Chung wrote:- 2 infinitives (learn the "short" form of the 1st infinitive and the 3rd infinitive. The other infinitives aren't used as much but knowing how to form and use them would be handy if you were advanced)
I like the idea of two infinitives. The Finns must be a very practical people. It's always a good idea to have a spare infinite around, you know, in case the first one gets a puncture or something.
Seriously though, thanks for all the great work you put into the Finnish profile. I just put a link to the whole thing in the links section. You've basically already done all the work of locating resources for us. That list is almost overwhelming.
And now, some group business.... Do we have a plan? Do we even want a plan? I figured that it probably is best not to have any set schedule or anything too specific since we are very different and lead very different lives. I know Cavesa has her medical studies taking up a lot of time and tends to binge-study languages, then disappear for a few weeks when her medical studies take over her life for a while. Yuurei seems to be very organized and good at following a schedule. I go back and forth between moderate schedules and all-or-nothing extremes, and I think Elenia is probably somewhere in the middle. Still, it might be fun to have some vague plans and sort of follow the same path more or less.
When I used Assimil for German, I started out doing one lesson per day, but the last third of the course was considerably more painful than advertised and I ended up slowing down to about three lessons per week. I think the Finnish course is going to be fairly difficult right from the start because of the base language, so I probably won't be doing a lesson a day, at least not for long. The course is 100 lessons, so that means about 149 days of lessons (you start the active wave at lesson 50). We have a bit more than 34 weeks from the beginning of September to the end of April, which would mean proceeding at a rate of a bit more than 4 lessons per week if we want to finish the whole course before the next Gathering. Is that our goal? Or should we keep our ambitions/expectations a little lower? I'm really not sure how well I will be able to get through ~4.5 lessons per week when the base language is German. However, I intend to do FSI and Supisuomea (and possibly some other stuff) on the side, and that may help.
Also, should we try for any group activities? Maybe we should just wait and see what occurs to us as we go along.
To any of our advanced Finnish learners who are following this: If you have any specific suggestions about our study plans, or thoughts about what you would do had you been starting out today, don't hesitate to give us some advice. (We might even take some of it.)