste of Finnish or Suomi Taskussa? This last one is full of short videos meant for newcomers/(im)migrants to watch how to use Finnish in everyday life (e.g. shopping, booking appointments, using public transport) as well as a few short videos teaching very basic vocabulary. I do think though that getting familiar with using some phrases and basic vocabulary from any of these online materials will help make things less intimidating when you start to work again with a conventional textbook/workbook.

Tsemppiä!

[ilmari]

As beautifully explained by Chung, ‘Finnish for Foreigners’ is still the most systematic and progressive Finnish course available. If you want a solid foundation in Finnish, this is the way to go.

If you wish to complement your studies with more contemporary material, you could also add ‘From Start to Finnish’ by Leila White: https://finnlectura.fi/oppimateriaalit/from-start-to-finnish
It is a clear and practical introduction. You can download a sample from here: https://finnlectura.fi/assets/naytesivut/from_start_to_finnish_naytesivut.pdf

Later on, you could move on to Finnish-based language textbooks like the ‘Suomen mestari’ series: https://finnlectura.fi/oppimateriaalit/suomen-mestari. These can be used for self-study, but you will already need a basic knowledge of the language. The latest edition of volume 1 (2020), while teaching every aspect of the standard language, also introduces spoken Finnish right from the beginning!

As for Assimil, it is excellent – but it is a shame nearly no spoken Finnish is used in it.

A reliable and friendly place to order ‘made in Finland’ learning material is the Ruslania bookshop in Helsinki: https://ruslania.com/en/